Finding a New Cisco Switch

[jmorton1]

We need to order a replacement switch for one of the branches where I work, and looking around, it appears that all of the switches listed on the Cisco site, when you compare them, have an EOL date only 5 years out. Anyone know of an easy way to identify one that is like 10 years out? I know a lot of our equipment in the past has had a 10 year EOL.

[Reza Sharifi]

Since technology changes so rapidly, it is very hard to keep selling the same product for 10 years. That said, when you see a product being EOL or EOS in 5 years, there will be support for an additional 4 or 5 years after the EOL date.

HTH

[jmorton1]

To be clear, when I say "end of life", I am referring to the end of hardware support. A lot of devices I am seeing do not appear to have hardware support past 5 years out.

[Ramblin Tech · Accepted solution]

For switches and routers, Cisco typically makes an End-of-Life announcement 6-12 months before the actual End-of-Sale date.  Most h/w will then typically be supported by TAC (troubleshooting and RMAs) for 5 years after the End-of-Sale date, with s/w (IOS) reaching its End-of-Engineering / End-of-Support before 5 years, but you would have to check the specific EoL announcement to be sure on both h/w and s/w.

While Cisco has had contractual agreements with some customers to announce EoL 12 months before the End of Sale date, they are not going to announce EoL much longer than that, nor make public commitments to support products for 10 years in the future for a couple of reasons:

 1 - Corporate governance: A publicly traded company that makes promises about actions it will take in 10 years on products it sells today may not be able to recognize all the revenue from that sale until the time has expired.  That is, a customer could demand some amount of money back if that company supported the product for less than the 10 years by claiming the purchase was made under the condition that support would last 10 years.

2 - Supply chain: No company can guarantee that it will have sufficient RMA replacements for today's products in 10 years.  Being able to lock in an RMA supply to cover the time period after the End-of-Sale date is one of the factors Product Managers use in determining when the h/w End-of-Support date will be in the EoL announcement.

[Leo Laohoo]

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@jmorton1 wrote:
I know a lot of our equipment in the past has had a 10 year EOL.

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5 years out is a standard.  If one can "squeeze" the life of a switch or router up to 5 years then that is a good "return of investment".  

If I remembered correctly, the 2960S/X/XR and the 3560X/3750X had a life of 10 years because their replacement, 3650/3850 was a flop.  

[johnlloyd_13]

i agree with leo. our 2960x, 3560x and 3750x were very stable.

we had these switches for almost 10 years!

we had our 3650/3850 for 5 years less only.