Exactly this, get your unlock key that is tied to your company and you are off to the races, bake it into your standard config. Your SE or support team should be able to get this to you :) -----Original Message----- From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces@nanog.org] On Behalf Of Ryan, Spencer Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2016 3:53 PM To: Stanislaw; nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Arista unqualified SFP Yes, email support and ask for the unlock code, they will make you agree that you know that 3rd party optics may explode the switch and it's not their fault. The command they give you will have a key/hash built into it (but will work on any switch) that ties the "unlock" to your org. Ours looks like this: service unsupported-transceiver DescriptionOfKeyFromAristaGoesHere 0000000000 (hex key) Spencer Ryan | Senior Systems Administrator | sryan@arbor.net<mailto:sryan@arbor.net> Arbor Networks +1.734.794.5033 (d) | +1.734.846.2053 (m) www.arbornetworks.com<http://www.arbornetworks.com/> ________________________________ From: NANOG <nanog-bounces@nanog.org> on behalf of Stanislaw <me@nek0.net> Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2016 3:50:12 PM To: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Arista unqualified SFP Hi all, Is there a way for unlocking off-brand transceivers usage on Arista switches? I've got an Arista 7050QX switch with 4.14 EOS version. Then it has been found out that Arista switches seem to not have possibility to unlock off-brand xcievers usage (by some service command or so). I've patched /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/XcvrAgent.py, made the checking function bypass the actual check and it helped: ports are not in errdisable state anymore. But despite of xceivers are detected correctly, links aren't coming up (they are in notconnect state). If anyone possibly have does have a sacred knowledge of bringing off-branded transceivers to life on Arista switches, your help'd be very appreciated. Thanks.

Hi all, If somebody is following my epic adventure of getting uqualified SFP to work on Aristas, here is the unhappy end of it. I've written to Arista support and got the following dialogue: Support guy: Hi, Thank you for contacting Arista Support. My name is **** and I'll be assisting you on this case. Could you please provide the "show version" output from this switch? Me: Hi, Here it is: <show version output here> Support guy: Hi, Thank you for the information. Unfortunately, we are unable to activate your 3rd party components. To ensure ongoing quality, Arista devices are designed to support only properly qualified transceivers. Please let me know if you have any other questions. Me: I do not understand, But there is a command which allows using non-Arista transceivers. Why have you implemented it but don't provide an access key to your customers when they ask for it? If it is required to sign some papers which declare that I am aware of all the risks and losing my warranty - I agree with that, lets do it. Any way what are the conditions to receive that access key? Support guy: I'm afraid that there is nothing I'm able to do regarding this situation. If you have any other questions regarding enabling 3rd party options in Arista switches, I suggest to contact your local account team (or sales) for further discussion on this matter. Next, i've tried inserting various QSFP+ DAC cables I have - none of them has been even detected on the switch, it was acting like nothing has been inserted. I guess that even if I get the key, most of my transceivers/DAC (which work like a champ in Juniper or Extreme switches) cables wouldnt work. I'm writing this post to make somebody who considers buying their switches be aware of what they'd get. Just buy Juniper instead. Stanislaw wrote at 2016-08-17 23:25:

Hi Tim,

Thanks for your expressive answer. Will try it :)

Tim Jackson писал 2016-08-17 22:57:

...

I'd suggest bitching and moaning at your account team & support until they give you the key to unlock them..

-- Tim

On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 2:50 PM, Stanislaw <me@nek0.net> wrote:

...

Hi all, Is there a way for unlocking off-brand transceivers usage on Arista switches?

I've got an Arista 7050QX switch with 4.14 EOS version. Then it has been found out that Arista switches seem to not have possibility to unlock off-brand xcievers usage (by some service command or so).

I've patched /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/XcvrAgent.py, made the checking function bypass the actual check and it helped: ports are not in errdisable state anymore. But despite of xceivers are detected correctly, links aren't coming up (they are in notconnect state).

