I took this picture when we went to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA and just had to share it.
This is Terry Slattery and Ivan Pepenljak looking at an old CIsco AGS that both of them are very familiar with. I would guess a model very similar that both had on their CCIE labs. It was funny as they where pointing out what cards this one had what they linked and did not like about that model. Quite entertaining discussion from two guys who have been there and done that.
On day 2 we started the day off with a visit to Juniper’s Sunnyvale HQ. The day was organized by Abner at Juniper and he lined up some great speakers for us. We had three good presentations but I am only going talk on two of them. The 3rd was a good discussion with Dogu Arin and I may have a post down the road as a result of that talk on MAC-VPN. But now on to today’s post.
First up was Mike Bushong who is the Product Manager Core OS, which is of course Junos. This was a great session. Mike busted out the white board and asked what we wanted to know then started going to town.
One of the first things Mike pointed out is that he does not like to do is a feature by feature comparison to Cisco’s IOS. The reason for this is today one of them may have a feature the other does not have but it will in 12-18 months most likely. When most of these boxes have a 5-7 year lifecycle so why buy for just a year or so of advantage? What he did focus on is what make Junos fundamentally better then traditional IOS.
Going into this meeting I had always felt Junos was a better thought OS then tradition IOS, leaving this meeting was I had a better understanding why. We all have heard that Junos is modular and tradition IOS is not. (I course keep saying traditional because the newer versions of IOS such as XR, XE, NX-OS and some 6500 versions are modular now.) This gives you a more stable product over all because processes are separated. For example, a crashed netflow process will not take down OSPF. This comes from them targeting the carrier space in the beginning and as the product line has grown they kept that focus on a highly reliable OS. Mike also talked about the separation of the control plane and forwarding plane. This again is a positive that all of us seemed to agree on. We also got very geeky on how the OS interacts with the CPU’s. Juniper has used custom silicone from day one but the OS is written so they could at anytime switch CPU’s. This is great to know as a customer. To me this means if they have to change hardware radically they can do that quickly and I won’t have to start over looking for new vendor halfway though a enterprise wide switch refresh.
Mike then talked about something has a been staple of Juniper marketing, the one OS for all devices concept. This of course does not mean one binary as each hardware will have specific needs resulting in separate binaries per platform. However this does lead to differences per platform. Clearly a SOHO firewall has no need for the code to configure an OC-192 module. I understand that different hardware has different software needs but if your going to preach one OS and have differences per platform that to me is not much different then the fact a Cisco 7600 runs a different IOS then the 1800. Clearly they are very different router you will configure them differently. Where one OS is an advantage is when going from a router to a firewall the config. On a Cisco 2800 vs an ASA the config is night and day different. However on a Juniper MX 960 vs SRX 240 it is not that different and it is easy to transition from one to the other. That is where the real advantage is to me. Most of is the group where not that sold on how great of a benefit one OS. Most of us feel that different devices have different purposes so they have different configs but maybe that is just the long term Cisco users in us. Overall the one OS is good idea and am glad Juniper is doing it, I just don’t see the benefit is a big as marketing tells us it is.
Switches are a fairly recent addition to the Juniper portfolio as result many people are still not very familiar with this product line. As a result Dave Hawley was there to explain the EX line of switch to us in detail. What Juniper recommending for data centers is top of rack EX4200’s (or 4500 if you need 10Gb) and in most cases uplinked to a MX router. This interesting for a couple of reasons, the first being the routed layer in the data center. The trend is going to all layer 2 in your DC thanks to VMware mainly. They do of course have designs showing the EX8200 as core but clearly MX was preferred. The second is those are the same switches that you would also deploy in the access layer to the users. These are of course powerful access layer switches which all run at wirespeed for the same cost as other vendors oversubscribed switches that makes them also work well in the data center.
One of the features Juniper introduced with the EX switches is the Virtual Chassis idea. Now Juniper will tell you this is not stacking but pretty much all of the delegates agree this is stacking, just a different way to do it. I think it is better the Cisco StackWise method but still stacking which brings new concerns when you’re deploying them. I personally have had very little issue with stacking but when it goes wrong it really goes bad. However a number of benefits exists when running the switches in this config. Easy management is one. Since 10 4200’s can be grouped into a virtual chassis that is a lot of ports all managed from a single IP. No more having to guess switch the connection on, you know it will be on that virtual chassis. The next is a larger layer 2 network spread across a wider area. These switches can be stacked using dedicated cables up to 5m or using the 10Gb uplink ports for a distance of 70km. With that config you can essentially have switch that spans two data centers. That is a great benefit for those that need that but it is a double edged sword so make sure you have a good plan if you’re going to go down that road. Within a single data center the 5m option allows for placement several racks apart. This also gets rid of the tradition tree design in the data center which makes server-to-server traffic faster and failovers faster too. I like what Juniper is doing in trying to replicate a chassis with 1RU switches but I still would like to see a few improvements. The main one being ISSU upgrades or least a staged one member at a time upgrade. Overall I think Juniper has a done a good job with the EX switches and I am excited to see what is coming next from them.
