Hello:
My company is looking at the 4507R which seems to be overkill for us (but that is ok). Right now we have a mishmash of HP Pro Curve 4000Ms and inexpensive Dell Power Connect switches. We are looking to go to a core switch for our internal network. We are a small sized company with about 80 users and several servers from public www, email, smtp, as well as internal filemaker, mysql and internal www servers. We are looking to go all Gig on the network so everything is speedy and we plan on going VoIP in the near future. We're initially looking at 3 -
48 port Gig Blades plus redundant managers, and redundant power (2x2800W) for the power.We really like the Cisco VoIP solution that is offered. We have a small call center (20 agents) and it would be a great fit.
The ppl from Avaya of course want us to buy an Extreme Core switch model 8810 which has 3 power supplies 700W/1200W (which doesn't seem adequate but they say it is.). Also they say that the 4507R's backplane is limiting and based on old (I say 'proven') technology.
Keep in mind that the 8810 is nearly 33% more expensive than the Cisco solution we're quoting. The Extreme people say that since the backplane is 585M vs the 48M on the Cisco that it's 10 times better. I beg to differ because we'd never even come close to utilizing it. Right now we're getting by fine with the ProCurves (a 3.8M backplane)... so with the new Cisco solution, we'd be almost 15 times faster right off, if that's even a concern.
Thoughts? I need some ammo to stick with Cisco.
Thanks Marc