Switches: Cisco vs. HP | The Golden Debate!

Mark · August 27, 2014, 10:49:26 AM

Very common comparison, often with people pushing HP for their lifetime warranty. Yes, HP ProCurve, etc has a good lifetime warranty.... but did you know that Cisco ALSO has a good warranty?

I was looking at some forum where people were debating this ever popular topic and someone mentioned that Cisco has practically the same warranty as HP - it's just not advertised.

Did some research. We have some fancy new Catalyst switches. Looked up the warranty on those switches: http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/general/warranty/EnhLmtdLf_78-19324-01.html#wp8709

The duration of Cisco's warranty is five years after end-of-life of a Catalyst switch for example. I think that's pretty good. I think a switch dieing 5 years after end of life is probably a good time to replace said switch with newer technology anyway.

Just throwing this out there as I had never looked that much into it. I've just always preferred Cisco. I will no longer accept the "HP warranty argument" as valid when comparing switches.

Jeff Golas · August 27, 2014, 03:44:25 PM

Eh...warranty may be good for others though that don't have climate controlled environments, amongst other things where the switches may endure more physical issues. Other than that I have all Procurve, and not only did none of them fail (loudly knocking on wood), but they seem to be pretty good!

I think in the long term swing of things, for firms our size, most of the switching gear we're buying is extreme overkill. In fact I remember reading something somewhere about the best switch for iscsi being a cheapo $200 netgear because it had the least amount of latency amongst MANY low and high end switches.

Mark · August 27, 2014, 03:47:53 PM

Not sure what you're saying regarding the warranty. My point was that both Cisco and HP basically have the SAME warranty. Cisco is just not advertized as such.

Billy Welsh · August 27, 2014, 04:33:50 PM

Agreed. If your Cisco fails past the warranty, it was overdue for replacement. Period. Unless they start getting "cute" with the end of life determinations/designations, which does not seem to be Cisco's way of operating.

Quote from: Mark on August 27, 2014, 03:47:53 PM
Not sure what you're saying regarding the warranty. My point was that both Cisco and HP basically have the SAME warranty. Cisco is just not advertized as such.

Bloody Jack Kidd · August 28, 2014, 01:38:10 PM

I think you get more value on the HP side; we have dozens, if not scores of Cisco switches, for the amount of money that is paid they aren't really any better than far cheaper gear and I have always felt the rather esoteric nature of IOS is purposeful to further promote the somewhat elitist aura that Cisco gear and its fanboys exude.

I have had Cisco support personnel practically berate me for trying to setup a router using the GUI rather than CLI.

Things have changed a bit with ASDM - but even that is a bit quirky.

The last procurve I bought (still running, but not in full production) had a workable web UI, a menu-driven telnet option and the CLI.

All that being said - Procurves are not perfect, but you get really good value for your money.

Mark · August 28, 2014, 02:00:23 PM

Yep. I have a procurve here too. It's not currently being used (and I didn't really like it) but I chose it. They are cheaper too.

Wasn't posting to debate. Just realized that I had a warranty just as good as HP's and thought I would share. Think it has been a misconception to many that if you want a lifetime warranty you should go with the HP and in many forums that DO want to debate, the warranty was often being pushed as the selling point.

Been here ten years and we went like this:

Cisco Catalyst -> Dell -> ProCurve -> Cisco Catalyst

Dell's were cheap. Wasn't impressed with ProCruve, and just feel like I have more insight to what's going on with the Cisco. No expert by any means but I am more comfortable with Cisco as far as configuring, finding what I am looking for, figuring things out, finding community based support, and all around just having things work the way they are supposed to.

I've had Cisco people get all weird on me when I even mention ASDM as well. Never used it on a switch, but I do use it for my ASA for the majority of the things I do. Have actually found that ASDM can over complicate things, too. Limiting bandwitdh for a specific host in my network for example, I could not figure out in ASDM because there were so many options I wasn't sure what I was doing, what I needed, etc. Couple of lines on cli and I was golden. I actually had both open to compare and still don't understand why ASDM was the way it was. Adding the rule via ASDM had too many options. Adding it via cli then view/edit in ASDM had less options (only what I was looking for). /shrug

Jeff Golas · August 28, 2014, 05:24:15 PM

See my problem is simliar....I have a Cisco AP here that in the control panel looks like the settings for the Space Shuttle. I dont understand why they can't just make a clean looking GUI.

Procurve stuff to me has been great...again what do you need to know? Its all pretty spelled out on the web interface as well as the CLI, and the CLI is pretty much identical (if not based off of) IOS.

Vlans? Check. Spanning tree? Check. Link status? check. Label the ports? Check.