If anyone possibly have does have a sacred knowledge of bringing off-branded transceivers to life on Arista switches, your help'd be very appreciated. Thanks.

Hello all, At my actual job, some colleagues bought Arista switchs very recently. They asked the question about 3rd party transceivers and their SE told them exactly what has been said before : "we do accept 3rd party transceivers but we don't support them. If you still want to use them willingly, you'll have to sign a discharge paper and we'll provide you with a key to activate on your equipement". That's Arista's official policy regarding 3rd party transceivers. HTH. BR.

Le 18 août 2016 à 13:29, Dovid Bender <dovid@telecurve.com> a écrit :

And I was about to jump on to the Arista train.....

Regards,

Dovid

-----Original Message----- From: Stanislaw <me@nek0.net> Sender: "NANOG" <nanog-bounces@nanog.org>Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2016 13:24:05 To: nanog list<nanog@nanog.org> Subject: Re: Arista unqualified SFP

Hi all, If somebody is following my epic adventure of getting uqualified SFP to work on Aristas, here is the unhappy end of it.

I've written to Arista support and got the following dialogue: Support guy: Hi, Thank you for contacting Arista Support. My name is **** and I'll be assisting you on this case. Could you please provide the "show version" output from this switch?

Me: Hi, Here it is: <show version output here>

Support guy: Hi, Thank you for the information. Unfortunately, we are unable to activate your 3rd party components. To ensure ongoing quality, Arista devices are designed to support only properly qualified transceivers. Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Me: I do not understand, But there is a command which allows using non-Arista transceivers. Why have you implemented it but don't provide an access key to your customers when they ask for it? If it is required to sign some papers which declare that I am aware of all the risks and losing my warranty - I agree with that, lets do it. Any way what are the conditions to receive that access key?

Support guy: I'm afraid that there is nothing I'm able to do regarding this situation. If you have any other questions regarding enabling 3rd party options in Arista switches, I suggest to contact your local account team (or sales) for further discussion on this matter.

Next, i've tried inserting various QSFP+ DAC cables I have - none of them has been even detected on the switch, it was acting like nothing has been inserted. I guess that even if I get the key, most of my transceivers/DAC (which work like a champ in Juniper or Extreme switches) cables wouldnt work.

I'm writing this post to make somebody who considers buying their switches be aware of what they'd get. Just buy Juniper instead.

Stanislaw wrote at 2016-08-17 23:25:

...

Hi Tim,

Thanks for your expressive answer. Will try it :)

Tim Jackson писал 2016-08-17 22:57:

...

I'd suggest bitching and moaning at your account team & support until they give you the key to unlock them..

-- Tim

...

On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 2:50 PM, Stanislaw <me@nek0.net> wrote:

Hi all, Is there a way for unlocking off-brand transceivers usage on Arista switches?

I've got an Arista 7050QX switch with 4.14 EOS version. Then it has been found out that Arista switches seem to not have possibility to unlock off-brand xcievers usage (by some service command or so).

I've patched /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/XcvrAgent.py, made the checking function bypass the actual check and it helped: ports are not in errdisable state anymore. But despite of xceivers are detected correctly, links aren't coming up (they are in notconnect state).

If anyone possibly have does have a sacred knowledge of bringing off-branded transceivers to life on Arista switches, your help'd be very appreciated. Thanks.

2016-08-18 13:47 GMT+02:00 Mark Tinka <mark.tinka@seacom.mu>:

On 18/Aug/16 13:41, Youssef Bengelloun-Zahr wrote:

Hello all,

At my actual job, some colleagues bought Arista switchs very recently. They asked the question about 3rd party transceivers and their SE told them exactly what has been said before :

"we do accept 3rd party transceivers but we don't support them. If you still want to use them willingly, you'll have to sign a discharge paper and we'll provide you with a key to activate on your equipement".

That's Arista's official policy regarding 3rd party transceivers.

I am fine with that.

All other vendors, explicitly or silently, adopt the same approach.

Mark.

