Lets talk optics

schnell

Gawd
Joined
Jul 22, 2005
Messages
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I am getting ready to buy about 2 dozen gbics for some new Cisco switches we are deploying. Normally I would always just buy Cisco gbics when I order the switches but they were not ordered. I have always used oem Cisco optics and have no experience with other brands but just because I was curious I priced out Axiom gbics. The cost was about 1/3. I dont have an issue spending the money if I need to but I also wouldn't mind the extra budget money.

Do any of you have experience with optics other than Cisco in your gear, specifically Axiom?


On a side note has anyone used any of the Axiom 10GB optics? They are like 1/5 the cost of the Cisco ones we bought 3 years ago :eek:
 
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I will have to look into them. Honestly the only reason I priced Axiom is I was flipping though a PC Connection catalog that was inside a box of SAS drives that showed up today and they were in there.
 
Where I work they give away all non-Cisco GBICs/SPF/SPF+s since they've had issues with Cisco saying "you're on your own" when needing support.

That said, I don't know if you're really going to see the issues we did. We basically have two sky scrapers with fibers from each building's distribution switches going to both buildings floors and their multiple access switches (400+ fiber runs basically just for dst to acc). Cisco ended up being right the optics were wonky, but it was only 2 or 3 pairs.
 
Where I work they give away all non-Cisco GBICs/SPF/SPF+s since they've had issues with Cisco saying "you're on your own" when needing support.

...

THIS

if you try to open a TAC case with Cisco and they find out about the non-Cisco optics, they wipe their hands and walk away until you replace the optics with OEM Cisco parts. shitty on their part, but they guarantee interop with their like branded gear.
 
For our HP switches we usually have our vendor spec out gencom or whatever generic one there is. Generally they are a lot cheaper than the HP ones.
Next time we need optics we are going to try some from here http://www.fiberstore.com/c/fiber-transceivers_9/sort-order_price
With how cheap they are we can buy multiple if / when they go bad. Of course if they don't perform very good, we'll do something else.
 
THIS

if you try to open a TAC case with Cisco and they find out about the non-Cisco optics, they wipe their hands and walk away until you replace the optics with OEM Cisco parts. shitty on their part, but they guarantee interop with their like branded gear.

Switches are 2960s so there is no smart net

Axiom also claims their optics are "Cisco approved" whatever that means.
 
Where I work we have 100+ routers and probably 800+ switches. We use 95% cisco sfp's, but recently we have started using Gencom in some places with no issue.

I wouldn't have a problem with using it on access layer stuff, but I'd prolly err on the side of caution and use cisco branded for dsw and core stuff.
 

I guess what it comes down to is, what's the budget, and what are you supporting? If it is not mission critical, then go with the third-party SFP's (and have a few spare Cisco modules to swap just in case).

If it is "mission critical" and you have the budget, why deal with the Cisco Support headaches and possibility of higher failure rate?
 
I guess what it comes down to is, what's the budget, and what are you supporting? If it is not mission critical, then go with the third-party SFP's (and have a few spare Cisco modules to swap just in case).

If it is "mission critical" and you have the budget, why deal with the Cisco Support headaches and possibility of higher failure rate?

The cost of Cisco (or other vendor) optics is completely ridiculous. When my customers see a BOM where populating a blade with optics is 3x the cost of the blade, they get a little annoyed. Sadly, we can't sell third party optics, but I'd be all over it if we could.

The failure rate shouldn't be any higher based on the research I've done and I'd definitely keep some Cisco optics on hand for TAC reasons, but that's a small price when you only need a couple.
 
Take a look at Finisar GBICs, they actually make alot of the OEM GBICs for Cisco, Procurve, Dell, etc. I have hundreds of Finisar GBICs deployed on a variety of equipment with no problems.
 
I've used Axiom SFP in the lab where support is a non-issue and never had any problems with them. On production equipment in the field we always use OEM optics as you will almost always run into non-support with most vendors should something come up.
 
So, I used Fluxlight based on recommendations from others I've talked to. They've been great so far.

I did have one fail, and called it in under warranty. Anyway, I put the SFP in my pocket and ended up forgetting about it and it went through the washer/dryer. I sent an email back to Fluxlight telling them that they wouldn't need to replace it since I had washed it and that wouldn't be covered.

Fluxlight responded by sending me the part anyway. They had a note saying not to worry about it and that since I had called it in before hand, they would honor the warranty regardless. That's customer service right there. No questions asked, just a short note and a thanks for being a customer.
 
ChampionOne makes a decent product. They claim cisco compatibility by burning a random cisco PID onto their gear. If not, there's always that "service unsupported-transciever" global command.

Personally, I've used Finisar, ChampionOne, Cisco, JDSU and they're all decent with great compatibility in our devices.
 
I use finistar in most of my stuff that will let me use generic gbics...

my Cisco fiber channel stuff will only work with cisco gbics, but in the FC targets and hosts I use finistar
 
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