Who, besides Cisco, for enterprise access switches?

D

DragonNOA1

Supreme [H]ardness
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For some reason (well, many) our CTO wants to move away from Cisco. I can understand his reasons why, but I've been drinking the juice for so long I don't know who else to recommend besides Cisco. Who do you guys use?

Dell, HP, Avaya.... anyone else?
 
Odd since you usually have to fight to break away from Cisco.

Anyhow, Juniper and HP.
 
Oh, there's a fight going on, but I guess we have to do our due diligence and look at all/other options. We'll compare and contrast and see which way we want to move as an organization. Higher up's only see dollar figures though, and Cisco can get pricey.
 
I have used HP switches before and the CLI is pretty spot on close to Cisco. I can confirm because I am studying for the CCNA.
 
HP Procurve - been a proven, reliable enterprise level switch for a long time. Been using them for 20 years and never had one fail. (knock wood)
 
We use Extreme, but I think I've gotten better reliability from Linksys. I don't like Extreme much....
 
Juniper is the easy choice at layer 2 or layer 3. At one time I'd have said 3Com was an easy choice for layer 2 but I've not used them since they were bought and absorbed by HP and I never cared for them at layer 3.
 
DragonNOA1 said:
For some reason (well, many) our CTO wants to move away from Cisco.
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Is it really "many" or does he just no longer want to pay Cisco SMARTnet and maitenance fees?

If the support fees are the issue then look into Network Hardware Resale (which rebranded itself as Curvature (WTF?)): http://curvature.com

They sell used Cisco gear at fairly decent discounts with their in-house lifetime warranty, and they have their own SMARTnet alternative called NetSure (https://www.curvature.com/NetSureBundles) which delivers substantial cost savings. If you want to stay Cisco rather than uproot your environment and institutional knowledge then Curvature (WTF?) is a must-check-out.
 
I hear a lot of commotion about how crappy HP switches are yet I've never had a problem with them.

Is there any legitimacy with anti-HP switch complaints?
 
The big question is how do you manage your enterprise switches? What features are you using in your enterprise switches that are absolutely necessary? I find that many organizations don't actually use even a fraction of the "enterprise features" of their switch and they manage them one at a time by SSH/Telnet/Web. Netgear switches can offer the features that some companies implement on their switches.

When you actually need the enterprise features and 4hr replacement crap that Cisco offers you're not going to beat them.

However, it really comes down to why you need Cisco. If you don't need Cisco why pay the premium? Cisco is awesome but price/performance and price/density ratio is not exactly on top. Plus some of the limitations they put on the hardware (including license specific features) seems arbitrary and silly.

If on the other hand you've spent thousands of dollars on management software and spent hours writing Cisco specific scripts and management procedures then it might be a huge pain to switch vendors.
 
Thuleman,

We use Curvature now. Our CTO comes from an Avaya shop and is in love with them. It is his answer for everything. We don't like them so much.
 
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Juniper = bunch of X Cisco guys started them
HP is great as well and even Dell higher end switches are solid.

You will find your share of problems with them all, but i would aim to HP or Juniper. Both include more options and Juniper usually handles far more throughput than the others.

Also you will save a TON on support costs, HP are guaranteed for life and both include support for the price, not like Cisco butt raping support add-on costs that end up being 5x more than any other product just so your paying for the name.

This isn't 10-15 years ago when Cisco owned the networking world. There are better options now but people are so drunk on Cisco Kool Aid they think there is nothing competitive out there.
 
+1 on the HP recommendation. Even the low end web managed switches are decent and have lifetime warranty. We sell quite a few of them to our SMB customers, along with 25xx series. All have been great, and as others have mentioned, CLI is very similar to Cisco.
 
QHalo said:
Surprised no one has mentioned Arista or Brocade.
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Isn't Arista targeting the data center? None of their switches seem to support POE for IP telephony.

Brocade acquired Foundry Networks and both aren't very common in the enterprise.

I'd probably play it safe and stick with the top three players Juniper, Cisco or HP.
 
Zyxel shouldn't be bad but I don't know how their high end switches stacks up to the rest.
//Danne
 
Kwisatz Haderach said:
We have been using Barracuda with pretty good results.
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Barracuda doesn't make switches, I would know, I used to work there.

I work at a VAR and 95% of the switches that we sell is either Juniper or Cisco. There's seems to be a big exodus with companies moving from Cisco to Juniper these days.
 
I used to be a big Enterasys fan over Cisco, but now that Extreme Networks bought them out, I'm not too sure how their support will be.
 