+1. At least they have a policy that they fully assume publically, which is more than others can say/do. Best regards. -- Youssef BENGELLOUN-ZAHR

Intel does allow DAC of any vendor (assuming they properly identify as DACs. You can also disable Intel's check in the Linux drivers. ----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions Midwest Internet Exchange The Brothers WISP ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mikael Abrahamsson" <swmike@swm.pp.se> To: "Mark Tinka" <mark.tinka@seacom.mu> Cc: "nanog list" <nanog@nanog.org> Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2016 7:32:55 AM Subject: Re: Arista unqualified SFP On Thu, 18 Aug 2016, Mark Tinka wrote:

All other vendors, explicitly or silently, adopt the same approach.

I've heard from people running Intel NICs and HP switches, that this can't be turned off there. You run into very interesting problems when you're trying to use DAC cables between multi vendor. Any pointers to how to turn this of on Intel NICs and HP switches? -- Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@swm.pp.se

https://sourceforge.net/p/e1000/mailman/message/28698959/ That or similar doesn't work for that model? ----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions Midwest Internet Exchange The Brothers WISP ----- Original Message ----- From: "Denys Fedoryshchenko" <denys@visp.net.lb> To: "Mike Hammett" <nanog@ics-il.net> Cc: "NANOG Mailing List" <nanog@nanog.org> Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2016 7:51:13 AM Subject: Re: Arista unqualified SFP Not a case with Intel X*710 new chipset, check is in firmware. Someone hacked it, but ... On 2016-08-18 15:41, Mike Hammett wrote:

Intel does allow DAC of any vendor (assuming they properly identify as DACs. You can also disable Intel's check in the Linux drivers.

----- Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions

Midwest Internet Exchange

The Brothers WISP

----- Original Message -----

From: "Mikael Abrahamsson" <swmike@swm.pp.se> To: "Mark Tinka" <mark.tinka@seacom.mu> Cc: "nanog list" <nanog@nanog.org> Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2016 7:32:55 AM Subject: Re: Arista unqualified SFP

On Thu, 18 Aug 2016, Mark Tinka wrote:

...

All other vendors, explicitly or silently, adopt the same approach.

I've heard from people running Intel NICs and HP switches, that this can't be turned off there. You run into very interesting problems when you're trying to use DAC cables between multi vendor.

Any pointers to how to turn this of on Intel NICs and HP switches?

Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:

Any pointers to how to turn this of on Intel NICs and HP switches?

Yes: don't buy Intel NICs or HP switches. Problem solved. Nick

All of our X520's don't care if you use Arista or Proline DAC cables (the two brands we have around). Spencer Ryan | Senior Systems Administrator | sryan@arbor.net<mailto:sryan@arbor.net> Arbor Networks +1.734.794.5033 (d) | +1.734.846.2053 (m) www.arbornetworks.com<http://www.arbornetworks.com/> ________________________________ From: NANOG <nanog-bounces@nanog.org> on behalf of Ryan DiRocco <ryan.dirocco@totalserversolutions.com> Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2016 9:49:14 AM To: Mikael Abrahamsson; Mark Tinka Cc: nanog list Subject: RE: Arista unqualified SFP If you are running Intel NIC(s) such as the X520-DA2 with 3rd party optics for something like DWDM, there are driver option flags for linux/windows, etc to permit the use of the optics. In deployments we've used various branded dac cables to connect Intel branded nics to cisco/arista/brocade, without issue. As with any vendor, there is a work around procedure. -----Original Message----- From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces@nanog.org] On Behalf Of Mikael Abrahamsson Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2016 8:33 AM To: Mark Tinka Cc: nanog list Subject: Re: Arista unqualified SFP On Thu, 18 Aug 2016, Mark Tinka wrote:

All other vendors, explicitly or silently, adopt the same approach.

I've heard from people running Intel NICs and HP switches, that this can't be turned off there. You run into very interesting problems when you're trying to use DAC cables between multi vendor. Any pointers to how to turn this of on Intel NICs and HP switches? -- Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@swm.pp.se

Your AM team will gladly unlock this for you.