I really like what Juniper has to offer with Junos being the core of that offering. It is a great OS and despite what I think marketing may over inflate as a benefit the one OS is a really good benefit to have on your side. Juniper is also really big on making customers and potential customers are knowledgeable on their products. They have number of free eLearning courses online, they offer a fast track program for certification and have a series of high quality free Day One books to help you get started with Juniper. This makes the transition from your current routers and switches to Juniper that much easier. We have a number of old Cisco 3550’s to replace and Juniper is high the list to replace them. I suggest you reach out to Juniper and learn more about them, they are very willing to help get you the info you need.
If you read my post on the Tech Field Day visit to HP you know I was disappointed with the technical content and ended up being a bit too harsh on HP for that. Although I did not get what I wanted I did like the direction they are going in. The good news is HP after that provided us with some addition PDF that have more of the info we were looking for. So I decided to look into the switch myself and I have to say if your looking for a new large data center core switch you need to at least look at these switches.
I think most people are not that familiar with how high end HP’s switching line is. Many people thought HP bought 3Com for low end switch but the opposite is true. H3C was a wholly owned subsidiary of 3Com but was founded as a Huawei and 3Com joint venture. H3C had a very high end line of switches that HP is now calling the HP A-series outside of China. It was formally called the H3C S12500. They have a number of offerings but the main ones we saw is the A12500. It comes in two flavors the A12518 which is an 18 slot chassis and A12508 is the 8 slot version.
This is the A12518 and as you can see it is a full rack. However unlike the Nexus 7018 it does not need a special rack for airflow. It also has some fairly advanced power and fan control for optimal power consumption to lower the total cost of ownership. A prime example of this is the power per 10Gb port. The A12518 its 54w and the Nexus 7018 is 112w. So it’s half the power per port as the Nexus. BTU’s are half of what the Nexus is which is major savings on cooling costs. Over the course of a year that is a real savings in your data center.
As you would expect from a modern data center switch this guy is fully redundant for key parts. The mid-plane is a CLOS architecture and today provides 360Gb per slot (and that is standard marketing math, counts both in and out.) It will support up to 720Gb with future fabrics. It has a total of 6.6Tb per second today and the architecture can double to 13.3Tb down the road. It can have 128 non-blocking 10Gb ports and 512 if your ok with 4:1 oversubscription. The buffers are pretty good too at 256Mb per non-blocking port vs ingress: 92 Mb / egress: 80 Mb on the Nexus. It also is ready for 40Gb/100Gb but I don’t have the specs on that.
Another key feature of this line is the Intelligent Resilient Framework. This sounds very familiar to Junipers virtual chassis. I have read up it some more but can not speak to it with the proper knowledge so this section is going to limited. These technologies (VSS, IRF, stacking, virtual chassis, etc) provide a great benefit in eliminating spanning tree and doubling the links bandwidth. However if you do some searching you will run into some horror stories on failures with these technologies. I would be very cautious with this if I was deploying it. I have deployed a number stackwise, VSS and VBS rings in our data centers because I have not had many issues and the increased bandwidth with the elimination of spanning tree is well worth it for me. For you, proceed with caution.
HP has come a long with in the data center switch market with the acquisition of 3Com and has a good vision for what data centers should look like. After really looking into this line of I switches I feel if your looking at large data center projects you need to at least talk to HP about these. After all if your going to consider Cisco for your servers with UCS I think it is fair to look at HP for your networking.
Orion NPM is what most people think of when someone says they use Solarwinds. It is their flagship product and the most mature offering they have. It is a network monitoring tool that keeps historical usage of all devices configured and will alert on status changes on those devices. It has evolved into a fully functional network management system with multiple modules to fit individual customers needs. I personally have used this product for the last 3 years and looked it a few times in the years prior to that. I have really enjoyed the way the product has evolved. The NetFlow and IP SLA modules have been great additions and will help just about anyone get a better understanding of their network.
The Solarwinds crew that spoke to use was Josh Stephens, Brandon Shopp and Joel Dolisy. What I really liked about them is they really seemed to get what the people who use their tools want and need. They also where did not hide short comings in the product and what was being done about that. Joel specifically spoke about database scaling issues. This went very technical and did get over my head as I am not a DBA. However it gave me confidence about where the product is going.
Thwack is Solarwinds community site and it is very active. This is another feature of Solarwinds I have benefited form. It is community driven and if you have a question most likely it has already been answered there. They also offer a number of templates for custom reports and pollers. It is worth your time to visit if you need anything for your Orion install.
Solarwinds also provides a number of free tools that are actually very useful. They will help you get a good idea of what the full suite of tools offers.
