I know that this forum requires posters to "do their homework", and I have done it, but I am looking for opinions as I am the only one where I work that deals with this and don't have really anyone to bounce ideas off.
I am replacing some 10G switches that do iSCSI traffic only. This will be all SFP+ at the access layer. I ruled out Arista due to the current hubbub with Cisco, and the sales guys have pretty much stopped emailing me back after i asked for from re-quotes. Brocade hasn't really gotten back to me with anything--no quotes after asking a few times--sales guys have been pretty unresponsive. I put a lot of decision weight on the pre-sales service. The Juniper and Cisco guys have helped a lot and have been very quick to respond. Anyway, I narrowed it down to Cisco Nexus 9300, Juniper QFX5100 and Dell S4048. Spec-wise, the Cisco is on top at either 25MB or 50MB buffers (not really clear from the spec sheet) and 16GB RAM. Juniper 12MB buffers, 8GB RAM. Dell 12MB buffers, 4GB RAM.
Dell is really only on the list due to cost. Cisco is the most expensive, Juniper is 19% less than Cisco and Dell is 35% less than Cisco. Cost isn’t the only factor. I am most familiar with working on Cisco and Dell stuff, but Juniper is offering free training with the purchase.
A little about the environment. Around 300 VMs and around 8 smallish SANs. We have a lot of data for an SMB sized place. As I said, these will be doing iSCSI only for storage and servers, no other networking, although I might create a VLAN for vMotion traffic between the hosts.
I am leaning toward Juniper because it's middle of the road. I used the demo of Junos Space and I like it. I don't like Dell's OMNM very much and I have never used Cisco's DCNM product. I am mostly looking at these tools more for monitoring traffic/latency than setting them up, etc.
Just want to know anyone's thoughts on this. Are the bigger specs of Cisco needed? Is it all overkill and I'd be fine with the Dells? Is learning Juniper a PITA or worth it?
Thanks for any help!
#TheWaterCooler