We need a Magnuson–Moss Act for computer networking interoperability

[Brons2]

Recently I bought some 25Gbps network cards for all my compute nodes in a large virtualization environment, along with twinax cables to cross connect. They would be connecting to a Cisco Nexus switch running ACI. I have a networking background, but now work in Cybersecurity platform engineering for the last 2 years. I am looking to move my VSAN network from a shared uplink into a dedicated network as to improve response time and reduce latency. It's also best practice to run VSAN over a network with jumbo frames enabled, another goal of mine with this upgrade.

Well after talking to the network guys and the local Cisco SE, I am hearing that connecting my 'Brand X' twinax cables to the Nexus would result in Cisco not helping us with any ACI issues we might have. Keep in mind that we are a multi-million dollar yearly contract with Cisco, 50,000 user organization. It seems they don't want to yield at all. We could cross-connect the 25Gbps ports using standard fiber, but I don't have any optics for my side and I would probably have to buy the fiber optics for the Nexus side as well. We are past the purchasing deadline for the current fiscal year as well so I could not even put in the request for what I need before September 1st and probably not receive until October at the earliest. Plus genuine Cisco optics are much more expensive than everyone else's.

Why do we let vendors strong arm us like this? You would think if I had a problem with my gear under the new connection that, if the problem was concluded to be a source of your twinax cable, that you need to replace it. But it seems Cisco is telling us that they just won't support us at all if we plug in third party optics. Oh sure, I'm sure they'd rather not deal with it, but we are not some mom and pop shop troubleshooting a $100 consumer level router. We are a large organization with large operational teams who have drank the Cisco kool-aid and spent tens of millions on this gear and millions on our yearly support renewals and they're not going to help us at all if we have 3rd party optics plugged in? The audacity of it boggles my mind.

We need something like the automotive aftermarket has to protect us from unreasonable warranty actions from the vendors. Thusly the thread title.

Thanks for letting me vent.

P.S.:
I hate Cisco and I have for a long time. Cisco is where innovative companies go to die. They get acquired by Cisco and then Cisco milks the technology for all it's worth until it stops making money. Then they shut it down.

A lot of people in this industry think Cisco is synonymous with networking. I am not one of those people. I have displaced Cisco gear everywhere I have gone in the last 20 years and the outcomes have usually been better for the organizations involved from a cost and support standpoint.

 

[andrew_j]

A long time ago in college I worked for organization that attempting to test interoperability. Not sure they would have helped : https://www.iol.unh.edu/

 

[Pew]

I completely agree. The companies try to grab as many big companies as they can, lock them in their vertical products, and then make their support exuberantly expensive and restrictive but too late to switch companies (like broadcom's purchase of vmware.)

 

[Brons2]

I completely agree. The companies try to grab as many big companies as they can, lock them in their vertical products, and then make their support exuberantly expensive and restrictive but too late to switch companies (like broadcom's purchase of vmware.)

Yes, the Broadcom acquisition of VMWare is causing us quite a bit of pain right now. We didn't budget for our support costs tripling. Broadcom counters with, for this price you get every VMWare feature available. Of course we don't and will never use most of the now-bundled features. It will ultimately just speed our transition to AWS/Azure, both of which we already have in our environment. I have support on our cluster until 2027, after that, it's probably all going offsite. For what they want for support on VMWare we can buy the expensive private circuits to the cloud.

 

[OVERKILL]

Yes, the Broadcom acquisition of VMWare is causing us quite a bit of pain right now. We didn't budget for our support costs tripling. Broadcom counters with, for this price you get every VMWare feature available. Of course we don't and will never use most of the now-bundled features. It will ultimately just speed our transition to AWS/Azure, both of which we already have in our environment. I have support on our cluster until 2027, after that, it's probably all going offsite. For what they want for support on VMWare we can buy the expensive private circuits to the cloud.

Proxmox and Hyper-V are both getting a nice boost thanks to Broadcom's idiocy.

 

[OVERKILL]

Recently I bought some 25Gbps network cards for all my compute nodes in a large virtualization environment, along with twinax cables to cross connect. They would be connecting to a Cisco Nexus switch running ACI. I have a networking background, but now work in Cybersecurity platform engineering for the last 2 years. I am looking to move my VSAN network from a shared uplink into a dedicated network as to improve response time and reduce latency. It's also best practice to run VSAN over a network with jumbo frames enabled, another goal of mine with this upgrade.

Well after talking to the network guys and the local Cisco SE, I am hearing that connecting my 'Brand X' twinax cables to the Nexus would result in Cisco not helping us with any ACI issues we might have. Keep in mind that we are a multi-million dollar yearly contract with Cisco, 50,000 user organization. It seems they don't want to yield at all. We could cross-connect the 25Gbps ports using standard fiber, but I don't have any optics for my side and I would probably have to buy the fiber optics for the Nexus side as well. We are past the purchasing deadline for the current fiscal year as well so I could not even put in the request for what I need before September 1st and probably not receive until October at the earliest. Plus genuine Cisco optics are much more expensive than everyone else's.

Why do we let vendors strong arm us like this? You would think if I had a problem with my gear under the new connection that, if the problem was concluded to be a source of your twinax cable, that you need to replace it. But it seems Cisco is telling us that they just won't support us at all if we plug in third party optics. Oh sure, I'm sure they'd rather not deal with it, but we are not some mom and pop shop troubleshooting a $100 consumer level router. We are a large organization with large operational teams who have drank the Cisco kool-aid and spent tens of millions on this gear and millions on our yearly support renewals and they're not going to help us at all if we have 3rd party optics plugged in? The audacity of it boggles my mind.

We need something like the automotive aftermarket has to protect us from unreasonable warranty actions from the vendors. Thusly the thread title.

Thanks for letting me vent.

P.S.:
I hate Cisco and I have for a long time. Cisco is where innovative companies go to die. They get acquired by Cisco and then Cisco milks the technology for all it's worth until it stops making money. Then they shut it down.

A lot of people in this industry think Cisco is synonymous with networking. I am not one of those people. I have displaced Cisco gear everywhere I have gone in the last 20 years and the outcomes have usually been better for the organizations involved from a cost and support standpoint.

I'm a bit of a Cisco whore, lol. I was actually quite glad when they bought Meraki, I think they've done a lot of good for the brand and equipment. They do however, as you note, really capitalize on what might be described as exploitative pricing for their support.

That said, I'm not a "Cisco or nothing" sort of guy. Their products can be a good choice or even the best choice for a specific application, but that's not going to be the case for other applications. I'm also not a Cisco purist and do have many mixed environments.

Their ASA's for example, were typically over priced and under powered. Their ISR lineup on the other hand has had quite a few gems in it from a performance perspective, with certain models being vastly more capable than their marketed stats. Their switches have always been solid.

Another problem is that they sometimes abandon projects at random. They've done that with two series of SMB phone systems for example, which makes you lose confidence in and avoid recommending them in that space.