Network switches

[PotNoodleTech]

2650s aka concorde need throwing away.

 

Replaced some with V1910 (older model) and theyre nearly silent, and also 2530G-POE which are ruddy awesome, very quiet considering they run 300w poe!

[mjk]

Some of the cheaper switches won't be able to give you routing options for redundant pathways, or free up your backbone by letting your edge make some of the routing decisions, or have the switching capacity that you might need in the future.

Not saying you need these feature as it's probably fine on a small network but might impact if you plan on expanding, for example with 1:1. Sometimes you might have to balance the cost of the switches vs the extra bandwidth cheaper switches will use and the lack of monitoring/maintenance features they generally have. If your a smallish school don't worry but if you've got high number of users or high bandwidth requirements you need to be thinking about it and not go for the SMB option.

[gh5000]

Those prices seem a little low. Everywhere I look, Dell has a 48 port 1GbE/4xSFP+ switch at around £900, and the 24x SFP+ N4032F comes in around £4k. Where are you getting those prices from?

 

I think he's missing a zero there. £4500 is roughly what price I see on Dell's partner site with a 5 yr nbd warranty for a N4032F. Can also find the older gen S4048 48x10GbE 6xQSFP+ on ebay for £2500 which still has a perfectly capable specification IMO. Two for the same price (ish).

 

Dell Force10 kit is very highly rated by a networking friend of mine. Says it's better than HP for the price

Edited March 8, 2017 by gh5000

[tech-man]

We have always used Allied Telesis switches with no issues & great service. PM for more info.

[njc235]

Have you looked at Brocade? The 7450 and below are have a similar lifetime warranty to HP pro curve and comware below 5800. Edited March 9, 2017 by njc235
Typo

[Mark-wilde]

Indeed the Unifi and Edge switches are very cheap, but they cannot offer you multiple ports and stuck at only 10GbE.

[caffrey]

Those with Ubiquiti switches, are you using the ES or the newer US ? And for inter vlan routing ? I'm considering the Ubiquiti path myself

[localzuk]

Have you looked at Brocade? The 7450 and below are have a similar lifetime warranty to HP pro curve and comware below 5800.

They appear to be rather expensive! More so than HPE.

[RobD]

A few years ago I used to work with Extreme switches, I believe they were a spin off from Cisco so the commands etc are really similar but I've no idea on cost sorry.

Extreme Networks ? Connect Beyond The Network

[localzuk]

I know of one college that went with Zyxel switches for their network. I wonder how they're getting on...

[Asgard]

We are in the same boat looking at upgrading old switch hardware. We are HP at the moment but the quotes for new have come in over twice that of other vendors. We have been recommended the Netgear M4300 series by 2 of our suppliers. Anybody use Netgear?

 

We are an entire Netgear site.

 

Core switch is an M6100 chassis just about to put another in to have a split core across the two data centres.

 

Edge switches are stacks of GS752TXS and PoE variants probably just short of 50 switches from about 9 stacks.

 

We have 4 of the M4300 (XSM4348CS) and two M7100 there outstanding and a couple of XS728T as San / heartbeat switches for our Hyper-V clusters

 

We had a case study done a couple of years ago that's now out of date but that was mainly due to their ReadyData SAN which we have 3 of.

 

https://www.netgear.com/images/pdf/Birkenhead_Sixth_Form_College_Case_Study.pdf

 

Our sponsored academy had a pair of HP E5406ZL which we ripped out and put in a M6100. Still have the blank chassis if anyone wants them

Edited March 9, 2017 by Asgard

[FN-GM]

I think he's missing a zero there. £4500 is roughly what price I see on Dell's partner site with a 5 yr nbd warranty for a N4032F. Can also find the older gen S4048 48x10GbE 6xQSFP+ on ebay for £2500 which still has a perfectly capable specification IMO. Two for the same price (ish).

 

Dell Force10 kit is very highly rated by a networking friend of mine. Says it's better than HP for the price

 

That is quite expensive. We paid £4k for Cisco catalyst 4500-X and they have a lifetime warranty.

