Datacenter 10G , 40G Leaf Spine Switch Buying Guide , 2016 June.
A commercial comparision between offerings from Cisco, Arista, HP, Juniper, Brocade, Huawei, Open networking
Take the trolley, lets go for shopping
We are going to shop for switches for our new Servers.
Disclaimer : All the prices shown in this post are based on our findings through information available publicly on internet. The discount levels are assumed based on industry experience. there is no guarantee that you can buy these equipment at these prices.
I'm very thankful to fate, as it pushed me to work with all networking vendors during my career. I have designed, implemented and managed multi million dollar projects with Cisco, Brocade (Foundry), Juniper, Huawei, Arista , Force10, HP (Provision and H3C / Comware). During that times, I got a direct access to engineering leads of these vendors which helped me to understand what are the things really they do, what are the unique stuff. (End of the day I realized that all vendors provide almost the same network switch with slightly different commands and features).
We are going to see what are the available switching gears for new servers being added to a data center.
We have decided to buy :
4 x Leaf switches (48 port 10G ) Each with 48 x 10G SFP-SR and 4 x QSFP-40G-SR4
2 x Spine Switches (32 port 40G) Each with 4 x QSFP-40G-SR4
We are going to have a look at Cisco , Brocade, Juniper, HP, Huawei , Arista and Bare metal switches.
Cisco
The most famous networking brand. Cisco's current offering is Nexus 900 series. In Nexus 9000 series there are 2 streams, the Nexus 9500 chassis based and Nexus 9300 series of semi fixed configuration switches. Since we are looking for fixed configuration switches, we limit our selection to Nexus 9300 series.
Cisco's nexus 9000 series utilizes a combination of merchant silicon and custom silicon. in some platforms Broadcom's Trident 2 and Broadcom Dune chips has been utilized and some other platforms are based on custom silicons. Have a look at Lipps report here.
In Nexus 9300 series includes 10G and 40G in form of 1U and 2U configurations. Thats exactly what we need. Great!. The switches which match our requirements are :
Leaf : Nexus 9372PX , 48 x 10G + 6 x 40G , 2.56Tbps , 720Mpps
Spine: Nexus 9332PX , 32 x 40G ,1.44Tbps , 1.15Bpps
Lets have a look at its pricing and discounts
Cisco's pricing is mainly based on hardware, the software licenses is a small portion of the whole cost. keeping in mind that we need 10G and 40G optics which needs to be added in our BOQ.
Cisco's discount levels are variable, it all depends on size of requirement and may go from Zero to around 70%. we have chosen 3 average discount levels as 42% , 57% and 69% for assumption and calculation. 
Arista
Arista networks has been producing many datacenter switches. Their recent 7500R chassis based Universal Spine switches are based on Broadcom StrataDNX (Qumran , Jericho) which provides large table sizes that whole internet routing table can fit in.
Anyhow, we are looking for Leaf and Spine switches. Arista's 7050X series is the successor of successful 7050 series and is a best match for our datacenter leaf and spine requirements.
The switches which match our requirements are :
Leaf : 7050SX-72Q , 48 x 10G + 6 x 40G , 2.56Tbps , 1.44Bpps
Spine: 7050QX-32 , 32 x 40G , 2.56Tbps , 1.44Bpps
Both the 7050SX-72Q and 7050QX-32 switches seem identical from performance perspective and they have very similar specification (Speed, 12Mb packet buffer) to Broadcom Trident 2 silicon (BCM56850) , so we expect that these switches are using the same ASIC.
Lets have a look at pricing model for our requirement.
Arista's discount levels are variable, it all depends on size of requirement and may go from Zero to around 70%. we have chosen 3 average discount levels as 42% , 57% and 69% for assumption and calculation.
Juniper
Juniper QFX series are the flagship products for Datacenter networking. Although Juniper started the switching product line very late, but they have coupe of switching families such as EX series, QFX , Q Fabric an OCX.
Juniper QFX series which includes QFX 5100 (10/40G) , QFX 5200 (100G) and QFX 10000 (Chassis based).
For our requirement which is a Leaf-Spine 10G/40G , we will look at juniper QFX 5100 series of switches.
The switches which match our requirements are :
Leaf : QFX5100-48S-AFI, 48 x 10G + 6 x 40G , 1.44Tbps , 1Bpps
Spine: QFX5100-24Q-AFI , 32 x 40G , 2.56Tbps , 1.44Bpps
Based on the specification of these switches from performance perspective they have very similar specification to Broadcom Trident 2 silicons (BCM56850 & BCM56854) , so we expect that these switches are using the Broadcom Trident 2 merchant silicon
Lets have a look at pricing:
Juniper's discount levels are variable, it all depends on size of requirement and may go from Zero to around 70%. we have chosen 3 average discount levels as 42% , 57% and 69% for assumption and calculation. 
