Who, besides Cisco, for enterprise access switches?

I decided to check out these Junipers everyone is talking about. From what I see they're pricey and you can get something else to do the job for a lot less money. I'm not into Cisco but even they are more modestly priced and would go that route if I ever decided to drop Procurve.
 
The bonus about Brocade products is that it's very easy for Cisco guys to learn the CLI, it's nearly the same. Big differences are debugging and vlan configuration (assign ports to VLAN, as opposed to VLANs to port), from my experience.
 
I decided to check out these Junipers everyone is talking about. From what I see they're pricey and you can get something else to do the job for a lot less money. I'm not into Cisco but even they are more modestly priced and would go that route if I ever decided to drop Procurve.

You may be looking at the wrong line but Juniper is FAR cheaper than Cisco once you factor in support.

They are a bit more than HP, but also tend to to be higher performance as well.
 
You may be looking at the wrong line but Juniper is FAR cheaper than Cisco once you factor in support.

They are a bit more than HP, but also tend to to be higher performance as well.

I went to cdw and the cheapest Juniper switch I saw there was $700. Thanks for the update. I'll keep an eye out and maybe check one out someday.
 
Another vote for Enterasys. Price and performance is where it's at. Also lifetime warranty + support. You can't beat that.
 
HP ProCurve all the way. Lifetime hardware warranty and no maintenance/renewal for access to firmware images. Dell Force10, select PowerConnect models, and Brocade have also been good to work with.

I do get a chuckle when someone talks about a switch's GUI in an enterprise setting. All networking professionals (myself included) disabled any http/https access as part of any standard config template.
 
HP ProCurve all the way. Lifetime hardware warranty and no maintenance/renewal for access to firmware images. Dell Force10, select PowerConnect models, and Brocade have also been good to work with.

I do get a chuckle when someone talks about a switch's GUI in an enterprise setting. All networking professionals (myself included) disabled any http/https access as part of any standard config template.

Yea I know what you mean with no one using the GUI. There are definitely times where CLI makes more sense and most of the documentation is going to reference it. There are times though where using the GUI would be a ton easier, (Think changing VLANs on several ports that are not in a row)

The biggest plus that I can say for Cisco is reliability is good, and since it's the most used it's also the most supported. Looking past just using the hardware and using management/monitoring software like SolarWinds, splunk, etc you won't need to worry about having to parse syslog or snmp traps if you're using Cisco gear. Some of the smaller vendors it might take more time to get monitoring to work correctly with.

I really wish I had a chance to play with Juniper gear as it seems like it can do more and does have a better GUI interface so you can do things that Cisco doesn't handle well. The biggest thing that stands out for me is doing ACLs on CLI versus a webpage. If you've used PFSense it's a lot easier to handle large rulesets via a GUI than in a command line.
 
I've used a bit of everything. Dislike brocade, avaya, nortel, and Dell.

HP is good, but limited feature sets (mostly worked with 28xx, 29xx and zl chassis. CLI is very close to Cisco

Juniper is my current favourite (disclaimer, I'm a Juniper partner, but also a Cisco Partner) I love using JUNOS on everything, and the CLI is great, the "xml like" config is so easy to understand, and being able to use a lot of *nix commands makes troubleshooting really easy.
 
I really don't see a problem using a web interface since an administrator login should be required to modify anything in a switch, provided that was setup in the device in the first place.
 
HP ProCurve all the way. Lifetime hardware warranty and no maintenance/renewal for access to firmware images. Dell Force10, select PowerConnect models, and Brocade have also been good to work with.

I do get a chuckle when someone talks about a switch's GUI in an enterprise setting. All networking professionals (myself included) disabled any http/https access as part of any standard config template.

Fully agree, however I prefer their A-series (comware-based) over their E-series (provision-based).

Currently you have lifetime next business day replacement and email support aswell as free access to firmware updates. 3 year of phone support. You could of course buy an extra 4 hour replacement or having a HP-tech on site for you and such but thats optional.
 
I went to cdw and the cheapest Juniper switch I saw there was $700. Thanks for the update. I'll keep an eye out and maybe check one out someday.

I'd be interested to know which Cisco you're comparing the EX2200 against - I'm guessing it's one of the "small business" range?

I may sound a little snobby here but I'm not sure those are "real" Cisco tbh, though they were the cheap dlink/linksys/whatever stuff?
 
We use Juniper EX.

You can buy cheaper switches but if you want something in the same tier as Cisco I'd say they're up there - performance is great and when we've needed support they've been good.

One of the reasons we went the EX route was consistency - I quite like HP switches but AIUI you could go out and buy 5 models of "HP" switch and have 5 different GUI/CLI's to deal with.
 
We have been moving to Arista for our production environments. Higher port density then cisco, cheaper price per port, and CLI is almost identical to Cisco.
 
Dell
Arista
Juniper
Fortigate
HP

Pick a brand, then find out what features you need and choose a model.
 
Come to think of it, Allied Telesis also have enterprise stuff but perhaps not as advanced?
//Danne
 
Stick with Cisco and buy from NHR/Curvature (I 2nd the WTF on the name change)

HP for a small step down. Juniper for a lateral move.

I use so many L3 features of Cisco products at the core though, I'd never want to move away. For closet switches, I could get away with something simpler.
 
FWIW, Humboldt State University and California State University system are migrating from Cisco to Alcatel Lucent for LAN/WAN and controller-managed Aruba for wireless.
 
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.

HP's lifetime guarantee is amazing! Some people buy old HP switches off ebay, try and find an issue with it, and send it in to HP for a new switch. Since they don't make some models anymore, they send their newer, and better, switches out as a replacement.

Maybe that's why they have jacked prices.


Zyxel shouldn't be bad but I don't know how their high end switches stacks up to the rest.
//Danne

I have a 24port ZyXel and it works great, has some layer 3 capability and a lot of options. It just has the feel of a cheap switch based on the GUI and the design. I can't say it's given me problems, but I've been happier. The GUI looks like it was written in html4 with no CSS or dynamically loading pages, just a thought.





One company I havent seen mentioned is Ubiquiti. They have 5, 8 and 16 port Gigabit compatible and POE capable (24v and 48v) switche.

They also have a 24/48 port EdgeSwitch with 2xSFP 10G connections and 24/48v POE for more intensive purposes. The GUI is great, and the features are pretty much exactly what is most concerning about switches. They have customizable alerts, logs, ping watchdog, L3 management, etc.


http://www.ubnt.com/accessories/toughswitch/
http://www.ubnt.com/edgemax/edgeswitch/
 
HP's lifetime guarantee is amazing! Some people buy old HP switches off ebay, try and find an issue with it, and send it in to HP for a new switch. Since they don't make some models anymore, they send their newer, and better, switches out as a replacement.

I can vouch that this happens, we've had numerous switches replaced this way and received a model (or 2) newer.

If you haven't seen the additions to the HP 2530 series, they now offer models with 2 SFP+ ports. The J9855A is 48x100/1000 + 2 SFP+ ports for < $2600 retail. Lifetime warranty, lifetime access to firmwares, etc. They also offer the same configuration with POE+. They are priced very well for a solid layer 2 access layer switch.

http://h17007.www1.hp.com/us/en/net...hes/HP_2530_Switch_Series/index.aspx#tab=TAB3
 
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