[c-nsp] Third party transceivers that fail only with new, NX-OS 6.2.2a on sup-2E

[Jared Mauch]

On Nov 19, 2013, at 10:59 AM, Nick Hilliard <nick at foobar.org> wrote:

> On 19/11/2013 13:54, Christina Klam wrote:
>> We have been running 6.2(2) since the summer.  In the last six months, I
>> had to return some third-party "Cisco compatible" twinax cables because
>> they were "Invalid" on our M2s.  And, I just had to swap out some
>> official Cisco SFP-10G-LR because they were "version 1" which also do
>> not work with our M2 cards.
> 
> Can't say I'm surprised.  If Cisco is going to do stupid customer-hating
> stuff like locking transceivers, they ought to expect to shoot themselves
> in the foot from time to time.  Pity that it's the customers who end taking
> the bullet though.

The failure of Cisco to support their own first party optics correctly is a significant problem we have faced.  We’ve done many rounds with them on this topic and it’s not gone well for them.  The optics folks have been borderline arrogant and ignorant of the software-side problems that exist.

My suggestion: Speak with your wallet and discontinue purchasing them.  You can save lots of $$$.  When you type “show” commands on a device, make sure you map them back to the SFF-8472 MSA fields.  If the software platform doesn’t display all of them, insist it’s basic support of the optics and their optics and software are substandard.

Regarding Twinax cables.  You really shouldn’t need these as the optics are fairly inexpensive via 3rd party, and you can use a fiber cable for “cheap” as well.

Look at places like monoprice, champion one, osihardware and many others out there. Most places have better warranty support than Cisco with paid support in my experience.

- Jared