[j-nsp] Rock-solid JUNOS for QFX5100

Tue Aug 13 12:00:37 EDT 2019

I'd like to add to that, l2circuit hot standby needs 18+ to work, I had been waiting for some time now for 18 to be recommended to use it.

Thanks for the info much appreciated!

-phil

-----Original Message-----
From: Richard McGovern <rmcgovern at juniper.net> 
Sent: August 13, 2019 10:30 AM
To: Philippe Girard <philippe.girard at metrooptic.com>; Ross Halliday <ross.halliday at wtccommunications.ca>; Andrey Kostin <ankost at podolsk.ru>
Cc: juniper-nsp at puck.nether.net
Subject: Re: [j-nsp] Rock-solid JUNOS for QFX5100

Just FYI for all, but 18.1R3-S6 is specifically needed for EVPN/VXLAN use cases with QFX5110, not so much QFX5100.  For 5100 without EVPN/VXLAN 14.1x53-D[latest] is very stable AFAIK.  There are no real added features/functionality for QFX5100 outside of EVPN/VXLAN, so if this is not your use case, 14.1x53 should be equivalent feature/functionality wise to 18.x.  For both EX and QFX I [now] recommend staying away from 16.x or 17.x, as no added benefits.

S-Releases are the new Standard 'recommended' for almost all products.  For sure all EX and all QFX.  Not happy with this, but it is what it is.

Please also note that "TAC Recommended" is generic BEST (fewest cases, along with some deployment/downloads) from purely STABILITY point of view, and does not take into account specific use cases.  Your best bet is to discuss any code upgrades with your local Juniper account team.  Even if you just work only with a specific partner, that partner has a Juniper team with an SE supporting them.

I am also of the firm believe that upgrade for upgrade sake or to stay most current is not always a great idea - if not broken why try to fix/change?

Just FYI, Rich

Richard McGovern
Sr Sales Engineer, Juniper Networks
978-618-3342

I’d rather be lucky than good, as I know I am not good I don’t make the news, I just report it

On 8/12/19, 11:31 AM, "Philippe Girard" <philippe.girard at metrooptic.com> wrote:

    Hi Ross

    We've recently switched our 5100s to 18.1R3-S5. 18.1 is stable with BGP/OSPF/LDP/RSVP/MPLS and LACP LAG in general. We don't use STP of any kind with the QFXs so I can't really help there.

    I was hesitant to upgrade to 18.X since the 5100 was still the only QFX not to have and 18 version recommended on KB21476, but recently they updated the KB to include that model, so I'd say it's pretty safe now. They've pushed out S6 in July, if I'd have to re-do it now I'd use that one instead of S5.

    The kind of problem you're describing sounds like what we've lived through with 14.X and VCF when we first started using these. We'd commit a change and some random ports would stop passing traffic, we'd then have to delete port config and re provision for traffic to resume. Lots of weird stuff like that kept happening until we go fed up with the architecture and moved to routed MPLS with almost no layer2 switching.

    Good luck.

    -phil

    -----Original Message-----
    From: juniper-nsp <juniper-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net> On Behalf Of Ross Halliday
    Sent: August 12, 2019 9:20 AM
    To: juniper-nsp at puck.nether.net
    Subject: [j-nsp] Rock-solid JUNOS for QFX5100

    Dear List,

    I'm curious if anybody can recommend a JUNOS release for QFX5100 that is seriously stable. Right now we're on the previously-recommended version 17.3R3-S1.5. Everything's been fine in testing, and suddenly out of the blue there will be weird issues when I make a change. I suspect maybe they are related to VSTP or LAG, or both.

    1. Add a VLAN to a trunk port, all the access ports on that VLAN completely stopped moving packets. Disable/delete disable all of the broken interfaces restored function. This happened during the day. I opened a JTAC ticket and they'd never heard of an issue like this, of course we couldn't reproduce it. I no longer recall with confidence, but I think the trunk port may have been a one-member LAG (replacement of a downstream switch).

    2. New trunk port (a two-port LACP LAG) not sending VSTP BPDUs for some VLANs. I'm not sure if it was coincidence or always broken as I had recently began feeding new VSTP BPDUs (thus the root bridge changed) before I even looked at this. Other trunk ports did not exhibit the same issue. Completely deleted the LAG and rolled back to fix. This was on a fresh turnup and luckily wasn't in a topology that could form a loop.

    Features I'm using include:

    - BGP
    - OSPF
    - PIM
    - VSTP
    - LACP
    - VRRP
    - IGMPv2 and v3
    - Routing-instance
    - CoS for multicast
    - CoS for unicast
    - CoS classification by ingress filter
    - IPv4-only
    - ~7k routes in FIB (total of all tables)
    - ~1k multicast groups

    There are no automation features, no MPLS, no MC-LAG, no EVPN, VXLAN, etc. These switches are L3 boxes that hand off IP to an MX core. Management is in the default instance/table, everything else is in a routing instance.

    These boxes have us scared to touch them outside of a window as seemingly basic changes risk blowing the whole thing up. Is this a case where an ancient version might be a better choice or is this release a lemon? I recall that JTAC used to recommend two releases, one being for if you didn't require "new features". I find myself stuck between the adages of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" and "Software doesn't age like wine". Given how poorly multicast seems to be understood by JTAC I'm very hesitant to upgrade to significantly newer releases.

    If anybody can give advice or suggestions I would appreciate it immensely!

    Thanks
    Ross

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