[AusNOG] Brocade experience

Fri Sep 26 09:47:49 EST 2014

Dear All

The X2 cards will physically work with X cards in the same box… but will be limited to the capacity of X cards….  you can also put M cards in which would make all cards to the capacity of M (Sorry for not being clear before)

The X2 cards are released you can buy them from Brocade right now…. So if you’re buying cards buy x2 cards to future proof yourself if you want full routes and features for IPv4 and IPv6, however firmware v5.7 only supports 1M routes, v5.8 will supports 2M.  v5.8 is expected to be released next year.  … and I would not expect a stable version of 5.8 to be ready until the end of next year or later… lucky the internet would have not grown that much by then ;)

Kindest Regards

James Braunegg
P:  1300 769 972  |  M:  0488 997 207 |  D:  (03) 9751 7616
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This message is intended for the addressee named above. It may contain privileged or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient of this message you must not use, copy, distribute or disclose it to anyone other than the addressee. If you have received this message in error please return the message to the sender by replying to it and then delete the message from your computer.

From: i3D.net - Martijn Schmidt [mailto:martijnschmidt at i3d.nl]
Sent: Friday, September 26, 2014 8:46 AM
To: James Braunegg; Tom Lanyon; 'i3D.net - Martijn Schmidt'
Cc: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net
Subject: Re: [AusNOG] Brocade experience

Hello James, Tom,

Just rephrasing this: "Please note you cannot use X cards and X2 cards within the same device." To this, to the best of my knowledge: "You can use X cards and X2 cards within the same device, but the X cards will bottleneck the performance of your chassis."

One other interesting fact: X2 cards behave like X cards until a certain as of yet unreleased firmware branch is installed -- and I fully concur with James when he says that it's best to wait for Brocade to release a few patches before hopping onto a new branch. As of right now 5600 still seems relatively mistrusted by the f-nsp community, 5500 is stable for us but will no longer receive patches because it's not LTS, 5400 is stable and receiving patches but it's also relatively old (e.g. doesn't run on "new" hardware like the 4x10G CER model).

Best regards,
Martijn Schmidt

James Braunegg <james.braunegg at micron21.com<mailto:james.braunegg at micron21.com>> , 25/9/2014 1:02 AM:

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
P:  1300 769 972  |  M:  0488 997 207 |  D:  (03) 9751 7616

E:   james.braunegg at micron21.com<mailto:james.braunegg at micron21.com>  |  ABN:  12 109 977 666
W:  www.micron21.com/ddos-protection<http://www.micron21.com/ddos-protection>   T: @micron21

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This message is intended for the addressee named above. It may contain privileged or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient of this message you must not use, copy, distribute or disclose it to anyone other than the addressee. If you have received this message in error please return the message to the sender by replying to it and then delete the message from your computer.

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Lanyon [mailto:tom+ausnog at oneshoeco.com<mailto:tom+ausnog at oneshoeco.com>]
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2014 12:20 PM
To: James Braunegg
Cc: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net<mailto: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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Best regards,

Martijn Schmidt
http://www.i3D.net

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