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Hi,
What is your personal opinion about the best pro (or semi-pro) switches available? And how are Allied Telesyn's 8350 and 8326, or Planet switches?
Of course everyone will say cisco because they are the leader but I feel are overpriced .for features and performance I think Foundry is at the top . Cisco can make some good switches and then we have run some that were absolutely terrible reliability wise. HP makes some decent decently priced switches and they have a lifetime warranty I believe.
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Nope, not everyone will say Cisco. I work with their products day in and day out and while more flexible on the whole....they're harder to configure. Personally, I think that's because they want to make you pay through the nose for overpriced training. Also, they kill you on support packages.
Where I work, we're replacing all Cisco managed switches with Nortel Baystack 5510/20's. (we have approx 100 managed switches in our WAN, cascaded in stacks of 2 to 4 per wiring closet running VLAN's) They're very nice units and can almost everything a Cisco can and do it easier either via the console connection, a telnet connection or through the GUI which is so much better than Cisco's there's no comparison.
Life time warranty or not, you couldn't give me anything HP makes other than printers. I've worked on far too many HP devices (ie: printers, PC's and laptops) and had far FAR too many headaches with their so-called "support" to ever want to send even one dollar their way again. If they should some time in the future figure out what support really means and offer it, I might change my mind. It might be tempting to purchase a life time warranty device from them but if one ever breaks, you'll understand totally why I said what I just said.
There are many manufacturers out there. Besides the Nortel devices, you will want to look at 3com, Foundry and Alcatel. They all make some very good managed switches that are also easier to setup/maintain than Cisco's. There are numerous other companies out there worth looking into too so I highly recommend you do some serious shopping around before making a final choice. Compare features, support, and prices before coming to a final decision.
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Say what you want about HP, but their servers kick butt....except for their very high prices.
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Actually hero, we use custom built 2 and 4 U servers at work that HP couldn't touch. Say what you want but we've got at least one of every kind in our main server room (Compaq, HP, IBM etc etc) and our hardware guy who's been testing different brands/models for years finally decided on these because of price, reliability and performance.
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"Actually hero, we use custom built 2 and 4 U servers at work that HP couldn't touch."
It's the little things HP does right that make them so good. Easy firmware and driver upgrades. ILO. Easy ability to change a bad power supply or hard drive. Easy setup of the OS, etc. They also use very good quality hardware.
When you're managing hundreds of servers, these things matter big time.
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When you're managing hundreds of servers, these things matter big time.
I couldn't agree more. All our servers have everything hot swappable that can be. PSU's, HDD's etc etc. All updating of BIOS, Controller cards, firmware is quite simple.
Out of the 50 or so servers that have been purchased since I started working here 6 months ago, only one has had any problems. The replacement system board was here within two business days and the server back up and in production within an hour or so of the part arriving.
I think our one big advantage over your situation is we don't have to waste any time at all trying to get through to a "technician" on the phone. Our hardware guy takes care of everything himself including RMA'ing bad parts and acquiring replacements.
Perhaps the server side of HP is better than the PC/Printer side where support is concerned. I don't know as I haven't worked with any HP servers yet. But I do know from personal experience that the PC/Printer support is beyond terrible. First you have to fight through the voice menu system which as often as not directs you to the wrong department. Then the person you are speaking to sends you to the wrong department.....in my case I usually got the US tech support instead of the Canada tech support......which meant hanging up and starting the whole process over because the many times I tried to let the US tech support redirect me to the Canadian I never made it. Then there was the time I dialed the toll free number and got some insurance company.....HP/Compaq's telco messed up (ok, technically that's not HP's fault, but when you need to order parts now, it's not much help). So after messing around on the phone for way longer than necessary, you finally do get a "technician" on the phone only to discover these people aren't real technicians and can only answer questions that appear in their Q/A database. If you have the temerity to request to speak with the 2nd level support (ie: someone who actually has worked on the equipment) you're told "Oh, we have no 2nd level support, we ALL get the same training"
I know we all have or favorites and of course the opposite side of that same coin. My dislike for HP/Compaq stems from more of the above type situations than I care to think about. I've had many excellent experiences working with IBM equipment of all kinds from PC's to high end servers. I found their support to be one of the best around. Of course, that may change with the sale of the PC department to a Korean company.....I guess we'll know if it does when the PC support contract with IBM runs out in a few years. I'll be honest, I wasn't too sure about the custom built server idea until I got to see a few of these units and work with them. I'm really quite impressed and from what I see, the failure rate on them is a lot lower than any other type (brand) of server I've ever worked with.
Have you ever worked with any other kind of server besides HP? I'm just trying to get a handle on why you seem such an ardent HP supporter. You don't work for HP do you?
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