Anyone have an experience with fs.com optics?

S

Sycraft

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Little background first: We are getting a new NetApp FAS and for the moment it is going to hook in to old Dell PowerConnect 7024 switches. The idea is to wire it to the 10gig SPF+ modules on the back so it has more than enough bandwidth, and since that is what we' d want to use in the future. The FAS itself is bought as a bundle and includes expensive optics supplied by NetApp (from Finisar I think). However we'll need optics for the switch.

Ok well Dell wants like $700/transceiver for 10gig SR modules for these old switches they don't sell anymore, and even getting them to sell you them is a bit of a pain. On the other hand fs.com wants like $25/transceiver and they are easy to buy and ready to ship.

Well I really like that price, of course but I'm always worried when something is that much cheaper. We do need the storage array to have reliable network communication, I don't want to be constantly losing connection or having issues because we cheaped out on a component.

So, anyone have any experience with these guys? Should we try it, or just bit the bullet and pay Dell a bunch of money for an old product? Should we just scrub using 10gig for now and get 1gig baseT modules for the NetApp?

Thanks.
 
I've heard some people use them and have had luck. The only issue thing you would be sacrificing is if there were support issues that pointed back to the optics and Dell not providing any support. Whether that's a concern or not would be up to you, but if it's an old switch anyway, it might already have limited support.

An alternative would be Interoptic (https://interoptic.com/products/)
 
Cmustang87 said:
On second thought, why not get a 10G TwinAx cable from NetApp?
Click to expand...

Basically because it ships with optics and that's how they'd like to support it. NetApp has started selling "bundles" for their lower end units and you get everything in it, including cabling and the like which in this case is all optical, even the cluster interconnect which only goes in between the HA pair. Since that's what it is coming with and all, I figure I'll just use that. Had it been the sort of thing that was spec'd piecemeal, it would be all direct attach since distances are short.

One of our vendors has Dell optics for $120 which is still stupidly expensive compared to FS or 10gtek, but I decided the hell with it and am getting those. It doesn't really matter, I just don't want to spend a lot of money on these old switches since they are end of sale units and I want to replace them in the near future.
 
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