[c-nsp] 3750G vs. Nexus for a SAN

[Michael Balasko]

I too can vouch for the 5K's not being ready for prime time. 
Here is a short list of the "advanced" features we are trying to use-
 -Disable the HTTP/HTTPS server onboard
 -NTP Authentication
 -ACL's for SNMP access
 -VTY ACL's
 -VTP passthrough - VTP packets WILL NOT pass through this switch.
Please save the VTY argument is bad for someone else.
 
As far as the Cisco litmus test of "it forwards packets so it's working
as designed" it operates fine, but until the above mention issues are
fixed, we can't in good conscience roll them into production to find the
real bugs. 
 
We have piles of TAC cases open for this and we have screamed loud
enough to be in direct contact with the 5K business unit product
manager. The official answer is hurry up and wait. In order to fix these
Cisco bugs we bought a pair of Brocade Turboiron 24's which are now our
only non-Cisco piece of kit out of over 400 devices. 

All that being said we bought the 5K's to do 10G distribution for our
core so your mileage may vary depending on needs. 
If it were done again right this second, I'd look at Arista Networks. We
demo'd their gear way back and was impressed with the support folks and
the willingness to respond to issues by cutting code instead of
providing a workaround of "none" or "don't use that feature".
They couldn't do RPVST+ at the time and that's why we looked elsewhere.
They say to do it today and based on some of the folks I know work there
I'm inclined to believe them.

Mike



-----Original Message-----
From: cisco-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net
[mailto:cisco-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net] On Behalf Of Brian Landers
Sent: Sunday, November 08, 2009 7:34 AM
To: Andrew White
Cc: cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net
Subject: Re: [c-nsp] 3750G vs. Nexus for a SAN

I realize this is cisco-nsp, but does anyone have any opinions on the
Force
10 S-series for top-of-rack?  Especially for iSCSI SAN.  I've long been
frustrated with Cisco's lack of a cost-effective "48 ports of gigE with
a
10ge uplink" switch.  I don't really *need* a $12,000 layer 3 switch (or
two) at the top of every rack in my data center!


On Sun, Nov 8, 2009 at 6:49 AM, Andrew White <adwhite at inchix.net> wrote:

> Any reason why you wouldn't go for fcoe on nexus 5k? :)
>
>
>
> On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 6:26 AM, Jason Gurtz <jasongurtz at npumail.com>
> wrote:
> >> Not sure that you want to go with Nexus at this point. Its got some
> >> really nice features, however we keep running into code bugs . Not
just
> >> stuff that's obscure and shows up in certain situations but real
show-
> >> stoppers like being unable to form port-channels with HP blade
servers.