We are really excited about the latest addition to our networking portfolio: a line of industry-leading, Dell-branded Juniper products. The Juniper line represents a best-in-class set of security and switching products that will help our customers stay at the forefront of new networking technologies / techniques while also driving down the cost of purchasing, upgrading, and maintaining their networks. "
-- Paymon Farazi, Dell Networking



Technical Community - Background Reading


Virtual Chassis Technology page on TechCenter

BLOG


Dell-Juniper Networking Portfolio Launched


PowerConnect J-EX4200 Series Switch Information

PowerConnect J-EX4200 Series Spec Sheet

PowerConnect J-EX4200 Switch Lineup

PowerConnect J-EX8208 modular Ethernet chassis

PowerConnect J-EX8208 Product Page

PowerConnect J-EX8208 Spec Sheet

Power Connect J-EX8216

PowerConnect J-EX8216 Product Page

PowerConnect J-EX8216 Spec Sheet

PowerConnect J-SRX Services Gateway

PowerConnect J-SRX Product Lineup

J-SRX100 Spec Sheet

J-SRX210 Spec Sheet

J-SRX240 Spec Sheet


Chat Transcript



Dell-Jeff_S Welcome to the TechTuesday Chat—just a few housekeeping items and we'll jump right in.
Dell-Jeff_S First up—this is an informal discussion, feel free to jump in and ask your questions at any time.
Dell-Jeff_S No need to take notes, the transcripts will be posted in the next day or two.
Dell-Jeff_S And last, if you see a link, right click on it, as the interface may cause you to have to rejoin.
Dell-Jeff_S There have been a number of recent announcements regarding a recent partnership with Juniper Networks. Today on hand, as you can tell, we have a number of experts from both Juniper and Dell to talk about our strategy, solutions and anything else you want to hear about.
HoosierCAB These dang students are starting to come back.
Dell-ScottH Ohh yeah, hustle and bustle of the school year—you need some bigger network switches, right? :-)
HoosierCAB Nah, that's not my department. We did just migrate three 2850 fileservers to a single Dell PowerEdge R710 and a Dell PowerVault MD1200 though.
Dell-ScottH Cool, virtualized?
Nace.Tech Can I have info on how Juniper or Dell fiber switches can help my VMWare infrastructure? Currently have four hosts plugged into a big ole’ HP switch.
Dell-Jeff_S What are some of the challenges you folks are facing when it comes to DataCenter Network point of view?
Dell-ScottH Let's get you off the HP Switch—any tech docs available on networking best practices on the Juniper switches?
HoosierCAB Unfortunately, no, someone up the chain wasn't comfortable with virtualizing file servers.
Emptyone Know about the Juniper firewalls, but not too much of what else Juniper has to offer. And what products will Dell have in?
Dell-ScottH @hoosier: Wow, that's the lowest hanging fruit of all.
Dell-ScottH Yes, is there any difference in the Junos of Dell PowerConnect J-series and switches directly from Juniper? Do I get update images from Dell or from Juniper, and does it matter?
Dell-DennisS @emptyone: Here is link for the current J-series offerings http://www.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/networking/switch-powerconnect-j/cp.aspx?refid=switch-powerconnect-j&s=biz&cs=555.
Juniper-ChandraP Dell PowerConnect J-series switches, which run Junos—same Operating System as Juniper T1600 routers—are designed for High Availability and High Performance and validated to work with VMWare.
Emptyone And how will Juniper switches be for iSCSI compared to Dell's?
Juniper-ChandraP Dell PowerConnect J-EX4200 provides the scalability as a Virtual Switch, so you have the option to grow as needed, but same time have redundancy.
Nace.Tech Thanks Chandrap. I'll do some additional reading.
Juniper-JeffC Juniper switches will offer comparable iSCSI performance to Dell's.
Juniper-ChandraP Dell PowerConnect J-series are Dell switches now running Junos Os for high performance and High availability as a inherent Junos feature.
Nace.Tech I have a kicker question. I recently purchased two WatchGuard XTM 520s and wanted to do Active/Active. Then I find out the only switches that WatchGuard can confirm that do active/active because of the manual ARP entries needed is Cisco. Can you tell if I can do active/active with Juniper switches? Meaning can they do manual ARP (address resolution protocols) entries?
