Replacing switches

[IT_CoffeeNeeded]

Hi Everyone!

 

I have been pushing to get the green light on a project to replace all my switches on site to an up to date solution (Have been for multiple years)

I have managed to get multiple surveys completed from companies who have provided reports on the current state of the network which agree this needs to be done to meet the DfE guidelines.

 

Switches are not my area of expertise in terms of which product is best / cost effective / reliable as this would be the first major project for switches I am running (After 20 years in IT)

 

Proposals I have had use Meraki/Aruba/Alcatel switches.

Problem I am having is justifying the cost and how it would be more beneficial to go for a more well known brand (Which I am confident will meet all DfE standards) instead of a cheaper solution just to reduce cost.

 

A third party consultant they contacted (Without informing me but that's a different story) has recommended purchasing TP links for the site instead, as apparently the other proposals are over spec'd.

Previously this consultant recommend Ubquiti. We were allowed to purchase 1 a few years ago but none since due to cost (Ironically).

 

Thoughts?

 

Bit of extra info if this helps!

 

• 1200 students
• 41 Switches in total
• Current switches are Alcatel (21 in total all POE) HP Procurve [2006 models] (20 nonPOE)
• Core is out of warranty and past EOL
• They don't wish to spend money.....
• External consultant has a lot of influence on a key decision maker

 

Thanks again!

 

[MYK-IT]

As you mentioned that Networking is not your area of expertise, I would suggest that:

 

• You (and your SLT) are aware of the various Meeting digital and technology standards in schools and colleges which are good technological frameworks to work towards.
   
• 6 of which, are to be the Core Standards by 2030 (so certainly within the lifecycle of any network equipment you are potentially going to purchase / install).
   
  • Network Switching (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/meeting-digital-and-technology-standards-in-schools-and-colleges/network-switching-core-standard).
  • I suspect that a Wireless Network (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/meeting-digital-and-technology-standards-in-schools-and-colleges/wireless-network-core-standard) provision should be factored into your proposal too, or at least capability / capacity factored in. (not sure if you currently have Wi-Fi, or not).
  • SLT Digital Lead / Digital Leadership and Governance (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/meeting-digital-and-technology-standards-in-schools-and-colleges/digital-leadership-and-governance-core-standard)
    The scope of the role is vast, covering a lot of IT, Cyber, Security, AI and business and continuity areas. Even if one is not currently in place, your school should already have a School Development Plan and Digital Strategy (and hopefully IT is within it!?!).
     
• I would also strongly recommend going through a DfE Approved Buying Option (IT - Get help buying for schools). For example, CPC, Everything ICT (others are available). There are many benefits of going through a framework, and this process should also appease your Finance Manager and ultimately Governors/Trustees, by referring to the various Meeting digital and technology standards in schools and colleges to use as your technical prerequisites / requirements for your network upgrade solution as well as demonstrating working towards compliance.

Finally, document everything (e.g. email) to SLT.

 

 

Edited March 13 by MYK-IT

[kennysarmy]

Would you be eligible for a CIF bid for this?

[ultraspy2000]

I'm in a similar situation with one of our schools.

We also looked at Fortinet, but they are not cheap either.

 

For peace of mind, and to ensure you have an adequate level of protection, resilience, support, and warranty, as well as a platform that is already proven and widely used across many schools, I would go with Aruba for a large school. I personally wouldn't want to take the risk with TP-Link in this scenario.

 

MYK-IT also mentioned checking the DfE guidance for the network switching standard, which Aruba tends to align with more easily.

 

[HarkNowHear]

Definitely leverage the DfE standards in terms of making the case for your preferred vendor and setup. I know there's a requirement in there for switches to be able to be centrally managed - no idea myself but can TP-Link offer this?  

 

Also worth ensuring the risk register is up to date with regard the existing setup - sometimes wheels only start turning when some red appears on these documents and local leaders start having to answer for it to trust staff or governors. 

[Fazza]

Have a chat with SwitchShop as they're vendor agnostic so can give you quotes for different brands that will do what you tell them you want to do.

[yac2016]

You should have a Unifi quote option also.  This will save a substantial amount on the likes of Meraki etc.

[dmj]

4 hours ago, IT_CoffeeNeeded said:

Proposals I have had use Meraki/Aruba/Alcatel switches.

Problem I am having is justifying the cost and how it would be more beneficial to go for a more well known brand (Which I am confident will meet all DfE standards) instead of a cheaper solution just to reduce cost.

