Cisco vs. HP Procurve
January 8th, 2007
“I woke up this morning, saw the news and laughed in your face.” In 2000, these exact words were spoken to me by a Cisco representative. Not a reseller, mind you, but an actual Cisco employee. In 1999, while working as an Associate Director of Information Technology at a college in upstate New York, where I managed the Network Services group, we had a need to upgrade the campus network electronics. Network utilization had been increasing more than originally planned for, necessitating a new core switch and most of the edge electronics. In short, at that time, my testing narrowed down to two vendors: 3Com and Cisco.
Both solutions were technically sufficient and both had all of the features that I was looking for. At the end of the day, I selected a 3Com CoreBuilder 9000 series switch at the core. While both solutions were sufficient, the 3Com solution was much less expensive. Further, at the time, the CoreBuilder was better at routing AppleTalk at the core of the network. At this time, this feature was a major consideration.
The network core was installed and went into production in very late 1999/early 2000. In March of that year, 3Com–on a whim, it seemed–dropped their enterprise networking line. This move surprised a ton of people including customers, analysts, and even 3Com sales people.
Soon thereafter, I presented at an educational conference where I ran into the Cisco sales person that I had worked with on the networking project. At this conference, he uttered the words I wrote above. By that point, I had moved to Maryland and taken another job, only traveling back to New York State for the conference. I didn’t think that this was the most professional thing that the sales person could say. However, since I had moved to Maryland, the chances of our paths crossing again were slim.
Fast forward 4 years.
In 2004, I moved from Maryland back to upstate New York where I was the Director of Information Technology for Elmira College in Elmira, New York. When I started in this position, one of the first things I did was analyze the budget to determine where we could free up funds that were not being spent in the best way possible. One line, Cisco SmartNet, stuck out very clearly, eating up close to 16% of the non-salary IT operating budget. At the same time, the edge equipment (Cisco) in use on the network was approaching end of life, meaning that it would no longer be eligible for maintenance under SmartNet. Further, edge switches were failing fairly regularly. One way or another, it was time to begin considering replacement hardware.
After analysis, we came down to Cisco and HP Procurve. The cost differential was dramatic, with an HP 10/100 edge switch costing significantly less than a comparable Cisco switch. Further, the HP gear came with a full lifetime warranty, while the Cisco equipment came with only a 5 year limited warranty. With testing, we found that the HP edge equipment fit 100% of our needs, and with a total 5 year price tag that was on the order of 70% less than Cisco. Done deal.
The only part of the network that we could not address was the core, which is now a Cisco Catalyst 6513 switch with supervisor 720 modules. We were happy to keep Cisco at the core since HP did not have a reasonable offering at that time.
After more than a year in operation, I can safely say that the project was an astounding success, both technically and financially.
Fast forward to October 2006. I am now the CIO at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. Upon my arrival, one of the first things I am told is that we need new edge network equipment that will cost about $200,000 plus annual SmartNet costs. The existing network is all Cisco, with a Catalyst 6506 at the core. However, this Catalyst is running the original supervisor module, so it’s not exactly high-end.
Cut to the end: At the end of this week, we will be accepting delivery of 200 boxes of networking gear… from HP. We will be replacement the core of the network with an HP Procurve 5412zl switch, and all edge gear with Procurve 2650 switches from HP. Further, using HP Procurve 5300 series switches as controllers, we will be deploying 100 thin (radio port 220 and 230) access points to provide a full campus wireless network. In addition, UPSs in each wiring closet will be replaced and power over Ethernet injectors will be installed in each closet.
The total cost of both the wired and wireless gear is much less than the cost would have been to replace just the wired edge gear with new Cisco equipment. In fact, I placed the HP gear on a 5 year lease that costs the same as SmartNet does this year. That means that, as time goes on, my organization saves money since the lease rate will not jump. Some years, SmartNet increases are in the double digits.