Avoid Avaya like the plague. I'm with the crowd about NHR's wtf moment and subsequent name change to Curvature.
 
necrophobic said:
Avoid Avaya like the plague. I'm with the crowd about NHR's wtf moment and subsequent name change to Curvature.
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i work for a nonprofit and got a stack of nortel poe 5520 48 ports for < $200 and 24s for like $120

so far i've been extremely happy with them :D havn't had any problems with the actual hardware, they seem very well built

no support, but i'm kind of a lone ranger when it comes to most stuff anyway...
 
We moved from Cisco to Juniper at a company I used to work at.
My current company is a Cisco Premier Partner, so we push that on clients.
I'd vote for HP or Juniper.
 
We have tons of HP access switches. CLI is very comparable to Cisco, while it's not a pound for pound copy, if you understand one, you'll get the other.

Lifetime warranty is cool, because we deal in such large quantities (we probably have over 2200 deployed and in production), some of our older switches are starting to go out, but they were deployed probably around 2006-2007 and have been on 24/7 since then, and in some cases in non environmentally controlled rooms and closets.
 
MrGuvernment said:
This isn't 10-15 years ago when Cisco owned the networking world.
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Not looking to debate, just comment.

HP switches are descendant of the old DIGITAL network hardware line. One of the few things HP hasn't tampered with and screwed up. Cue network pron....a hat I still keep on my shelf.

 
Mister Natural said:
Not looking to debate, just comment.

HP switches are descendant of the old DIGITAL network hardware line. One of the few things HP hasn't tampered with and screwed up.
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They're trying, I've tried using their A-class switches and the interface was absolute garbage. I guess it was chinese company that got sued for knocking off Cisco's IOS to closely and HP has since purchased that company.
 
i dont like HP GUI and the Java usage for it..can be slow at times when i use it to quick view something.
 
MrGuvernment said:
i dont like HP GUI and the Java usage for it..can be slow at times when i use it to quick view something.
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Can't argue with you on that. I just bought a couple new Procurve's and actually the web interface didn't require java anymore. I was quite happy to see that. Many years ago the interface was awful. Don't know if anyone remembers a program called ClearVisn along with java which was required to manage a switch in a gui. The thing was once I had it configured I really never had to mess with the switch anymore. But I hear what you're saying. The java requirement bugged me for a long time and never understood why they stuck with it.

Reliability is there, but there certainly may be better interfaces out there.
 
I'd stay away from HP and Dell. My experience is throughput is usually bad, reliability suffers and management and function isn't as good as the others.

I usually use Juniper as an alternative to Cisco, but Arista and Brocade are very good, but I must say I don't use them as AC. Mixed environments do have there own challenges though and discovery can be a pain.

I'd go Juniper as an alternative is most environments, but it does depend on the business. I have mixed Juniper quite well with Cisco.
 
I've never had any issues with Juniper or Brocade/Foundry. HP is generally pretty good as well.
 
Good to know, i only have some old 25** series from 2-3 years ago so havent been able to play with any of the new ones yet.
 
Depending on what you go with and how much money you save I'd get a few spares too. Having spares on hand beats even the best support.
 
bigdogchris said:
I hear a lot of commotion about how crappy HP switches are yet I've never had a problem with them.

Is there any legitimacy with anti-HP switch complaints?
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Speaking from my observation at my workplace over the past 2-3 years as consultants have come and go, as we use to be all HP hardware, it's likely due to ignorance, arrogance, and pride. Instead of working with the equipment, we switched to what many people know better and more fluently: Cisco.
 
HP in the access, distro and core. We are moving to Juniper in the core though for expanded features.
HP is awesome and cheap, Cisco gear is nice, but we could not afford them. Juniper gives us pretty good discounts on their gear and their jcare is cheap also.
 
Brocade is okay, we use them exclusively for our DCs. You need to be very careful which running image you have, they will have multiple versions that are 'compatible' with your hardware but will have broken features, you need to have the 'right/supported' image even if there are 10 versions of images newer than the one you are running.

Other than that, solid hardware and support.
 
Cisco cornered the market decades ago and it stuck with them. For me at least now you pay for the Name with Cisco, when you can get just as good hardware from the other listed providers above and usually for cheaper with higher throughput and better performance.

I have noted on my reading journeys people say though that Cisco support is top notch, if you have an issue usually their level 1 can fix it, where as with Juniper you can end up going through several people and hours or days to get a fix.
 
Brocade (Foundry really) -- good big switches. I used them at my old job and never had any issues

Nortel/Avaya - All the Avaya routers and switches are really just Nortels products. People seem to like them a lot more than I do, but I never had to manage them day to day in an office


Juniper - a lot of my customers use this if they don't use Cisco. Juniper seems to make a good product, and I haven't heard any real complaints about them.

I've seen all the above three brands (and Cisco) in servers room all over -- hospitals, government, small business etc
 
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