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Black Diamond 6808 - Extreme
- Thread starter JavierBS
- Start date
Good core for our company, 800-900 users. Intuitive CLI and EPICenter is worth every dime. The support personnel could use more experience but the never hesitate to RMA a faulty piece of equipment if its even close to being suspected. I'd buy it again.
Brian
Brian
StevenWilliams
Technical User
We use numerous BD's, Alpines and flavours of Summits.
Over the last few years, we have found the firmware to be slightly buggy, however overall stable and much cheaper than the similar Cisco product.
Technically very good product, however their tech support is poor.
Over the last few years, we have found the firmware to be slightly buggy, however overall stable and much cheaper than the similar Cisco product.
Technically very good product, however their tech support is poor.
- Thread starter
- #4
We use BD 6808's other then the last year, we have had no problems with them. This last year we have had a number of RMA's, which stemmed to a product manufacturer they used. They are replacing some blades, as a prevenative measure, to bring them up to the current revision.
Tech support: Line 1, typical, some are good, some not so good. Line 2 preety good. We have never really had a problem there.
documentation I would say is there biggest weakness, there have been features that I tried to look into and all they have is a 2 sentence paragraph on it.
Software: the last year they have added alot of features, and there have been some bugs, they are quick on finding them and getting a hotfix out. Rule of thumb: test before you upgrade.
Overall I would still go with Extreme.
Tech support: Line 1, typical, some are good, some not so good. Line 2 preety good. We have never really had a problem there.
documentation I would say is there biggest weakness, there have been features that I tried to look into and all they have is a 2 sentence paragraph on it.
Software: the last year they have added alot of features, and there have been some bugs, they are quick on finding them and getting a hotfix out. Rule of thumb: test before you upgrade.
Overall I would still go with Extreme.
I'd echo most of the above... build quality can be a bit dodgy. Code occassionally buggy, but in general they're very solid boxes. A lot cheaper than cisco though,
when we looked at buying ours we compared cisco 6509 / alcatel omnicore and the extreme black diamond. Personaly I wanted to go for the Omnicore as it could reboot quicker than ospf takes to reconverge ;-) but the extreme was cheaper, and beat the Cisco hands down in terms of performance
when we looked at buying ours we compared cisco 6509 / alcatel omnicore and the extreme black diamond. Personaly I wanted to go for the Omnicore as it could reboot quicker than ospf takes to reconverge ;-) but the extreme was cheaper, and beat the Cisco hands down in terms of performance
StevenWilliams
Technical User
Just to expand, we have over 10 BD's and I'd guess at over 50 Summits globally within our company.
We had a set design in place, and asked Extreme, Cisco and Cabletron to recommend suitable equipment and provide a quote. In the end, Extreme were technically superior and cheaper than any other solution.
My earlier comments against Extreme was regarding technical support. The answer we always got was to upgrade firmware, and as mentioned earlier, documentation was average.
Overall though, I would still choose Extreme for any solution purely because of performance versus cost...
We had a set design in place, and asked Extreme, Cisco and Cabletron to recommend suitable equipment and provide a quote. In the end, Extreme were technically superior and cheaper than any other solution.
My earlier comments against Extreme was regarding technical support. The answer we always got was to upgrade firmware, and as mentioned earlier, documentation was average.
Overall though, I would still choose Extreme for any solution purely because of performance versus cost...
We had over 70 BD's and they ran great for a year or so but then all heck broke loose. We were averaging dozens of RMA's per month and it still continues (although not as bad). Great boxes for performance (when they work) and easy to configure but quality issues abound. We were told it was due to faulty memory from their supplier...hmmm
We have over 11 BD's. It is cheaper than Cisco product.
But there are many hardware faulty such as checksum error, packet memory errors.
We were sending RMAs of one module per month.
It is very critical issue that you have to insert new module and reboot the chassis.
In L2 switching, very good but not in L3 switching/routing.
I know Alpine product is very stable.
I would choose stability than cost in the next time.
But there are many hardware faulty such as checksum error, packet memory errors.
We were sending RMAs of one module per month.
It is very critical issue that you have to insert new module and reboot the chassis.
In L2 switching, very good but not in L3 switching/routing.
I know Alpine product is very stable.
I would choose stability than cost in the next time.
We have a BD and several Summit48's, most of which we bought in 1999. They all work great, when they work. We've had to replace around 5 out of 12 Summits so far. The main problem is that they stop responding to console or telnet access, then eventually stop forwarding for some ports. You know there's a problem when you remove a cable and the link light stays on.
We have just purchased used ones since they're cheaper than the support contract that's needed to get repairs/replacements. We've also had the Black Diamond fail, apparently due to the failure of both management modules (so much for redundancy). We got that fixed by buying maintenance.
Suffice it to say that we don't buy Extreme equipment any more.
Lee.
We have just purchased used ones since they're cheaper than the support contract that's needed to get repairs/replacements. We've also had the Black Diamond fail, apparently due to the failure of both management modules (so much for redundancy). We got that fixed by buying maintenance.
Suffice it to say that we don't buy Extreme equipment any more.
Lee.
I know from talking with our SE that there was the company that made some of their (Extreme's) parts, that extreme moved away from because of Quality issues. We have 2 BD's and since we have been on extremeware 7.0.1b11 and received the newer 12 port MTRJ boards, we have had one minor issue since build 7.0.1b11 was released.
Stay away from any extreme gear. So far I have had over 100 RMA's for failed cards. Their SE and sales team played such a bad game of rope a dope with us we finally decided to replace every one with a cisco. If your running them be sure to have the diags enabled to test those cards and review your logs often to get the bad ones out.
I just left a major pharmaceutical company running several thousand BDs, Alpines, and Summits. We were very dissapointed with the life of the hardware. Our longest running chassis without replacement was just under a year. Our longest running copper card in either BDs or Alpines was about 8 months.
Tech support is terrible...common response is to clear FDB/IPFD and run a show tech. This solves exactly nothing, but more often than not it is their only response. Would highly recommend you spend the extra $$ if you want reliable equipment with decent support.
Tech support is terrible...common response is to clear FDB/IPFD and run a show tech. This solves exactly nothing, but more often than not it is their only response. Would highly recommend you spend the extra $$ if you want reliable equipment with decent support.
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