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<p class="p1">Hi All,</p>
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<p class="p1">I'm currently looking at some new hardware to upgrade our network. I've narrowed my selection down to two sets of hardware, from either Juniper or Brocade. I don't have experience with either vendor, otherwise it would be a fairly straight-forward
selection process for me. Most of my dealings have been with Cisco IOS, but am expecting to have to learn a new CLI, and I'm not particularly attached to IOS, so that's fine.</p>
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<p class="p1">I'm looking for people's recommendations that could be given to pick one over the other, as I'm having a tough time deciding. Based on the technical specs, and feature listings of both sets of hardware, I can't find a major technical reason to
pick one over the other - they are mostly pretty closely matched for what we need. So I'm more focused on trying to find out what people's experiences are generally, so I can get a "safety in numbers" sort of approach.</p>
<p class="p2"><br>
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<p class="p1">I'm looking for any feedback in a few key areas (or anywhere you deem relevant):</p>
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<p class="p1">- Overall hardware stability / reliability</p>
<p class="p1"><br>
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<p class="p1">- Reliability of software - looking to stack some of the switches, so any lessons learned there would be of particular interest.</p>
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<p class="p1">- Documentation - Cisco seems unparalleled in the amount of blog posts and other articles you can find online regarding various things. JunOS seems to have a fair bit as well, but not sure about Brocade. Brocade's similarity to IOS could be a
plus here (or it may be unwise to rely on that at all).</p>
<p class="p1"><br>
</p>
<p class="p1">- Training / Knowledge - As much as it seems to me that any network engineer would be able to transition between OS's relatively easily, I'm thinking that in general it would be advantageous to use a platform more widely used. Though it seems
like both vendors are quite popular.</p>
<p class="p1"><br>
</p>
<p class="p1">- Config Automation / Orchestration (though this is not necessarily a deal-breaker)</p>
<p class="p2"><br>
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<p class="p2">Here are the two sets of hardware I'm currently looking at:</p>
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<p class="p1">Juniper</p>
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<p class="p1">- 2xEX4300-32F for core switches (stacked).</p>
<p class="p1">- 2xEX3300-48T per rack for ToR (stacked).</p>
<p class="p2"><br>
</p>
<p class="p1">Brocade</p>
<p class="p2"><br>
</p>
<p class="p1">- 2x ICX6610-24-PE for core switches (stacked).</p>
<p class="p1">- 2x ICX6450-48 per rack for ToR (stacked).</p>
<p class="p1">- 1x ICX6450-C12 (for 1G/100M SFP ports).</p>
<p class="p2"><br>
</p>
<p class="p1">For our router platform I'm looking at virtual routers - either Brocade's vRouter (which is strikingly similar to JunOS, to me), or Juniper's Firefly Perimeter.</p>
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</p>
<p class="p1">Thanks in advance for any feedback you can provide!</p>
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<div style="font-family:Tahoma; font-size:13px"><font face="Tahoma" size="2">Rhys Hanrahan<br>
Chief Information Officer<br>
Nexus One Pty Ltd<br>
<br>
E: <a href="mailto:support@nexusone.com.au" target="_blank">support@nexusone.com.au</a><br>
P: +61 2 9191 0606<br>
W: http://www.nexusone.com.au/<br>
M: PO Box 127, Royal Exchange NSW 1225<br>
A: </font>Level 10 307 Pitt St, Sydney NSW 2000<br>
<br>
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