Senior Director Information Technology at a hospitality company with 201-500 employees
User
2022-04-27T05:13:22Z
27 April 22
Depends upon what feature you NEED to operate within your network and the size and complexity of your design will dictate which model and what brand can support the design, function and feature you NEED to run the network.
I used HP ProCurve, Cisco, Netgear, and Brocade.
HP ProCurve was great reliable and cost-effective never paid maintenance as they had a Lifetime Warranty.
Cisco is good (not great) and you need to watch out for the Cost of Ownership with Cisco as the purchase can be competitive but the cost of ownership can kill.
Netgear works well for a 420-seat network along with WIFI A/P (8) and was super cost-effective. No issues for the 4.5 years running these.
Brocade is very good: we are still running these switches after 11 years. A few dead ones during this period but I must say impressed by the reliability.
Ruckus and Extreme: some models come from BROCADE, which is the best of the best for Fiber channel systems and switching for old virtualization systems. Extreme bought something from AVAYA.
Ruckus - you need to pay licenses for the speed of the ports where they are 1 GB, 10 Gb or 40 Gb.
Aruba is easy to configure and includes many features.
If the main consideration is performance, you won't go wrong with anyone in the Gartner Wired and Wireless Edge Networking Magic Quadrant Leader quadrant, i.e., Aruba / HPE, Cisco, Juniper / Mist, or Aerohive / Extreme.
I've worked with all of 'em. It's never really the case, but if the starting point is "Cost is no object," then go with Aruba CX-OS (6300M, 6400, 8360v2, 8325, 8400) to build the Campus LAN, Cisco Nexus for the Data Center Top of Rack (ToR) and End of Row (EoR) L2 Switching Fabric with Arista Routers for the L3 part, and Palo Alto for your Internet firewall(s).
There's not a lot of context here, so those recommendations change if you're doing something specialized like a megascale datacenter, Cloud native infrastructure, multi-tenant, etc.
Network Services Manager at a educational organization with 51-200 employees
User
Top 5
21 April 22
@Sandeep Pandit Aruba (formerly ProCurve) most recently with LL3 switches being fed by a full L3 switch. The L3 switch is SPF+ and we use Copper SFP+ cables to connect to servers in the room and put in a SFP+ fiber module for remote connections. I also looked at Netgear.
I forget to comment on some points, with respect to Netgear I have not had enough experience, but if I can comment a customer of Netgear wireless changed it to Ruckus, with respect to prices Aruba, Extreme and Ruckus are very similar, Allied has not quoted for a while.
It is worth mentioning that Extreme stayed with Brocade Data Center equipment, but also Ruckus has similar solutions especially oriented to the campus level, creating clusters remotely without too many free loop configurations.
It is convenient to see more of your design to know which solution is the most appropriate and approach you with a manufacturer.
@Michael Velasco 100% agree with you, if you need a highly secured and redundancy as a requirement I would look at Extreme's (old Avaya) fabric. So yes you are right depends on the requirements.
Network Services Manager at a educational organization with 51-200 employees
User
Top 5
2022-04-20T17:30:23Z
20 April 22
Of those mentioned, I have used Aruba and Netgear most recently and they have worked well.
If you're not sure if you need an L2 or L3 switch you should also look at "light layer 3" switches which are in between. They are mostly L2 but with the most basic L3 functionality.
@Sandeep Pandit, there are some legacy Procurve / Aruba switches that are examples. The 2930 series had a single area OSPF.
You were never going to use them as ABR or ASBRs, but they could participate in one OSPF area and had a great price point.
All brands claim that their switches are;
a) Wirespeed
b) Non-blocking
Therefore, I don't anticipate any performance difference between brands.
If you are only concerned about performance, you can buy just any brand/model.
If you are "really" concerned about performance, you should think about purchasing switches with 10 Gbps or 25 Gbps or 40 Gbps or 100 Gbps Ethernet interfaces (then your PCs should also support such rates, and your cabling should be able to handle such rates).
In short, you should be more concerned about the following things:
a) Price.
b) Delivery time (because of chip shortage).
c) Failure rates.
d) Service and support.
e) Extra features (if you need them).
Your need for extra features (including Layer-3 capabilities, QoS capabilities and security capabilities) will mainly depend on the size of your network and your specific work requirements.
If you have diverse network products to connect to this switch (Huawei, Ubiquiti, Citrix media), discard Ruckus/Brocade (many incompatibilities with not common products).
I am trying to determine if we need to specify and justify the cost for FM200 fire suppression.
Client has about 24 sites each with a computer equipment room containing anywhere from 3 to 5 racks with 3-4 Dell and HP servers, CIsco network switches, patch panels, UPS and batteries. Many of these locations will go to unstaffed in the future.
