[c-nsp] ASR opinions..

[Mark Tinka]

On Sunday, August 21, 2011 01:55:35 PM John Elliot wrote:

> Thanks - Can you please elaborate on how you are running
> them as redundant pairs(As this is what we are wanting
> to do) - interchassis HA, or something else? 

For the border/peering routers, there's no (in)direct 
communication between the different chassis. Just regular IP 
routing where the edge routers in the network choose which 
border router to use for exit, e.t.c.

However, we're deploying some NAT services and will be 
implementing the inter-chassis NAT redundancy feature across 
2x ASR1006's, to allow for session state on the backup NAT 
router should the main one fail.

> Have you come across any "gotchas" on the asr's...having
> never touched/seen XE, how does it compare to standard
> ios? 

Hardware-wise, not really. We've been lucky that all the 
units we've got haven't failed in any way.

The biggest problem with the ASR1000 is IOS XE. We've been 
running the box since IOS XE 2.4, and that had a number of 
key features missing when compared to something like 
12.2(33)SR*, which is what IOS XE is based on.

That said, we're now running IOS XE 3.3.1S and it has 
greatly improved. We continue to use this platform because 
all the features we need do not require any additional 
hardware, so we know those missing features will come 
eventually. One of the biggest areas for us that were 
lacking was QoS, but it's getting there - simple things like 
marking statistics for service policies has only just become 
available (and requires a special command to actually enable 
it).

But otherwise, all in all, we're happy, and will be buying 
more ASR1000's. I think they'll be as popular the 7200's, 
just with more horsepower.

> Much appreciated on the software redundancy tip!

Sure!

Cheers,

Mark.
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