In summary I really like the Solarwinds products I have used. It has had it’s issues in the past but for me each release is improving. I think Orion has moved from a NMS that smaller companies would choose to one that will fit any enterprise. If you are looking for a NMS I high recommend you look at what they have. They offer evaluations across the product like and very good online demo’s at solariwnds.com. I hope to have a follow up blog post giving some more details on how I use these products ensure my networks are up and running optimally.
The first vendor we visited was HP. First up was Jay Mellman and this was the marketing presentation which was well done. Jay talked about what the 3Com acquisition did for HP by brining in the high end switching from the H3C portfolio. Going into this I did not realize just how high end the HP switch line had grown. The 12518 is a big data center switch that directly completes with the Nexus 7018.
Jay (pictured) also talked about where HP sees the data center in 2010. Their vision is a standards based DC focusing on service delivery. I agree with this vision as companies are going to be more concerned with are the key business services up and running not what it is running on. HP feels, as do I, that infrastructure will be converging into a single fabric. They also think they are in the unique position as they can be a one stop shop for all of your needs because they offer servers, storage and the network.
This led us to the next presentation and where things went downhill. We went to very nice looking showpiece room and this is where we thought we would start to get technical. We did not. In fact it was very non-technical. The presenter could not even answer basic questions like “What is the bandwidth per slot?” when talking about the 12518. His answer was “The good news is they sent the good looking guy” to explain why he is non-techncal. Yeah, that went over well. This was pretty much a waste of time. I had really hoped to get a good understanding of HP’s Intelligent Resilient Framework but we did so now it just sounds like a good idea but I still don’t know technical details.
After that we talked about the management software called Intelligent Management Center which sounded like a really nice management offering but price is going to eliminate most customers from buying it.
We wrapped up the visit with a discussion on Tipping Point which is a nice security product but again the presenter was more marketing then technical so not much to say here. When did the demo it was good but not a lot of depth. Looks to be a good product but security is not my strong point.
Summary
HP did not get the audience. Jay’s opening presentation is about all the marketing we wanted. We are a highly technical group but they sent no one technical. I like where HP is going on their products but have no idea if they are accomplishing their goals. Hopefully in the company weeks I can find the technical info I was looking for. However HP is clearly moving in the right direction and if your going to look at Cisco for servers you have to look at HP for networking in your data center.
Well I am off to a network focused Tech Field Day today. The event officially kicks off tomorrow with visits from HP, SolarWinds, Cradlepoint and Force10. Then on Friday we will meet with Juniper, Arista and Xsigo. I am pretty excited to meet with all of these vendors. Where I work now we are customers of HP, SolarWinds and Juniper. We also did an extended demo with Xsigo so I am fairly familiar with them. I think I am most interested in what HP and Juniper have to say and hoping for data center specific content. I also want to hear what the other delegates think of Xsigo which I am fan of.
What I hope to get out of this event is a better understanding of each vendors products. In this format we get access to people at these companies we would not normally get on a normal sales call. Plus this is not a sales call! It’s a highly technical discussion between the delegates and the vendors. I also am excited because there are 12 delegates each coming from a different company with a different background. That should make help all of us understand the benefits and drawbacks of each product in a variety of situations.
What those who are not attending can get out of it is pretty much the exact same thing! Basically all of us are active on the internet with blogs, Twitter, in forums, etc. Most of us will be posting our thoughts, good or bad, on each vendors pretension. I know from previous Tech Field Day’s even though I did not attend I got new insight to products I was already familiar with and was introduced to completely new products and I hope you will get the same from me and the other delegates. You can see the full list over at Gestalt IT.
Now I have a flight to catch, talk to you tomorrow!
Full Discloser: The vendors are paying for my (and the other delegates) flights, hotel and meals while at this event. However they are not requiring anything in return. Meaning I am free to say or not say anything I want about them.
Well I am excited to announce that I will be attending the next Tech Field Day hosted by Gestalt IT in September 2010. If your not familiar with Tech Field Day it is a group of 10-12 IT professionals that come together and over a couple days meet with various vendors and get presentations or hands on demo’s of new technology. The delegates who attend are independent and are free to give honest opinion good or bad on what they see. It is run as a community event with the vendors and delegates interacting with each other, not just a one way power point show. In turn the companies get (hopefully) great feed back from a wide range of people who are in the industry that they can use to improve the product or the customers experience with it.
What makes me particularly excited about this field day is it is networking specific! Other field days have covered a broader range of technologies. Since networking is what I do I can not wait for this event and everything I will learn at it. Right now I don’t even know who the vendors are going to be but I am sure since it is in San Jose you can count on it being some good ones!
I plan on sharing my thoughts on every presentation here and on Twitter. I highly recommend you follow the hashtag #TechFieldDay on Twitter to see all of the delegates thoughts on this event. You can see the full list of delegates on the Gestalt IT site and it quite a group! I am honored to have been selected. Watch this space for more info, the event is less then a month away.
Full Disclose: My airfare, hotel and travel meals will all be paid for by the sponsors of this event. You can read what is expected of a delegate if you would like to know more about it.