[AusNOG] Brocade experience

[James Braunegg]

Dear Tom



Brocade state the X cards supports 1 million routes, but in actual fact this is incorrect. (It’s actually just smart advertising)



The X platform supports 1 million ipv4 routes however, turn on a small section of ipv6 and this drops to 700k ipv4 routes using the profile cam profile ipv4-ipv6-2  turn on some VPN functions and this drops to about 600k routes .. turn on even more IPv6 routes and you get a very small IPv4 FIB which is a lot less than the promised 1 million routes….



When you take into consideration both the IPv4 and IPv6 route tables will keep growing it makes the X2 cards with 2 million (total routes minus features.. you turn on) look very attractive over the X



Please note you cannot use X cards and X2 cards within the same device.



With reference to management cards, we have seen a few of these fail randomly for random reasons including cpu and memory errors which resulted in cards being replaced, however the redundant standby card seamlessly worked every time. Never seen a switch fabric die however these are so cheap they are worth buying.



As for software intricacies never come across any software issues using two management cards its always just worked, the key is to wait for the D or E software release of the code which means you’re always 1 or 2 versions behind the latest firmware.



Kindest Regards


James Braunegg
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-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Lanyon [mailto:tom+ausnog at oneshoeco.com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 12:20 PM
To: James Braunegg
Cc: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net
Subject: Re: [AusNOG] Brocade experience



On Wednesday, 24 September 2014 at 11:31, James Braunegg wrote:

> Dear Tom

>

> I've been using the Brocade MLXe X platform since 2010, however if you are buying new hardware now and require full routes then do not buy the X buy the X2 which supports more routes !



Hi James,



Thanks for the reply.  We don't need a huge number of physical ports, and given the price of the 20-port 10GbE -X2 card compared to the 8-port -X series card, we're willing to sacrifice the extra FIB space!  We can upgrade to -X2 cards or start filtering in the year 2020 if the equipment is still in use and Geoff's predictions are reasonably accurate[1] :)

> I also highly recommend 3 switching fabrics and two managements cards per physical device.



Can you elaborate on this?  I assume you've had good success with the redundant cards taking over after failures?  Are there any software intricacies to look out for when running the redundant fabric and management cards?



Cheers,

Tom



[1] http://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2014-01/bgp2013.html




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