First off can I ask how many people out there are using UCS servers B200 or B250 (hope i got the models right) the reason I ask is Cisco is pushing very, very hard to get their servers in our enviroment, I am not sure if this is a good thing or bad thing. We currently are a full Dell shop (networking is Cisco Catalist, future nexus) with 3 vsphere 4 clusters 2850's(getting retired as I type), 2950's(6 with 32gb of memory) and 3 M610 blades with 48 gb of memory and three more on the way each with 96gb of memory. The Chasis is setup with two brocades npiv back to cisco mds switches attached to a emc san, then two cisco 3130x switches, and two pass throughs. Cisco and Dell did not get along on the Nexus sales along with HP so neither get those but Dell is going to use Juniper and another company to get FCOE. This is the main thing that is pushing us to look at Cisco is they can currently do FCOE (along with IBM, not sure about HP), but the B200 cisco servers are about 8grand more than the Dells coming in the door and this is the please take our system price. They keep wanting to push the B250 servers (the whole by more smaller sticks of memory sales push)but my problem with that is you can fit 5 Cisco chasis in a rack each holds 8 B200 for 40 servers or 4 B250 for 20 servers, where Dell I know can fit 3 in a rack maybe 4 so either 3x16 for 48 or 4x16 for 64 servers in a rack. Dell is saying the juniper will be out late this year where Cisco has it now. So to sum it up the Cisco gives us FCOE with our Nexus install but cost us about (8 grand more a server by 16 servers) 96 grand more then the Dell is it worth it cutting down the amount of cables. Can anyone tell me why or why not to go to Cisco (Dell has never given us any problems) is anyone else looking the same thing, is there anything else I should really be looking at, and do I really need FCOE over a 10gig connection?
