[c-nsp] Design recommendation from Cisco

[CiscoNSP List]

Just an update to this - I got to speak to (unfortunately) just the sales team(Cisco), and one SE...they wanted to build a POC for us (NCS 5500 vs ASR9K) to show how much "better" the 9K was(thanks, but no thanks)...told them it wasnt necessary, and wanted a full BOM with 5501's vs 9K (Compare price/features etc).


Ive now just learnt that they had another meeting 2 days ago, and have convinced our CEO that the NCS5508 would be the best solution...i.e. they could see that the 9K was getting blocked, but NCS5500 was liked as a potential option, so have gone for the bigger 5508 to get the bigger $.....Ive got no idea what one of these cost (As chassis/line cards), but 13RU high, 8 slots...and when RRP of a 5501-SE is  $120K and the 5502-SE is $720K...I can only imagine what the 5508 will cost....Ive had a quick read up on them, and they appear to have 250K TCAM (IPv4)...but Ive read this also "Line cards for the 5508 come in regular and scale. Scale has TCAM for lots of routes external to the ASIC. The space required for the external TCAM reduces the number of ports that can be supported on each line card."


The only other details I received about the 5508 solution was "chassis in spine/leaf with additional wan cards"


No doubt it will be a replica of the 9K design (Single "redundant" router)....just replacing the 9K with 5508.


For some reason my replies have not been appearing on the list...if this one doesnt, Ill start a new thread...

Cheers

________________________________
From: cisco-nsp <cisco-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net> on behalf of Tom Hill <tom at ninjabadger.net>
Sent: Tuesday, 7 March 2017 3:28 AM
To: cisco-nsp at puck.nether.net
Subject: Re: [c-nsp] Design recommendation from Cisco

On 06/03/17 14:23, CiscoNSP List wrote:
> either a single 9906 or 9010 (Fully redundant, dual RSP), with
> NCS5K's hanging of each on as satellites...theyve also proposed dual
> A9K-MOD200-SE's with 2 x A9K-48x10G-1G-SE....those with 9Ks will know
> how much those cost...insanely expensive.

I'm curious as to how that mix of cards gets in there. I'd have thought
a pair of 48x10G/1G cards would see off any requirement for MOD200s,
unless of course they're aiming to sell you small quantities of 100G as
well?

Further, try to avoid the 9010, and the 9006. The 9906 will be an
excellent choice (does away with the need for a baffle for front-to-back
cooling, has upgradable Fabric, etc.) and like the 9910, will be
supported for much longer.

As to their overall design, it does sound like they've got dollar signs
in their eyes... Probably as a result of the SDN requirement.

The A9k is a very capable edge device that can happily operate in a core
role, but the port density does not lend itself well to that. Their
suggestion even goes against the standard model for larger builds, that
use NCS6k in the core, and A9k on the edge.

The NCS55k isn't "cheap" (the L3VPN/L2VPN licensing alone is insane) but
using it as a purely P device is pretty much what it's been designed for
from the outset. For these Cisco bods to be suggesting NCSk on the edge
is pretty insane, and somewhat contradictory to what they've been saying
about the feature set of the NCS55k as a core device; it's not ready yet.

I'm not a Cisco SE, and I've not fully evaluated the 'SDN' features of
each platform in great detail, but I'm fairly sure your initial idea was
far better than the one Cisco have tried to sell you.

I'd see if you could try and get a second opinion internally, or perhaps
try and speak to a few more SEs without the salesmen watching. :)

Good luck.

--
Tom
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