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Hello everyone,

Alright, so my burning question is. Is there a reason why you would pick Extreme networks gear over Juniper if you couldn’t afford to be a cisco shop? I ask because I work in a siloed environment, which I am not in charge of networking nor have an opinion. It just made me curious being used to smaller shops that I had to be responsible for everything. Most places that go off cisco, usually jump to juniper, and I’ve been a few places where that was done. I’ve never really heard of or seen extreme networks used in a production environment.

My position now I deal with networking on a daily basis, and it seems like anything that is on the extreme gear is a pain in the neck. Configuring a VLAN, setting ports right, nothing seems to be easy in the things. Despite being sold as being the best thing since sliced bread. Is their hardware really that bad or is this a case of I have a crew that doesn’t know what they are really doing with it? Also, is there such a thing as an extreme networks certification? I have yet to be able to google one.

2 Spice ups
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What I have found with extreme is that most of their growth has come from acquisition in the form of Nortel, Avaya, Brocade, ipanema etc. So they tend to be kinda all over the place when it comes to standardization and a unique way of doing things. Cisco has the cisco way, and once you are used to it, it makes sense. The Cisco CLI is a unified platform and they really see themselves as a software company who makes hardware as well.

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Now that is starting to make sense. Our dept has all of those brands, and basically never changed. They stayed with the same vendor that keeps selling them whatever the previous company became. I think because the network admin has a close relationship with him has a lot to do with it as well. I know that the config had been talked about but given what I’ve seen so far about them. I don’t think I’d want my staff to be on this gear given how difficult it is to administrate. Great way to keep yourself in job security. Do they also make certs for extreme as well? I couldn’t find any.

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Honestly I am more of a cisco guy, I run into brocade fiber channel switches a lot in the datacenters or switches on the back of blade chassis systems like the C7000’s or SAN’s. I do not find them to be that much harder to configure than Cisco, I just have to do more ?'s or googling to find the syntax of whatever I am trying to do. Extreme has it’s place in the market and If it is a new shop you popped into I would spend some time with the network guy to ask his reasons. Sometimes a business use case is not immediately obvious, but there is probably a reason he went that way. Even if he just likes the platform and is stuck in his ways the dude probably knows a lot about it. I would recommend chatting with they guy about why, you might just be surprised what comes out of the conversation. Or not , then ya know = )

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also here is the Extreme certification site.

I have never taken any of these nor have I ever known anybody who did.

You might want to reach out to the sales guys your network admin is close with and have a conversation. Before Juniper made it free to get training you used to be able to call your sales guy and get it for free if you spend anything with them. If you spent a chunk of change my sales guy used to break me off a free voucher.

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I’m leaning more towards the second, he already sees me as a threat as I keep asking questions about it, I get no answers, and any time I ask about configuration settings, I get sent up the chain to management for being ‘hostile’

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Sometimes it is not what we ask, but how we ask it.

We have all been in this position at some point.

Our job as IT is based on communication. We need to communicate with everything from servers, to clients, to C Level employees, to switches and routers. Interpersonal relations is just another aspect of the same shit show. I have had employees, peers and bosses who were stuck in their ways. When I was younger I had an almost Arthurian right vs might attitude. I thought the best way was obvious. It turns out what is best for the business use case at that moment was not always best for me. Sometimes taking a step to the right or a step to the left and not hitting your head against the tree is the best way to go. If you have been ran up the chain on this one the only real hope on salvaging the relationship is to eat some crow, take a deep breath, and try a different tactic. In these situations I tend to apologize and say " hey, I came at this the wrong way, can I buy ya a sandwich and you can explain to me over lunch why you lean this way so I can understand "

Please forgive me if I sound preachy, this knowledge came at great personal and professional cost to me. If I had taken some of this to heart sooner it would have been way better for both my own sake and my career.

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Not, not at all, and I get that. A lot of people are like that, myself, I always come at it with, I just need info for documentation. I don’t come at it very meanly, and most of the time unless pressed I try to be kind. This is just one of those places, I don’t care how nice you are, you still get it. They won’t even take my phone calls before that started, so what does that tell you? they just get mad I’m using infrastructure, that they won’t let me pay for with capital. It’s more, I’m wading into their pond rather they like it or not, and its making people upset because I’m having to do it type of thing.