Anyone with Cisco download access (firmware) can help me ?
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@scottalanmiller said in Anyone with Cisco download access (firmware) can help me ?:
Who needs that, just have a spare. Better protection, a fraction of the price, and no arguing with Cisco to try to get support from those idiots. Not trusting Cisco support is another facet of the situation
If you need product support (Question about why something isn't working) if you need a bug fixed, or a workaround for a 3rd parties bug (Cisco gave me the workaround for fixing interop issues caused by bad RSTP implementations by HPE and others etc). Also, same day replacement with labor to do it (If I've got a firewall at a lumber mill in the middle of no where having the staff to deal with that). I can pay someone but that costs money (It's an insurance policy against having to deal with all this stuff or do my own RCA's on obnoxious interop issues of SIP inspection with a broken 3rd party Avaya system etc).
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@storageninja said in Anyone with Cisco download access (firmware) can help me ?:
@scottalanmiller said in Anyone with Cisco download access (firmware) can help me ?:
Who needs that, just have a spare. Better protection, a fraction of the price, and no arguing with Cisco to try to get support from those idiots. Not trusting Cisco support is another facet of the situation
If you need product support (Question about why something isn't working)...
Just buy stuff that works and doesn't constantly need them to figure out why they shipped things that don't work
But honestly, this is one of the benefits of a spare that is tested up front, you can have something working long before Cisco (that I don't trust to fix things promptly) could even look into it.
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@storageninja said in Anyone with Cisco download access (firmware) can help me ?:
I can pay someone but that costs money (It's an insurance policy against having to deal with all this stuff or do my own RCA's on obnoxious interop issues of SIP inspection with a broken 3rd party Avaya system etc).
With good spares and any level of competent receptionist, you can do this without needing a third party. Somehow, somewhere there is a scenario where there isn't a single competent employee within any reasonable distance, but we are into the insane niche here. And those techs sent out are just random on call remote hands, they don't have any specific skills or training. For all you know, it's your own receptionist that they have contracted to do that for you.
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@storageninja said in Anyone with Cisco download access (firmware) can help me ?:
Also, same day replacement ....
But my way is cheaper with same hour replacement
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@scottalanmiller said in Anyone with Cisco download access (firmware) can help me ?:
@storageninja said in Anyone with Cisco download access (firmware) can help me ?:
I can pay someone but that costs money (It's an insurance policy against having to deal with all this stuff or do my own RCA's on obnoxious interop issues of SIP inspection with a broken 3rd party Avaya system etc).
With good spares and any level of competent receptionist, you can do this without needing a third party. Somehow, somewhere there is a scenario where there isn't a single competent employee within any reasonable distance, but we are into the insane niche here. And those techs sent out are just random on call remote hands, they don't have any specific skills or training. For all you know, it's your own receptionist that they have contracted to do that for you.
We had firewalls on barge/piers and lumbar sites with actually illiterate staff... also in retail cables and poets can be color coded and the stoned teenager there will screw it up. It’s not as far off as you think. Throw in language barriers overseas and it gets more fun.
This is part of the reason for cloud managed configs like Meraki, and Ubiquity. Cold spares have a lot larger config drift problem than people realize.
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@storageninja said in Anyone with Cisco download access (firmware) can help me ?:
@scottalanmiller said in Anyone with Cisco download access (firmware) can help me ?:
Who needs that, just have a spare. Better protection, a fraction of the price, and no arguing with Cisco to try to get support from those idiots. Not trusting Cisco support is another facet of the situation
If you need product support (Question about why something isn't working) if you need a bug fixed, or a workaround for a 3rd parties bug (Cisco gave me the workaround for fixing interop issues caused by bad RSTP implementations by HPE and others etc). Also, same day replacement with labor to do it (If I've got a firewall at a lumber mill in the middle of no where having the staff to deal with that). I can pay someone but that costs money (It's an insurance policy against having to deal with all this stuff or do my own RCA's on obnoxious interop issues of SIP inspection with a broken 3rd party Avaya system etc).
My point is you don’t always control the 3rd party device you connect to. 1/2 the stuff I called my networking vendor was getting a work around for someone else’s gear (ISP, SIP peer, security vendor switch) misbehaving.
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I only ever seen three scenarios of Cisco hardware owners:
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huge enterprises that that have a lot of money to spend, but don't have the IT staff to make good purchasing decisions.
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a specific feature or technology is required that only Cisco offers.
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The largest enterprises who need the largest equipment and biggest support contracts.
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@tim_g said in Anyone with Cisco download access (firmware) can help me ?:
I only ever seen three scenarios of Cisco hardware owners:
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huge enterprises that that have a lot of money to spend, but don't have the IT staff to make good purchasing decisions.
