North American Network Operators Group
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Re: Force10 Gear - Opinions

  • From: Stephen Sprunk
  • Date: Tue Aug 26 10:56:00 2008
Paul Wall wrote:
On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 10:34 AM, Matlock, Kenneth L
<[email protected]> wrote:
Does anyone here have real-world experience with Force 10 gear
(Specifically their E-Series and C-Series)? They came and did their
whole dog and pony show today, but I wanted to get real-world feedback
on their gear.

I need to know about their

1) Reliability
2) Performance

EANTC did a comprehensive study of the E-series:

http://www.eantc.de/en/test_reports_presentations/test_reports/force_10_sfm_failover_video_ftos_6211.html

http://www.eantc.com/fileadmin/eantc/downloads/test_reports/2006-2008/Cisco-Force10/EANTC_Full_Report.pdf

http://www.eantc.com/fileadmin/eantc/downloads/test_reports/2006-2008/Cisco-Force10/Section_8.pdf

Standard benchmarketing. Not that I blame Cisco or EANTC for that, since they were debunking some benchmarketing done by Force10 and Tolly, but consider the source (and follow the money) when reading any "independent" test and what that means for accuracy.

80% of the EANTC report can be summed up as "The default CAM profile didn't do what we wanted, and we didn't bother asking Force10 for the commands to make it work." There are indeed some interesting product weaknesses, like any vendor has, but the fact that Force10's CAM can be partitioned to match the buyer's needs, rather than having a fixed configuration that all customers are forced to use, is an advantage in my book.

S

(Disclosure: I am a former employee of both Cisco and Force10, but have no ties to either today.)