back to article The gear I use in my test lab: A look at three Trident+ switches

Buying new infrastructure does matter. Even small business need a basic set of features and equipment that meets industry standards, not just some proprietary vendor ones. But most businesses simply don't need the bleeding edge. Let's look at an upcoming switch replacement as an example. This customer is going to need to move …

  1. Probie

    Open Ethernet

    I do not trust power connect switches any more after some bad experiences with them a while back. For cheap I would look as you have said at supermicro, but you could look at Accton (edge-core) or Quanta switches. But if you want to extend functionality I would take a peak into the open-ethernet community, Mellanox may be a good place to start.

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Re: Open Ethernet

      I am currently testing a Supermicro Cumulus Linux-based switch. Very promising so far.

      1. Probie

        Re: Open Ethernet

        From what I remember of the early spins of cumulus the Layer functionality was very good, the layer 2 through tended to drag behind most of the other vendors. that may have changed with what you have now, my experience with cumulus is about 2 years old and a lot can happen in that time.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Cisco

    We go for Cisco, but nof for any of the reasons mentioned in the article. The main reason for us is that we work with different IT partners on different continents (for 2nd and 3rd line support). The US guys can handle for example vendor A, vendor B and Cisco. The guys in Asia : C, D and Cisco. India : Vendor E and Cisco. EU : well, you know where I'm getting at.

    The main thing : if excrement really hits propelling device and we need to switch partners, Cisco is the safest choice. At least it was a few years ago when the decision was made.

    The pricing on Cisco is sometimes nauseating, but still cheaper than working with 1 IT partner that can offer global services 24/7. In our specific case and based on data from 5 years ago when we standardized of course.

    Posted as AC because nowadays it's frowned upon here to share details on infrastructure.

    1. dan1980
      Stop

      Re: Cisco

      @AC

      I don't know why you we're down-voted - support concerns are absolutely part of the equation and, as you say: if things start to splatter, you can almost always find a Cisco tech.

      That said, Dell's own support team are very good at that level but you do need someone competent to be 'at the coal face' to speak with them.

      People may not like Cisco, may think they are overpriced or underperforming or simply hate their corporate attitude (or all three) but any tech who spends some time considering how easy it will be to get support for some unforeseen situation in the distant future, will have to admit that getting Cisco-qualified technicians is not going to be super-difficult.

      And every tech should spend some time considering the future supportability of the equipment they install.

      I wouldn't install ANY Supermirco equipment in a customer's site as it currently stands but that has nothing to do with the equipment itself - they simply have next-to-f$#k-all presence in Australia and that makes the conservative part of me anxious when I think to the future.

      1. dan1980

        Re: Cisco

        Just by way of explanation of the Supermicro comment - the two listed vendors in Australia are one group that rebadge SM servers as custom parts and another that provides "end-to-end ICT Services to ensure you achieve your Business Outcomes". Why 'Business Outcomes' is capitalised is unclear.

        The former appears to sell it's own configurations, while the latter appears to provide the equipment as part of a full deployment, rather than to others who would use them to install themselves.

        So no SM for us here.

  3. wabbit347

    If it was me, I'd be going with the Nexus 3000s.

    If you want single point of management, perhaps it might be worth looking at the Cisco 5548s or 56xx range of switches combined with a pair of 2248 FEXes. This would give you 10G and 100M/1G ports with a single management console, although the FEXes don't appear to have PoE so may not be suitable for end users needing VoIP phones for example.

    If you can get refurbed Cisco gear, you can get some considerable savings even on relatively new Cisco kit (hence me mentioning the Nexus 5000s). I guess it depends if Smartnet is critical or whether you can use a third party support company.

    AFAIK the Catalyst switches are still going, so a venerable 4900 or something 4500-ish would give you 10G ports (and VSS with 2 of them for hardware resiliency) Can't comment on costs though.

    For vendors other than Cisco, I'd be giving whiteboxes running Cumulus a serious look. If you're familiar with Linux, then these might be a viable option, I'd have thought with a bit of puppet/chef/ansible that management overheads could be reduced. They also now have a VM for download so you can at least evaluate/test at a minimal cost.

    1. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

      4500-X

      You want the 4500-X for 10Gb ports. You can get a 32 port (plus 8 port uplink module) version of it. Only downside is that you need SFP+ GBICs for all the ports which bumps up the cost...

      As you say, you can also use VSS to get redundancy for these switches too.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: 4500-X

        ...I've heard that switch hasnt got a long term future recently: http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/cisco/nsp/189429

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: 4500-X

          Re: the future of the 4500-X

          I suspect that, as it is a Sup7-based switch and the Sup8 has now been around for a while there will be either a Sup8 version (unlikely) or more than likely a Sup9 version released in conjunction with the 4500E blade.

