Switching

Hi

 

Can any one share knowledge over license required to activate Virtual chassis on EX 3300 ? i guess by default we can use 2 switches but for more i guess i need to buy license... but no sure which one...additionally, wouldnt it be better to go for 2300P-VC ? 

 

secondly, the deployment senario is like 4 switches at lcoation A, 3 switches at location B, 7 switches at location C and 2 switches at location D. do does it mean i will have buy master license for each master switch of each location and slave license for rest of the siwtches ? 

 

thanks in advance.

 

 

#EXseries
#license
#virtual
#troubleshooting
#Virtualizatrion
#2300
#master
#chassis
#3300
#default
#senario

Hi Hassan,

 

VC licenses is only needed on EX2300. On all other EX platforms the VC functionality is provided without need for further licensing.

 

Furthermore EX2200 and EX2300 can only do VC for up to 4 members. Rest of the EX series can do up to 10 members.

 

For EX2300 you would need a VC license for each member switch.

 

Hope this clarifies.

so its means 2300 is better to go with as 3300 will be costly and lower in specs... additionally, i also wanna know what will be the impact if i use 10G uplinks from each switch ? any more license per port type something ? or just simple buy a 2300-VC along with sfp and thats it ??

EX3300 has better specs as it can do BGP and routing-instances with the right licenses. This is not found on the EX2300.

 

Depending on port usage they are pretty close in price to each other when doing VC on 24 ports models:

 

EX3300-24T: 3200 USD list

EX2300-24T-VC: 3150 USD list

 

Price difference is a bit bugger on 48 ports models:

EX2300-48T-VC: 4200 USD list

EX3300-48T: 5095 USD list

 

There are not licenses for ports on either on the platforms. You have the 4 x SFP+ port available when buying the switches.

I know this is an old thread, but check out this funny bit:

 

From (https://www.juniper.net/documentation/en_US/release-independent/junos/topics/reference/requirements/virtual-chassis-ex2300-hardware-planning.html, emphasis mine):

• License requirements—You must have license keys for all the devices. See Understanding Software Licenses for EX Series Switches.

But from that very article they link to (https://www.juniper.net/documentation/en_US/junos/topics/concept/ex-series-software-licenses-overview.html, emphasis mine):

For a Virtual Chassis deployment, two license keys are recommended for redundancy—one for the device in the master role and the other for the device in the backup role:

[...]

You do not need additional license keys for Virtual Chassis member switches that are in the linecard role or for the redundant Routing Engine (RE) modules or the redundant Switch Fabric and Routing Engine (SRE) modules in an EX8200 member switch.

 

Cool, so, depending on how you read all that, for a 4-switch EX2300 VC, you need 1, 2, or 4 VC license keys.

For any VC license deployment you always need EXACTLY 2 licenses which should be load on Master and Backup switches that act as REs. Of course pre-provisioned VC setup makes this much easy to control.

Rccpgm,

 

That's not complete true. With the introduction of the EX2300 series, you actually need a license per EX2300 to operate them in a VC. Then feature licenses are added on master and backup RE if needed just as you describe.

 

@nikolay.semov; You are right that https://www.juniper.net/documentation/en_US/junos/topics/concept/ex-series-software-licenses-overview.html doesn't cover this change. The documentation only describe feature licenses. I have used the "rate a give feedback" function in the top of the page to suggest adding the VC licensing part for EX2300 to have the complete licensing picture.

 

To avoid misunderstanding in this thread I'll recap licensing for the EX2300:

A 4-member EX2300 VC requires four VC licenses, one for each member. If you need eg. VRRP or OSPF, you will need to purchase one EFL license for the master routing engine - and if you want redundancy on the OSPF features, you should purchase an EFL license for the backup routing engine as well.

Thanks for the correction, my bad.  I forgot that consistency is not a word in the Juniper vocabulary -:)

that was really helpful. just to update the deployment senario is of access layer... whereas team is not getting agree on 3300-48T as of the cost factor....

 

Thanks again.

 

Regards,

Hassan Mustafa 

Actually these are questions either your Partner Account team or Juniper Account team should be able to answer easily.  As for EX2300-VC (with extra license) vs EX3300-VC, if this is not yet purchased, I would suggest maybe you look at either EX4300-VC or EX3400-VC.  The reason that EX2300 has a VC license is that the vaste majority of deployments have been (and will be) single standalone use cases.  Therefore the extra cost for [often non-used] VC functionality has been removed from base price and added in as a license cost.

 

Basicaly the higher the number, the more powerful the platform (better, faster, more costly RE functionality) along with deeper feature set, things like BGP, routing-instances, more OSPF neighbors, etc.  Also, generally higher numbers of same family equal new functionality.  For small examples (not exclusive list):

 

EX2200 -> EX2300 = 1G vs 10G uplinks

EX3300 -> EX3400 = no redundant power vs redundant power

EX4200 -> EX4300 = 128G fixed VC connectors, vs more flexiable 40G ports

 

I think you would be best off discuss your entire network needs with your local Partner and/or Juniper Sales Account team who can provide you all the options and then let you make a best decision.

 

My 2 cents worth.

Thanks. This really helped me alot. 

 

Sorry for late reply.