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

Mon Feb 9 20:18:22 UTC 2015

Cliff Bowles <Cliff.Bowles at apollo.edu> writes:

> 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.

You could always roll the 6509s into 6800 series stuff if you're married
to Cisco for Campus style switches in your distribution network.  But I
really hate the Sup2T.  In my admittedly limited scope, they have a
pretty high failure rate.

If you want something simple that still supports MPLS and VPLS, you
can't really beat Brocade for port density.  I getting ready to rip out
6 sets of 6509s and replace them with 16 slot MLXe chasis.

And if I were in your shoes I'd be looking at either ASR9K or Juniper MX
series stuff to replace the 6509s that you have on your edge.

I can't speak much for the server-facing stuff on your network though.

-Daniel