advice on using multiple brands of switches

[FesteringDoubt]

Currently my school runs an almost completely HP switch network, but when looking for a replacement switch we couldn't find an exact copy and we couldn't find a HP switch that met our needs and was at a price we could pay so we were thinking of buying a switch from another manufacturer, are there any considerations for this, and any brands to steer clear of/look at closely.

 

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[jthompson]

We have mostly Netgear Smart Managed Pro switches here. Lifetime warranty, which has been useful a few times, but configuration is all done through a rather janky web interface. I'd prefer stuff with a CLI, but they do the job well enough and aren't as expensive as others. We have a couple (literally) of HP Procurves in amongst them, and we've never noticed any weirdness as a result.

[FN-GM]

I would be careful about what features you need. If you are running something that is proprietary to one manufacturer you won't be able to get it on another. An example in the Cisco world is if you're running EIGRP, you can't run this on anything else but Cisco.

[pow]

I often mix and match, one site I have Cisco small business, Cisco proper and Unifi Switches and APs, my main site I have Netgear prosafe and Cisco small business running Unifi APs, another site has just got big enough for warrant a core so I picked up a 3750G for them to do routing, connected to a local GfL Cisco with a Unifi Switch!

[mjk]

Consider that your total cost of ownership will be much higher if you have diverse systems.

Getting them to work together will be the easy bit; managing and maintaining firmware versions, training staff, SNMP configurations and managment tools etc is going to be much more expensive and it is THE most critical part of your network.

[enjay]

Check compatibility of GBICs - we found (the hard way!) an HP GBIC will only talk to another HP GBIC, and HP GBICs only talk to HP switches.

 

Support costs may be higher if you have two systems, as when you want to make network-wide changes such as ACLs or VLANs, you'd need to make them twice (and learn how to do the task twice!).

[FN-GM]

Check compatibility of GBICs - we found (the hard way!) an HP GBIC will only talk to another HP GBIC, and HP GBICs only talk to HP switches.

 

Im not surprised, they haven't made GBICs in years since they got replaced with SFPs. I bet it was hard finding people who still had stock of GBICS.

[njc235]

Couple of things here.

Almost all of HP protocols are industry standard and will talk to just about any other manufacturer's switch on those protocols. Any half decent VAR will be able to help you with this.

HP transceivers will talk to non HP transceivers.

FN-GM, I think a lot of people refer to transceivers as GBICS as a generic term.

HTH

[enjay]

Indeed, I meant SFPs. Interestingly, a quick look at Amazon and I see "HP-compatible SFPs" for literally a quarter of the price of the HP ones. Might give those a try next time I'm buying.

[Priscilla110]

You may consider the white-box switches provided by some third-party suppliers which usually come at a lower price and give you the ability to heavily customize the operating system to provide high performance.

[synaesthesia]

I don't see any major problems. I wouldn't touch any whitebox kit with a bargepole in schools for obvious reasons, but mixing and matching won't be a problem. As long as everything is documented, training, monitoring shouldn't be difficult. And no, SFP modules will happily speak to eachother regardless of brand.

We have a mashup of dlink, HP and unifi switches here, mostly with compatible SFP modules and have no issues with working around them all.

[fsbilby]

What features do you need? What's your budget?

[swainx]

It's a matter of preference really. I've seen people swear by their chosen brand while others switch with the wind. I found a pretty good discussion of it from a few years ago. If interested, I'll post the link.

[Davit2005]

Spanning tree may be another incompatible option between certain makes of switches.

 

Have you thought about a 2nd hand HP switch?? You really can't knock HP managed switches but stay away from the cheaper 1920's etc if you want to automate backups and/or use the CLI a lot.

 

Another plus with the HP kit is the warranty :-) .

[Bezwick]

We have old 3Coms, New HP's, a few Netgear's and a couple of D-Link switches here, with multiple VLans. Never had any issues with any of them and been running this system 24/7 for around 4 years now. The 3coms we purchased back in 2006 and they are still going, although they are 10/100's with gigabit uplinks. So a bit slow, but never blinked in 11 years. The new and old switches seam to get along fine.

[AlanD]

I continue to buy second hand network kit off Ebay - often less than £100 for 10G switch with 48 ports. Whack the latest firmware in and off to go with a Chinese SFP module (£10). Keep a spare switch or two in the cupboard...bought the same way - ...never had to use them (actually that's not true - I took the fans out of one because a set of new fans were more than I paid for the switch).