          In terms of features, line rate IPv6 on all ports would be a sensible upgrade.

  4. The Original Steve

    Personally...

    ... I'm a massive fan of HP ProCurve switches. Cheaper than Cisco for a very similar feature set, open standards and the life time warranty is the topper.

    Had a bad experience years ago with Dell PowerConnect and haven't used them since.

    Can't justify Cisco prices.

    Unsure about Supermicro - what's the software and interface like? Support?

    For me, it's HP switches and Juniper firewalls.

    Just sayin.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Personally...

      and the life time warranty is the topper.

      Yes, but only because you know you'll need it. All three of mine have died, two were replaced under the warranty, I haven't got round to claiming the third one yet, I may not bother.

      1. Pirate Dave Silver badge
        Pirate

        Re: Personally...

        I've got around twenty HP 4000 switches that we put in between 2000-2004 and all are still going strong. The fans did tend to burn out after 3 or 4 years, and HP promptly replaced them - didn't even have to CALL tech support - apparently it was a Known Problem with hose fans, so they setup a "replacement fan request" webpage where I just had to give a shipping address and how many fans I needed and they shipped them to me, no cost. Yeah, we've had a few ports go out, but we get a lot of lightning here. I can't blame HP for that.

        Can't say I'm as fond of the rebadged 3Com switches. The stupid captcha on the admin login page is a total PITA. Who thought THAT was a good idea???

        We're running Avaya (nee Nortel) ERS gear now for our backbone. Pretty good stuff, although, well, you can tell it started life at Nortel...

        I confess, I don't much care for any Dell gear in my server room or wiring closets. IMVHO, they engineer too far down to a price-point.

        Cisco is way more $$ than my small college can afford, at least for wiring closets. However, our main BGP router is a Cisco box, and it's been rock-solid for 5 years.

        1. dan1980

          Re: Personally...

          I like HP too, but part of that is that in Australia we get screwed around on pricing a lot so sometimes equipment that might be worth the extra spend in North America is less justifiable here as the extra cash can be rather a lot extra.

          Dell actually go up a lot in my estimation for good channel pricing in Australia but time will tell how they stack up. (Anyone?)

          The problem with ALL those three vendors mentioned in your post: Dell, HP and Cisco, is that they have all BOUGHT entire lines of switches and are at various stages of integrating them into their range and ecosystem. Cisco is the best here, I believe.

          I saw this recently when I hastily grabbed some new relatively-basic HP switches only to find that, while the features were fine, the management was just utterly at odds with any HP or 3COM I had used before.

          The insane mixture of Procurve/Provision/Comware/3Com and differing levels of CLI usability is just f$#king painful and their attempts at integration actually seem to make things WORSE. But, still I find them the to be stable and reliable for largely static deployments - once they are setup.

          But that's the world of large players acquiring product lines and feature-sets ready-made that nearly defines modern IT.

          One one hand, it can be good for a customer as you can stay with your vendor and still get a full range of products backed by a single point of support. Unfortunately, you still often end up with a bunch of, essentially different switch architectures and management styles.

          I like the ability to copy-paste the config of an IOS switch to an NX-OS with only a few changes in most instances and I like the fact that almost all the knowledge I have about Cisco switches from last generation will be useful for deploying Cisco switches of next generation.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Personally...

          The captcha crap are rebadged H3C switches, not 3com. That's the main issue I have with HP ProCurves these days, it's impossible to tell just from the model number if you're getting:

          - An original HP ProCurve

          - A rebadged 3com

          - A rebadged H3C

          As they all work completely different. Unless somebody out there has some secret decoder ring that I'm missing?

          1. Pirate Dave Silver badge
            Pirate

            Re: Personally...

            H3C? I didn't even know such a thing existed. Sorry, my bad. I assumed it was leftover cruft from 3Com.

            1. razorfishsl

              Re: Personally...

              It is BIG in China and HK.

              but they are real asses about updated firmware.

              1. no details about latest firmware

              2. you have to send a separate email for each product to ask if firmware is updated.

              3. you have to prove you own the equ.

              4. they send the firmware.

              5. they do not give clear installation instructions for the FW.

              But the biggest crap is the lack of battery backup or storage of the date.... loose power/reset and your date gets set back to 1998 or 2000, great for log files....

  5. NotBob

    To borrow an old adage

    No one ever got fired for buying Cisco...

    1. Bluto Nash

      Re: To borrow an old adage

      While that may be true, I very likely would get a stern looking at for dropping $12k on a single switch of ANY brand that wasn't replacing a major part of my installation.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re: Old adage

    ...no, and it never hurts to have those 5 letters on your CV either...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Old adage

      adage?

