[c-nsp] choosing a switch.... cat6500 vs cat6800

[Mark Tinka]

On 8/Jul/18 00:51, Eli Kagan via cisco-nsp wrote:
> 1.       Cat6807, sup6T  -- would be my first choice but other techies have no experience with it and are reluctant to agree.
>
> 2.       Cat6506-E.  sup2T  --  7 years old, perhaps will be EoL shortly otherwise will do.
> 3.       Cat4507R+E, sup9 -- good on paper but I had too manyhardware and software issues with the existing cat4500 for me to be comfortablewith this option. On top of that, Cisco is “encouraging” to go to Cat9400instead 
> 4.       Cat9400 7-slot  --  I know nothing about that thing. Does it support quad sup VSS or similar? Is it too cutting edge for a financial client? Is the code stable enough?
>
>
> 5.       Nexus 7700 6-slot   or    Nexus 9504   --  both are expensive ashell.
> Any insight would be highlyappreciated.

We've been running the 6880-X as core switch since 2014. No major issues
to report of in all of that time, but again, these just do simple Layer
2 Ethernet switching in the core.

We've ran them in smaller PoP's that have been happy with N x 10Gbps
links in the core. For larger core PoP's, we've deployed 100Gbps on
Arista's 7508E's.

If you are looking for something nice and simple, the 6880-X is
reasonably priced. Just watch for those 16x 10Gbps line cards; they are
actually oversubscribed 2:1; so like us, you'd do well to run each of
them at 80Gbps maximum so you don't have to worry about this.

The Nexus switches are too costly. If you aren't looking for anything
fancy, I'd stay away from them.

I'd also advise you to look at the Arista switches. CLI-wise, it is
essentially IOS, so not much for you to learn apart from Arista-specific
things which, IMHO for such a use-case, is only about 20% of the CLI.
Price-wise, you can do a good deal with them.

Mark.