 

ah politics. From what i've seen of the DfE specs it's all pretty standardised things that any enterprise solution will have. If you are determined to pay for a well know brand, might I suggest adding in a Chinese third party like omada These are essentially TP-link for enterprise, they are actually pretty good feature wise and come in at a good price point. You can then let SLT worry about whether the Government will make you replace them with US/EU branded ones so that state sponsored hackers can't access them.*

 

* I don't believe this for one moment, but it's quite normal to get three bids and be able to argue why the cheapest isn't the best. 

[djm968]

5 hours ago, IT_CoffeeNeeded said:

 

41 Switches in total

 

My initial thought is that 41 switches is quite a large number for a site. How big is the physical site?

 

Before focusing purely on the switch brand or model, it might be worth reviewing the overall network layout. There may be an opportunity to rationalise the cabling and centralise some of the switching, which could potentially reduce the number of cabinets and switches required.

 

A design review could help determine whether parts of the network could be consolidated into fewer distribution points, which may reduce hardware costs, simplify management, and improve resilience. If you can reduce the total switch count, it may also make it easier to justify investing in a higher-quality platform that will meet DfE standards and provide longer-term reliability.

[psydii]

Write a spec, put it in a spreadsheet give each item a weighting (how important it is), score the offers against the spec. multiply the scores against the weighting. total it up. award to the highest score.

 

(test the spreadsheet extensively before committing to using the weightings - its very easy to build something that scores the worst offer highest because of some untested  interaction in the spreadsheet).

 

I've fended off a few grumpy unsuccessful vendors with this approach, and always ended up with the best solution delivered. 

 

I've also (for larger projects) paid consultants for a day or two's work, to review the initial spec, ad-hoc advice and then 1 page report  sense checking the final scoring/decision ahead of final approval by governors.

[psydii]

3 minutes ago, djm968 said:

My initial thought is that 41 switches is quite a large number for a site. How big is the physical site?

 

Before focusing purely on the switch brand or model, it might be worth reviewing the overall network layout. There may be an opportunity to rationalise the cabling and centralise some of the switching, which could potentially reduce the number of cabinets and switches required.

 

A design review could help determine whether parts of the network could be consolidated into fewer distribution points, which may reduce hardware costs, simplify management, and improve resilience. If you can reduce the total switch count, it may also make it easier to justify investing in a higher-quality platform that will meet DfE standards and provide longer-term reliability.

In my experience, rationalising the cabling is way, way more expensive that having a few extra switches.  It costs the sort of money you only get with a specific grant or project coming from central government.

 

You are absolutely correct about the benefit of such work though.

[Wave9_Lee]

It's a quirk of the reseller ecosystem that you should probably have an idea of your main preferred vendor/partner before asking for quotes.  The deal registration process means that usually the first company you approach for, say, Meraki, will have the deal registration, meaning they get preferential pricing throughout your process.  So if you later decide that Meraki is your preferred option, the first company you approached will get the best price (even if you changed your mind about them through the process) 

[AlphamaleZed]

Go for a Unifi quote, theres a reason why loads of people have moved away from Aruba to TP Link or Unifi.

 

License free is your best option long term to be honest. If they dont want to pay now how can you ensure a long term payment for licenses?

[RedwayNetworks_Michael]

Cambium Networks

[jmak]

I personally wouldn't take the reasonably foreseeable risk of buying a brand that I might be mandated to remove.

 

BT has had to remove Huawei kit from their network at their expense. It's a bigger scale, but maybe that makes it more worrying. 

[FN-GM]

I would be careful with Meraki. They seem cheaper up front, but when the support runs out they sting you on the renewal. People have reported it being very high. So high, it's cheaper to replace the switches!

[itskdog]

10 hours ago, FN-GM said:

I would be careful with Meraki. They seem cheaper up front, but when the support runs out they sting you on the renewal. People have reported it being very high. So high, it's cheaper to replace the switches!

 

We're looking to replace our EOL Meraki APs this summer. The latest models from Cisco have two operating modes, Meraki mode or Catalyst mode - you can switch from being cloud-managed to locally-managed (with a Catalyst controller in your server rack) at any time, which might counteract this.

 

Though a quick glance on their website suggests they haven't made this change on their switches yet. Hopefully they do by the time our current ones reach EOL.

[TheHyperTechie]

UniFi...

 

Pricing is good, support is improving, ability to extend warranty, easy to manage, fits DfE requirements. 

[aydee]

9 minutes ago, TheHyperTechie said:

UniFi...