This is probably just a procedural issue with Arista TAC not knowing the secret sauce.

That's not the answer I got at all from Arista: "I understand that Arista TAC indicated that <SE> could provide you with a transceiver unlock code. While it is true that the unlock code concept exists, it is very unusual for us to unlock optics on switches. We’d be happy to talk with you further about this in person. " Followup was: "As I'm sure you know, Arista is not the only manufacturer that has made this choice. Unlike our competition, we work to make our optics pricing competitive, but we'll never be as low as the "Taiwan specials" that you see floating around. I have another customer that was flashing white label optics that just made the decision to start using Arista labeled optics again because they were tired of bad quality." They basically said we'll sell you 10x priced optics instead of 100x and we're awesome because we do that. No unlock for you, buy our slightly cheaper OEM optics instead. -- Tim

Tim Jackson wrote:

"As I'm sure you know, Arista is not the only manufacturer that has made this choice. Unlike our competition, we work to make our optics pricing competitive, but we'll never be as low as the "Taiwan specials" that you see floating around. I have another customer that was flashing white label optics that just made the decision to start using Arista labeled optics again because they were tired of bad quality."

They basically said we'll sell you 10x priced optics instead of 100x and we're awesome because we do that. No unlock for you, buy our slightly cheaper OEM optics instead.

Nothing specific to Arista or anything, but this is a terribly frustrating position to be in as a customer, when you want to e.g. use some transceiver which isn't supported by the vendor or connect up Vendor A's switch to Vendor B's switch using a DAC or something. Ultimately one side needs to give in because vendor DACs are coded one way or the other. It is always better to clarify this sort of thing with the account management team before purchasing, and preferably have it in email or writing. After that, the best approach is to ask support and/or account management nicely rather than "bitching and moaning" as someone else suggested - diplomacy is usually a better long term basis for having a good relationship with your vendor. Often it's useful to point out discussions like this which indicate that it's been enabled for other people. Nick

On 18/08/16 14:45, Mark Tinka wrote:

On 18/Aug/16 14:42, Nick Hilliard wrote:

...

It is always better to clarify this sort of thing with the account management team before purchasing, and preferably have it in email or writing. After that, the best approach is to ask support and/or account management nicely rather than "bitching and moaning" as someone else suggested - diplomacy is usually a better long term basis for having a good relationship with your vendor. Often it's useful to point out discussions like this which indicate that it's been enabled for other people.

+1.

We politely said to Arista, "We like your box, but we're afraid that if we can't use our existing optics, we'd all miss out on a good opportunity working together".

That did the job.

Mark.

I think someone from Arista said... "We are never going to lose an affair due to not supporting 3-d party optics, but we will try to convince the customer to buy our stuff, since that's what we do, we sell stuff". In these cheap arista switches, filling them with optics (if the optics is from ANET themselves) is usually the same cost as buying like five switches, so of course they want a share of that and they will try to convince you that 3rd party optics will make the switch go up in flames etc etc. So its kinda easy... just present three choices. 1. Arista Switch + Arista Optics (at the same price as your favourite 3rd party vendor) 2. Arista Switch + 3rd party optics 3. No Arista switch. I know which one you are gonna get. -- hugge

Yeah, it is. And yeah, I was considering that option too. Ethan писал 2016-08-18 16:59:

...

I think someone from Arista said... "We are never going to lose an affair due to not supporting 3-d party optics, but we will try to convince the customer to buy our stuff, since that's what we do, we sell stuff". In these cheap arista switches, filling them with optics (if the optics is from ANET themselves) is usually the same cost as buying like five switches, so of course they want a share of that and they will try to convince you that 3rd party optics will make the switch go up in flames etc etc. So its kinda easy... just present three choices.

Arista is an x86 Fedora box right?

Get someone to make a keygen.

On Aug 18, 2016 7:42 AM, "Nick Hilliard" <nick@foobar.org> wrote:

It is always better to clarify this sort of thing with the account management team before purchasing, and preferably have it in email or writing.