      (sorry, long day)

  7. Sandtitz Silver badge
    Gimp

    Quotes

    "my personal favourite, the Supermicro"

    "personal bias towards the Supermicro"

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Re: Quotes

      Yes, and? Everyone has biases. I am biased towards equipment I've used which has worked well for me. I am aware of this and discuss it openly and honestly.

      Are you so delusional as to believe you are beyond bias?

      1. Sandtitz Silver badge

        Re: Quotes

        "Are you so delusional as to believe you are beyond bias?"

        Certainly not. 'brand tribalism is a piss-poor reason to choose technology.'

        Half of your articles usually feature Supermicro as the "answer to life, the universe, and everything" as I see it. I visit other tech sites as well and while some other journos have a visible bias - whether they admit it or not - they usually cover more than just manufacturer's devices unless it's e.g. Apple fanboi site.

        Are you getting gratis equipment from Supermicro to review, or are you reviewing only your or your clients' devices?

        On another note, the Trident+ can be found in many other manufacturers' switches as well. El Reg had articles about them over 4 years ago.

        And D-Link is shite - just above Belkin level in my books. Getting 10 years from basic 100Mbps or Gbit L2 switches seems to be a miracle, I've had to replace plenty of them due to them just breaking down...on the other hand it's kind of a pity to replace those fully functional 15+ year old 3Com/Cisco/HP switches just because Fast Ethernet (or even 10BASE-T) doesn't cut it anymore.

        1. PJF

          Re: Quotes

          .... "And D-Link is shite - just above Belkin level in my books. Getting 10 years from basic 100Mbps or Gbit L2 switches seems to be a miracle, I've had to replace plenty of them due to them just breaking down...on the other hand it's kind of a pity to replace those fully functional 15+ year old 3Com/Cisco/HP switches just because Fast Ethernet (or even 10BASE-T) doesn't cut it anymore."

          I echo D-Lump, and add Linksometimes... Still have "A" 3-Com 48 port 10-Base switch running. How, I don't know, it's in the most inhospitable environment possible - damp, warm/hot, and dark pipe tunnel. When it was "installed" (on a milk-crate just to keep it off the floor) I did use Dow Corning Compound #4 (DC-4) di-electric grease on all the ports, just to help with the moisture. It did loose about 8 ports over the years, but it's still switchin'... (all be it at a "slow" pace!)

          Anything "new" we install Cisco, because of government contracts/preferred vendor clauses.

          My home network is Netgear "pro-safe (sometimes, when the decide to post a update)" and ZyXEL

          1. PJF

            Re: Quotes

            hate to reply to my own post, BUTT- 4 hrs later Linksometimes @ The Reg:

            http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/08/linksys_routers_vulnerable_through_cgi_scripts/

            Carry on....

        2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

          Re: Quotes

          @Sandtitz

          Brand tribalism is a piss-poor reason to choose technology. That's why I

          A) Test the things to make sure they do what I need to do

          B) Review needs that go beyond basic functionality

          C) Discuss my thoughts and biases with industry peers

          "Half of your articles usually feature Supermicro as the "answer to life, the universe, and everything" as I see it".

          That would be bias against Supermicro on your part. You clearly don't like them and so you see anything complimentary about them as far more important than it really is.

          "Are you getting gratis equipment from Supermicro to review, or are you reviewing only your or your clients' devices?"

          Lovely "when do you plan to stop beating your wife" question. Good setup. But you should really alter capitalization for real trolling victory. The answer to your troll question is both...and neither.

          I get equipment from many companies, some I get to keep, most I don't. Equipment I get to keep is listed publicly on my "about" page. I believe in full disclosure. You can find all that information here: http://www.trevorpott.com/about/.

          For the record, I review what I can get my hands on. I'm not rich, so I don't have the option to spend 1000x what I get paid per article to buy stuff from various manufacturers in order to test it. If a manufacturer sends me datacenter equipment I will review it. (Consumer level stuff is harder to get past the editors.)

          If you have a problem with that approach, you are welcome to start up a Patreon or Kickstarter in order to fund the acquisition costs of equipment or software from vendors who don't send gear for testing. Assuming, of course, that those vendors don't have clauses in their EULAs that prevent review without their explicit permission (see: VMware).

          "On another note, the Trident+ can be found in many other manufacturers' switches as well. El Reg had articles about them over 4 years ago."

          Absolutely. Do you seriously expect that I will go buy one copy of every single Trident+ switch? With what funding?

