Network Vendor suggestions/reviews, Arista Networks, Dell Force10, Juniper, Extreme Networks etc...

Wed Jun 19 00:47:54 UTC 2013

DELL Force10 switches (not DELL Power Connect) run so far so good in
our environment. the combination of S4810 and Z9000 make good sense on
both operation and capex point of view.

There were three headaches for us in the beginning of adaption.
Force10 calculates frame size with CRC32, say if your IP MTU is 9000
on VMware then the trunk port on Force10 should be 9022. Although it
clearly documented in manual but still troublesome for people who
lives in Cisco world for all his past life and want to use non-default
MTU (1500) on Force10 switch.

Another headache was Force10 needs to manually config MTU (if not use
default MTU) on every interface even if the interface is member of
port-channel and you do already config MTU on PO interface

The last one was the way how it creates VLANs. Not like Cisco, Force10
cannot creates say hundreds of VLANs in one single line, but need to
create VLAN interface one by one, even if they are purely layer-2
VLAN, not RVI.

However, those 3 things can be managed by script or by using the free
deployment tool, AFM, from DELL. Beside those 3, so far the switches
run rock solid.

One very good benefit is Force10 does not (almost) have virtual port
limitation like Cisco does. (Force10 has completely no limit when use
RSTP. and 250 x ports when use PVST. You can google "Cisco virtual
port limit".) This freedom is extremely important when operate large
flat layer-2 network for VM.

On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 5:08 PM, Phil Fagan <philfagan at gmail.com> wrote:
> I love JUNOS, don't really care for IOS. I really trust Cisco and Juniper's
> hardware, with that being said Arista is your best bet for cheapest port.
> I've only seen Arista in lab, not in the wild yet so I can't speak for how
> I would trust them. You mention getting bit by single sups, I believe as of
> late Arista has had issue with OSPF failover time between dual-sups in HA
> setups.
>
> I used to have a Dell laptop....but I'm sure their great too. In the end
> for me I only trust Cisco or Juniper. I've been burnt by Foundry and am
> waiting to on Arista.
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 5:53 PM, Blake Pfankuch - Mailing List <
> blake.mailinglist at 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
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Phil Fagan
> Denver, CO
> 970-480-7618

-- 
--
Michel~