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a specific feature or technology is required that only Cisco offers.
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The largest enterprises who need the largest equipment and biggest support contracts.
And loads of small, really clueless shops that buy purely off of airport marketing campaigns.
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@tim_g said in Anyone with Cisco download access (firmware) can help me ?:
huge enterprises that that have a lot of money to spend, but don't have the IT staff to make good purchasing decisions.
To be fair with the big enterprise vendors, they don't pay list, or anything close to what you pay.
I did a deal with Brocade where they went 90% off list because I needed 34 campuses worth of switches. Storage and networking vendors will go to 4% margin if your deal is big enough (and they plan to make it up on later smaller expansions, support renewals etc). -
@storageninja said in Anyone with Cisco download access (firmware) can help me ?:
@tim_g said in Anyone with Cisco download access (firmware) can help me ?:
huge enterprises that that have a lot of money to spend, but don't have the IT staff to make good purchasing decisions.
To be fair with the big enterprise vendors, they don't pay list, or anything close to what you pay.
I did a deal with Brocade where they went 90% off list because I needed 34 campuses worth of switches. Storage and networking vendors will go to 4% margin if your deal is big enough (and they plan to make it up on later smaller expansions, support renewals etc).In the end, it'd still be a hell of a lot cheaper and more effective to go with non-Cisco hardware (given that points 2 or 3 don't apply to them).
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@tim_g said in Anyone with Cisco download access (firmware) can help me ?:
@storageninja said in Anyone with Cisco download access (firmware) can help me ?:
@tim_g said in Anyone with Cisco download access (firmware) can help me ?:
huge enterprises that that have a lot of money to spend, but don't have the IT staff to make good purchasing decisions.
To be fair with the big enterprise vendors, they don't pay list, or anything close to what you pay.
I did a deal with Brocade where they went 90% off list because I needed 34 campuses worth of switches. Storage and networking vendors will go to 4% margin if your deal is big enough (and they plan to make it up on later smaller expansions, support renewals etc).In the end, it'd still be a hell of a lot cheaper and more effective to go with non-Cisco hardware (given that points 2 or 3 don't apply to them).
In many cases, it's cheaper to just go with someone else just because the time to talk them into a deal costs more than the competition.
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I replaced a Cisco a few weeks ago because we could get a Ubiquiti that was new faster, delivered to the site, than we could get a cable to hook into the Cisco. Saved both time and money and got them better quality gear. Pure win. Cisco's "deal with our BS" overhead is very high and a huge factor on their TCO.
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@tim_g said in Anyone with Cisco download access (firmware) can help me ?:
@storageninja said in Anyone with Cisco download access (firmware) can help me ?:
@tim_g said in Anyone with Cisco download access (firmware) can help me ?:
huge enterprises that that have a lot of money to spend, but don't have the IT staff to make good purchasing decisions.
To be fair with the big enterprise vendors, they don't pay list, or anything close to what you pay.
I did a deal with Brocade where they went 90% off list because I needed 34 campuses worth of switches. Storage and networking vendors will go to 4% margin if your deal is big enough (and they plan to make it up on later smaller expansions, support renewals etc).In the end, it'd still be a hell of a lot cheaper and more effective to go with non-Cisco hardware (given that points 2 or 3 don't apply to them).
We big 2 Million with Brocade and Cisco bid 12 million. That said Cisco was the incumbent and the incumbent generally yields less margin in a mid-scenario as it's expected that the migration will be simpler (Just copy/paste configs and no new interop issues to worry about).
To be fair, we ran into two issues.
- Some GBIC's were non-transferable (Cisco proprietary, got missed in the audit, but was trivial to swap with some spares we had).
- The VDX6670 chassis had a limit on the number of ports it could provide multicast routing with PIM-SM for. We were warned, and since it could be tested after the fact we ended up using a temporary mitigation plan (Old ASR for RP), and Brocade had offered to make good a solution if we needed (They gave us a free MLXe on a 3 year loan to close the gap until VDI could replace imaging over the WAN).
Also to be fair to Cisco, Brocade wasn't a "major" player in ethernet and since then has split up its ethernet products into 3 companies so the customer now has to deal with Extreme for their Datacenter and another company for their ICX campus.
Still, the savings were worth it to that school.
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@scottalanmiller said in Anyone with Cisco download access (firmware) can help me ?:
I replaced a Cisco a few weeks ago because we could get a Ubiquiti that was new faster, delivered to the site, than we could get a cable to hook into the Cisco. Saved both time and money and got them better quality gear. Pure win. Cisco's "deal with our BS" overhead is very high and a huge factor on their TCO.
Their optics division makes 2 Billion a year I hear. 3rd party optics are made by the same people so I never blinked at using them and duck taping some spares to the side of the chassis.