Emptyone We have three main sites, with about 150 to 200 users. Different brands of switches today. How about switches with redundancy, like dual power? Possible in "lower" ranges?
Juniper-JeffC Yes, the Juniper (Dell PowerConnect J-series) switches support manual ARP entries.
Juniper-ChandraP Dell PowerConnect J-EX4200 for branch will be way to get redundancy at PSU, as well as network level, and you may achieve network level redundancy by using the virtual switch configuration on the Dell PowerConnect J-EX4200.
Dell-ScottH Is there a place to go for whitepapers on Junos? What about a community site for users Q&A?
jhutches Yes, you can do manual ARP entries on all Juniper switches. Also on the question about redundancy, the Dell PowerConnect J-EX4200 has many redundant features. From the virtual chassis features, you can configure LAGs (link aggregation groups). You can also have redundant internal power supplies on a 1 U 48 port switch. In fact, it is the only one made that does this.
Nace.Tech Here is the official response: "IGMP multicast will not make the multicast MAC address currently used for Active/Active mode FireCluster work. The switch must either support static ARP or the switch must allow IP addresses to be bound to multicast Mac addresses via ARP."
Nace.Tech Which the switches I have cannot do.
jhutches You can go to www.juniper.net and get all kinds of whitepapers and research and even knowledgebase stuff.
Juniper-ChandraP Emptyone: Do you have A private leaseline across the three main sites or are you using L2/L3 VPN or VPLS connectivity across the locations?
Emptyone If I understand the info correctly, configure it as virtual switch, then you can switch at different locations and only need to configure one place, for example VLAN, and it will be ready to use at all switches?
Emptyone Using VPN via Forefront TMG (threat management gateway) today on the three main sites.
Juniper_Julie You can visit Junos Central at www.juniper.net/junos for technical information and resources about Junos.
Dell-ScottH Nice community site - http://www.juniper.net/us/en/community/
Emptyone What if one switch in the virtual chassis fails, will it just be to replace it with a new one, and the configuration will be transferred?
Juniper-ChandraP Emptyone, all the switches connected in virtual switch mode act as a single system with one acting as a Master RE and Second as redundancy RE and Rest as PFE so yes you just have to configure it once.
jhutches That is correct. It is completely transparent. One switch is the master route engine; one is the backup RE, the rest act as linecards. They will automatically elect new RE's if one of them fails.
Juniper-ChandraP Yes, you can do that using 10G or 1G fiber connect for connecting the Virtual chassis if they are far apart
jhutches The VC acts exactly like a real chassis. The failover times are comparable.
Emptyone We have an old HP as main switch at one site today, and that is also GW/router for all the VLAN's. If that goes down, we have a heck of a job getting things up again :)
Juniper-ChandraP Recovery for RE failure in most cases is in milliseconds.
Emptyone So we are looking for a solution if something like that happens, then we just have to replace the switch or have one in spare, and then just move cables.
jhutches Emptyone, you need to upgrade with Juniper/Dell. You need the redundancy capabilities. Sounds also like you may have some spanning tree issues. With Juniper EX4200 Virtual Chassis you eliminate spanning tree between switches.
Juniper-ChandraP Emptyone, based on your requirement for scalability, you may want to look into J-EX4200 or J-EX8200 since both will provide you redundancy and well as Junos HA features
Emptyone How about buffers on the ports? How big are they, and are they dynamic?
Juniper-ChandraP Yes, they are dynamic with some dedicated buffers for each ports.
jhutches On the Juniper EX8200 1 GB ports they are 512 MB per port.
jhutches My mistake that is 512 MB on the 10 GB ports, and 42 MB on the 1 GB ports.
Juniper-ChandraP J-EX8200 has dedicated Buffer Memory chips for applications requiring large buffer at aggregation/core node solutions in DataCenter
Juniper-ChandraP Emptyone, do you have some applications in your network, which suffers due to buffering issues?