[localzuk]

@Asgard - that seems more expensive than HPE!

[localzuk]

Indeed the Unifi and Edge switches are very cheap, but they cannot offer you multiple ports and stuck at only 10GbE.

What do you mean about multiple ports?

[gh5000]

That is quite expensive. We paid £4k for Cisco catalyst 4500-X and they have a lifetime warranty.

 

Yes, that's paying an extra £1k for the 5 year NBD. I haven't looked into it in detail before (always had HP in places I worked) but Dell do come with a lifetime warranty too. I don't know if you get quicker replacements with the NBD over the lifetime - or if the lifetime warranty is limited in other ways.

 

You may have to get a salesperson to explain why you need the extra warranty. Does it just depend on if you can wait for a replacement?

[localzuk]

Just looked at pricing for our school using Ubiquiti here - to upgrade and migrate our network in this school over to 1Gb edge, 10Gb backbone, with PoE available in every cabinet. We'd end up paying £10k, for 736 Gbit ports, and 24 10Gbit ports at the core, with the 4x RJ45 ports used for trunking. Only extra cost to add is the SFP+ modules which I don't yet have a price for.

 

For the other school that needs its infrastructure upgrading (their switches are between 10 and 15 years old), the price is a quarter of the HPE price. As they are running a deficit, it seems like a no-brainer.

 

That'd be massively faster than our existing infrastructure, at half the price we paid for our core switch alone here before.

 

Routing would be handled by our UTM.

[FN-GM]

Yes, that's paying an extra £1k for the 5 year NBD. I haven't looked into it in detail before (always had HP in places I worked) but Dell do come with a lifetime warranty too. I don't know if you get quicker replacements with the NBD over the lifetime - or if the lifetime warranty is limited in other ways.

 

You may have to get a salesperson to explain why you need the extra warranty. Does it just depend on if you can wait for a replacement?

 

I haven't had an RMA on these but last time I did it was on site the next day. However for us it wouldn't matter anyway as we have 2 and are fully redundant incase one fails.

[NB9457]

Just looked at pricing for our school using Ubiquiti here - to upgrade and migrate our network in this school over to 1Gb edge, 10Gb backbone, with PoE available in every cabinet. We'd end up paying £10k, for 736 Gbit ports, and 24 10Gbit ports at the core, with the 4x RJ45 ports used for trunking. Only extra cost to add is the SFP+ modules which I don't yet have a price for.

 

For the other school that needs its infrastructure upgrading (their switches are between 10 and 15 years old), the price is a quarter of the HPE price. As they are running a deficit, it seems like a no-brainer.

 

That'd be massively faster than our existing infrastructure, at half the price we paid for our core switch alone here before.

 

Routing would be handled by our UTM.

 

 

If you have multiple sites, Unifi would be good as you can get the cloud controller and centrally manage all the switches and wireless if you have or move to Unifi.

 

As for the Unifi it has got me thinking a lot more, only downside really is stacking speeds are limited to 10Gb or sacrifice ports to make a lag, they just need to bring out a 24 port 10Gb switch, they'd steal the market!

[localzuk]

If you have multiple sites, Unifi would be good as you can get the cloud controller and centrally manage all the switches and wireless if you have or move to Unifi.

As for the Unifi it has got me thinking a lot more, only downside really is stacking speeds are limited to 10Gb or sacrifice ports to make a lag, they just need to bring out a 24 port 10Gb switch, they'd steal the market!

Indeed. We have 7 sites at the moment, so centralised cloud controller would be ideal. We're already doing something similar with Ruckus for our wireless.

[Achandler]

What concerns me with the Unifi is how managed is managed, for example currently we have very little setup on our switches, two VLANs, thats about it. STP etc on.

 

However we have 2 x Cisco 3750 switches in a stack as our core, they can do a lot more (except one seems a little dodgy). I can't get it replaced and taken out because we have no alternative to use while it gets sorted. Theya re also limited to 1GB only.