Sometimes you inherit bad situations... The (bad) solution is to program your own optics to match Arista ones so their switches can't tell the difference.. It's not hard, but a lot of the time it's out of the normal reach of a lot of customers. Flexoptix fixed that problem, but they're still priced way too high vs the OEMs that supply to them.. It's still terribly frustrating to deal with this issue in 2016. It's a desperate money grab from less informed customers. Arista should really stop this bad practice. I'd urge anybody buying any gear to make sure it can accept any optic meeting whatever MSA standard optics that it's able to have plugged into it. -- Tim

Though it would be really interesting to see, if a company like Cisco or Juniper ever suffered a major data leak, what number of customers really do pay full list price for some stuff. "Yeppers, twenty 1310nm LX 10Gb SFP+ for $4800 each, sounds good. Where do we send the check?" On Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 6:59 PM, Ricky Beam <jfbeam@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, 18 Aug 2016 08:05:30 -0400, Tim Jackson <jackson.tim@gmail.com> wrote:

...

"As I'm sure you know, Arista is not the only manufacturer that has made this choice. Unlike our competition, we work to make our optics pricing competitive, but we'll never be as low as the "Taiwan specials" that you see floating around. I have another customer that was flashing white label optics that just made the decision to start using Arista labeled optics again because they were tired of bad quality."

I can't count the number of times I've seen this BS from vendors. I'm not buying crap made in a shack out in a rain forest. I'm buying the same f'ing optics from the same f'ing people as the vendor. (Finisar, Infineon, etc.) The only difference between my $10 optic and their $300 optic is the value in an EEPROM and the logo on the label.

(I know from experience, the numbers on the price sheet are inflated so sales can maintain the illusion of "deep customer discounts". As the saying goes, only an idiot pays list price.)

Well, Context: Starting with 10Gb the optics are more finicky. Part of that price hike include tech support (1) which you will never get from most OEM vendor. PS: Mine is pretty good. Having dealt with a few optic issues lately: . Why that 10km LR won't work with that circuit, oh its a 8.5km + fusion + etc, your cutting it a bit short there bud, replaced them by ER's ( Cost: 3 weeks lag on delivery and ~10h ) . Why is that XFP ain't working in those x450, oh its a power issue :( ( Cost: 6h, delivery was no issue ) But the question remains, does $290 is over charging it for that type of insurance. PS: Approaching those issue logically with less Trumpish hyperbole make more sense, almost as much as the Juniper pricing with their 78%+ discounts off their official pricelist =D ----- Alain Hebert ahebert@pubnix.net PubNIX Inc. 50 boul. St-Charles P.O. Box 26770 Beaconsfield, Quebec H9W 6G7 Tel: 514-990-5911 http://www.pubnix.net Fax: 514-990-9443 On 08/18/16 21:59, Ricky Beam wrote:

On Thu, 18 Aug 2016 08:05:30 -0400, Tim Jackson <jackson.tim@gmail.com> wrote:

...

"As I'm sure you know, Arista is not the only manufacturer that has made this choice. Unlike our competition, we work to make our optics pricing competitive, but we'll never be as low as the "Taiwan specials" that you see floating around. I have another customer that was flashing white label optics that just made the decision to start using Arista labeled optics again because they were tired of bad quality."

I can't count the number of times I've seen this BS from vendors. I'm not buying crap made in a shack out in a rain forest. I'm buying the same f'ing optics from the same f'ing people as the vendor. (Finisar, Infineon, etc.) The only difference between my $10 optic and their $300 optic is the value in an EEPROM and the logo on the label.

(I know from experience, the numbers on the price sheet are inflated so sales can maintain the illusion of "deep customer discounts". As the saying goes, only an idiot pays list price.)