 

Pricing is good, support is improving, ability to extend warranty, easy to manage, fits DfE requirements. 

Our Trust has gone the Aruba Route, which is great in performance terms, but in licencing costs for Aruba Central (to meet DfE requirements) its outrageous. £25k over 3 years for our one Secondary School. 
I wish I had pushed harder for Unifi, but they (the trust) still thought it was consumer level equipment and not ready for large scale usage. I didnt have the energy to push it, but really wish i did in hindsight. The money we could have saved would allow me to do so much good... And with Unifi Hosting of Multi Site deployments, we could manage the whole trust from a webpage!!

[StephenPink]

We've been moving to Ruckus - so far so good. Previously an Aruba house, and as others say the Central costs are insane... 

[TheHyperTechie]

3 minutes ago, aydee said:

Our Trust has gone the Aruba Route, which is great in performance terms, but in licencing costs for Aruba Central (to meet DfE requirements) its outrageous. £25k over 3 years for our one Secondary School. 
I wish I had pushed harder for Unifi, but they (the trust) still thought it was consumer level equipment and not ready for large scale usage. I didnt have the energy to push it, but really wish i did in hindsight. The money we could have saved would allow me to do so much good... And with Unifi Hosting of Multi Site deployments, we could manage the whole trust from a webpage!!

I received CtC funding at one of our very small primary schools a couple of years ago. I pushed for UniFi kit and got it. All enterprise kit, we used UniFi everywhere else, I didn't want a different system etc and the school already had a cloudkey on-site. Still a fraction of the cost compared to a Meraki/Aruba setup.

[synaesthesia]

25 minutes ago, aydee said:

Our Trust has gone the Aruba Route, which is great in performance terms, but in licencing costs for Aruba Central (to meet DfE requirements) its outrageous. £25k over 3 years for our one Secondary School. 
I wish I had pushed harder for Unifi, but they (the trust) still thought it was consumer level equipment and not ready for large scale usage. I didnt have the energy to push it, but really wish i did in hindsight. The money we could have saved would allow me to do so much good... And with Unifi Hosting of Multi Site deployments, we could manage the whole trust from a webpage!!

 

I still haven't had anything back from anyone to clarify what the "requirements" for centrally managed network actually means. Aruba central is a menace and still to this day not fit for purpose for switching, it's just an afterthought to their wifi management.

 

"Your supplier or IT support should provide a central management tool that can be used to configure the switching (core and edge), monitor performance and provide alerts in the event of a failure."

 

so that's SNMP monitoring and if you really wanted to do configuration (WHY???) at that level then there's tools for that as well. It's one thing that IMO should stay well away from the cloud and so called cloud solutions - but UniFi's setup is FAR better than Aruba there. Hardware might be the other way around, but it'll be a cold day in hell before my aruba switching gets connected to the means to destroy it with one wrong click.

Edited March 27 by synaesthesia

[dmj]

14 hours ago, jmak said:

I personally wouldn't take the reasonably foreseeable risk of buying a brand that I might be mandated to remove.

 

BT has had to remove Huawei kit from their network at their expense. It's a bigger scale, but maybe that makes it more worrying. 

Could be any US brand the rate we are going. 

[mikkydoos]

I would say ignore the DfE specs... they are guidelines, not outright requirements..

 

Aim for a minimum of 40gb backbone to future proof... even if you don't have the cabling in place yet.

 

Avoid Unifi   (wait for the shouting at me....  don't bother). Its not enterprise grade equipment... it's just cheap/cost effective. You can't even stack the switches.. a basic feature... although it is cheap. Unifi switches are OK... but just OK, AP's are terrible. No network expert would advocate Unifi. 

 

 

A lot of network gear nowadays is subscription based management and its a filthy way of vending products, and massively expensive.

 

 

My tuppence..... Cisco, Aruba or whatever mainstream brand doesn't require cloud management/subscriptions.  Ruckus seemed good when I last looked. 

 

 

www.performancenetworks.co.uk have been really helpful to me and have hooked me up with meetings with manufacturers to thrash out the right spec for Wi-Fi and switches.... and they'll do a survey/analysis for you at not a great cost.

 

 

and... wait for the impending Unifi bashing....

 

 

EDIT:  Just read the TPLink/Omada bit in your original post....   don't go near them

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 27 by mikkydoos

[TheHyperTechie]

10 minutes ago, mikkydoos said:

Its not enterprise grade equipment... it's just cheap/cost effective.

I guess that's why NASA were looking to procure it 🧐