So whats everyone using for switching and servers?

[pduncan66]

3 x Cisco UCS C220M4

2 x Meraki MS420

1 x Nimble CS300

[Kelli]

Phillip -

We are looking at implementing a close setup.  Cisco UCS C220M3 and a Nimble CS215.

Do you like your setup?  How long have you been running this setup?  Did you compare it to anything else?  If I may, what applications are you running?  Exchange?  SQL?

We are still in the discovery phase so any help would be great!

Kelli

[pduncan66]

Hi Kelli,

We are still in the implementation phase of our new environment but so far so good with 1 exception. We've had small issues with how the Meraki switch environment is performing and their support when we think there is a problem. We have been up and running for about 1 month now. The Nimble has been great, and the Cisco UCS have been performing well. Actually, now I remember that there are small issues with the Cisco UCS environment as well, when working with a VMWare hypervisor. Nothing that was too hard to solve but definitely wished it worked out of the box without any hiccups.

We are a Public Safety agency so we had to get multiple vendors and platforms. We mainly compared it to a complete Dell solution (Dell switches, Dell servers, Dell SAN) but decided to go with Cisco and Nimble.

We run a Windows AD environment, with multiple SQL VMs, multiple Exchange 2010 VMs, and other custom app servers. PM me if you want pricing or any other details.

We plan on purchasing another 3-2-1 solution for our secondary 911 center site and will probably go with Nimble/Cisco.

Thanks,

Phil

[Kelli]

Can you follow me so I can PM you..

[ron_fisher]

We have a variety depending on datacenter. Remote datacenters have DL360G8's with 1G or 10G uplinks to either HP A5920 or A5500Hi switches in IRF stacks with CS300's and moldy oldy Equallogic and CS120's.. Wish we would have gone with 380's for more PCI expansion. Main data center we have HPc7000 enclosures with virtual connect (converged FCoE and 10GE) running 10G meshed to HP A5920 IRF stack with CS500 iSCSI and VNX fibre channel connected.. smoking fast

[kevin_hsieh]

My servers are connected to Cisco 4948 or 4948e switches. Anything less than the 4500 series from Cisco really isn't recommended as they don't have the port buffers required to handle microbursts, and you will see lots of dropped frames. I was losing over 1-1.6% with EqualLogic on 3650E switches. My CS300 is connected to some 10G ports on my 6509. All my switches are used, which saves me a bundle. Currently running on R710, which I plan to start replacing in 2016 with newer gear and 10G networking on the host.

[iannoble38]

Cisco 9372TX in NX-OS mode, 48 ports of 10gb base-t & 6 x SFP 40gb uplinks, good value as it was the first Nexus kit in our environment.

I was originally looking at the trident II based switches, the 9372 is trident II too but it also has a Cisco custom asic chip - I liked the extra buffers & micro burst protection that this added.

Could have went for the SFP based model but the extra up front and increased smartnet expense wasn't worth it for our environment, the Nimble supports SFP or 10g Base-T.

[mtedross96]

We are looking at upgrading our Dell power connect 1G iSCSI switches to an affordable 10G-BaseT switch.

We were leaning towards the Netgears. What issues did you have? were you able to fix them through Nimble? or Netgear's support?

I am have a CS300. do you happen to have the same Nimble SAN model?

[pbitpro96]

I would stay away from NetGear... just not worth the perceived value!

For a reliable, solid performing, "value" switch, I've used teh Brocade ICX 6610 with good results for small SANs

Brocade ICX 6610 Switch - Brocade

[dejvnull49]

Hi!

Update on the Netgears... they were very very buggy when trying to add L3 support to them... and really don't use the stacking feature it just is not worth it.

If you run then as L2 switches and have them really dumbed down then they might be ok. Their support is a non-support, overall pretty much non-existent.

After having to many issues with Netgear we switched over to Arista 10GB, which are totally the opposite of Netgear, they are great, their support is great.

We now took the Netgear back in to production for a different set of servers, we run them redundant and non stacked, dumbed down. The only thing we set in them is some VLAN's and Jumbo frames.

Things we know have been very problematic previously are L3, Stacking, NTP, and the web interface.

L3 was just really broken...

All this might be fixed in later updates of the fiwmware, I don't know.

So to finalize, I would not get these for mission critical systems. There are other vendors in a similar price range that are much better. If you can afford then go with Arista they are the shit, and really really stable!

/Dave