[AusNOG] 3rd Party SFP+ Optics

[Colin Stubbs]

Lead time can be another issue.

Recent project: needed SFP+ 10GBASE-SR's for HP servers ASAP, missing
optics not noticed until server installation was attempted.

HP ~= 10+ weeks, ~$40K
OEM supplier in Sydney == overnight package, $10K

Specs were identical down to the letter. e.g. they almost certainly all
came from the same factory.

The only concern I had was the onboard SFP+ sockets rejecting them because
of the vendor ID. But the OEM guaranteed they'd programmed them with a HP
vendor ID that would be accepted by the particular generation of hardware I
was dealing with.

Given all of the NIC's, both onboard and PCIe were essentially
Broadcom/whatever commodity chips with a HP sticker on them I was pretty
comfortable they'd have no other issues beyond vendor ID.

The only modification that HP could possibly have done to those chips is
NIC firmware to reject optics which don't have one of the "approved" HP
vendor ID's.

No dramas since surprise surprise.

I view the issue like this:
 1) Box vendor$ don't support your cables.
 2) You will need to troubleshoot and rule out cable faults anyway, optics
are an extension of cables, you should do them at the same time.
 3) Not expecting box vendor$ to support optics will actually save time in
identifying the issue and restoring services.
 4) Continuing to buy optics from overpriced box vendor$ is bad for you, me
and everyone else dealing with technology.
 5) Continuing to buy into the "we won't support it" argument is bad for
you, me and everyone else dealing with technology.

We should be selecting optics in the same way we do any other knob and
widget. Based on a combination of price balanced against spec, MTBF and
warranty offered/available.

I'd be comfortable going OEM in most situations with SFP/SFP+/QSFP optics,
provided the end customer/operator is comfortable with being responsible
for their own equipment. Sounds dumb but some mandate vendor supported
optics because they think they'll be able to live in a land filled with
magical vendor fairies who will automatically fix all their problems by
accurately identifying every issue and sending them replacement hardware
immediately every single time.

-Colin


On 26 March 2014 18:41, Julien Goodwin <ausnog at studio442.com.au> wrote:

> On 26/03/14 18:11, Greg Anderson wrote:
> > Good evening Gentlepeople,
> >
> > I will keep this simple and straight to the point:
> >
> > You buy 10G network switches from recognised brand name vendor(s).
> >
> > Please do tell me why you chose (or chose not to) use 3rd party SFP+
> > optics in your gear at 1/4 the price rather than going to your vendor
> > for the modules.
>
> OEM's are only 1/4 the price, you're lucky, 10x is hardly unusual.
>
> Out of interest, has anyone *ever* had an optic compatibility issue (as
> opposed to say a laser dying or lockout) from one of the top-level
> vendors (ex, JDSU, Finisar) on decent vendor (Cisco, Juniper, HP,
> Extreme, etc.) kit?
>
> With the price differential I find it nuts that people would do
> differently in most cases, excluding 100g and some of the odder DWDM or
> high-power types, it's almost certainly cheaper to treat optics as
> consumables than try and get support for them, even a NOC staffer or
> logistics person probably costs more than $100/hour, and you've got a
> very good process if you can work your way with a vendor to giving you
> an RMA (and send the faulty one back) in less than an hour. Even a 40g
> QSFP doesn't multiply that by a huge amount.
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>
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