Same here, i was considering Arista, because they are quite cost effective,feature rich, interesting hardware for developing some custom solutions. But no more, after reading about unreasonable vendor lock-in. But such inflexibility are very bad sign, this "openness" looks like marketing only, under the hood it seems worse than other solutions on market. Also when support shows such inflexibility, it is very bad sign. And very sad. On 2016-08-18 14:29, Dovid Bender wrote:

And I was about to jump on to the Arista train.....

Regards,

Dovid

-----Original Message----- From: Stanislaw <me@nek0.net> Sender: "NANOG" <nanog-bounces@nanog.org>Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2016 13:24:05 To: nanog list<nanog@nanog.org> Subject: Re: Arista unqualified SFP

Hi all, If somebody is following my epic adventure of getting uqualified SFP to work on Aristas, here is the unhappy end of it.

I've written to Arista support and got the following dialogue: Support guy: Hi, Thank you for contacting Arista Support. My name is **** and I'll be assisting you on this case. Could you please provide the "show version" output from this switch?

Me: Hi, Here it is: <show version output here>

Support guy: Hi, Thank you for the information. Unfortunately, we are unable to activate your 3rd party components. To ensure ongoing quality, Arista devices are designed to support only properly qualified transceivers. Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Me: I do not understand, But there is a command which allows using non-Arista transceivers. Why have you implemented it but don't provide an access key to your customers when they ask for it? If it is required to sign some papers which declare that I am aware of all the risks and losing my warranty - I agree with that, lets do it. Any way what are the conditions to receive that access key?

Support guy: I'm afraid that there is nothing I'm able to do regarding this situation. If you have any other questions regarding enabling 3rd party options in Arista switches, I suggest to contact your local account team (or sales) for further discussion on this matter.

Next, i've tried inserting various QSFP+ DAC cables I have - none of them has been even detected on the switch, it was acting like nothing has been inserted. I guess that even if I get the key, most of my transceivers/DAC (which work like a champ in Juniper or Extreme switches) cables wouldnt work.

I'm writing this post to make somebody who considers buying their switches be aware of what they'd get. Just buy Juniper instead.

Stanislaw wrote at 2016-08-17 23:25:

...

Hi Tim,

Thanks for your expressive answer. Will try it :)

Tim Jackson писал 2016-08-17 22:57:

...

I'd suggest bitching and moaning at your account team & support until they give you the key to unlock them..

-- Tim

On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 2:50 PM, Stanislaw <me@nek0.net> wrote:

...

Hi all, Is there a way for unlocking off-brand transceivers usage on Arista switches?

I've got an Arista 7050QX switch with 4.14 EOS version. Then it has been found out that Arista switches seem to not have possibility to unlock off-brand xcievers usage (by some service command or so).

I've patched /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/XcvrAgent.py, made the checking function bypass the actual check and it helped: ports are not in errdisable state anymore. But despite of xceivers are detected correctly, links aren't coming up (they are in notconnect state).

If anyone possibly have does have a sacred knowledge of bringing off-branded transceivers to life on Arista switches, your help'd be very appreciated. Thanks.

On 18/08/16 13:29, Dovid Bender wrote:

And I was about to jump on to the Arista train.....

Regards,

Dovid

-----Original Message----- From: Stanislaw <me@nek0.net> Sender: "NANOG" <nanog-bounces@nanog.org>Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2016 13:24:05 To: nanog list<nanog@nanog.org> Subject: Re: Arista unqualified SFP

Hi all, If somebody is following my epic adventure of getting uqualified SFP to work on Aristas, here is the unhappy end of it.

I've written to Arista support and got the following dialogue: Support guy: Hi, Thank you for contacting Arista Support. My name is **** and I'll be assisting you on this case. Could you please provide the "show version" output from this switch?

Me: Hi, Here it is: <show version output here>

Support guy: Hi, Thank you for the information. Unfortunately, we are unable to activate your 3rd party components. To ensure ongoing quality, Arista devices are designed to support only properly qualified transceivers. Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Me: I do not understand, But there is a command which allows using non-Arista transceivers. Why have you implemented it but don't provide an access key to your customers when they ask for it? If it is required to sign some papers which declare that I am aware of all the risks and losing my warranty - I agree with that, lets do it. Any way what are the conditions to receive that access key?

