[127283] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Advice regarding Cisco/Juniper/HP
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jeff Young)
Fri Jun 18 19:24:13 2010
From: Jeff Young <young@jsyoung.net>
In-Reply-To: <AANLkTik_qczGgmelqHnOoee_SoGnjfEEQ6pIE_B4X95T@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 19 Jun 2010 09:23:54 +1000
To: James Smith <james@jamesstewartsmith.com>
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
OK, I'll throw in my $.02,
It really doesn't matter what any of us say, anecdotes from NANOG will =
not
stop your CEO/CFO or worse your CMO from directing you to use HP.
You have only two choices. The first is to engage in "war of the =
PowerPoints"
during which you and the HP account team inform "the people who write =
the
checks." As most account teams are pretty good at this type of warfare, =
and
as the war will eventually escalate into a "war of the Excel =
Spreadsheets" it's
a pretty difficult road. =20
The second choice is a "war of the Lab Reports" in which you bring HP=20
equipment into your lab and test it against the comparable Cisco/Juniper
equipment. By choosing this road you get to learn all about HP and if =
it works
in your application, you're that much closer to deploying it safely. If =
it won't
work, you have real data which, in most cases (but not all), trumps any =
war
of the PowerPoints your account team might start. Sometimes you even =
find
that while the "deal" looks really good, in order to accomplish your =
application
you'll need twice as much of Brand X and therefore, the deal isn't quite =
so
appealing. (By the way HP, Cisco and Juniper are pretty much=20
interchangeable in this discussion). What CEO's, CFO's and CMO's really
like to see are options. Cost and test all three.
jy
On 17/06/2010, at 11:52 PM, James Smith wrote:
> I'm looking for a little insight regarding an infrastructure purchase =
my
> company is considering. We are a carrier, and we're in the process of
> building a DR site. Our existing production site is all Cisco =
equipment
> with a little Juniper thrown into the mix. I'd like to either get the =
same
> Cisco equipment for the DR, or the equivalent Juniper equipment. We =
have
> skill sets for both Cisco and Juniper, so neither would be a problem =
to
> manage.
>=20
> A business issue has come up since we have a large number of HP =
servers for
> Unix and Wintel. With HP's recent acquisition of 3Com they are =
pressing
> hard to quote on the networking hardware as well, going as far as =
offering
> prices that are way below the equivalent Cisco and Juniper models. In
> addition they're saying they'll cut us deals on the HP servers for the =
DR
> site to help with the decision to go for HP Networking. Obviously to =
the
> people writing the cheques this carries a lot of weight.
>=20
>> =46rom a technical point of view, I have never worked in a shop that =
used HP
> or 3Com for the infrastructure. Dot-com's, telco's, bank's, hosting
> companies...I haven't seen any of them using 3com or HP. =
Additionally, I'm
> not fond of having to deal with a third set of equipment. I'm not =
exactly
> comfortable going with HP, but I'd like some data to help resolve the
> debate.
>=20
> So my questions to the NANOG community are: Would you recommend HP =
over
> Cisco or Juniper? How is HP's functionality and performance compared =
to
> Cisco or Juniper? Does anyone have any HP networking experiences they =
can
> share, good or bad?
>=20