I really like what Procurve has to offer. Their support is very good, the product is stable and reliable. Further, HP just keeps getting better. With 2006’s introduction of the 5400 series, HP made it possible for my new organization to completely remove Cisco from the equation–and save a ton of cash in the process.
Ok… so Exchange 2007 isn’t *all* good.
January 1st, 2007
First off, I should preface this by saying that, while I really, really like Exchange 2007, I never thought that everything about Exchange 2007 was 100% positive. There will be some deployment challenges, to be sure. But, Microsoft cut some pretty important corners that just make no sense. I read somewhere that the Exchange team put everything on a list and those elements that couldn’t be fit into the schedule got chopped. This is a very reasonable approach, but the team made a couple of serious mistakes.
- Inability to view public folders from within Outlook Web Access 2007: Even though this ability is slated to return to the product with Exchange 2007 SP1, this exclusion means that many organizations will simply not be able to upgrade until the functionality comes back. Removing commonly used functionality from a product makes it extremely difficult for IT managers to upgrade to newer versions of a product. Now, if this was to be a permanent exclusion, it would be nice for Microsoft to just come out and say so. Sure, it would mean that IT managers would need to work out an alternative, such as SharePoint, but would allow real planning to take place.
- Missing GUI-based management functionality: It’s been written about forever - *nix admins love to use a command line and Windows admins love to use a GUI. With Exchange 2007, Microsoft has provided a partially finished GUI and included PowerShell, a really good shell providing 100% of the management functionality needed for Exchange. Note that I said “partially finished GUI” in that last sentence. This is a bad thing. For example, you can’t manage the POP3 or IMAP services at all with the GUI at this point. Instead, you must use the command line-based management shell. Repeat after me: Windows admins use GUIs. Now, this is not to say that a command line is a negative. To the contrary, PowerShell will make scripting events much easier than it ever could have been in the past. But, eliminating GUI-based management for common tasks just makes no sense whatsoever. Making sure that the management console was airtight should have been job #1 before shipping. Again, some of these missing management elements are slated to return with SP1.
Ok… off my soapbox for now. I really want to love Exchange 2007. And, I do… mostly. The Exchange team did a lot of things right, and, overall, the Exchange Management Console makes a lot more sense than Exchange System Manager ever did. But, there were just some unforgiveable cut corners made that will make deployment very difficult, or delay Exchange 2007 deployments until the milestone SP1 release.
TechRepublic: An introduction to the Microsoft Office 2007 ribbon interface
December 18th, 2006
I’ve been using Office 2007 since very, very early betas and now have quite a few months of use under my belt. In short: I love the new interface and some of the new features. I wasn’t quite this happy with the new interface when I first started to use it, and I still find the occasional frustration, but overall, I think the new interface makes a lot more sense than an endless stream of menu choices. In this TechRepublic article, I give you a look at the new Ribbon interface.
TechRepublic: Exchange 2007 goes gold! What will tarnish deployments?
December 16th, 2006
My last post talked about a feature missing from Exchange 2007 that I think will negatively affect a number of organizations. In this TechRepublic article, I talk about some other factors that may have a negative impact on uptake for Exchange 2007. Don’t get me wrong; I actually really like Exchange 2007. It’s by far the most substantial upgrade since Exchange 5.5 and includes some great new stuff. But, we have to inject some reality into the hype, too.
Exchange 2007 available for download
December 15th, 2006
I tend to keep an eye on what’s going on in the Exchange world, particular since I write e-mail tips for TechRepublic and am currently co-authoring the Microsoft Exchange 2007 Administrator’s Companion. Within the past couple of days, Microsoft has made available for download a 120-day demo of Exchange 2007.
Personally, I’m very pleased with Exchange 2007, with one major exception: The inability to access public folders using Outlook Web Access 2007. Unfortunately, without this capability, which is rumored to be returning in service pack 1, I can’t deploy Exchange 2007 at work.
Grab the download and take a look. The Exchange team has done some pretty cool things with Exchange.
« Previous Page