a need for easy arguments

[dekdek]

hi everyone,

some network managers in my structure try to convinced me of replacing ERS 8600 by
HP 5400zl.
I don't want this change. But i'm at a loss for arguments specialy for technical arguments.
can you help me ?
thanks in advance.
Cristophe 

[Michael McNamara]

Well it's clear that HP is trying to get serious with their Enterprise Switching/Routing.

Having completed the acquisition of 3Com they are trying to make a serious play for more than just the edge switches. I know quite a few organizations that use them at the edge because of the pricing but those same organizations usually use a Cisco 6500 or similar in their core.

Are you utilizing IST/SMLT today? The ability to have a Spanning Tree free topology is key in my opinion leveraging both primary and secondary paths in an active/active configuration as opposed to an active/passive solution.

Why are they looking to replace the ERS 8600? Are they looking for 10Gbps?

Cheers!

[dekdek]

we don't use ist/smlt configuration.
i think they are looking to replace the ERS8600 because :
1/ price
2/ fear of recent Avaya/Nortel story : in France it's not a sign of good health.
3/ 10Gbps : HP use SFP+. It seems to be a better choice than Nortel XFP.

With a simple config and 2500 mac can we say these 2 products have same :
 - performance
 - fiability
??

[Michael McNamara]

Well it could be said that an ERS 8600 is overkill for a 2,500 node network. How many uplinks and/or edge switches do you have? Are you using just core and edge or do you have core, distribution and edge switches?

The only benefit to using a SFP+ over an XFP interface is density on the card/module. I don't believe there are any technical benefits to one over the other or any significant cost differences between the two.

There are obviously a lot of questions to examine and review... one of them is do you really need 10Gbps of networking? Vendors are very happy and content to tell you that you definitely need 10Gbps switching and software manufacturers are very happy with folks that just 'throw bandwidth' at the problem over designing an efficient client/server application.

With all the applications riding the network today everyone should be designing with redundancy and high-availability in mind.

I can't really speak to the HP 5400zl other than I know it's fairly new switch for HP. What features does it have that can enable you to build highly available networks? Are in-service software upgrades supported? Are all the protocols you need supported, OSPF, PIM-SM, IGMP, BGP, MPLS, etc.

Good Luck!

[dekdek]

1/ i don't understand the word "overkill" ! is it ironic ? do you mean ERS8600 in such a situation is not necessary : 2500 mac, just core and edge, 30 edge fiber link with ERS2550.
2/ SFP+ : i think (just not me, i have read it) this technology should become the more "factory-made". So price, choice, availability, support,  R&D will go on. I don't think it's a just a question of density.

[Michael McNamara]

In my opinion it comes down to feature sets of the product more so that packets-per-second and raw aggregate throughput. There are obvious applications where 10Gbps networking is warranted but the majority of traffic that I've seen to day is served up quite fine over a 1Gbps network. If you don't need the deep feature set that comes with the ERS 8600 then perhaps an ERS 8300 would have sufficed (at a much lower cost). Is it your intention to put in a place a highly redundant network with active/active pathing?

I agree with you that SFP+ is certainly the 'new' standard moving forward, again because density is a concern for the manufacturers. They can't physically fit 30 ports on a card/module if they are XFP interfaces, that will only work if they are SFP+. You won't find Nortel/Avaya releasing any new hardware for the ERS 8600 as all their development is now going into the VSP 9000. We need to remember that the backplane of the ERS 8600 can only provide 30Gbps of bandwidth to each card (60Gbps if you use Cisco math ) So on a 12 port 10Gbps card you are oversubscribing the backplane on a 4:1 ratio.

Good Luck!

[dekdek]

thanks, allways nice talking with you.
If i follow you, active/active configuration is only possible with Nortel switchs.
Other manufacturers (HP,Cisco,...) do just active/passive configuration ?

[Michael McNamara]

The Cisco Nexus 7000 has vPC which is the equivalent to IST/SMLT in the Avaya ERS 8600.

Good Luck!