If you’ve stuck with me this far, you’re probably wondering where I am going with all of this. Well, I for one am a big believer in inertia…aka the bigger it is the harder it is to stop.
The day is probably not that far away where you as a network admin or implementer will go to work and find that at least some of the pallets of Cisco switches you were expecting for your new site or your site update have magically morphed into pallets of ProCurve switches or conversely the HP blade chassis you were expecting has suddenly become a Cisco Unified Computing System (Wow that’s a mouthful…I swear computer companies enjoy forcing us to use acronyms). In either case, you and all of your comfort and years of experience in configuring said computing/networking gear are stuck with the semi-unenviable task of trying to make it all co-exist somewhat peacefully.
in·ter·op·er·a·ble
Show Spelled Pronunciation [in-ter-op-er-uh-buh l, -op-ruh-buh l] Show IPA Use interoperability in a Sentence –adjective capable of being used or operated reciprocally: interoperable weapons systems.
In my opinion, the word interoperability gets thrown around WAY too much, however in this case the word fits the description. What you, and I, and every other network admin in the world wants is to design, install, support a network that meets the business requirements the money folks who sit in the offices with nice views give us, and to do it with the least amount of pain and suffering to our organization. Over the next couple of posts I’m going to attempt to take a few different core networking technologies and share our knowledge on how they are implemented using a combination of Cisco and ProCurve gear, and how you can get them all to talk the same language, or at least stay out of each other’s way.
My goal is help you all out as you begin facing requirements of blending HP ProCurve and Cisco networking gear in your environment. As we go along over the next several posts, please let me know if you have questions, want more detail, etc.
Wilson
