Need recommendations for high-feature, high-density L3 Switch

Mon Feb 9 19:54:46 UTC 2015

We have some aging infrastructure and need to start budgeting next-gen.

*         The network has several small routers as individual edges to peers, WAN, SIP services.

*         It has a couple 6509s as Internet edge (full tables, 2 carriers, no transit, simple policies)

*         It has some Nexus 7K as an aggregation layer for all the server pods

*         It has some 6509s as a backbone to interconnect the aggregation layers and inter-site links.

*         We do run VRFs/MPLS across our backbone with L3, L2 and L1 services. Nothing super fancy, but it's a requirement.

Two approaches:

1 - Look at ASR9010 (or something similar) to replace all of the above. Pros: It has the density, it has features, port buffers, seems to have good granular virtualization, seems to have a good reputation amongst heavy users. Cons: It is very expensive fully populated and there is some oversubscription on the higher-density cards.

2 - Look at one solution to consolidate all edge routers and a separate solution to consolidate backbone/aggregation. Pros: Less density required at the edge layers, so a cheaper solution is possible; Not requiring full BGP tables and port buffers at the backbone/agg layer widens the selection a LOT considering the number of vendors with high-feature/high-density L3 switches. Cons: Now we are looking at 4 boxes per data center rather than 2.

So... Is there something in the same class as the ASR9000s that also have a good reputation? Will need at least 48 ports of 10G, 24x1Gb, limited oversubscription, good feature sets, not astronomically priced. If we can't find the perfect fit, we will just look at two separate solutions.

Also... has anyone used a CSR1000v or Vyatta VM-based solution on something like a Pluribus? I know you can run them on any server, but there are vendors like Pluribus who integrate the server hardware with a full-feature physical switch. (Their E68 is the one we are considering) I'm assuming you aren't going to get anywhere near the features and performance of an ASR9010, but... can you get close?

Thanks.

CWB