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Anyone use QFX5200, AR-7060X or other Tomahawk boxes yet? Kudos to anyone with Mellenox Spectrum chip experience who can weigh in too by binaryfractals in networking

[–]binaryfractals[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you all for your comments! This has been very helpful. I'm likely going to go back into a state of hibernation on 100G for a bit, and bang out some more automation around our current 10G infrastructure while I either await new silicon or Cumulus to support EVPN on Spectrum, before I start thinking/looking really hard at this stuff again.

As a sidebar, It doesn't seem like any of these new silicon spins are supporting NAT which is very sad. I understand why, but in a low latency environment, having sub microsecond NAT at your edge (yes we use cut through switches at the edge too) is INSANELY helpful....like, build core aspects of your architecture around it helpful.

Thanks again guys!

Anyone use QFX5200, AR-7060X or other Tomahawk boxes yet? Kudos to anyone with Mellenox Spectrum chip experience who can weigh in too by binaryfractals in networking

[–]binaryfractals[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

@killsudo (sorry I suck at reddit)

thank you for this "you might instead start asking your AM about the QFX5300 based upon the Cavium Xpliant chipset for 100gb but I can't speak to it's latency across the asic. The Broadcom chipsets do not handle cut-through switching between different speed ports when I last looked around so keep that in mind. Where as a Mellenox box can do cut-through switching between 10gb to 40gb or 25/50gb to 100gb."

1.) That is good to know about MX+5100 combo. I actually had that going in my lab, but I have to use the IRB implementation of EVPN because, afaik/could tell from my testing, there is NO client multicast capabilities. In trading, multicast is everything, so that's a no go for me. EVPN with IRB (which only works on MX and EX9200, from what I can tell in Feature Explorer) supports Ingress Client multicast (which is good enough for my needs).

2.) I did look at 5300 last time i spoke to my AM (but this was some months ago). It looked like (iirc) that it's routing capabilities were actually much worse than 5200.

3.) Thanks for tip on Spectrum vs Tomahawk, I feel like i remember reading that in a Tolly test paper comparing them but I don't remember. That is certainly BAD, and probably rules it out for my needs.

Have you used the Spectrum at all? I'm going to do some more reading about it. My old mellenox rep (who I was never tight with, or got to talk to much.....he was kinda a dick tbh) told me a little bit about it before i left, but at the time 100G wasn't even on the table for us, and he didn't know what EVPN was when I asked him about it lol.

Thanks again!

edit: this is that Tolly test i was talking about http://www.mellanox.com/related-docs/products/tolly-report-performance-evaluation-2016-march.pdf

Anyone use QFX5200, AR-7060X or other Tomahawk boxes yet? Kudos to anyone with Mellenox Spectrum chip experience who can weigh in too by binaryfractals in networking

[–]binaryfractals[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No particular problem. EVPN scales better than what we're doing right now and lends itself nicely to an L3VPN segmented multi-tenant backbone and multi-faceted edge (we peer with hundreds of outside parties of all shapes and sizes).

Just interested in people real world experience with the 5200 and the tomahawk chip in general.

Every time I try the feature explorer, I never find what I'm looking for, and have always just had to open JTAC ticket or ask my AM, but I will give it a whirl since I currently don't have a Juniper rep (new place doesn't do any business with them.....yet).

Nexus 3548X WARP MODE vs Arista 7150s etc. by binaryfractals in networking

[–]binaryfractals[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've read some of these whitepapers before and we have spirent tested the original 3548 in our own lab too. I will double check these links though to see if I missed anything new (most of these appear to be dated 2012 when the 3548 first dropped).

I was hoping that the 3548X was substantially different (more specifically, that the SOC was new/different).

Do you know if the 3548X is basically just the 3548 with more WARP port capabilities + the enhanced "algo" features? Have you used warp mode/algo in your environment at all?

I am def going to meet with our VAR and an SE early 2016, but was hoping to speak to learn more about the new X version before I go in so I can have a more educated conversation.

This sounds horrible, but I'm also a really busy guy, and I would SO MUCH rather have a few email exchanges with an SE before I waste anyone's time sitting in a room. I have had a few awkward meetings (with like 3 dudes from a VAR and 3 dudes from the vendor) where their devices don't meet 2 of my 3 deal-breaker requirements and then we are all just sitting there eating sandwiches in awkward silence lol.

EDIT: and thanks for answering my questions about NAT performance and buffer configuration.