Complete Switch Replacement Project

[rama1712]

We are planning next summer upgrades and are looking into upgrading our 6 cabs around the school.

 

Can anyone recommend any good companies that will quote install and advise us on our best course of action.

 

Thanks in advance

 

Stuart

[localzuk]

Net-Ctrl are a good option. As are CSE.

[fiza]

Try our good friend @Millgate

[FN-GM]

SoftCat did a good job on designing ours. We told them what we want, they spat out some solutions. Very good people to work with.

[Millgate]

We are planning next summer upgrades and are looking into upgrading our 6 cabs around the school.

 

Can anyone recommend any good companies that will quote install and advise us on our best course of action.

 

Thanks in advance

 

Stuart

 

Hi Stuart,

 

As Fiza said, we'd be happy to help you with this. We can work with you on any brand, on any solution.

 

If you drop me an email or a PM, I'll get right on it

 

[email protected]

 

Luke

[dhicks]

We are planning next summer upgrades and are looking into upgrading our 6 cabs around the school.

 

We did the same this summer. We used SwitchShop for the purchasing of switches - their advice was really, really good and I feel we wound up with the right devices for the right reasons. When you say "upgrading the cabinets" do you literally mean upgrading the physical network cabinets, and/or the wiring in between them, or do you just mean the switching equipment inside those cabinets? Do you plan on replacing your core switch? As a rough guide, it cost us around £40,000 for the switches (about the same size of network) and probably around that much again for the wiring between them.

 

If you're buying switches, I think it's worth getting ones that supporet OpenFlow / Software Defined Networking, if just to leave the option open for the future to use SDN to control your network.

[john]

Net-Ctrl are a good option. As are CSE.

 

Second that they did my big upgrade with me and were excellent pricing and we looked at many brands and option from a variety of resellers and Net Ctrl came out on top and the Juniper solution was perfect so much so it is a Juniper case study - http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&ved=0CDYQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.juniper.net%2Fus%2Fen%2Flocal%2Fpdf%2Fcase-studies%2F3520447-en.pdf&ei=zxufUsjlMKKV7Aa854DIDA&usg=AFQjCNHGo_FAnrIynhxF1w64yeivWfHetg&sig2=GMWynDaZ20rmISBURDJUTw&bvm=bv.57155469,d.d2k and Youtube Video http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CC8QtwIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DAUCAODJ2i3g&ei=zxufUsjlMKKV7Aa854DIDA&usg=AFQjCNHmrThg0wfeYV5untesg5ydh3FCcg&sig2=khU3LvQhaW80Yis9S2P8aQ&bvm=bv.57155469,d.d2k

[HPlum78]

I have a number of years working in Schools/ Colleges and Unis and have used on many occasions a company called European Electronique (euroele.com)

[TheScarfedOne]

As already mentioned.... NetCTRL or Softcat are two companies Ive worked with closely on a number of big projects in the past. Highly recommended.

[rama1712]

Thanks to all for suggestions we have connected a few companies on the suggestion list and so far been pleased with how thwey have respone. Today we hat staff from SwitchShop and never might a nicer bunch of guys not pushey and know there stuff lets see what the other companies come up with

[sonofsanta]

We worked with SwitchShop last Easter to upgrade our core and begin a roll out of upgraded switches (still on-going), and as said by @dhicks, really sound advice and pricing, and the two consultants we had come down were absolutely superb - got everything stacked and set up on one day, then VLANned the network the next day, and essentially spent all that time tutoring me - to the point I've continued stacking & VLANning on the command line myself. Cannot speak highly enough of them.

 

We also spoke to Net-Ctrl & SoftCat who were equally knowledgeable, but the solutions they proposed ultimately lost out because they weren't compatible with our existing 3COM SFPs, which represented a big saving on the core and going forward. Any of them lot will do right by you, IMHO.

[cpjitservices]

Gotta love Juniper, all Juniper here.

[TechMonkey]

Second that they did my big upgrade with me and were excellent pricing and we looked at many brands and option from a variety of resellers and Net Ctrl came out on top and the Juniper solution was perfect so much so it is a Juniper case study - http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&ved=0CDYQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.juniper.net%2Fus%2Fen%2Flocal%2Fpdf%2Fcase-studies%2F3520447-en.pdf&ei=zxufUsjlMKKV7Aa854DIDA&usg=AFQjCNHGo_FAnrIynhxF1w64yeivWfHetg&sig2=GMWynDaZ20rmISBURDJUTw&bvm=bv.57155469,d.d2k and Youtube Video http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CC8QtwIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DAUCAODJ2i3g&ei=zxufUsjlMKKV7Aa854DIDA&usg=AFQjCNHmrThg0wfeYV5untesg5ydh3FCcg&sig2=khU3LvQhaW80Yis9S2P8aQ&bvm=bv.57155469,d.d2k

 

Any thoughts vs HP? We are looking to do a similar refresh next year and have a quote for HP upgrade but I'm thinking of other options.

[localzuk]

We moved from DLink to HP about 7 years ago. Works flawlessly. Definitely a good option to go for.

 

Nice and expandable at the core too - we have a HP ProCurve 5406zl, which has allowed us to install 10GbE for our new virtual server infrastructure without any hassle.

Edited December 13, 2013 by localzuk

[dhicks]

Any thoughts vs HP?

