Enterasys

[jkaftan]

I appreciate that this is a Cisco Forum but we are looking at a LAN refresh and are looking at options. I have only worked with Cisco but we have an Enterasys Wireless system and their full set of management tools and I see a lot of good things with that company. We are also looking at Brocade, and HP.

Does anyone else have experience with Enterasys, Brocade or HP that can compare them to Cisco? We are very concerned with price and total cost of ownership over 10 years.

Yes we are looking to run this new gear for 10 years.

Thanks

John

 

[Cluebird]

If you like Enterasys, go with them. Then you'll see why I prefer Cisco. The last rebuild of a network core I was involved with using Enterasys was a mess. We shipped a full skid of brand new gear back to them because the stuff failed out of the box. If you like fighting with system integration issues between vendors, go with the lowest prices but for TCO, Cisco is the way to go for end-to-end solutions IMHO.

Most of the companies I consult with these days are returning to Cisco after finding the other vendors don't support features or capabilities that Cisco does. Cisco leads, they follow. When I hear a vendor says, "We're just as good as Cisco but cheaper." warning bells go off because my life gets miserable whenever I've tried the "cheaper" solution.

Some of the vendors do make nice GUIs for the novice admin, though.

Remember, there is a reason Cisco maintains the highest market share in networking equipment. It ain't just slick sales and marketing, either. ;-)

HTH

 

[unclerico]

My .02:

I had a plan at one point to replace all Cisco access layer switches with HP. HP has some really nice quality gear, but they don't all support a standard set of features (spanning-tree, ACL's, etc.). I returned them and got Cisco gear. That being said, the HPs are very nice and will work fine as long as you know what features you're looking for.

I'm now in a new environment and it is 100% Extreme Networks which is not my favorite. I have submitted requests to both Cisco and Juniper for hardware refresh. If you've never tried Juniper before you're missing out; the EX line of switches is fantastic!! I still have to heavily consider Cisco because the gear is top notch, but the price may make management say no.

Anyway, I can't offer opinions on Brocade or Enterasys as I've never used them. Just make sure you get a few units and do a POC before you buy them. You want to make sure they will work in your environment.

I hate all Uppercase... I don't want my groups to seem angry at me all the time! =)
- ColdFlame (vbscript forum)

 

[VinceWhirlwind]

The big plus for Procurve is they are very, very cheap compared with Cisco. On the downside, you don't get the stackable stuff, so you are relying spanning-tree instead of etherchannel/LACP.
On the other hand, HP now have some non-procurve switches which are stackable (they call it "virtual switch").

 

[jkaftan]

unclerico:

Extreme is also on the table. What don't you like about them?

 

[unclerico]

for me, i don't trust anything other than Cisco or Juniper in the core of my network. extreme is fine, but i would only have it running as access-layer gear.

I hate all Uppercase... I don't want my groups to seem angry at me all the time! =)
- ColdFlame (vbscript forum)

 

[m4ilm4n]

We had some pre-Enterasys Cabletron gear that was pretty well bulletproof (it ran for ten years). Don't know what they're like now, but I run Cisco gear throughout now.

 

[jkaftan]

Cluebird:

Can you elaborate on your Enterasys experience experiece and why you sent the equipment back?

 

[Cluebird]

Equipment was sent back because it was DOA (failed to boot) out of the box (bad power supplies or corrupt OS mostly...some bad modules or bad ports on modules...the types of issues you don't expect with new gear!). Of course, all was installed before anyone tried to boot the boxes so we had to remove from racks and repack for RMA.

The project was migrating the Core/Distribution functionality of the network from software based routing (Linux boxes) to hardware based solution...the campus was too cheap to buy routers so the admin took discarded workstations (286 machines), installed Linux and made them route. Finally got budget for hardware because of too many performance issues with the software-routers (500-1000 users surfing Internet at once) and had Cisco and Enterasys bid. Cisco actually had a better overall bid, but the Enterasys salesrep was related to one of the decision-makers. Politics won and Enterasys got the bid.

The install was supposed to take a week. The OSPF never worked completely right. There were some Cisco switches and routers for Access Layer so Enterasys blamed Cisco, Cisco blamed Enterasys and the network suffered. Finally found several spanning-tree issues and got acceptable performance but I vowed to never use Enterasys again. Their support sucked after the sale and they constantly made excuses when their product failed. Plus, they regularly made snarky comments about Cisco while the Cisco people never tore down Enterasys but wanted to help get the network fixed.

HTH