Cisco Twinax Cables

rwilliams

Hi Everyone,

I am looking to connect a couple of 3030S to some Cisco Nexus 5k switches using 10Gb interfaces. The cheapest option would be to use Twinax cables rather than buying individual SFP+ modules for both the A10s and Ciscos.

I have asked A10 Support if Twinax cables are supported and got the the following reply:

"o We officially do not support the Cisco twinax, but it does/should work."

Which is a bit vague on whether they work or don't, so I was wondering if there is anyone out there who is using Twinax in a live production environment, and if so, if you have experienced any issues with their use.

Thanks all

Ryan

dshin

Ryan,

I would like to chime in to your inquiry specific to Cisco Twinax. The response from A10 Support is correct that Cisco Twinax are unsupported optics since it has not been validated or tested in our labs. Based on our A10 documentations, we strongly recommend to use the A10 recommended SPF+ modules for optimum performance. Nevertheless, you can try the Cisco twinax but A10 will not provide performance and interop guarantee. Good luck!

Genard

rwilliams

Hi Genard,

Thank you for your reply. I received a quote from our A10 supplier with regards to the 10Gb Fibre SFP+ module, and it came to around £950gbp each, a second supplier was around £900 mark. Which when you consider we need at least two for link redundancy, that works out to nearly 10% of the cost we got the actual ADC for. If I then add in the cost of the optics for the Cisco Nexus side (which will be 3rd party compatible optics at around £200 each) I am looking at around £2200 for 2 x 10Gb links. That's just for 1 ADC, we will have 3. a grand cost of around £6600.

Where as the Cisco Twinax option will cost me around £130 for 2 x 10Gb links.

£6600 or £390 = easy decision and worth trying, even with the no guarantees on performance.

Hopefully there is someone out there who has tried the twinax option in their environment

Kind Regards

Ryan