Business infrastructure

[nunners]

Hi all.

My software development company is renewing its IT infrastructure. We used to have servers etc but everything is in the cloud these days.

We have 20 laptops and a VPN requirement with 3 voip phones.

Our current provider is recommending an Extreme ERS 3626 switch. But I think this is overkill given we host everything on various Iaas providers.

What would be a suitable managed POE switch with same managed capabilities as the Extreme ERS 3626 model.

I would rather not pay £2k+ for a switch….. but if this is what I need, so be it!

Thanks all

[ffc]

What do you mean by "managed capabilities"?

In most cases you might want VLAN's and SNMP states retrieval for management. There are a myriad of cheap swithes that can do this. Examples are:

TP-Link TL-SG3452 JetStream 48-Port Smart Managed Rackmount Gigabit Switch w/ 4 x 1G SFP Ports
Ubiquiti USW-48 UniFi 48-Port Managed GbE Access Switch w/ 4 x 1G SFP Ports
NETGEAR GS752TPv3 48-Port Smart Managed Pro Rackmount Gigabit PoE+ Switch w/ 4 x 1G SFP Ports (380W)

All less than £600 from the site I looked up. Ask your provider what the Extreme switch will give you that these won't and then ask whether that is worth the price difference. I suspect it isn't and that your provider is just an Extreme reseller. Are they providing you with any professional services for this?

[colin79666]

Have a look at fs.com switches. Something like this is under £1500 inc vat.

https://www.fs.com/uk/products/115386.html?now_cid...

Very similar to Cisco from a command line point of view. We use a lot of them where Cisco or HPE are just overkill and too expensive. That has a couple of 10Gbit SFP+ ports if your WAN is/may in future be over 1Gbit.

Thing is though your msp may well be an extreme house and want to stick with what they know and can support. Or as has been said, they could be a reseller who wants to get their cut.

[quinny100]

I'd recommend the Aruba/HPE Networking Instant range for no nonsense managed office switch. The 1930 would be a close match for that Extreme unit.

Cisco C1000 are OK for small sites too.

You're less likely to run into a service affecting software issue with these compared to the likes of TP-Link or Ubiquiti. I'd steer clear of Netgear - I've seen their kit fail in bizarre ways too many times.

[colin79666]

quinny100 said:

I'd recommend the Aruba/HPE Networking Instant range for no nonsense managed office switch. The 1930 would be a close match for that Extreme unit.

Unknown at this time what the Juniper acquisition will do to Aruba. Unlikely they will kill it off overnight but something will have to give in the merger and they are buying Juniper for their tech, especially MIST.

We are all really guessing here without knowing all the requirements. On the face of it the Extreme option seems, well, extreme, but there may be things we are missing. For example the switch proposed does POE+ and has SFP+ ports. Of course you can get switches for half the price that don't have these but we don't know if the OP's business setup needs those functions.

[quinny100]

colin79666 said:

Unknown at this time what the Juniper acquisition will do to Aruba. Unlikely they will kill it off overnight but something will have to give in the merger and they are buying Juniper for their tech, especially MIST.

You're not wrong, but it's overthinking it in terms of a few hundred quid investment. The low end stuff I've recommended is somewhere HPE has long operated and where Juniper doesn't have an equivalent offering. HPE are still selling Comware kit despite telling everyone it'll be killed off next quarter for at least 3 years now.

FWIW my prediction is HPE will support CX OS on Mist fairly quickly but CX and JunOS will both live on until at least 2030 - and possibly much longer than that given the big iron stuff like MX routers aren't likely to change. Much of the switch hardware is commodity Broadcom stuff so it's not too much of a stretch to suggest a unified hardware line with choice of OS may - which is exactly path Cisco are going down with Catalyst hardware on Meraki - they just announced EOS on MS switches with C9k as the reccomended replacement.

[nunners]

ffc said:

What do you mean by "managed capabilities"?

In most cases you might want VLAN's and SNMP states retrieval for management. There are a myriad of cheap swithes that can do this. Examples are:

TP-Link TL-SG3452 JetStream 48-Port Smart Managed Rackmount Gigabit Switch w/ 4 x 1G SFP Ports
Ubiquiti USW-48 UniFi 48-Port Managed GbE Access Switch w/ 4 x 1G SFP Ports
NETGEAR GS752TPv3 48-Port Smart Managed Pro Rackmount Gigabit PoE+ Switch w/ 4 x 1G SFP Ports (380W)

All less than £600 from the site I looked up. Ask your provider what the Extreme switch will give you that these won't and then ask whether that is worth the price difference. I suspect it isn't and that your provider is just an Extreme reseller. Are they providing you with any professional services for this?

