IPv6-capable 10G switches

[Sam Wilson]

On 12 Aug 2010, at 15:33, Tore Anderson wrote:

> Hi guys,
>
> I need a couple of new core switches for a medium-sized data centre  
> I'm
> setting up soon, and I'm curious to hear if any of you have any
> recommendations or tips on suitable products?  The budget is limited,
> maybe around US$15.000 per unit max, so I'm focusing on the
> fixed-configuration models for now.
>
> My requirements are at least 20 SFP+ ports and full L3 support for  
> both
> IPv6 and IPv4 (fast-path IPv6, OSPFv3, VRRPv3, filters).  On the
> nice-to-have list are things like candidate configuration database  
> with
> commit/rollback capabilities, in-service software upgrades, MPLS, and
> stacking support.
>
> Disappointingly enough I've only found two switches that appear to
> satisfy my requirements so far:  the Extreme Summit X650 and the BNT
> RackSwitch G8124.  The latter is completely unknown to me, but I do  
> have
> some Extremes already and I can't say I'm a very big XOS fan...

We have a couple of G8124s but they are used entirely as rack-top L2  
switches - I have no experience of L3 configuration or performance  
with them.  The CLI is Cisco-like but not very - the logic of how you  
configure features is very different.  (If you have experience of how  
"like", say, 3Com 5500s are to Ciscos you'll know how "like" the BNTs  
are, but in yet another completely different way.)  That said, even  
though we're not stretching their capabilities the G8124s seem to do  
what you tell them to; we've not found any obvious glitches or bugs.   
We are using Cisco compatible PVST+ to run different spanning tree  
topologies and Blade seem to have got that right.  The folks with 10G  
connected servers are having some problems, but that seems to be a  
server issue rather than a switch problem.

Not very useful, I'm afraid, but perhaps it might help a little.

Sam

Sam Wilson
Network Team, IT Infrastructure
Information Services, The University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh, Scotland, UK



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