What else do you need in a switch? Maybe 802.1x but you can do that too.

Billy Welsh · August 28, 2014, 06:18:18 PM

I have never forgotten the day we replaced our Cisco router with a SonicWall. For a non-tech like me, it was wonderful to from from Cisco's CLI to SonicWall's GUI.

We had real techs install the Cisco, but after that any issues fell on me initially. Even though I grew up on DOS, the Cisco was intimidating and I hated fooling with it.

Mark · August 29, 2014, 08:52:16 AM

Unlike Dos, on Cisco you can just hit a ? and see all your available commands, pick a command and put a ? after it and get more information (the later would be similar to Dos with /? only difference is you need to know the command first). Granted, that's not always enough. I don't configure my ASA fully from cli, but I do my routers and my switches.. they don't really need much. oh, and I like to be able to copy and paste. That makes sure everything is exactly the same and is very quick. Especially when configuring multiple units. Just change the IP and paste the whole configuration.

You know, it's gotta go back to "the right tool for the job" and matching the tools with the people using them is going to be part of picking the right tool.

Jeff Zylstra · August 29, 2014, 10:16:32 AM

I'll show my considerable ignorance here again, but how much difference is there between switches as far as performance, reliability and cost? I use Dell switches because they're cheap and they're fairly reliable. But we probably don't ask much of our switches either. I think I have about 18 computers, about 8 printers hooked up, plus a firewall and our phone system and voice mail. I just plugged the switch in and didn't run any configurations, so I'm not even sure what I'm missing in functionality or diagnostics, reports, etc....

Mark · August 29, 2014, 10:55:00 AM

I like to have a "managed" switch so I can determine what is plugged into each port without trying to trace wires. This helps immensely with troubleshooting. I also use VLANs to segment the network where appropriate, and for VMware I use EtherChannel which is like muxing a group of ports together fir higher performance and redundancy. I also have multiple switches and use an EtherChannel port group between each switch to support high traffic flow.

My Dell web managed switch did some of that, but the biggest thing it DIDN'T do was show me the mac address table which shows what is plugged into where - which is a must have in my mind. The Dell's web interface also started to degrade over time. It would not respond, would not let me log in, and was just all messed up. But, we worked the heck out of them and maybe kept them longer they wanted to live.. Nice thing about them is that they were cheap, so technically we could have replaced them every couple of years if we wanted to. But, I fought with them more than I should have, so I moved on.

Jeff Zylstra · August 29, 2014, 11:04:55 AM

Funny that mentioned the MAC table thing. One of my projects is to label the outlets in the office and match them to the wires and ports on the switches. Sounds like having this functionality might be handy. I've always been a little afraid to turn on the managed functionality of the switch for fear that either I may do something wrong, or that something might get scrambled and it would bring the entire network down. As the only semi computer literate person in the office, I tend to be really, really careful so I don't do anything that could come back and bite me when I'm out of the office and someone else might need to work on the system(s).

Mark · August 29, 2014, 11:30:12 AM

Well, I would first check and see if your version of the Dell switch even gives you the MAC table.

In your case, it doesn't sound like you have a "need" for managed outside of the MAC table and that wasn't a feature on my Dells. But they were circa 2005 or something. Things change so I'd look into it. You might be able to save yourself from some manual labor, lol.

Jeff Golas · August 29, 2014, 12:01:09 PM

For 18 computers...your not gonna see or care much in terms of performance. For larger switches (24 port and up) and larger setups (where your stacking many switches), performance can get into consideration.

For example, whether your daisy-chaining or spoke-n-hubbing (all your switches), one switch (or several) will not only have to carry the traffic of all its ports, but also all the traffic of all the data passing through it as well (whereever it falls in the chain or if its the hub in the spoke and hub scenerio) - thats where CPU and backplane fall into play.

Latency only matters for real-time traffic such as VOIP or iSCSI. For sending a file you wont care that it took .43seconds to begin copying.

Then its all icing on the cake - the management features, VLANs, security, etc etc.

Jeff Golas · August 29, 2014, 12:02:05 PM

Quote from: Mark on August 29, 2014, 11:30:12 AM
Well, I would first check and see if your version of the Dell switch even gives you the MAC table.

In your case, it doesn't sound like you have a "need" for managed outside of the MAC table and that wasn't a feature on my Dells. But they were circa 2005 or something. Things change so I'd look into it. You might be able to save yourself from some manual labor, lol.

I'd be REALLY REALLY REALLY surprised if you can't get a mac table from it, although, I may know what your talking about. I think I have a Dell 2500ish gigabit switch at home.