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

[Phil Fagan <philfagan () gmail com>]

I've had nothing but good luck with Juniper support and well with Cisco you
pay for support too. I will say Arista support was great, however, I'm
still hesitant to put them in full production; but I think that is lack of
experience with them speaking.

Do the bake off in your lab and let'm run!


On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 6:31 PM, Blake Pfankuch - Mailing List <
blake.mailinglist () pfankuch me> wrote:

>  Let me also clarify, Price per port is not the final deciding factor.
> We are looking much more at a combination of daily operational sanity,
> troubleshooting features, operational feature set, vendor support quality
> and price.****
>
> ** **
>
> Support is absolute key.  When we need help, we need help quickly and
> knowledgeable support.  The name checkpoint comes to mind when I think of
> something I DON’T want for support quality.  It also causes nausea…****
>
> ** **
>
> Thanks,****
>
> ** **
>
> Blake****
>
> ** **
>
> *From:* Phil Fagan [mailto:philfagan () gmail com]
> *Sent:* Tuesday, June 18, 2013 6:08 PM
> *To:* Blake Pfankuch - Mailing List
> *Cc:* NANOG (nanog () nanog org)
> *Subject:* Re: Network Vendor suggestions/reviews, Arista Networks, Dell
> Force10, Juniper, Extreme Networks etc...****
>
> ** **
>
> 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 () 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****



-- 
Phil Fagan
Denver, CO
970-480-7618