 

I couldn't quite figure out what features Juniper switches provided over HP to justify the extra cost. Interestingly, this rather seems to be the thinking behind Software Defined Networking - instead of paying for propriatory, black-box switches stuffed full of features that you have no control over the implemnetation for, buy generic switching hardware that supports an SDN standard (OpenFlow, etc) and implement the features you need via your SDN controller. The HP switches we bought support OpenFlow, and I'm keen to give that a try and see what, exactly, it can do and how I can best go about using it. SDN doesn't seem like something that you can replace current switches with this time round, you might have to wait a few years until you can buy an off-the-shelf system with SDN support and a pre-defined SDN controller that will do the kind of things that Juniper's switches currently do. Most current SDN work seems to be being driven by Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc, who are large enough to be able to commision their own switch hardware if they need to, so again it might be a little while until useful features for the smaller business are available.

[john]

Any thoughts vs HP? We are looking to do a similar refresh next year and have a quote for HP upgrade but I'm thinking of other options.

 

In our case the Juniper solution was a lot less ££ than HP for the equivalent hardware and spec so it was budget based. However I felt the usability of the Juniper is simpler than the HP, for someone who's complex routing and switching knowledge isn't the best the Juniper made things much clearer and simpler than doing similar things in HP.

[FN-GM]

We have just installed 2 x Cisco 4500X for the core and then Cisco 3750's for the edge. Each stack is linked up with 4 x 10GB connections. Nice a quick, but not cheap. It really depends on your budget.

[s1d972]

Juniper could be deemed overkill for Educational establishments. We favour Procurve due to their lifetime warranty (Juniper 1 year) and free firmware upgrades making the total cost of ownership low. We have noticed more and more Schools are looking at 10gb for the backbone particularly with the new wireless standard of 802.11ac becoming available. 1gb backbone links could become a bottleneck if a School embraces this standard.

 

Hope that helps.

[john]

Juniper could be deemed overkill for Educational establishments. We favour Procurve due to their lifetime warranty (Juniper 1 year) .

 

Juniper is Lifetime warranty as well (has a range of T&Cs with it as do all other firms so read them and evaluate accordingly).

[rickypike]

We did a whole school switch refresh too, all HP ProCurve now, been faultless

[HTCPCP]

we did a major refresh in the Summer term half term while moving to VLans. All HP managed here, had a small amount of help from the LA, but apart from that it was just us working very very hard! Was well worth it, and we then tidied the cabinets in the summer. HP may not be the cheapest, but in terms of reliability can't fault them.

[dhicks]

HP may not be the cheapest

 

In our case, they were the cheapest for a 10GbE fibre network with core switches and 9 PoE-capable edge switches. Other networks might work out differently, of course, but for us they were best on price.

[snoerre]

If you're buying switches, I think it's worth getting ones that supporet OpenFlow / Software Defined Networking, if just to leave the option open for the future to use SDN to control your network.

SDN is still in the beginning. It will take years, till ready to use SDN controllers will be available at normal costs

Any thoughts vs HP? We are looking to do a similar refresh next year and have a quote for HP upgrade but I'm thinking of other options.

HP has Procurve line of switches and H3C based switches. That quote you are talking about, which HP switches have been offered? (I wouldn´t buy every switch from them anymore)

The HP switches we bought support OpenFlow

Procurve OS based switches support Openflow 1.0 only, the latest Comware OS 7 based H3C switches support Openflow 1.3. But this is still quite useless without any ready to use SDN controller. Google and Co have manpower to get those working. And yes I´d prefer Juniper over HP/H3C, although "thanks" to public tenderism we once were forced to purchase HP/H3C.

In our case the Juniper solution was a lot less ££ than HP for the equivalent hardware and spec so it was budget based..

Interesting, I once contacted our local Juniper contact for getting a quote. The prices were way higher than HP, unfortunately. Which switches have been offered on HP site?

Juniper could be deemed overkill for Educational establishments. We favour Procurve due to their lifetime warranty (Juniper 1 year) and free firmware upgrades making the total cost of ownership low.

Well, well HP´s lifetime warranty. Nice, but software support is much more important. I had "several" tickets with HP support. One even ran over 1,5 year. At the end it wasn´t recognized as security bug. HP later published a new topic within its knowledge base. Guess what they say now: "not supported".

I like HP for its routing support, but you get what you paid for, that´s all. Btw, you don´t get lifetime support on latest Comware 7 switches, you have to buy carepacks as well.

HP may not be the cheapest, but in terms of reliability can't fault them.

We get >>60% on HP EMEA list prices on HP A series of switches. If HP wants the deal,...

 

Let´s talk about money. What do you have? Just look at HP´s 10GB SFP+ optics. Even with mentioned discount, we would have to pay ~500,-€ incl. VAT for one 10GB SFP+ SR optic. Needless to mention that I pay 39,-$ (+shipping, + customs duty/VAT, for one compatible SFP+ module with correct coding while directly importing that one from China... So does it matter?

What features do you want? What network design? Layer 3 routed access? MPLS at the edge? VPLS at the edge (layer 2 tunnel from each port to another port in your network, wouldn´t that be nice)? How many clients/devices do you have? How many switches (core, distribution, access) are we talking about?

Edited December 23, 2013 by snoerre