[c-nsp] 10Gb+ "Core" w/ Netflow

[CiscoNSP List]

Excellent info mate!   Really appreciate it.

So, the AS9001 (the non "S") version, all 4 onboard 10G ports are "active",  can do 120Gb(Without any additional licenses), supports MPLS, VPLS, L3VPNs, QOS(Shaping) + Netflow(that works :) ) without any additional licenses?  (As I see licenses for VRF + L3VPN - Are these required for "vanilla" VRF support? Or are they for something additional?)

You do need to purchase 2 x power supplies (I assume)
 And if I want to throw a 4x10Gb line card or 20x1G line card - There's not additional licensing required to activate those cards/slots?

but nothing else?




> Date: Sat, 14 Mar 2015 00:23:35 -0500
> From: brez at brezworks.com
> To: cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net
> Subject: Re: [c-nsp] 10Gb+ "Core" w/ Netflow
> 
> On 3/13/2015 11:14 PM, CiscoNSP List wrote:
> >> if you want cisco kit and need more than 5x 1G ports, then you should take
> >> a look at the asr9001 platform with 20x1G cards.  The cost per port is much
> >> lower than trying to scale up asr1k boxes.
> >
> > Interesting - Thanks very much Nick.
> >
> > They do look very nice, and scale looks like exactly what we need....I know there are always "extra" costs with these, and having zero experience on the 9000 range, is it
> >
> > ASR-9001
> >
> >
> > A9K-750W-AC x 2 (As I
> > assume they don’t come with power supplies standard?)
> >
> >
> > 20
> > x 1 GE Modular Port Adapter
> >
> >
> > 4 x 10 GE Modular Port Adapter (If we wanted more 10Gb)
> > Licenses?  i.e. Are they similar to ME's where you need to purchase licenses to unlock MPLS, 10G ports etc?
> > Anything else you need?
> >
> 
>  From my relatively limited experience with them as a couple of Internet 
> edge routers taking a couple of full feeds (in production for about a 
> year and a half now)...
> 
> They're solid.  We've had no unplanned downtime on ours (moving 
> datacenters and software upgrades are the only downtime so far) We're 
> running XR 5.2.2 on them, waiting for at least 5.3.1 to upgrade to the 
> next level.  From a pricing perspective, we needed at least 3 10G ports 
> and a couple of 1G ports, and the ASR9001s were considerably less 
> expensive than getting an ASR1004 with RP2 and 3 10G cards.  And you get 
> the benefits of IOS-XR like sane BGP filtering and scalability that goes 
> way beyond what we were ever able to get from our ASR1000s they 
> replaced.  Boot time is long, plan on 10-15 minutes on a reboot, but BGP 
> convergence is quick. Bouncing a full feed took 2-3 minutes for the 
> first peer, and less than a minute for the second one.
> 
> The biggest thing to be careful of with licensing is the difference 
> between the ASR9001 and the ASR9001S.  The ASR9001S only has 2 of the 4 
> on-board ports enabled, and can only do 60Gbps instead of 120Gbps.  For 
> the other licenses that are available, see Table 4:
> http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/routers/asr9000/software/asr9k_r5-3/general/release/notes/reln_530a9k.html#reference_62DD9EA197C548DA9C702E711DC18534
> 
> The only licenses that show up in CCW for these besides the small 
> handful in the table are the BNG, Lawful Intercept, and nV licenses.
> 
> You can upgrade from a 9001S to a normal 9001, but it's more cost 
> effective to buy it with the higher performance if you are going to need 
> it (we needed 3 10G ports day 1, so it didn't make sense to upgrade from 
> the S model).  The on-board ports are SFP+, the add-in 10G cards are 
> XFP.  If you have other ASR9Ks or GSRs, those optics might be reusable 
> in the add-in cards.  If you're mainly dealing with enterprise optics, 
> the XFP ones aren't common (except on the 10G card for the ASR1K which 
> is a carryover from the GSRs).  The support on the ASR9Ks is a bit more 
> limited than on the ASR1Ks and other enterprise class boxes.  The SFP+ 
> ports support SR, LR, ER, and ZR as well as the BX40D-I BiDi one.  They 
> do NOT support LRMs. Both the on-board and add-in cards support 
> CWDM/DWDM optics.
> 
> The one pain point I still have with them is software upgrades.  If 
> you're used to downloading an image from CCO, copying it to the router, 
> changing a boot statement and typing reload, the XR way of doing things 
> will be a MAJOR education.  To start, you download a tar file which 
> contains all the different packages available for all 9Ks.  So there's 
> files in there for nVs, ASR903s, etc that you don't need.  The bundle is 
> about 1.5GB.  Once you strip out what you don't need in there (which 
> requires a couple readthroughs of the release notes to see which .pie's 
> include various features), you make a smaller copy of that tar file to 
> download to the router.  Once you copy it, then you have to install and 
> activate it.  Then once you reboot into the new version you commit it, 
> then you can remove the old one.  The other major change from IOS is 
> SMUs.  Think of these like hotfixes for routers, they're a fix for a 
> specific bug which doesn't require a full software update to fix.  They 
> will be marked as hitless (no impact), traffic loss (will impact traffic 
> but not require a reload), and reboot required.
> 
> I'd be curious if anybody has used the CSM (Cisco Software Manager, boo 
> to Cisco having two products with the same acronym for two different 
> products) to push upgrades to 9Ks.  I've used it to grab the list of 
> SMUs, but never gotten it to actually push the changes, but haven't 
> tracked down if that's a firewall between me and the routers that is 
> blocking it.
> 
> Overall, I've been pleased with the ASR9001s, they've been a very solid 
> box that hasn't required us to do much with them other than let them sit 
> and quietly move a lot of traffic for us.  If you have any specific 
> questions about them, post to the list, these kinds of discussions are 
> helpful to everybody.
> 
> Jeremy "TheBrez" Bresley
> brez at brezworks.com
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