This is where my knowledge ends somewhat - The tech guys insist on it being a managed switch, so I presumed there was some settings which need to be set in order for it to work.

I have since checked the 'Extreme ReSeller Network' and I can see they are on it, so this is why Extreme is being pushed.

I will send those details of those switches out to him and see what he says thank you

[nunners]

colin79666 said:

Have a look at fs.com switches. Something like this is under £1500 inc vat.

https://www.fs.com/uk/products/115386.html?now_cid...

Very similar to Cisco from a command line point of view. We use a lot of them where Cisco or HPE are just overkill and too expensive. That has a couple of 10Gbit SFP+ ports if your WAN is/may in future be over 1Gbit.

Thing is though your msp may well be an extreme house and want to stick with what they know and can support. Or as has been said, they could be a reseller who wants to get their cut.

Yes a ReSeller from what i have found out.

I would rather spend about £500 on the switch - I don't think we need Enterprise grade equipment as we have no hardware/servers in the office

[nunners]

quinny100 said:

I'd recommend the Aruba/HPE Networking Instant range for no nonsense managed office switch. The 1930 would be a close match for that Extreme unit.

Cisco C1000 are OK for small sites too.

You're less likely to run into a service affecting software issue with these compared to the likes of TP-Link or Ubiquiti. I'd steer clear of Netgear - I've seen their kit fail in bizarre ways too many times.

thanks you I will take a look at those too

[nunners]

colin79666 said:

quinny100 said:

I'd recommend the Aruba/HPE Networking Instant range for no nonsense managed office switch. The 1930 would be a close match for that Extreme unit.

Unknown at this time what the Juniper acquisition will do to Aruba. Unlikely they will kill it off overnight but something will have to give in the merger and they are buying Juniper for their tech, especially MIST.

We are all really guessing here without knowing all the requirements. On the face of it the Extreme option seems, well, extreme, but there may be things we are missing. For example the switch proposed does POE+ and has SFP+ ports. Of course you can get switches for half the price that don't have these but we don't know if the OP's business setup needs those functions.

So we have fibre into the office, so i will presumably need the SPF ports. The IT guys also provide us with the internet connect as the (one of many) data centres are next door to our office.

We have VOIP phones which are powered over POE.

We also have some hardware to control our VPN (which may of been some use when we had servers in the office but we don't now), So thinking a cloud VPN service will suit us, as we need that service for a few clients we serve.

Thanks

[camel_landy]

If you're looking at the Juniper range (which I find a lot easier to manage than Cisco), then something like the EX4400, with POE & a line card for the SFP connection.

Either way: Write down some requirements & use cases... Scribble a fag-packet diagram of what would bring it all together and then get it sanity checked by someone else. Once you have that, do some research into the hardware, not forgetting to add in some extra capacity for expansion.

My 2p.

M

[biggiles]

If the POE is only for the telephones, then it might be easier to have 2 devices. No point having it all in one device?

One VPN-capable router, and one POE managed switch.

If these are laptops, then presumably there will be wifi APs in the office as well, which your provider will need to tie into the requirements. That big Extreme switch does seem extreme, when you consider what a little £100-200 business-grade router will do these days. If this really is just for VPN-VOIP access, then your needs are very simple; I've used a basic TP-Link POE VPN router for similar use cases in the past.

(But ultimately your chosen provider will have to support whatever gets sourced, so they need the final say.)

Edited by biggiles on Saturday 7th September 17:27

[ffc]

nunners said:

This is where my knowledge ends somewhat - The tech guys insist on it being a managed switch, so I presumed there was some settings which need to be set in order for it to work.

I have since checked the 'Extreme ReSeller Network' and I can see they are on it, so this is why Extreme is being pushed.

I will send those details of those switches out to him and see what he says thank you

I preume they need to monitor it and login to make config changes or fix things. It's doesn't need to be expensive or big name to achieve these things.

Switch functionality is largely commoditosed today so cheap devices are very effective. It's only when more sophisticated management is required (Mist and Meraki tye stuff as mentioned above) that things should get more expensive.

[ffc]

quinny100 said:

FWIW my prediction is HPE will support CX OS on Mist fairly quickly

That would be a first. Nothing has appeared quickly in Mist yet, althought it's a big improvement of any of Junipers previous attempts at management products.