[163811] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Network Vendor suggestions/reviews, Arista Networks, Dell
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andreas Larsen)
Wed Jun 19 02:27:08 2013
From: Andreas Larsen <andreas.larsen@ip-only.se>
To: Brent Jones <brent@brentrjones.com>, Blake Pfankuch - Mailing List
<blake.mailinglist@pfankuch.me>
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 08:26:36 +0200
In-Reply-To: <CAOC=LuXYFJJ+xRUSQ50yfYrYtQA5uqBnAvxCB8+gwASpU5s7aw@mail.gmail.com>
Cc: "NANOG \(nanog@nanog.org\)" <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
I have worked with both Extreme, Juniper, Cisco and Brocade and Avaya.
Extreme.=20
Great boxes stable and afforadable when it comes to 10GE and 40GE. Truly
one XOS for all boxes, lowend x440 has the same XOS as 48*10GE
device.Support sucks very bad though if you can't get your SE to support
you.
Juniper=20
Great boxes, very nice CLI, good support with a nice ticketsystem and good
kb. However I have found alot of bugs that needs to be corrected in the
switch series that are somewhat annoying.
Cisco=20
Good boxes, expensive great support and a amazing KB.
Brocade
Good boxed, a tad expensive. Open to opensoucre when it comes to SDN
stuff.=20
Avaya=20
Great boxes, SPB all the way =3D), not a solid true OS yet but some
different ones on different boxes, but to my mind the SPB solution gives
you the most flexability in a datacenter today and you can even in the
long run mix vendors if you like since it's open and standarized.
Short rant =3D) Hope you find the vendor you like the best and by all mean=
s
take in a couple of them for test.
Med v=E4nlig h=E4lsning
Andreas Larsen
=20
IP-Only Telecommunication AB| Postadress: 753 81 UPPSALA | Bes=F6ksadress:
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Den 2013-06-19 05:17 skrev Brent Jones <brent@brentrjones.com>:
>On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 4:53 PM, Blake Pfankuch - Mailing List <
>blake.mailinglist@pfankuch.me> wrote:
>
>> Howdy,
>> I have been working on a proposal for the organization I
>> work for to move into the 10gbit datacenter. We have a small datacenter
>> currently of about 1000 ports of 1gbit. We have traditionally been a
>>full
>> Cisco shop, however I was asked to do a price comparison as well as
>> features with other major alternative vendors. I was also asked to do
>>some
>> digging as far as what "the real world" thinks about these possible
>>vendors.
>>
>> We currently have 2 Cisco 6509's with 8 48 port cards Sup 3BXL, 2 Cisco
>> 4506 with 5x 48 port card and Sup V's and 2 4900M switches providing
>>10gbit
>> to a very specialized implementation. With all of our technology, we
>>try
>> to not be bleeding edge, but oozing edge. We need 5 9's or more of
>>uptime
>> yearly so stability is preferable to cool features. We currently have
>> single supervisors in all of our switches (not my decision) and it has
>>bit
>> us recently. Everything we are looking at needs to support NSF/SSO/VSS
>>of
>> some kind.
>>
>> What we have been looking to replace it with in Cisco world is Nexus
>>7004
>> Core and Nexus 5596UP with 2200 series Fabric extenders for Dist/Access
>>as
>> well as 2200 Fabric Extenders within our Dell Blade Chassis.
>>Realistically
>> we will be under 800 ports of 10gbit (excluding Blades) which puts us
>>in a
>> tough spot from what I can find. Currently everything we have is EOR,
>> however TOR would make more sense allowing us to switch to SFP+ twinax
>> connectivity to servers.
>>
>> With this in mind, I have a few questions...
>>
>> It was mandated that I look at a company "Arista Networks" and
>>investigate
>> possible options. I had not heard much about them, so I look to the
>> experts. Pro's and Con's? Real world experience? Looks to me they
>>have a
>> lot of cool features, but I'm slightly concerned with how new they might
>> be, how reliable it would be as well as their QA/bugfix history. Also
>>24x4
>> support and hardware replacement. Everything in our datacenter
>>currently
>> has a 2 or 4 hour cisco contract on it and critical core components
>>have a
>> cold spare in inventory.
>>
>> Dell Force 10... I know Dell tries to get you to drink the Koolaid on
>>this
>> solution, I was a former Dell Partner and they even pushed me to get
>>demo
>> equipment going... What's the experience with their chassis switches?
>> Stability? Configuration sanity? What do people like? What do people
>> hate?
>>
>> Juniper. What do people like? What do people hate? Have the Layer 2
>> issues of historical age gone away? Is the config still xml ish? It
>>has
>> been about 5 years since I worked with anything Juniper.
>>
>> Extreme networks. I know very little about them historically. What is
>> good, what is bad? Is the config sane?
>>
>> I would be happy to compile any information I find, as well as our
>> sanitized internal conclusions. On and off list responses welcome.
>>
>> If there is another vendor anyone would suggest, please add them to the
>> list with similarly asked questions.
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> Blake
>>
>
>Coming from first hand experience, all network equipment vendors have
>strengths and weaknesses.
>Personally, I prefer the Junos CLI and ecosystem, but it is a learning
>curve, especially with a larger team who may not be familiar with it.
>But I found once I grasped the "Junos way", I'm significantly more
>productive with less errors, and "commit confirmed" is much better than
>Cisco comparable rollback methods.
>Juniper also offers several methods for automation: Junoscript/SLAX,
>Netconf, and now Puppet integration.
>
>I also have experience with Force10, and minor experience with Arista,
>both
>good vendors. They will be immieditely familiar to your team, since they
>use the same commands mostly.
>I find Juniper's virtual chassis to be among the better stacking
>technologies, but everyone has their own take. Force10 and Arista do
>really
>good multi-chassis LAG, as well as the Juniper QFX lineup.
>
>These days, vendors are really competitive on pricing and offerings, so
>you
>really can't go wrong :)
>
>--=20
>Brent Jones
>brent@brentrjones.com
