Fortinet FortiSwitch - Data Center and Juniper QFX Series Switches compete in the network switching market. Juniper QFX Series Switches maintain an advantageous position due to their advanced features, while Fortinet's competitive pricing and integration with security solutions make it a strong choice for budget-conscious buyers.
Features: Fortinet FortiSwitch - Data Center is notable for its seamless integration with FortiGate, enabling enhanced security measures and automation capabilities. It offers significant visibility and control over the network through the Fortinet security fabric. Juniper QFX Series Switches deliver high-performance networking, scalability through the Virtual Chassis technology, and sophisticated port analytics.
Room for Improvement: Fortinet FortiSwitch - Data Center could enhance its standalone mode and interface configuration, which requires linking configurations differently than traditional switches. Juniper QFX Series Switches may benefit from simplifying their initial setup and reducing power consumption. Additionally, further integration of advanced analytics tools could strengthen their offering.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Fortinet FortiSwitch - Data Center offers straightforward deployment with integration capabilities through FortiGate and responsive customer support, enabling quicker initial setup. Juniper QFX Series Switches, while requiring more initial configuration, come with comprehensive documentation and dedicated service resources to assist users effectively.
Pricing and ROI: Fortinet FortiSwitch - Data Center is praised for cost-effectiveness, making it an attractive option for full-feature deployments without breaking the budget. Juniper QFX Series Switches present a higher initial setup cost but are justified by ROI through superior performance, scalability, and robust feature sets.
The integration of Fortinet infrastructure, including FortiSwitches, is cost-effective compared to Cisco, especially when paired with Fortinet wireless solutions.
The normal ROI customers work with is five years unless there is a major change in technology.
Technical partners provide responses within a day for any technical queries.
Customer support needs improvement in terms of speed and reliability.
On a scale from one to 10, I would rate the technical support of Fortinet an eight.
Sometimes parts are not available in stock, then you have to wait for replacement time.
When used in a dedicated Fortinet infrastructure, FortiSwitch scalability is better than some other switches, like Cisco, Meraki, or Arista.
Scalability is generally good, with transitions from gigabit to ten giga, twenty-five giga, and forty giga.
When building a fabric, you can add multiple leaf switches and multiple spine switches if required.
There is room for improvement as it sometimes takes over an hour to push configurations onto the devices from the management tool.
Juniper has better performance than any other networking product as far as performance is concerned in the router area.
Sometimes, customer support does not provide prompt assistance, leaving projects hanging.
There is room to improve the integration between FortiSwitch and other third-party solutions, as challenges arise when integrating with different vendors.
The commercial aspect presents challenges, particularly with pricing, as customers often ask for Juniper or Cisco, brands they are more aware of, which makes awareness about Fortinet FortiSwitch - Data Center another weak point.
My personal opinion is that if anyone wants to work with a Layer 3 fabric in a data center, they should choose Juniper because working with ACI and APIC is very complex in the Cisco part.
The Fortinet switches come with no additional cost as they are open source, with only hardware warranties applicable.
Pricing is competitive, although it's not the cheapest option.
We are a number one, tier-one partner of Juniper. Therefore, we normally get better discounts than with Cisco because we don't have the level one partnership with Cisco.
This feature allows the switch's ports to be used as firewall ports, enhancing network security by enabling IPS and network profiling directly on the ports.
It allows me to create VLANs, implement security measures, and push configurations using a single tool.
The main actual benefit that Fortinet FortiSwitch - Data Center brought to my customer's environment is secure connectivity while minimizing downtime from unexpected traffic or broadcasting.
They work with EVPN solutions, providing a Layer 3 fabric, which is a very good capability.
With 10 or 40 GE access ports and a high-throughput backbone, FortiSwitch Data Center Switches are ideal for the top-of-rack (ToR) server or firewall-aggregation applications. The high-speed switching fabric is also well suited for enterprise network core or backbone network installations.
QFX Series Switches deliver industry-leading throughput and scalability, an extensive routing stack, the open programmability of the Junos OS, and a broad set of EVPN-VXLAN and IP fabric capabilities. With QFX, you’ll find premier solutions for data center spine-and-leaf, campus distribution, core, and data center gateway and interconnect switching.
Rethink data center operations and fabric management with turnkey Juniper Apstra software in your QFX Series environment. You can automate the entire network lifecycle to simplify design and deployment and provide closed-loop assurance. With Apstra, customers have achieved 90% faster time to deployment, 70% faster time to resolution, and 83% OpEx reduction.
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