RE: Nexus in DC?

Marc,

This is very valuable competitive information that will be very helpful to dispel Juniper's obviously inferior solution.

Please KEEP this thread alive for us to review :)

Thanks!

Joe

-----Original Message-----
From: nobody_at_groupstudy.com [mailto:nobody_at_groupstudy.com] On Behalf Of Marc La Porte
Sent: Wednesday, September 02, 2009 3:12 AM
To: Rick Mur
Cc: Chris Riling; Iwan Hoogendoorn; Cisco certification
Subject: Re: Nexus in DC?

Strategy is a big word I think. For my current project I have been in many
meetings with Juniper and their equipment is simply not tailor-made for DC
environments but are multi-purpose yet focused on SP environments (which
means any features are always first produced for that market and not for DC)

Think about this:
# their EX4200 10-switch virtual chassis works best with a proprietary fat
copper stack cable of 5-meters max (which doesn't scale well across multiple
racks)
# the alternative for the stack cable is using fiber, but this diminishes
the backplane from 128-Gbps/FD to 20-Gbps/FD (uhm, the world upside down!!)
# the propose the MX960 as DC core switch, but it's basically an
over-dimensioned router for DC purpose
# the 16-ports 10-GE blades for the MX are ridiculously expensive ($340K
list!)
# their DC solution (with VPLS) only works in a 2-tier design
# they will come with a 10-GE access switch (like the Nexus5000) which can
be put in any virtual chassis combination (pretty cool)
# the "super-switch" is a matrix-like setup on the MX or EX8200 with shared
backplane etc, but I fear for the type of interconnect
# they do not have a strategy for 40GE ports
# they do not have a strategy for integrating VMware
# they do not have a strategy for FCoE / CNA

Do I need to go on? ;-)...

Just my 2ct.

Cheers,
Marc

On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 08:09, Rick Mur <rmur_at_ipexpert.com> wrote:

> They do have a strategy and are making a 'super-switch' which means
> clustering all switches in your DC and even across DC's, it's still due to
> be released and there is not much information available.
>
>
http://www.juniper.net/us/en/company/press-center/press-releases/2009/pr_2009
_02_24-12_00.html
>
>
> --
>
> Regards,
>
> Rick Mur
> CCIE2 #21946 (R&S / Service Provider)
> Sr. Support Engineer  IPexpert, Inc.
> URL: http://www.IPexpert.com
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 1:44 AM, Chris Riling <criling_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> What is Juniper's storage / unified I/O strategy? Do they have an answer
>> to L2 datacenter interconnect besides traditional spanning tree / EoMPLS?
>>
>> Chris
>>
>> On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 4:01 PM, Rick Mur <rmur_at_ipexpert.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Yeah those new DC projects are awesome I might say.
>>> I'm also a fan of NX-OS. Much better CLI than IOS-XR :-)
>>>
>>> We are planning for a customer that requires 80!!! Gbps of internet
>>> connection an entire network build on Nexus switches and UCS blades.
Would
>>> be so awesome!
>>>
>>> I will be going on a UCS bootcamp quite soon and implement the first two
>>> chassis in Holland ;-)
>>>
>>> Cool stuff!
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>> Rick Mur
>>> CCIE2 #21946 (R&S / Service Provider)
>>> Sr. Support Engineer IPexpert, Inc.
>>> URL: http://www.IPexpert.com
>>>
>>> On 1 sep 2009, at 19:52, Iwan Hoogendoorn wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Marc,
>>>>
>>>> I find this a very nice project.
>>>> I have done a lot of reading on the Nexus technology and I really can
>>>> not wait to put my hands on a Nexus Project.
>>>> But then again its just with all types of expensive technologie ...
>>>> your boss need to have he money of have customers who has the money
>>>> and who needs this.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Regards,
>>>>
>>>> Iwan Hoogendoorn
>>>> CCIE3 #13084 (R&S / Security / SP)
>>>> Sr. Support Engineer IPexpert, Inc.
>>>> URL: http://www.IPexpert.com
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 10:27 AM, Marc La Porte<
>>>> marc.a.laporte_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hey guys,
>>>>>
>>>>> Any of you already having practical experience with big Nexus roll-outs
>>>>> in
>>>>> Data Centers? Running into any "problems"?
>>>>>
>>>>> For a customer we are planning to deploy 5020 end-of-row switches with
>>>>> 2148T
>>>>> top-of-rack switches, aggregated in 7018s fully loaded with 32-port
>>>>> 10-Gbps
>>>>> blades. Just to give you an idea, the complete data center would be
>>>>> around
>>>>> 256 rows (30,000 ports)...
>>>>>
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>> Marc
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________________________________
>>>>> Subscription information may be found at:
>>>>> http://www.groupstudy.com/list/CCIELab.html
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Regards,
>>>>
>>>> Iwan Hoogendoorn
>>>> CCIE #13084 (R&S / Security / SP)
>>>> Sr. Support Engineer IPexpert, Inc.
>>>> URL: http://www.IPexpert.com
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________________________________
>>>> Subscription information may be found at:
>>>> http://www.groupstudy.com/list/CCIELab.html
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________________________________
>>> Subscription information may be found at:
>>> http://www.groupstudy.com/list/CCIELab.html

Blogs and organic groups at http://www.ccie.net
Received on Wed Sep 02 2009 - 04:17:09 ART