Senior Network Admin at a educational organization with 501-1,000 employees
10 March 21
No, i've been working it IT for 20 years and never seen a fire in a server room (yet). However I have seen a flood when there was a particularly heavy rainstorm that flooded the car park and then made its way into the basement of the office block. The rain was so heavy it set all the car alarms off in the car park.
It's like insurance, you hope you never need it. But one day you just might.
I have never experienced a fire in a data center but have seen some hazardous server rooms. It basically comes down to insurance and how badly damaged the equipment is and if not you have a redundant/fail-over/disaster recovery solution in place. Fire damage like water damage means game over, you will be looking to replace all IT equipment. Apart from physical damage you must also take downtime into account. So it's weighing up the cost of replacing the data center and downtime versus a fire suppression system. You may find this article interesting:https://www.missioncriticalmag...
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Depends upon what feature you NEED to operate within your network and the size and complexity of your design will dictate which model and what brand can support the design, function and feature you NEED to run the network.
I used HP ProCurve, Cisco, Netgear, and Brocade.
HP ProCurve was great reliable and cost-effective never paid maintenance as they had a Lifetime Warranty.
Cisco is good (not great) and you need to watch out for the Cost of Ownership with Cisco as the purchase can be competitive but the cost of ownership can kill.
Netgear works well for a 420-seat network along with WIFI A/P (8) and was super cost-effective. No issues for the 4.5 years running these.
Brocade is very good: we are still running these switches after 11 years. A few dead ones during this period but I must say impressed by the reliability.
@reviewer160041 thank you for such an in-detail answer. I'm sure it will be helpful to many peers.
It depends on your budget, but here is a list:
-Extreme
-Ruckus
-Aruba
-ALLIED TELESYN
For data centers: Arista.
Ruckus and Extreme: some models come from BROCADE, which is the best of the best for Fiber channel systems and switching for old virtualization systems. Extreme bought something from AVAYA.
Ruckus - you need to pay licenses for the speed of the ports where they are 1 GB, 10 Gb or 40 Gb.
Aruba is easy to configure and includes many features.
Greetings
@Cesar Reza Thanks buddy for detailed response
If the main consideration is performance, you won't go wrong with anyone in the Gartner Wired and Wireless Edge Networking Magic Quadrant Leader quadrant, i.e., Aruba / HPE, Cisco, Juniper / Mist, or Aerohive / Extreme.
I've worked with all of 'em. It's never really the case, but if the starting point is "Cost is no object," then go with Aruba CX-OS (6300M, 6400, 8360v2, 8325, 8400) to build the Campus LAN, Cisco Nexus for the Data Center Top of Rack (ToR) and End of Row (EoR) L2 Switching Fabric with Arista Routers for the L3 part, and Palo Alto for your Internet firewall(s).
There's not a lot of context here, so those recommendations change if you're doing something specialized like a megascale datacenter, Cloud native infrastructure, multi-tenant, etc.
Hi @Sandeep Pandit,
As a general rule, Layer 2 is faster than Layer 3.
Also, I need to know more details to recommend anything.
@Sandeep Pandit Aruba (formerly ProCurve) most recently with LL3 switches being fed by a full L3 switch. The L3 switch is SPF+ and we use Copper SFP+ cables to connect to servers in the room and put in a SFP+ fiber module for remote connections. I also looked at Netgear.
I forget to comment on some points, with respect to Netgear I have not had enough experience, but if I can comment a customer of Netgear wireless changed it to Ruckus, with respect to prices Aruba, Extreme and Ruckus are very similar, Allied has not quoted for a while.
It is worth mentioning that Extreme stayed with Brocade Data Center equipment, but also Ruckus has similar solutions especially oriented to the campus level, creating clusters remotely without too many free loop configurations.
It is convenient to see more of your design to know which solution is the most appropriate and approach you with a manufacturer.
Greetings.
Steer away from legacy networking.
I would consider Extreme Networks Campus Fabric which will enhance performance at a lower cost
@Michael Velasco 100% agree with you, if you need a highly secured and redundancy as a requirement I would look at Extreme's (old Avaya) fabric. So yes you are right depends on the requirements.
Of those mentioned, I have used Aruba and Netgear most recently and they have worked well.
If you're not sure if you need an L2 or L3 switch you should also look at "light layer 3" switches which are in between. They are mostly L2 but with the most basic L3 functionality.
@Sandeep Pandit, there are some legacy Procurve / Aruba switches that are examples. The 2930 series had a single area OSPF.
You were never going to use them as ABR or ASBRs, but they could participate in one OSPF area and had a great price point.
-Aruba
-Netgear
Aruba
Hi @Wesley Wang, @reviewer1042635, @YaserAltwailey, @Steve Pender, @Manish Nalawade and @reviewer1567812,
What would be your professional recommendation to @Sandeep Pandit?
Thanks for the help!