[j-nsp] Juniper support vs. Cisco TAC - experiences?

[Justin Sharp]

On Tue, 2008-05-27 at 22:55 -0700, matthew zeier wrote:
> I'm looking at the EX4200 as an alternative to Cisco's 3750G.  The 
> EX4200 is much less expensive than a comparable 3750G.
> 
> Current network is all Cisco and I don't have any experience dealing 
> with Juniper support outside of a couple SSG-5 issues.  I think the 
> largest barrier to Juniper is their support is an unknown and no one 
> wants a Cisco/Juniper finger pointing match when there's some problem.
> 
> Looking for real work experience with Juniper support (and even with the 
> EX4200s, as new as they are).
> 
> Oh, and Juniper doesn't do VTP or CDP (or Cisco doesn't do LLDP)!
> 

I can't speak to your real question about Juniper TAC. I can speak to
the EX4200 line though. We were the first organization in my state to
purchase them, and have been testing them in our lab for the past couple
of months. There were a few issues that we came across in 9.0R2.10
(enough to make me not push them into production), but these issues
largely have been corrected in 9.1R1.8. Enough so, that I just started
rolling them into production last week with a lot of success. I don't
really have anything bad to say about the product, it performs on par
with Juniper gear, the feature set is rich as always with Juniper, and
they look good (Looks being very important in a datacenter
environment :) ) All in all, I expected to have a lot more issues with a
v 1.0 product, but Juniper stood good to reputation and delivered a
great product.

As a side note, I'm excited that Juniper has a switch line now. I don't
have to buy any more Cisco :)

--Justin