          And considering that these switches are, in fact, still being sold - and selling quite well, I might add - they are still relevant. Especially to SMBs that are looking at 10GbE refreshes now that the prices on these units have more than halved since launch. Maybe that isn't relevant to your particular market niche, but - and I say this will all due delicacy - you can go pound sand.

          As for your hatred for D-Link...that's your own set of Mindspiders, mate. Not mine. Take your pills and learn to smile.

          1. sms123

            Re: Quotes

            On a lighter note after reading http://www.trevorpott.com/about/

            "My comapny is currently on sysadmin contracts for:"

            This would be work you can do in your sleep (insert comedy drum rimshot here)?

            1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

              Re: Quotes

              Almost literally, yeah. It's stuff that for the most part is maintenance, check-ups, troubleshooting, etc. It honestly goes well when I am feeling a little out of it, and just want to watch some TV. Lots of progress bars, etc. I can pause the show if a little bit of focus is required, but...well...I've been doing it for so long that the "making things go" portion of the equation is second nature.

              Now, a couple of times a year I have to do some really neat architecture stuff. That takes a week or two of concerted research, maybe even a couple months of testing, depending on the project.

              But "I forgot my login" or "baby the file transfer of 20TB from A to B" or "do patch testing"? Yeah, that doesn't take a lot of cycles. Just a lot of time. It's great for winding down from a day of intense research.

          2. Sandtitz Silver badge
            Boffin

            Re: Quotes

            "Half of your articles usually feature Supermicro as the "answer to life, the universe, and everything" as I see it".

            That would be bias against Supermicro on your part.

            How so? I have nothing agaist Supermicro per se. I only object your adulation of Supermicro.

            "Are you getting gratis equipment from Supermicro to review, or are you reviewing only your or your clients' devices?"

            Lovely "when do you plan to stop beating your wife" question.

            It was an honest question. How would you formulate it then? It should be stated if you are given stuff permanently or on a loan basis when you are reviewing them on this site. If you are handling your own or your clients devices then fine - I'd have absolutely nothing against that.

            "On another note, the Trident+ can be found in many other manufacturers' switches as well. El Reg had articles about them over 4 years ago."

            Absolutely. Do you seriously expect that I will go buy one copy of every single Trident+ switch? With what funding?

            No, I do not expect that from you. But you seemed curious to hear that Lenovo has a Trident+ based switch. So I introduced you to HP as well.

            As for your hatred for D-Link...that's your own set of Mindspiders, mate. Not mine. Take your pills and learn to smile.

            So the few D-Link's you've operated have worked fine, good for you!

            - I deployed a lot of them a decade or so ago because they were relatively cheap. Most if not all have been replaced because they have failed. These were anything from simple 8-port configurations to whatever was available in 1U form. Sometimes they died completely or slowed everything to crawl or would just blink the lights.

            - Some managed switch model were been found to reset themselves to defaults after exactly one year of continuous usage. No firmware upgrades available.

            - Regional D-Link websites seem to host their own set of updates (why?) so you'll need to go for the source to obtain the latest firmware.

            - The also make a lot of revisions and usually each revision has their own firmwares. The revision may or may not be shown on the management page so you'll actually need to check the physical markings usually under or at the back of the switch which is hugely annoying if you can't disconnect it first.

            - D-Link is using deceptive means to sell their consumer and small business gear. Fast Eternet products feature text such as "up to 200Mbps per port" speeds and gigabit devices (such as this) claim 2000Mbps speeds. Technically that's true since at full duplex transfer those speeds are attainable. But that's just marketing fluff for the unwashed.

            If the D-Link switches would just keep on trucking like all those 3Coms and HPs all the way from the 1990s I'd really wouldn't have such a big beef with them.

            1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

              Re: Quotes

              How so? I have nothing agaist Supermicro per se. I only object your adulation of Supermicro.

              Which is entirely my point. I don't elevate Supermicro above where they belong. I point out their flaws as well as their benefits. But I don't, like some, pretend they don't exist. They have become an important vendor in the past few years and I won't pretend that isn't the case. That this bothers you indicates to me a bias against them on your behalf.

              It was an honest question. How would you formulate it then? It should be stated if you are given stuff permanently or on a loan basis when you are reviewing them on this site. If you are handling your own or your clients devices then fine - I'd have absolutely nothing against that.

              Quite simply, I would be asking about access to review sources rather than who gets to keep what.

              The big reason for this is that if I am being perfectly honest free stuff doesn't matter. After you've been doing reviews for even a little while you have so much technowhosits that free stuff isn't a benefit that makes you like the vendor it becomes a burden.

