Currently, my company is in the process of upgrading our existing Dell N4032 switches.
We have specced out Dell N3248X-ON model switches for this project. I was curious what people think of this model or if you would recommend any other alternative devices. I have been looking at FS switches as well. Our only stipulation is that we would prefer to stay away from Cisco devices. My manager would prefer to stay away from them.
As background, the usage of this will be for our Co-Lo where the switches will be in a stack with the Hypervisors and Storage connected to them. We require 48x 10Gbe ports either copper or SFP+.
These reason people dislike Cisco is the recurring costs for security fixes in the form of new firmware.
Back what seems like ages ago now, I went with Enterasys partly because the firmware was always free and they had lifetime warranty. Cisco finally put lifetime warranty in place, but not free firmware updates for security fixes. Either that or I’m doing something wrong with the Cisco stuff that I own, and hoping I’m wrong because I’d like to replace my current switches with Cisco. No way I can drive another software contract through the budget. Work is buying the Xtreme stuff, they bought Enterasys and it seems they are still fine with allowing free firmware upgrades. Features are licensed, same as Cisco and same as Enterasys, but seem to be a buy once plan for the feature licenses.
[edit] I should add that I think Juniper still offers free certification training. Not sure I would base my purchase on that single thing, but it might be the final straw in a purchase. The Cisco books are so cheap that I wouldn’t consider it a big deal. Finding the time for the training is the hard part!
Cisco’s recurring cost includes both updates and technical support. I can’t say I’ve ever been at an org that wouldn’t pay for support each year, but I get it with your personal stuff.
Many of the colleges around my part will not pay for that contract, including the one where I work. More and more schools are going this way. I would not be able to push another support contract through for my department to go Cisco, even though it is solid gear and required if we ever expand our software/hardware capabilities to get support on that stuff.
Flip side is the school systems that require Cisco and the contracts, yet have bumbling fools handling the networking and constant problems. But that’s typical government style management.
I’ve mostly worked in the data center space where resources are consolidated and a lot of money is generated with the services running on it. If it is high stacks then companies are almost always willing to pay for that support. I can also see if leadership can’t find the talent needed then have to invest more third party support.