Brocade VDX (discontinued) vs. Juniper EX Series Switches

My experience since I started working with Extreme VDX has been great and everything has been working effectively. I give it 10/10 in performance since it has never failed us during our normal operations. Networking across our company and WAN has been covered by powerful fabric technologies that enhance secure and transparent business operations. It supports both wired and wireless connections with switches that network them through our applications.

Incentivized

They work great as core switches, data center switches, top of rack switches. They can even serve as routers, their routing capability is great, except for where you need lots of routing processing power. I would not use many of them for branch office switches though, due to noise and slowness of bootup

Incentivized

• The VDX is very simple to configure.
• Documentation on the product is amazing.
• The VDX will interface with any data center hardware; there is interoperability with all the BIG vendors: Dell, EMC, NetApp.
• I have a pair of VDXs running at my DR site that has been up for over 8 years without any issues!

Incentivized

• Configuration is light years beyond everyone else. The structure of the config file and the commit/confirm/rollback features are critical.
• Juniper Support is excellent and affordable.
• The variety of models is enough to cater to particular needs, but there is not a dizzying array of options like other vendors.
• JunOS operating system is the same across all platforms, greatly simplifying administration.

Incentivized

• I once had a problem with a USB drive and had a lot of trouble fixing it. We can use more documents and a better way to recover the drive. I understand the problems that every vendor faces with proprietary software. If you are a customer, this should not be a problem.
• It has limited commands.

• Virtual chassis new switch has overwritten existing config if not performed in a particular way.
• Applying a configuration to a range of interfaces could be done in a better way.
• Applying firewall rules to multiple security zones could be done a little more efficiently.

Incentivized

Easy to use once you create your templates. Stacking is easy by creating a virtual chassis and everything shows up under one pane per switch. Showing LLDP or CDP on each port is really good so you can determine the device. Insights in to connectivity issues could be better and provide more info.

Incentivized

Many times when contacting Juniper EX Series Ethernet Switches support, it seems that it is easiest for support to recommend a straight replacement (RMA) instead of taking time to walk through a solution on the faulty system. We find we get better help from a third-party consulting firm that has Juniper certified technicians or professionals on staff. They take the time to explain processes and workflow, which Juniper EX Series Ethernet Switches support seems to shy away from.

Incentivized

I have not had an opportunity to use a similar featured platform in my networking journey. All I have learned is that Extreme VDX has great potential for controlling and managing networking operations in our company. The data analytics insights that we receive from data analysis have developed great planning and decision-making infrastructure. The speed of operation is always stable with high data transfer rate.

Incentivized

Juniper is much better than Cisco. Especially when it comes to price for performance. I can do the same thing with a Juniper switch and a Cisco switch at the same power-level. It cost much less to run the Juniper switch. I also have the Mist dashboard which provides incredible insight into my network.

Incentivized

• We definitely have a great ROI on the VDX cluster at my DR site; 8 years without issue!
• It takes so very little of my time because it has been so reliable, which allows me to be productive in other areas of the network.
• After the transition from Brocade to Extreme VDX, it was a little rocky with the code at first but things have improved with R & D.

Incentivized

• Definitely helped for rapid network replacement, we were able to build data centers in a matter of weeks
• Return on investment is greatest for data centers, as the commit confirmed feature reduces the need to go on site for making some changes
• Flexibility of stacking is is another feature that makes ROI more positive

Incentivized