              Where do I put all the junk I get sent, hmm? How do I power it? I probably have a half-million dollars worth of gear in my house and I can't have more than 10% of it on at any given time or the house overheats. How many VMs do I really need to run? How much testing can I really do? But there is an unlimited supply of this stuff, and demand from vendors as well as readers to write reviews.

              Understand me when I say that writing reviews is not profitable. Not in the least. It takes days to properly test most equipment. Weeks or months for enterprise grade stuff. If the equipment is shipped to me I usually end up paying hundreds of dollars in customs or shipping fees and there are tax implications if the equipment is kept for more than a year.

              Shipping it back to a vendor costs money - hundreds of dollars, usually - so no matter which way I play this I probably end up paying at least $1000 for a switch or server and $2500 for a largeish storage unit and get paid a fraction of that for the article I write. All for equipment that is typically too power hungry and/or loud to actually use.

              And yet, you phrase your question as though I am somehow going to be biased because a vendor sends me equipment to keep. What?!?

              You betray your ignorance of how the review scene works, sir.

              I would also hope that reviewers are willing to work with samples provided by vendors in addition to merely reviewing those items that they/their customers deploy in the field.

              This is called expanding one's horizons. It's important. It's part of begin a good technician and a good reviewer. By all means, try to put production workloads on whatever you test, but don't restrict yourself to the narrow field of view that has been your traditional comfort zone. That's not only how biases start, that's where brand tribalism comes from. And brand tribalism is very, very bad.

              That said, a reviewer can only review the equipment he or she has access to. Even then, many reviewers have to turn down a lot of reviews because reviews are normally a net negative and thus we can only afford to subsidize so many of these things per year. If you don't like that fact, start funding reviewers.

              If the D-Link switches would just keep on trucking like all those 3Coms and HPs all the way from the 1990s I'd really wouldn't have such a big beef with them.

              I did a count the other day. Across my supported base there are a total of 1850 d-link switches. Of those, around 350 are over ten years old. Over 1000 are at least six years old. I've taken some time to talk to other MSPs for the SMB scene and am seeing similar survival rates. So I would have to say that your personal experiences do not match the broader statistics.

              You also bring up a bunch of stuff about D-Link that is completely irrelevant to the hardware. Are they perfectly valid reasons to not use D-Link? Yes, but that isn't related to the survivability of the hardware at all.

              Nowhere did I say I like D-Link. Nowhere did I recommend D-Link. Truth be told, I wouldn't put new D-Link switches into any of my installs today, mostly for non-hardware related reasons, some of which you highlighted.

              You seem unable to disconnect objective discussion of a vendor or product from endorsement of that vendor or product. It seems to me that your worldview is such that unless a vendor or product is actively being slated you feel that a vendor or product is actively being endorsed.

              That would be an incorrect assessment of reality on your part.

        3. razorfishsl

          Re: Quotes

          LOL...

          Have to agree on the D-link, currently clearing out a substantial installation over 2 manufacturing sites.

          D-link & consumer grade cisco for WIFI.... , who needs SNMP anyway?

          WTF....

          And don't get me started about which T...W...A...T... put in Synology as a corporate solution for NAS.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Quotes

        Trevor,

        One thing I did notice that you listed prices for the others, but I don't recall seeing a price for the Supermicro?

        1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

          Re: Quotes

          Well THAT'S an oversight. The Supermicro should be $8000ish. Let me go check the article...

  8. Nacona

    The comment on the Cisco for global service but keep in mind that Lenovo sells a Trident+ based switch as well that is globally supported at a fraction of the cost ;)

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      They do? I am intrigued. I will need to investigate this.

      1. dan1980

        The got it through IBM who got it through BLADE. It's their 'Rackswitch' line.

        1. Nacona

          Exactly.. So these switches have their roots in the nortel's, run ISCLI for anyone that has a catalyst background and carry full warranties with no yearly maintenance. Under the covers they are the same single ASIC cut-through switches with a full layer 2/3 software stack plus are openflow 2.0 compatible. Run like a charm but I am baffled that more people don't know about them .

  9. Lamb Chop

    HP, A Series

    I use and would use again A series procurve's 5 and 6 series are monsters and something about having to pay extra to get the latest firmware or to activate just 2 more sfp ports kind of annoys me.

    I respect Cisco, but on a production environment, I have never seen Cisco do anything that a HP or Dell could not. In fact quite the opposite, due to licensing

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Juniper

    Look at the Juniper EX series, Specifically the 2200/3200 range. Just as good as Cisco, feature packed and brilliant build quality.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Juniper

      we use a lot of Juniper equipment where I work and I really like Junos.

    2. G Olson

      Re: Juniper

      Yep, I dumped the Big C 7 years ago for Juniper. Best part, "start shell user root" and you have a *nix environment When The Situation Requires.

