Stratix 5700 vs 5200 – Lucid Thoughts

Is the Stratix 5200 an improvement over the old 5700? I’ve seen the early reviews from the folks preferring alternate platforms, but I got thoughts after spending 16+ hours configuring and staging a decent size network.

TL;DR: Yeah, it’s definitely an improvement—especially around the web interface. Solid entry, but there’s still room for improvement.

For context, these units are destined to be simple access switches—two VLANs with spanning tree and BPDU guard, setting port security, port descriptions, NTP, and such. No NAT or anything else too wild.

The engineers are out onsite prepping for the startup, so I’m pulling weekend duty to get ahead of the configuration and freeing up their time onsite. Enough to spend quality time with the 5200, but not enough to try out cooler features.

The initial setup of the 5200 is basically the same as the 5700 with express setup, just a little quicker. Boot times are a marginally better 140-160 seconds, still FOMO-inducing while staring at EIP/Mode flashing lights waiting for the correct sequence to long-press the setup button.

But once you’ve got a port, the web interface makes it quick—just 30 seconds to get the console configured with a device name, initial vlan, and console IP address.

We had quite a few units to set up, so we overlapped that initial boot time with some quick configuration. Six units were up in under 20 minutes. (Honestly, took longer to wire them.)

With the ridiculously slow web interface on the 5700, we got used to configuring these switches over Putty with the blue console cable. Pretty much the same CLI experience with the 5200.

I did poke around the new web interface, and it’s definitely a lot better—quicker to navigate and update.

Downloaded the running config, and it seems the auto-generated configs are less of a dumpster fire now. It’s not command-line clean, but the signal-to-noise ratio should make future troubleshooting of a switch configured solely through the web interface easier to read.

And for my GMP life science users, much easier to validate with a simple text comparison.

I’m sure these are only going to improve from here. The 5700 was a finicky beast to set up. But once it was running, it was a workhorse. We’ve deployed hundreds, and the only consistent beef was initial configuration and web interface.

The 5200 seems to have addressed these two major issues.

One thing though—these things run a little warm. At idle, it’s pulling about 1A @ 24VDC, and the inrush current is a fuse-killer. It popped my little 20mm 3A fast-blow fuses 50% of the time.

So, mind your clearances, double-check your heat calcs, and size those fuses accordingly.

Anyone know if running them at 48VDC helps with the heat?

Still need to test out the NAT functions and get some convergence numbers, but I’m pretty stoked on the improvements so far.

I know the heat this post is going to bring. Can’t wait for the engagement bump when everyone tells me why I’m wrong…