Brocade
Back in 2009, Brocade was the first company to release the L3 routing features for free on their flagship FastIron FCX POE+ switches. That was an amazing time for building routed-access campus networks.
Back in our requirement for datacenter, Brocade's offering includes VDX series. Brocade VDX 6740 and 6940 are good match for our requirements.
The switches which match our requirements are :
Leaf : VDX 6740 , 48 x 10G + 4 x 40G , 1.28Tbps , 960Mpps
Spine: VDX 6940 , 36 x 40G , 2.88Tbps , 2.16Bpps
As you can see, the VDX 6740 comes with 4 x 40G and VDX 6940 comes with 36 x 40G ports, which is different from other switches in the market. Also the performance is slightly different. I think the reason is Brocade uses different ASICs in their switches. For example Marvel ASICs are used Brocade FastIron FCX switches, and they might probably using Marvel silicon on VDX series. this is just an assumption,.
Lets have a look at pricing:
Brocade's discount levels are variable, it all depends on size of requirement and may go from Zero to around 70%. we have chosen 3 average discount levels as 42% , 57% and 69% for assumption and calculation.
HP
HP networking portfolio might see a little complicated, as they have aquired multiple companies such as Matrix, 3Com, Aruba.
For 10G and 40G switches we are looking at FlexFabric 5900 (3Com) switches. HP also provides a line of switches called Altoline which are baremetal and are capable of running third party Network Operating System (NOS) such as Cumulus , Pica8 and IPinfusion.
The switches which match our requirements are :
Leaf : 5900AF-48XG-4QSFP, 48 x 10G + 4 x 40G , 1.28Tbps , 960Mpps
Spine: 5930-32QSFP+ 36 x 40G , 2.56Tbps , 2.16Bpps
The Spine HP 5930 switch has similar specification to Broadcom Trident 2 ASIC which might be used inside the switch. both of these switches are from 3Com family and run Comware operating system.
Lets have a look at pricing:
HP's discount levels are variable, it all depends on size of requirement and may go from Zero to around 70%. we have chosen 3 average discount levels as 42% , 57% and 69% for assumption and calculation. 
Huawei
Huawei has a rich line of Enterprise networking products.If you have experienced Huwei switches, you have seen that the CLI is very similar to HP Comware CLI and commands. The reason for that is 3Com and Huawei created a consortium which anyhow ended but resulted in creation of Comware and 3Com enterprise switches back in 2008/9.
Back to our requirement, Huawei new line of products whihc is Cloud Engine matches with our requirement.
The switches which match our requirements are :
Leaf : CE6851, 48 x 10G + 4 x 40G , 1.44Tbps , 1Bpps
Spine: CE7850 32 x 40G , 2.56Tbps , 1.44Bpps
Both of these switches seems to have Broadcom Trident 2 ASICs as they completely matches with Trident 2 ( BCM56854 & BCM56850) ASIC Chips.
Lets have a look at pricing:
Huawei's prices are generally lower than other vendors, therefore the discount levels might be lower. We assumed a maximum discount level of 66% on switches and networking products.
Disaggregated Networking / Open Networking , Baremetal + NOS
With Open networking and Bare metal switches getting attention from enterprises and service providers, the market for switches is not only limited to big vendor products.
From hardware vendors, we chosen Edge-Core (Accton) for evaluation. Although there are other vendors such as Quanta , Interface Masters, Penguin, Agema, Inventec, and also Brightbox from DELL and HP available, but we limit to Edge-Core as they are all have an identical hardware.
The switches which match our requirements are :
Leaf : AS5712 , 48 x 10G + 6 x 40G , 1.44Tbps , 1Bpps
Spine: AS6712 32 x 40G , 2.56Tbps , 1.44Bpps
Both the switches are based on Broadcom Trident 2 chipsets ( BCM56854 and BCM56850) .
The main difference in Open Networking financial is that we need to consider the hardware and software separately, which means that we have to have pricing of both hardware and software (Network Operating System )
For pricing we have evaluated 2 options, with Cumulus and IPinfusion OcNOS.
Lets have a look at pricing:
Unlike the other vendors with high list price and discount levels, in Open Networking the prices and discounts are lower, which means the total cost of ownership of the switch is lower. 
NOS Options
Conclusion
We have done an Apple-To-Apple comparison between products from major vendors.Below chart compares all the above. Cisco , Brocade, HP and Arista are almost same range , and Juniper is quite higher probably because of MPLS support.
All the evaluated products were having identical performance, and mostly are based on Broadcom Trident 2 ASIC family.
Huawei is almost 20% cheaper than the competition.
Open Networking is almost half the price of competition. between 40% to 50% lower.