      The change a few years ago from 32bit Junos to 64 bit was tedious; but no major complaints about the hardware. The support OTOH needs a swift kick or three. Most problems you can figure out from the docs these days.

  11. ecarlseen

    Just can't seem to quit Cisco.

    I'm a huge fan of Supermicro's excellent price / performance / reliability metrics... but their offerings do tend to be fairly bare-bones in terms of features. In some cases this is acceptable, in others not so much. As much as I hate paying Cisco prices (and SmartNet, if you need a replacement switch in the same month as your problem) we do tend to exercise their feature set and the consistency of the configuration language and the extensiveness of their CLI troubleshooting options keep us coming back.

    That being said, Cisco has some awkward feature gaps in their switching line-up. They do large enterprise extremely well and small business reasonably, but they always seem to mess up the middle. With the amount of compute you can pack into each blade or pizza box these days, we're typically able to run companies with 8- and 9-figure revenues on three or four VM host servers, necessitating maybe 8 10GbE ports of L2 switching per top-of-rack switch (everything L3 goes through firewalls at this scale) - 3 or 4 ports per switch for servers, 1 or 2 for storage, and 1 for downlinks to GigE switches. Really, 8 10GbE ports + 12 GbE ports and + stackability would be the sweet spot. Unfortunately, our choices are 20-48 port monsters like the Nexus 3000- series, the 4500X series (fewer ports, same price), or the 2600/3600 series that don't have enough 10GbE ports. The closest thing they have is the UCS Mini, which is interesting if you're willing to deal with some extremely awkward configuration at a small scale but is otherwise a reasonably-priced bandwidth beast. In fairness, nobody else that I've looked at seems to cover this any better than Cisco does. Dell has a small 10GbE switch, but with almost no features. Juniper's leaving me hanging. SuperMicro is at least cheap.

    1. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

      Re: Just can't seem to quit Cisco.

      Yeah, Cisco do seem to be lacking in the low(er) end 10Gb/s switch arena.

  12. Ian Michael Gumby
    Alert

    You should talk to a networking consultant.

    "My experiences with my Dell PowerConnect 8132F have been phenomenal, so I looked at what they have in this range. The Dell N4064 is a 48 port 10GbE switch that can have up to four 40GbE ports and can be had for $12,500 if I work at it."

    -=-

    Uhm ... hate to break it to you... but you're looking at tech that's been around for ~3+ years and could be bought cheaper...

    I believe Arista has this... along with some of the other vendors.

    What you could do ... have a couple (2+) ToR switches. One for 10GbE the other for the 1Gbe and then uplink the 1GbE switch to the 10GbE and out to your main back plane switch.

    Just a thought...

  13. Nate Amsden

    haven't used cisco in 8 years

    And even then it was stuff I inherited that the company bought off ebay..

    I've been an Extreme Networks customer for about 15 years now, ease of use for CLI is one reason, and the past 11 years I have been a big fan of ESRP for network fault tolerance(you can google "extremely simple redundancy protocol" for my blog post on that topic from many years ago). I've also made extensive use of their virtual router abilities which I believe both Cisco and Juniper have too. Extreme has had an "API" for over 10 years but I've never had a need for it(in general I don't use APIs).

    They are of course cheaper than Cisco though at my volumes purchase cost really isn't a big deal anyway(operational cost more important). I have deployed the X670V (similar to many other broadcom 10G switches with 40G uplinks), X670 (similar but no 40G ability - few grand cheaper I see $9k on newegg for example which is similar to what I paid 3 years ago), and the X670-48t (10G copper, my newest stuff).

    I only mention it because you talk about liking stacking, I'm not as much of a fan for stacking myself but it has it's uses, these 10G switches are completely compatible with stacking with lower end 1G switches without an issue(stacking bandwidth I believe is limited to whatever switch has slowest links). I was running X670V with X460(1G) stacking for a few years without much issue. Obviously many other product lines of theirs as well, I just list the more recent 10G stuff. I haven't had a need for their X770 40G stackable switches.

    I tell people if you want to make a career out of networking go Cisco (or perhaps Juniper they are also complicated(you can google "simple network management techopsguys" for a blog post on that from years ago too). If you are perhaps more like me, and do many different things then use something else.

    HP's stacking technology seems more robust(based on conversations only, have not used HP networking gear since the 90s) than Extreme's, though I really do not like the cisco-like UI on pretty much every vendor who tries to imitate Cisco.

    I'm 100% HP for servers+storage, but of course I don't use them for ethernet stuff. Each of my servers has 4x10GbE ports on it(fail over spread over two NICs). Works really well, more so with the 10GBaseT which makes cabling easier. I would of deployed 10GBaseT many years ago but HP lacked NICs at the time, so had to invest in SFP.

