The Sun Blade Blog
Cisco 3120 for HP C-Class
Someone brought this new(?) Cisco 3120 switch for the HP Chassis to my attention.
The 3120 has additional management features and provides 10G uplinks to the chassis.
These are all features that have been available in the top of the
rack solutions for some time -> Blade switches lag in functionality available in industry standard switches.
The management features are touted to "allows multiple switches to
act as a single entity". This is a critical requirement in a chassis
switch architecture where eliminating cables can increase the number of
switches to manage by 4X.
The price of the new switch 2X the price of
the existing embedded Cisco switch which means that the acquisition
cost of the HP I/O architecture is 4X Sun's for a standard 4 chassis, 2
GbE ports per blade, redundant config!
HP:
- 4 Chassis
- 2 Switches per chassis
- 3120 Price $10,599
Total= $84,792
Sun
- 4 Chassis
- 2 GbE NEMs per chassis @$500 per
- 2 4948 Cisco Switches @ $7,500 per
Total = $19,000
This does not even address the performance, servicability and
reliability impacts that result from an increased number of switches in
the architecture introduced in the cable reduction scenario.
Posted at 06:52PM May 03, 2008 by blades in Sun | Comments[3]
the best thing to do when researching Cisco parts and pricing is to enter the model number in Google search and then enter the words "list price" to see the various performance reviews and information on the part.
Posted by Holly Wild on August 28, 2008 at 11:23 AM PDT #
Yes, but at the end of the day you would own an HP Bladesystem, not a pieced together annoyingly loud bunch of SUN servers on their side.
Posted by Jeff Allen on August 28, 2008 at 09:12 PM PDT #
Additionally, you do not have to run Cisco switches in your HP Bladesystem, you can run HP switches or even passthrough ethernet connections to an external switch.
The problem with your Sun config is that you'll need to run 96 UTP patch cables from your blade chassis to the top of rack switches; what a nightmare!!
Posted by Tom Lanyon on October 06, 2008 at 05:39 PM PDT #