Arista Switches

Netflow1354

Has Anyone here ever worked with Arista switches in a Cisco environment?

apr911

Netflow1354,

I know this is a bit of an older thread now and you may have already gotten your answer elsewhere but I have worked with Aristas in a Cisco environment.

Was there something specific you were looking for in regards to that?

They seem to be growing in popularity at least on the lower end of the spectrum (i.e. access switches). Most likely this is due to pricing as you can get a high port density, 10Gbit Arista for a fraction of the price of a Cisco Nexus switch.

matai

We use a pair of 10Gb 24 port switches. The rest of the network is Meraki... they were bought by Cisco.

They work great.

it_consultant

Netflow1354 wrote: »

Has Anyone here ever worked with Arista switches in a Cisco environment?

Nah, not on the low end of the spectrum. They are used in places where extreme low latency is a requirement, like Wall Street. You could buy them for access switching because they are a fraction of the price of Cisco (well...most things are) but their datacenter products are very highly regarded.

apr911

it_consultant,

Lowend maybe isnt the right term here... At 10k a pop, Im not saying arista are low-end but I see a lot more Arista's and other switches feed up to Cisco Nexus Aggrs/Cores than I see the other way around.

I dont really have any complaints about the Arista in general just saying they seem to be used as low latency 10GBit access switches more frequently than cores.

it_consultant

I can easily see that being the case in many environments. Fact is Cisco and Arista support each other's leaf and spine architecture so you can mix and match which is nice. I just implore people not to base your perception of quality quality on the price you paid for a product, I have worked with enough Ciscos and other brands to know that you are mainly paying for the green paint.

Dieg0M

In LLC it will be Cisco Nexus 3548/24 or Arista's. I work for trading firms and mostly use these with proprietary switches.

apr911

Yeah I definitely didnt mean to imply a quality issue. Just that I typically see them deployed at the bottom (and thus of the low-end) of the traditional Core->AGGR->Access RS Topology Model.


So to reword my original statement:

apr911 wrote: »

They seem to be growing in popularity at least on the lower end of the spectrum (i.e. access switches). Most likely this is due to pricing as you can get a high port density, 10Gbit Arista for a fraction of the price of a Cisco Nexus switch.

The Arista is a quality device that is growing in popularity especially as access switches. There introduction into an otherwise Cisco environment is likely attributed to to the fact they provide a high quality, 10Gbps, high port density switch at a fraction of the cost of comparable Cisco Nexus device.



That was the point I was trying to make in the light of the OPS question about working with Arista's in an otherwise Cisco environment but I can easily see how my comments outside of that context implied something entirely different.