Netgear Prosafe layer 3 switches - cost effective or put my money elsewhere?

[john]

we are a large campus with 2 large buildings, each with a GSM7328FS at their core. These are connected via 10gig modules & OM3 to a GSM7352S switch which has our servers connected to it, effectively giving us a 10gig backplane, then 1gig to each satellite switch in each building. It's never missed a beat. You may also be interested to know you can use any compatible tranceiver in your netgear switches, unlike HP who lock them down to their own. £45 cheap tranceivers? No problem!

Nice to hear good success with that combination, we are looking at using those exact two switches for linking our buildings up and doing that so nice to hear you are having good success with them

[Oops_my_bad]

Nice to hear good success with that combination, we are looking at using those exact two switches for linking our buildings up and doing that so nice to hear you are having good success with them

If my cabling all came back to the one location then I'd go for one of those new chassis you mentioned, would be ideal. Either way I don't think you'll be disappointed

A further word to the OP, 3com have been bought out by HP completely, so whilst you can probably still get hold of later 3com kit it will more than likely be going EoL soon whilst HP finish asymilating 3com. At least with 3com they were still making access points for their managed controllers several years after they were released, so it's not suprising all our kit is now EoL following HP's buyout, with no easy migration option. HP's product lifecycle is rediculously short as well.

So it looks like your choices are either HP or Netgear

[CyberNerd]

A further word to the OP, 3com have been bought out by HP completely, so whilst you can probably still get hold of later 3com kit it will more than likely be going EoL soon whilst HP finish asymilating 3com. At least with 3com they were still making access points for their managed controllers several years after they were released, so it's not suprising all our kit is now EoL following HP's buyout, with no easy migration option. HP's product lifecycle is rediculously short as well.

It's the other way around. HP bought 3com because their kit is good and their O/S is better, much of the 3com kit remains at the expense of procurves..

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[camel]

we are a large campus with 2 large buildings, each with a GSM7328FS at their core. These are connected via 10gig modules & OM3 to a GSM7352S switch which has our servers connected to it, effectively giving us a 10gig backplane, then 1gig to each satellite switch in each building. It's never missed a beat. You may also be interested to know you can use any compatible tranceiver in your netgear switches, unlike HP who lock them down to their own. £45 cheap tranceivers? No problem!

Yes, great to hear about your experiences too. @Oops_my_bad, what size school/establishment do work for? And, do you utilise any other switching hardware, alongside the Netgear core? Thanks, Rob

[john]

If my cabling all came back to the one location then I'd go for one of those new chassis you mentioned, would be ideal. Either way I don't think you'll be disappointed

We will have 2 Campuses from Sept 2012 so were aiming for that copper switch on both sites linked with a 10g fibre to each other to be the cores for both sites, and on the main site which has all the Servers, SANs etc on it we will have the copper switch (may actually, from my initial calculations need two of them) and the fibre switch as we will have a large number of the cabinets on fibre by that point, and the closer ones on bonded copper so we will finally have all the cabinets being fed from the core rather than fed from each other which is something we have at present.

[Oops_my_bad]

Yes, great to hear about your experiences too. @Oops_my_bad, what size school/establishment do work for? And, do you utilise any other switching hardware, alongside the Netgear core? Thanks, Rob

L3 at the core, L2 at the edges. We have a mix of GS748TP's and GSM7224/7248's at the edge, these are all getting replaced with GS748TP's. Not that there are any issues with the GSM7224/48's, it's just we have a lot of PoE devices such as phones, CCTV and Wireless AP's that we've outgrown them. And we have tonnes of PoE bricks in those cabs :| About 1500 lusers here...

[Oops_my_bad]

We will have 2 Campuses from Sept 2012 so were aiming for that copper switch on both sites linked with a 10g fibre to each other to be the cores for both sites, and on the main site which has all the Servers, SANs etc on it we will have the copper switch (may actually, from my initial calculations need two of them) and the fibre switch as we will have a large number of the cabinets on fibre by that point, and the closer ones on bonded copper so we will finally have all the cabinets being fed from the core rather than fed from each other which is something we have at present.

Sounds good Is your fibre on site or by Campus I'm guessing you've got to run it via BT or something? Check your distances - if it's 500m or less (might even be 300m) on OM3 you should be able to get away with short range tranceivers

[john]

Sounds good Is your fibre on site or by Campus I'm guessing you've got to run it via BT or something? Check your distances - if it's 500m or less (might even be 300m) on OM3 you should be able to get away with short range tranceivers

We own all the land both sides of the road and a conveniently located underpass so were getting the diggers in and going to fit it all It will be OM3 and support 10Gb no issues BT wanted heading for 30K a year for that speed, the campuses are literally across the road from each other its crazy!

[snoerre]

so it's not suprising all our kit is now EoL following HP's buyout, with no easy migration option. HP's product lifecycle is rediculously short as well.

Hi, may I ask what product is now EoL?

Talking about Netgear. Pricing is really nice. I do like their new 30 year warranty and I used it many time. I had some GS724T V1 with defective fans. The whole switch was replaced by a new one. This was GS724T version 3. The software was completely new, meaning the switch hardware was completely different. And here is the disadvantage of Netgear products. Netgear buys its switches from different hardware makers. You don´t know what you really get as Netgear seems not to build those devices on its own.