[163812] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Network Vendor suggestions/reviews, Arista Networks, Dell
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Rodrick Brown)
Wed Jun 19 02:52:19 2013
From: Rodrick Brown <rodrick.brown@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CC75EEBF17C7374EA8309102B7B10C84010AA27D2C@exchange.shenrons-house.local>
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 02:51:43 -0400
To: Blake Pfankuch - Mailing List <blake.mailinglist@pfankuch.me>
Cc: "NANOG \(nanog@nanog.org\)" <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
Arista is rock solid they have both an IOS like cli and a standard
unix shell you can even run tcpdump on their switches.
Arista claim to fame came about 3-4 years back when they had at the
time one of the fastest non-blocking cut though 10Gbe switches using
the fulcrum asic geared for low latency environments the financial
sector ate it up and loved it. Facebook is also a huge Arista shop.
Sent from my iPhone
On Jun 18, 2013, at 7:56 PM, Blake Pfankuch - Mailing List
<blake.mailinglist@pfankuch.me> wrote:
> Howdy,
> I have been working on a proposal for the organization I w=
ork for to move into the 10gbit datacenter. We have a small datacenter cur=
rently of about 1000 ports of 1gbit. We have traditionally been a full Cis=
co shop, however I was asked to do a price comparison as well as features w=
ith other major alternative vendors. I was also asked to do some digging a=
s 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 4=
506 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 t=
o not be bleeding edge, but oozing edge. We need 5 9's or more of uptime y=
early so stability is preferable to cool features. We currently have singl=
e supervisors in all of our switches (not my decision) and it has bit us re=
cently. 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. Realisticall=
y 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, ho=
wever TOR would make more sense allowing us to switch to SFP+ twinax connec=
tivity to servers.
>
> With this in mind, I have a few questions...
>
> It was mandated that I look at a company "Arista Networks" and investigat=
e possible options. I had not heard much about them, so I look to the expe=
rts. 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, h=
ow reliable it would be as well as their QA/bugfix history. Also 24x4 supp=
ort 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 thi=
s 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? St=
ability? Configuration sanity? What do people like? What do people hate?
>
> Juniper. What do people like? What do people hate? Have the Layer 2 iss=
ues 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 g=
ood, what is bad? Is the config sane?
>
> I would be happy to compile any information I find, as well as our saniti=
zed internal conclusions. On and off list responses welcome.
>
> If there is another vendor anyone would suggest, please add them to the l=
ist with similarly asked questions.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Blake
