HP brought an interesting array of complementary products to our test. Core switching was handled by two 4U 5406zl Intelligent Edge chassis. The 5406zl is the second-largest chassis in the ProCurve line, but the pair sufficed for our tests. Each chassis was equipped with four four-port 10GbE modules and a single 24-port 10/100/1000 premium line interface card, as well as its own 5400-series management module.

HP deems the line interface card “premium,” apparently for its support of PoE. The company showed off this capability by also bringing along its ProCurve Wireless Access Point 520wl and its Mobility Management software platform. To support its PoE intentions, HP had to equip the 5406zl with a powerful enough power supply, choosing for this task an 875-watt number that was placed in both cores. HP rates the 5406zl with an overall backplane throughput capability of 628Gbps.

The 5406zl’s management card deserves special mention, as HP has gone to considerable trouble to make it smart as well as competitive. A separate 667MHz PowerPC CPU runs the card along with between 256MB and 1GB worth of dedicated RAM. The card can manage multiple configurations via a handy Compact Flash card interface and even filter them on to other switches in the chain. A standard RS-232 console port is included, but there’s also a USB port on the card that HP claims will assume console duties in future releases of the management software.

HP has built a wide variety of expansion cards for the 5400 series chassis. Multiple 10GbE card configurations are supported by both fiber and copper 10/100/1000 cards with and without PoE. Power supplies can be had in either 875- or 1,550-watt versions, and the switch can support single- or dual-power supply configurations. All this to afford admins as much flexibility as possible in configuring downstream PoE devices. Should all the power generate too much heat, there’s also an optional hot-swappable fan module with four variable-speed fans.

HP ProCurve 3500yl Intelligent Edge

On the edge, HP deployed two 1U 3500yl Intelligent Edge switches. These came equipped with 20 10/100/1000 PoE-capable ports, four “dual-personality” ports — where each port can be used as either a 10/100/1000 RJ-45 or an open mini-GBIC (Gigabit Interface Converter) slot — and four 10GbE uplinks. Management is built into the 3500yl, so an additional management card was unnecessary — and there was no room for it, anyway. This is one tightly packed unit.

All our 10GbE entries, even those from our previous shootout, position their products primarily via a customized ASIC architecture; HP is no exception. HP’s is called the ProVision ASIC, and what sets it apart from the competition here is that it’s been designed solely with enterprise switching duties in mind. There is no optimization here for telecom switch rack chores. Instead, ProVision marries performance to a very flexible and management-heavy software architecture — and frankly, it works.

HP’s management platform is called the ProCurve Manager, and it comes in two flavors: a freebie of the same name and a premium version that gets Plus tacked to the end of its title. The free version is actually surprisingly robust, including topology discovery and full event notification. For our tests, we used the Plus version, which also offers identity management and wireless capabilities.

The optional IdM (Identity Management) module is a truly nifty security bonus. It allows admins to apply individual or group access security across all compatible network infrastructures from the ProCurve Manager console. IdM is backed by a RADIUS server, and although it has limited use for end-users at this point, it certainly has potential in future releases.

In testing, the ProCurve solution performed excellently. HP deliberately sent just what it needed to complete our tests in order to keep its as-tested pricing as low as possible. Yet, after its engineers managed to get the ProCurve hardware talking to our Spirent TestCenter infrastructure, its performance numbers were excellent and nearly identical to those of the much higher-priced Extreme entry.