 

If I swapped to Unifi then I might be limiting myself in the future, right now I know they will be fine as long as they are reliable and heck I could buy 4 switches when I only need 3 for example but in 5 years time will they still suffice? Can they definitely LAG the ports together properly amongst other questions. Maybe I should take a punt. I was one of the first to use the WiFi points, when it was me and @m25man singing their prasies against most others and they are still good to this day.

[Chris_]

Just looked at pricing for our school using Ubiquiti here - to upgrade and migrate our network in this school over to 1Gb edge, 10Gb backbone, with PoE available in every cabinet. We'd end up paying £10k, for 736 Gbit ports, and 24 10Gbit ports at the core, with the 4x RJ45 ports used for trunking. Only extra cost to add is the SFP+ modules which I don't yet have a price for.

 

The Ubiquiti SFP modules look very reasonably priced when compared to what we've been paying for HP ones! https://linitx.com/product/ubiquiti-multimode-fibermodule-10g-ufmm10g-2pack/14965

 

If you have multiple sites, Unifi would be good as you can get the cloud controller and centrally manage all the switches and wireless if you have or move to Unifi.

 

As for the Unifi it has got me thinking a lot more, only downside really is stacking speeds are limited to 10Gb or sacrifice ports to make a lag, they just need to bring out a 24 port 10Gb switch, they'd steal the market!

 

They have a 16 port 10Gb UniFi switch, and at ~£600 it's a bargain!!

[NB9457]

What concerns me with the Unifi is how managed is managed, for example currently we have very little setup on our switches, two VLANs, thats about it. STP etc on.

 

However we have 2 x Cisco 3750 switches in a stack as our core, they can do a lot more (except one seems a little dodgy). I can't get it replaced and taken out because we have no alternative to use while it gets sorted. Theya re also limited to 1GB only.

 

If I swapped to Unifi then I might be limiting myself in the future, right now I know they will be fine as long as they are reliable and heck I could buy 4 switches when I only need 3 for example but in 5 years time will they still suffice? Can they definitely LAG the ports together properly amongst other questions. Maybe I should take a punt. I was one of the first to use the WiFi points, when it was me and @m25man singing their prasies against most others and they are still good to this day.

Depends what your needs are today and what they'll be in 5 years and normally how long you'd expect a switch to last, at the core I'd say around 5-7 years for us, edge switches aren't too much of a worry as they aren't as mission critical and are easy to swap out, so tend to only get replaced when we start seeing problems/limitations in them.

[foofighterjim]

Just an FYI, if you are using Aerohive and have access to the NG version of HMOL (upgrade is free to all active contracts) then the Dell N series switches can be managed from this.

[localzuk]

Depends what your needs are today and what they'll be in 5 years and normally how long you'd expect a switch to last, at the core I'd say around 5-7 years for us, edge switches aren't too much of a worry as they aren't as mission critical and are easy to swap out, so tend to only get replaced when we start seeing problems/limitations in them.

That's the thing isn't it really. What features do we need? Capacity-wise, they should handle stuff just fine here. However, functionality is the question.

 

We currently run dynamically assigned VLANs here. Over the 10 years of having them, I can safely say there's not really a point in doing so. Devices don't move around enough to need it. Especially with everyone's laptops being well served by wireless now - no-one connects up using their cables any more.

 

So, that leaves the features that we use: Spanning Tree, QoS, VLANs, Inter-VLAN routing, udp broadcast forwarding (for ABTutor and Bonjour).

 

Spanning Tree, QoS, VLANS all fine on the Unifi. The other stuff is easily handled by our UTM (and actually reduces the network complexity, as we won't be running 2 routers then).

[PotNoodleTech]

Ubiquiti wireless stuff has always had my attention if we're ever in a position to replace our wireless.

 

The network switches look very interesting. I might actually buy one to test on the edge. They do look good value compared to HP and the pair of 10GB ports are a big bonus. I'll be interested to see how manageable they are!