From: William Pitcock <nenolod@systeminplace.net>
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2010 13:35:30 -0500
> > I would also add Brocade/Foundry to the mix as well. We've been deploying these switches with great results. Since the IOS is very similar to Cisco's, the transition has been quite easy.
> >
> >
>
>
> Do you still have to pay them to read the manual?
We have plenty of Foundry gear and we've never had to pay anything to
read the manuals for them. Then again, we bought it all new, so it came
with printed manuals.
There's a 1000+ page manual on the management software itself.
The Brocade manuals are good, but you need to have a customer account to
access them. Very annoying when you are trying to do an evaluation.
I have spoken with one of their engineers about that and he said that
they (the engineers and sale folks) are trying to get that changed.
I am guessing they might be referring to the h3c equipment.
3com and Huewai had joint venture, that was bought out by 3com before they were purchased by HP
see http://www.h3cnetworks.com/en_US/index.page
We use the HP as edge switches in the campus networks, and they seem to work well.
I would be interested to hear what people think of the h3c equipment.
Hibernia seem to use them if you read the hp website
Ben
Changes to the Brocade and legacy Foundry support sites are in progress.
The candid comments from the community expressed here in numerous threads
this year have captured your frustration for me to explain to management
in far better words than I can write myself. I've had several mail and
phone conversations with the team in charge of our support site about our
current practice of requiring a login to access documentation, and they
understand why this is not at all helpful and a bad way of doing business.
It's the way it is for various historical reasons.
Product documentation will be freely available on the new MyBrocade support
site that is under construction. This is part of a huge effort to integrate
the disparate support sites' software, knowledge bases, manuals, etc. into
one new happy place.
Stand by, and thanks for your patience.
Greg
(works for Brocade)
Product documentation will be freely available on the new MyBrocade
support
site that is under construction. This is part of a huge effort to
integrate
the disparate support sites' software, knowledge bases, manuals, etc.
into
one new happy place.
Stand by, and thanks for your patience.
Greg
(works for Brocade)
--
I brought up the issue to Martin Skagen last year in San Francisco and
we probably chatted for over an hour on that subject. There is a
certain leverage that the community having access to manuals provides to
a manufacturer. If people who might never buy a support contract can
pick up a piece of gear and find the manuals for it, particularly
someone who might be just learning about your products, you might be
able to create a loyal customer for many years to come. As it currently
stands, a piece of used (but still quite viable) Brocade/Foundry gear
might be quite useless to and avoided by someone in that category.
From personal experience, I often like to peruse manuals of new
equipment in order to judge the value of new features. The availability
of the manual can generate a sale if I can see that a feature would be
of value in the network. One can often obtain a better idea of how the
feature works from reading the manual than from some marketing slick.
It would also be important to have access to old manuals, too, for gear
that is no longer manufactured. Enabling self-support is also a way to
install brand loyalty.
Getting back to HP gear, I haven't had a problem with the rebranded
Brocade stuff but there was a line of low-end switches that gave me fits
for a couple of years. I think others have mentioned the same issue
where they would simply decide to start dropping packets on all ports.
Kicking the switch every week or so was the only cure. Don't have them
in the network anymore so I don't know if they fixed it.