Support guy: I'm afraid that there is nothing I'm able to do regarding this situation. If you have any other questions regarding enabling 3rd party options in Arista switches, I suggest to contact your local account team (or sales) for further discussion on this matter.

So. Since when does one handle a business-decisions with the TAC? handing out the key means that ANET will not never ever be able to sell you any optics, because that's how it works when you ride on the 3rd party optics train. Also the TAC need to be flagged to ignore non-official transcievers when sending in your issues so they know they don't have to bitch about that. Id suggest you call your SE/TAM instead of TAC for this. Or buy something where you can brand the EEPROM with something more appropriate that a ANET-switch like -- hugge

It won't work. They require the hashed key that support/your AM has to generate for your org. Spencer Ryan | Senior Systems Administrator | sryan@arbor.net<mailto:sryan@arbor.net> Arbor Networks +1.734.794.5033 (d) | +1.734.846.2053 (m) www.arbornetworks.com<http://www.arbornetworks.com/> ________________________________ From: NANOG <nanog-bounces@nanog.org> on behalf of Ryan Gelobter <ryan.g@atwgpc.net> Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2016 10:58:36 AM To: Stanislaw Cc: nanog list Subject: Re: Arista unqualified SFP Instead of patching the python what happens if you just run 'no errdisable recovery cause xcvr-unsupported' On Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 5:24 AM, Stanislaw <me@nek0.net> wrote:

Hi all, If somebody is following my epic adventure of getting uqualified SFP to work on Aristas, here is the unhappy end of it.

I've written to Arista support and got the following dialogue: Support guy: Hi, Thank you for contacting Arista Support. My name is **** and I'll be assisting you on this case. Could you please provide the "show version" output from this switch?

Me: Hi, Here it is: <show version output here>

Support guy: Hi, Thank you for the information. Unfortunately, we are unable to activate your 3rd party components. To ensure ongoing quality, Arista devices are designed to support only properly qualified transceivers. Please let me know if you have any other questions.

Me: I do not understand, But there is a command which allows using non-Arista transceivers. Why have you implemented it but don't provide an access key to your customers when they ask for it? If it is required to sign some papers which declare that I am aware of all the risks and losing my warranty - I agree with that, lets do it. Any way what are the conditions to receive that access key?

Support guy: I'm afraid that there is nothing I'm able to do regarding this situation. If you have any other questions regarding enabling 3rd party options in Arista switches, I suggest to contact your local account team (or sales) for further discussion on this matter.

Next, i've tried inserting various QSFP+ DAC cables I have - none of them has been even detected on the switch, it was acting like nothing has been inserted. I guess that even if I get the key, most of my transceivers/DAC (which work like a champ in Juniper or Extreme switches) cables wouldnt work.

I'm writing this post to make somebody who considers buying their switches be aware of what they'd get. Just buy Juniper instead.

Stanislaw wrote at 2016-08-17 23:25:

...

Hi Tim,

Thanks for your expressive answer. Will try it :)

Tim Jackson писал 2016-08-17 22:57:

I'd suggest bitching and moaning at your account team & support until

...

they give you the key to unlock them..

-- Tim

On Wed, Aug 17, 2016 at 2:50 PM, Stanislaw <me@nek0.net> wrote:

Hi all,

...

Is there a way for unlocking off-brand transceivers usage on Arista switches?

I've got an Arista 7050QX switch with 4.14 EOS version. Then it has been found out that Arista switches seem to not have possibility to unlock off-brand xcievers usage (by some service command or so).

I've patched /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/XcvrAgent.py, made the checking function bypass the actual check and it helped: ports are not in errdisable state anymore. But despite of xceivers are detected correctly, links aren't coming up (they are in notconnect state).

If anyone possibly have does have a sacred knowledge of bringing off-branded transceivers to life on Arista switches, your help'd be very appreciated. Thanks.