Be it Aruba or Cisco, probably the biggest challenge when purchasing optics (OEM or third-party) is making sure they are real and not knock-offs. This is especially true If you delve at all into the used market, where even if the remarketer is well known, they can’t tell the difference between a good fake and the real deal.
I purchased a number of Cisco optics years ago. They were in sealed Cisco boxes, had cisco paperwork, were in Cisco sealed bags, and the printing was perfect. They were absolutely fake – The embedded SNs (some duplicated) had yet to be issued by Cisco. It’s not just a Cisco issue as I’ve also come across a lot of fake Finisar’s. Jeff From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> on behalf of "Howard, Christopher" <[email protected]> Reply-To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Date: Thursday, June 30, 2016 at 1:21 PM To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Third Party 10Gbs optics with Aruba Controllers We’re in the same boat. We use a wide variety of vendors for network equipment. For wireless we use Aruba. We very rarely ever use 1st party optics. Aruba has a list on their site that shows “approved” part numbers for optics. http://www.arubanetworks.com/support-services/interoperability/#SFP-XFP You can take those part numbers and quote those out. You will get much better prices than straight from Aruba and you have optics they approve. However, I know for a fact that we are using optics not in that list and have never had an issue with support or reliability. -Christopher On Jun 30, 2016, at 2:00 PM, Adam T Ferrero <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: We are Aruba and happen to have Aruba direct 10G optics sort of unintentionally. We’ve been using Approved Optics parts for Avaya, Palo Alto, Intel, and Check Point for a couple years. Our savings is multiple six figures at this point. No one ever complains about it and we are transparent about the fact that we use them. Should an optic come into question we will do the usual swap/clean optics, fiber jumpers, etc. to identify root cause. It was ruled against the law (Manguson-Moss Act of 1975) for the manufacturers to require you to purchase their optics. Juniper is the only one that has very reasonable pricing for optics so we do purchase them directly. But, we’ve otherwise been completely thrilled with our very affordable, lifetime warrantied optics. When I did the research I was amazed at the number of Fortune 500s and the social media giants that figured this out long ago. Do your homework and I’d expect you’ll find it’s well worth the effort. Adam Ferrero From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Brian Helman Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2016 10:01 AM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: [WIRELESS-LAN] Third Party 10Gbs optics with Aruba Controllers Over on the NETMAN list we have lots of discussions about 3rd party optics. I’m in the process of pricing comparative solutions right now to our existing wireless. FOR EXISTING ARUBA CUSTOMERS .. do you use 3rd party optics on your controllers? If so, have you ever had support issues from Aruba? Feel free to ping me directly. Vendors, this is not a sales opportunity, but if you can answer the questions from a usage/technical viewpoint, that would be great. Thanks! -Brian ____________________________________ Brian Helman, M.Ed | Director, ITS/Networking Services | •: 978.542.7272 Salem State University, 352 Lafayette St., Salem Massachusetts 01970 GPS: 42.502129, -70.894779 ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