Emptyone Quite a bit more than the Dell switch we use for iSCSI today if I remember correctly.
Juniper-ChandraP Dell PowerConnect-J-series is new Dell Offering now.
Emptyone Not suffering today as I know of, just wanted to check with regards to iSCSI traffic.
Emptyone Both the Juniper EX4200 and Juniper EX8200 might be good solutions for us. One system to maintain and looks like it has the redundancy we need.
Juniper-ChandraP Great, mostly it comes down to traffic being aggregated at node, if you have one to one you do not end up using much buffer at all.
Juniper-ChandraP One Junos Operating System as well.
Emptyone Got three Dell PowerEdge R710s working towards two EqualLogic boxes, with quite a lot of traffic at times.
Juniper-ChandraP On all of Dell J-series offing Switching, as well as PowerConnect J-SRX Gateway Secure.
Juniper-ChandraP Junos reliability and HA will keep high performance network going.
Juniper-ChandraP Emptyone: What is your expectation for latency for storage connectivity?
Emptyone Not sure if I understood that question fully. :) (English is not my main language)
Juniper-DavidC Emptyone: What are you using for VPN appliance today?
Nace.Tech I use a SonicWALL SSL VPN.
Emptyone Using TMG at main sites for FW/VPN. At smaller sites we have a mix today, mainly WatchGuard and Cisco.
jhutches Nace: Are you using IPSEC VPN's?
Juniper-ChandraP Emptyone: Server Access to Storage iSCSI, what latency you are getting currently, and what will be the ideal for the best performance?
Nace.Tech We don't have a constant connection. When needed we use the SonicWALL client.
Nace.Tech Mainly for people on the road.
jhutches Nace: Are they SSSL/VPN's or IPSC/VPN's?
Emptyone The lower the better. :) From what I have seen until now the latency is not caused by the switches.
Nace.Tech SSL VPNs.
erson Been checking out the J-series, and it definitely looks nice.
Juniper-ChandraP Nace: That makes sense. Do you have site to site connectivity as well with SSL VPN, or for that do you use a dedicated service like lease-line or L2/L3 VPN or VPLS?
erson Is the DTC getting any hardware to make demos with?
Juniper-JeffC Emptyone: What does your storage topology look like: do you consolidate your storage in the core or keep them connected to the top-of-rack switches closer to the servers?
Emptyone What products will Dell bring in as time goes by?
Emptyone Other than the switches that are there now.
erson MRX routers.
jhutches Erson: Yes, the SRXs will be added, as well as the MX series.
Emptyone Today, two dedicated switches per main site for iSCSI traffic.
Nace.Tech We really just have one HQ, and when the people that make up the 'remote offices' need to connect, they fire up SonicWALLs VPN client, connect, then disconnect.
erson The SRX has already been added?
Juniper-JeffC Emptyone: So you completely separate your iSCSI traffic from your LAN traffic?
erson Quite sure they are already on www.dell.com.
Juniper-ChandraP Nace: That make sense.
Emptyone Today we separate it completely, yes.
jhutches Erson: The branch series. But there are more that will be added soon.
Juniper-ChandraP Yes, Juniper Networks-SRX100, SRX210, SRX-240.
jhutches There is a lot of stuff coming.
erson Has the Juniper Networks EX4200 series been approved by Dell EqualLogic?
Emptyone The Juniper Networks EX8200 looks nice. Just have a module in spare and would really be ready in case something happened then.
Juniper-ChandraP J-SRX series offers the solutions for branch office connectivity as secure gateway routers.
erson How does the Juniper Networks EX4200 handle member failure compared to the Dell PowerConnect 6200 series with latest 3.x firmware?
Dell-Jeff_S That went by quick. Thanks Emptyone, Jhutches, Nace.tech, Hoosiercab for all the great questions.
jhutches Yes, the Juniper EX8200 is highly redundant; in fact, you can make every component in the chassis redundant to another if you want to.
Juniper-ChandraP Yes, J-EX4200 is validated with Dell EqualLogic.
Dell-Jeff_S Thanks everyone @ Juniper!
Juniper_Julie Thank you for having us!
Dell-Jeff_S Next week we have a discussion on CMC 3.0…details to be posted shortly
Emptyone Thanks for the good info.
erson Nice!
Juniper-ChandraP Thanks everyone.
erson Thanks to Juniper, the J-series looks very promising.
Juniper-DavidC Bye all.