On 7/27/21 19:27, William Hilsum wrote:
Cisco are the “reliable” choice and will do what it says – you won’t
go wrong, but expect to pay for it.
Juniper – at higher end will most likely give you the same performance
and save a minimum of ~30%, especially if you have a bid from a rival
vendor…. Just make sure you use their tools/port checker – We had a
client who went for MX204s in order to “go 100Gb” in the near future
whilst allowing them to use a load of 10Gb ports now (and breakouts)…
They declined presales/consultancy and only wanted parts. The MX204
ran out of MACs and they couldn’t utilise all the ports…
I think this is a little subjective, and might directly relate to how
close you are to your SE (Cisco have tended to do this better, I feel)
and how much time you are willing to put in to understand the systems
from either vendor.
Especially nowadays, with the OEM's pushing for license-based hardware
and software features being enabled, it's very easy to run into
surprises months or years after you've made a purchase based on a
promise made by your SE and account team. Lord knows we've run into many
of those ourselves, sadly, especially with Cisco.
My advice would be to get as more involved as you can in your own
outcome. Vendors and their partners have targets to deal with, and while
they want to provide the best value they can to their customers, they
also have limited time (and thus, limited bandwidth) they can expend on
a single customer.
The only people that are 110% invested in your business, is you, the
business owner? If you expect the vendors and their partners to perform
the same way, you will be disappointed if your net is not ready.
Mark.****