    (for Firewalls I use Dell SonicWall for similar reasons, works well for my org, easy to manage, rarely had an issue in the past several years).

  14. David Roberts

    Buy cheap, replace early?

    This has logic if you are in total control of the budget and can guarantee that (1) you will still be in total control in 5 years time and (2) there will be money available to spend. It is a good option if you own the infrastructure yourself e.g. SoHo.

    Sadly, in more mainstream businesses once the expenditure has taken place and the financial year ended then the savings made are usually forgotten. Telling a bean counter that you saved the firm say 20k five years ago and so you would like to spend it now doesn't always work. Especially after reorganisations, personnel changes and all the other big organisation cruft.

    So purely from the analysis I would go for Cisco every time for the additional future proofing beyond the limited rage of my cracked and dusty crystal ball.

    1. Roland6 Silver badge

      Re: Buy cheap, replace early?

      Additionally, we are talking SMB, so cost is likely to be an issue - they will want the kit to run for 15 years, regardless of original price point.

      About the only way you are going to be able to perform a switch after a number of years, is to lease the kit to your client. Then as part of lease you can refresh the kit.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    My Cisco partner hates me but...

    ...in the education and SMB space you can easily shave a ton off your costs by going with their down level switch series like the 200-300 series. You lose central management, but can link them to a beefier head switch in each stack and serve 1G port capacity and PoE to individual hosts, and save the bigger Iron for the server room.

    Our partner cried when we tore up their $80k quote which wanted to replace switches on campus with at least 2960 and 3950 series gear. We have also replaced some lower traffic devices with used parts, which we can buy spares in case we lose one. We also took a large part of our gear off 4hr parts and support, as with the spares we will have wired around the problem within 20-30 min, and we won't want to eat another during business hours service window, so we would just leave the temp part in place until the new part shipped. Cisco and Dell both charge a large premium for same day vs next day parts support, so this can be another way to stretch your dollars if the business cost of an outage isn't prohibitive.

    The deciding factor is how much down time the different parts of your site can tolerate. In our case (A Single site with multiple buildings) the majority of our several hundred users can tolerate the risk of an occasional(2-3 times a year) and Short(Less than an hour during business hours) outage. Our phone system is another story, so it gets the redundant power treatment, and hooked into the head switch of each buildings stack. If we lose a legacy switch full of personal printers it isn't going to slow us down much, and a 350$ used switch with no support(and a spare on the shelf) makes more sense then 1200$ a year for Smartnet.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    My Cisco partner hates me but...

    ...in the education and SMB space you can easily shave a ton off your costs by going with their down level switch series like the 200-300 series. You lose central management, but can link them to a beefier head switch in each stack and serve 1G port capacity and PoE to individual hosts, and save the bigger Iron for the server room.

    Our partner cried when we tore up their $80k quote which wanted to replace switches on campus with at least 2960 and 3950 series gear. We have also replaced some lower traffic devices with used parts, which we can buy spares in case we lose one. We also took a large part of our gear off 4hr parts and support, as with the spares we will have wired around the problem within 20-30 min, and we won't want to eat another during business hours service window, so we would just leave the temp part in place until the new part shipped. Cisco and Dell both charge a large premium for same day vs next day parts support, so this can be another way to stretch your dollars if the business cost of an outage isn't prohibitive.

    The deciding factor is how much down time the different parts of your site can tolerate. In our case (a single site with multiple buildings) the majority of our several hundred users can tolerate the risk of an occasional(2-3 times a year) and short (Less than an hour during business hours) outage. Our phone system is another story, so it gets the redundant power treatment, and hooked into the head switch of each buildings stack. If we lose a legacy switch full of personal printers it isn't going to slow us down much, and a 350$ used switch with no support(and a spare on the shelf) makes more sense then 1200$ a year for Smartnet.

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: My Cisco partner hates me but...

      "...in the education and SMB space you can easily shave a ton off your costs"

      by not buying Cisco.

      Their quotes were 4-6 times higher than the same capabilities from HP/Dell/Juniper/Huawei/Brocade and their contract support costs on those purchases (which they base on the "list price" of the kit and won't discount) were an order of magnitude higher.

      I ended up giving my $180k to Huawei and didn't regret it.

  17. dan1980

    Most of this all comes down to preference and your own experience.

    I know I can deploy Cisco switches quickly and easily and have them do exactly what I want. Yes, they cost more and no, they really don't do anything that another vendor won't. And that makes sense because the big vendors have each bought into most of the relevant spaces and acquired most of the relevant features to add to whatever they had in-house already.

