[j-nsp] SFP Compatibility

[Kevin Day]

On Jan 15, 2008, at 5:34 PM, bill fumerola wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 10, 2008 at 05:38:47PM -0500, Richard A Steenbergen wrote:
>>          I heard some grumbling that HP implemented vendor locking on
>> their switches out of the blue with no notice and significant  
>> downtime
>> caused to users who tried to upgrade code.
>
> this is true. as i recall, the warning was buried deep in the release
> notes (possibly even the release AFTER the code that made devices sad)
> and was phrased as a "reliability improvement" or some such.

Yep, this bit us, too. HP sold us switches saying we could move our  
existing SFP inventory over to save money, then pushes a non- 
downgradeable update on us for vague security reasons that slips in a  
vendor lockout... This is getting a bit off topic, but I can't turn  
down a chance to make sure the world knows about this. :)

We invested a decent amount replacing our switch infrastructure with  
HP ProCurve switches. One of the things we confirmed with the sales  
engineers was that our existing SFPs would work. We even brought demo  
units in to play with before buying, and confirmed that our mish-mash  
of SFPs would work. This was important because we were on a limited  
budget, and I've got a rule about not stocking more spares than I  
need. Kinda pointless stocking otherwise identical SFPs except for the  
vendor ID.

Then one day we get a notice from HP suggesting that we upgrade the  
firmware/OS on the switches. The exact description of the fix said  
nothing more than "Certain types of traffic cause the switch to route  
very slowly
and drop packets." (seriously, those exact words were the entire  
description) Before doing the upgrade, I checked the full release  
notes and saw nothing else scary, so I upgraded our test switch (which  
had no SFP in it), saw that it was fine, then pushed the update to our  
production switches. Looking back that was probably a mistake, but...  
yeah. Even though the release notes said NOTHING about this, they  
slipped in a change that made the switch stop accepting non-HP SFPs.  
Absolutely nothing would get logged, the port would just seem dead.  
Even worse, as soon as the switch saw a non-HP SFP in a slot, it would  
completely kill that port until you rebooted the switch. Even swapping  
an HP SFP in wouldn't help unless you removed your non-HP SFPs before  
powering up. That made debugging this nearly impossible unless you  
knew what the problem was. The only thing I could see was that all my  
SFP ports were dead.

This pretty much meant we were completely down. HP's ProCurve support  
seemed to know nothing about this change either. Downgrading to an  
older version was impossible for reasons I can't quite remember right  
now. Finally we get someone there to give us an updated release notes  
PDF that mentions that they're no longer allowing non-HP SFPs. On page  
80-something of a 100+ page PDF. Since then they've moved it up to  
page 17, with a paragraph that says:

"Non-genuine ProCurve Transceivers and Mini-GBICs have been offered  
for sale in the marketplace.
To protect customer networks from these unsupported products, starting  
with release E.09.22,
ProCurve switch software includes the capability to detect and disable  
non-genuine transceivers and
mini-GBICs discovered in Series 5300xl Switch ports. When a non- 
genuine device is discovered, the
switch disables the port and generates an error message in the Event  
Log."

We escalated this as high as they'd let us. The reply from high up was  
that they were sorry for the inconvenience, but there is no  
workaround, and that it's for our own protection.

I was a huge ProCurve fan before this, but... that's the last piece of  
HP gear we've purchased. If their SFP prices were at least reasonable,  
I would have at least been willing to put up with it, but when they're  
asking for $4k for an SFP today (it was even higher back when these  
were new), it's hard to justify that they're really doing this for  
anyone's good but themselves. Google for "J4860B" if you don't believe  
they actually want $4k for a GE SFP. :)

-- Kevin