Switch overhaul and upgrade

[NathanH99]

Hi,

 

I am the ICT manager for a school of 1600 students and 200 faculty,

 

We are looking to completely overhaul our current infrastructure with new switches, after working with several companies I have been offered solutions from the following brands

 

Fortinet

 

Cisco Meraki (Too expensive)

 

Netgear

 

Without going too much into detail does anyone have experience or recommendations with for switching brands / models. I originally was looking into Unifi however after a bit of research I'm under the impression that this brand would not be good enough.

 

We have around 750 desktop machines 200 laptops and around 100 misc including tablets

 

We currently have around 5 48 POE Port Switches and 24 48 Port Switches

 

Thanks in advance

[TechMonkey]

Haven't used NetGear in a long while but they were always a bit bargain bucket, lacking in features. That may have changed.

I'd ask about realistic lead times and if they say there are no problems, laugh and walk away from that company. Then get an order in ASAP so you are in the queue.

[5tu]

We're 100% HP / Aruba here. Great kit and lifetime warranties.

[slugshead]

100% aruba in all my schools too - Wouldn't go any other direction

[howartp]

Ditto.

[mavhc]

https://www.arubanetworks.com/assets/support/warranty-summary.pdf

 

What features of switches and routers do you require? What speed? What security? What connectivity?

[RedwayNetworks_Michael]

What do you want from the network, also budgets.

 

Meraki and Aruba are great products however if wanting a full cloud managed solution Aruba is not much cheaper and the central can be clunky.

 

If budgets are a big part to play on the network then i would highly recommend looking at Cambium switches.

 

Meraki to Netgear and forti are worlds apart.

 

Lead times are also something to consider.

 

Aruba lead times are the worst, Meraki is not great either

 

Cambium is readily available or worst case a month or so rather than 6months plus.

Lifetime vendor support

 

Either way i would try to stay clear of the netgear or fortinet options if possible.

 

Im more than happy to have a look at options for you as we are vendor agnostic.

 

Quite a few others on the forum have purchased Cambium from us recently.

 

My personal recommendation would be Aruba core without cloud (set and forget on the core) Cambium edge switches fully cloud managed with no ongoing costs.

[Strawdog]

We replaced our whole network a few years back with Meraki switches (MS-350/350LP and MS-425 from Cisco 2960/2960X and 3750) after running Meraki APs for a few years before - it's very good kit and although yes it's expensive the price includes the support subscription (e.g. swap outs for any failures, enterprise level support for config/troubleshooting, etc.).

 

There's a few other options out there but I'd be looking at enterprise level stuff just for future proofing and that's all pretty expensive whichever manufacturer you go with (but it's generally only something you're going to be swapping out every 10+ years).

 

Check out https://www.fs.com/uk for sundries (SFP modules, interconnects, etc.) too as they're generally much, much cheaper to pick up yourself compared to those an installer will include in a quote.

Edited November 18, 2022 by Strawdog

[FN-GM]

To be honest, without knowing your requirements I can't see how anyone can recommend a brand.

 

What are you looking to do?

[gszech]

We used Cisco Meraki switches for 9 years and I've upgraded them all with UniFi Switches. There was nothing wrong with Meraki (apart from the switches being very loud), but the license renewal costs were just too expensive.

We are using 20 x UniFi Pro PoE switches across the school. Our school is similar size to yours, there are right now 1174 live clients on the network and everything works fine. CCTV, PoE Phones, WiFi (staff and pupils) is heavily used every day.

 

Before anyone else comments, yes you don't get proper support or warranty with UniFi, but because the price is so cheap we just bought spare PoE switches that can be installed if something goes wrong. We also bought the UniFi RPS units to provide backup power supply to the switches.

[Davit2005]

Switching wise you can go for the following but as @FN-GM mentioned it really depends what features the organization needs (and/or wants to spend)

 

Basic layer 2 switch with no vlan/management all the way to stacked switches with layer 3 dynamic routing (OSPF, BGP, etc.)

 

 

You need to check the Aruba switches, not all are lifetime warranty these days although mostly the firmware is available for download without a subscription for a lot of their switches but check before you buy.

[TechMonkey]

Basic layer 2 switch with no vlan/management all the way to stacked switches with layer 3 dynamic routing (OSPF, BGP, etc.)

 

Sorry I think I am misunderstanding here but is that no need for VLAN beyond the core?

[NathanH99]

Hi All,

 

Thank you all for your suggestions and questions I really appreciate it.

 

We are going to have a look at a Aruba solution,

 

More information on what we require is below

 

We will be setting up Multiple networks / VLAN's for Backups, Staff Wi-Fi, Sixth Form Wi-Fi, Guest Wi-Fi, then the main network for all school owned devices so L3 switching will be required.

 

We are wanting a reliable solution that is going to last us 10 years plus and a solution that will have a minimal down time while giving good performance. We also want to have the ability to easily expand the farm if we need to. Our network is quite a high loaded network due to the amount of computers we have and the demand for computers meaning the majority of the time all computers across the school are in use plus the misc tablets etc.

 

Any other questions please let me know and once again I appreciate all the feedback

[Davit2005]

Sorry I think I am misunderstanding here but is that no need for VLAN beyond the core?

 

Jus examples of switching needs not been specific :-) For example we have stacked switches at the edge and some top of rack but also chassis switches at the core and top of rack, but we do have 4 core switches running ospf. All of our switches are managed though apart from some basic 4 port unmanaged switches in very few places like 3-4 if desperate (in preference to cable economizers if there are cabling constraints or limitations). But we do have 700+ managed switches.