    But, while I have Ciscos, I also have HPs and Dells, as well as plenty of Netgears and D-Links for small clients who just want something simple. For me, the warranty on HPs is a big plus as any piece of equipment can fail - no matter how good your experience of the brand in the past - and they do that for a price that is not uncompetitive in Australia.

    I like the Dell Openmanage web UI - once I got used to it - for it's simplicity and how it packs a lot of options and configuration and information into a small space rather than trying to make a switch interface all 'web 2.0'.

  18. Alan Brown Silver badge

    Another path

    Huawei Cloudengine 6800 series - also Trident+ based, with a highly responsive tech support team.

    As of last month, not only TRILL, but also L3 distributed routing - which eliminates a major bottleneck in datacentres or large campus networks (the router)

    And that's all in the basic license. They don't try and nickle&dime you like some others do....

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: Another path

      I should mention: when someone brings up the "hackable Huawei" stuff - every single device that was demonstrated was a Huawei badged 3com product running Comware and the equivalent 3com product had exactly the same holes.

      None of their internally produced stuff had those vulnerabilities and they don't sell any comware products anymore. So far when vulnerabilities have been discovered in the kit we own(*), they've been lightning fast at both notifying customers and issuing hotfixes (or advising workarounds) until the hotfixes are out.

      (*)All the ones I've seen so far are down to 3rd party software such as SSL libraries. Trident+ systems tend to have Linuxen(or other OS) wrapped around them for actual system control.

  19. Justin Clift

    Mellanox?

    Some of the Mellanox ethernet switches seem to have good pricing. eg:

    http://www.colfaxdirect.com/store/pc/viewCategories.asp?SFID=5&SFNAME=Fabric&SFVID=120&SFVALUE=10%2F40Gb+Ethernet&SFCount=0&page=0&pageStyle=m&idcategory=7&VS12=0&VS5=1&VS1=0>

    The trident chipset problem wouldn't affect them.

    There a "Quanta" brand on that page too (less than 1/2 price), but I've never used them before. Wouldn't really trust the Quanta brand for anything mission critical without direct positive exposure first. ;)

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Jeezus

    People really get this interested in switches?

    What brand patching cables do you use? How about fuse manufacturers?

    1. Justin Clift

      Re: Jeezus

      Yeah, switches can have a lot of features, and historically each brand hasn't always played well with others. Can be very, very complex to implement properly, let alone troubleshoot effectively across dev/test/production/(etc).

      Also, some of the higher end ones cost as much as houses... in a Telco data centre I worked with many years ago, one of the core Cisco switches cost more than all of the several racks of HP servers connected to it. ;)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Jeezus

      Cables - Excel because no one else makes the incredibly useful 0.2m length.

  21. SniperPenguin

    I loathe (and refuse to buy whenever possible) any switch which restricts access to ports via licensing.

    It is nothing short of extortion - The kit is not subsidised at the lower end, and now that the common practice with FC is dying, Cisco are doing their damn to keep the revenue stream alive via UCS.

    If you sell a switch with 48 ports, 48 ports should ****ing work.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Cisco are always going to be twice the price as everyone else - when you own the market you can set the price.

    Have you looked at the Brocade VDX TOR switches, which are not based on Trident+ so have a few neato features like managing all the switches as 1 large switch, and extra buffers for storage traffic, and start off at 24 ports licensed (out of 48 plus 4x40Gb). Some customers rave about them, and they are pretty cheap.

  23. Down not across

    D-Link longevity

    After all, even D-Link can build a switch that lasts 15 years.

    Really? Have they finally learnt how to build PSUs or found a supplier of reliable ones. I've lost count of how many D-Link kit I had lost its PSU (either within or just outside warranty period).

    As for the original question. From your original list I'd say Cisco. I'd also add HP ProCurve to the list as I've never had any issues with those either.

  24. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Re: Anyone tried the Pluribus stuff ?

      It's on my list to hunt down, as it looks cool, but haven't tried it myself yet. I've heard good things from others about it, however.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Another vote for Extreme

    As someone else has already mentioned Extreme provide the ability to stack across nearly their entire range allowing you to stack 1GB switch's with 10GB switches. They use the same firmware across all of their switches and have the same CLI which is extremely easy to learn and use and is rather different and considerably more user friendly than the likes of Cisco, HP and Dell.

    The ability to stack and different switch models means that you dont need to go with a chassis based solution until you are into massive enterprise.

    The pricing on Extreme kit is also extremely competitive. You could certainly pick up a 10GB capable switch towards the lower end of the prices being quoted for Dell kit.

    If were going to talk firewalls then there is only 1 choice and thats Palo Alto Networks.

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