At work I'm helping with our data center expansion.  For the top of rack switches in the expansion cabinets, we're going to run a 25gb SFP drop from the main switches (which are Aruba's) that talk to the outside world.  Is there any transceiver brands to avoid?

The safe option is to just buy transceivers on the approved list of the top of rack switch manufacturer.

I’ve had good luck personally with Finsair, FS, and 10Gtek as far as 3rd party transceivers go otherwise.

Since it’s not your money in this case though I’d go OEM so that when one dies you’re not on the hook for having recommended non-OEM transceivers.

+1000000%. Any time dealing with commercial get what your contract says. That's why you pay the prices, so you get warranties and support without any questions.

Im gonna recommend this as well.  Some places wont provide troubleshooting / support if its non OEM cables ...  (cisco / meraki)
This very much a pay to play environment.

If you choose to use third party optics, make sure you have a handful to "test" optics from the OEM that you can pop in and "prove" that it's not an issue with the optic.
It makes the tech call easier when the problem happens with the OEM optic and you can ALSO prove that the problem happens with other optics.
For most production interfaces, I use OEM, however, I also use a ton of third party optics. I've had very good success with FS and ADDON.
I've used both brands in my Aruba (6300M) switches (10g optics only). I've also used both brands in Extreme, Fortinet and Juniper switches from 10G, 40G and 100G (in MM, SM and DAC versions)

This, some OEMs may not support items not in the approved list.

Why would you use transceivers?

Would would you not use the appropriate approved SFP (Small form Plug-able laser) fiber plugged into it, then the fiber runs to the main core or edge switch or router, then plugs into the SFP on that end?

I am missing something or over complicating this on accident or is it semantics and you all callthe SFP/Laser module a transeiver ?
We always called them "Lasers" SFP, SC, XFP, etc etc... I can't remember them all now, but I remember there were about 10 different formats/sizes, aside from SX,LX, ZX, and various Mux Colors...

When I was working in all of Charters Data centers and hub sites, we only used Cisco SFP, XFP, or whatever sized laser modules in the Cisco Routers and switches...  Officially and as far as Cisco was concerned.  Now in actuality, we did run a bunch of off brand lasers bought from Worldwide Technology and a few other vendors for a pretty steep discount.

However, if we had an issue big enough that we had to open a TAC case and escalate to the upper level Cisco Engineers, we'd quickly swap out to actual Cisco lasers, for the call. That way when they did a Show Interface, Show Inventory and Show tech I think it was, they'd show up as Cisco.  
If the TAC engineer logged in and ran those commands and they saw a non Cisco laser, that is the 1st thing they'd stop at, swear that was the issue and not go any further.  

Then, If we swapped out the laser to Cisco's, they'd proceed to work the issue.  It was almost like union guys walking off the job and filing a grievance.. LOL...

Not once did we ever have an issue that the issue experienced was a non-Cisco laser issue.  
Now we did have a few failed (link down) lasers, that we replaced and resolved the link issue ourselves, without engaging Cisco TAC...

In my go box in my truck, I used to carry around about 30 or so lasers of various sizes (and different Lambdas for CWDM and DWDM muxes) for troubleshooting and replacements as needed.

Sorry, my terminology may not be the best.  In looking for cables (both DAC cables and optical cables), I'm seeing them with different brand modules at the end.  








I've gotten the impression that outside of vendor warranty support, you can pretty much buy whatever and it will work (excluding your switch having some sort of bullshit vendor lockdown feature).  That impression was what I was trying to confirm in this thread.

We're talking about the same thing.  Some companies call them modules while others call them transceivers.

https://www.fs.com/c/10g-sfp-plus-63
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/interfaces-modules/transceiver-modules/data_sheet_c78-455693.html

SR transeivers use LED's while LR tranceivers use lasers.  I guess BiDi transceivers probably use lasers too but I've never dealt with them.

You're correct in that *most* switches nowadays are brand agnostic when it comes to their transceivers.  Even Cisco SMB switches don't care what you use.

As long as the transceivers on both ends match spec wise you should be fine.

I love buying cheap gear for home use and have probably 75 SFP+ transceivers of all brands in use currently, however, for work I buy OEM.

I don't get paid more (or even appreciated for) trying to save the company money and it will just be another headache for me if/when something doesn't work if I'm not using OEM equipment.

What switches are going in the rack?

Unifi XG-24 10gb switches with SFP28 uplinks.  The Unifi's will be fed by an Aruba 8360V2.  I work for a poor university, so saving money if its low risk is worth it to me.

It looks like Ubiquiti transceivers are $49 while FS.com transceivers are $39 for SFP28 so I wouldn’t bother with non-OEM for $10 per transceiver. If you were talking Cisco prices then I probably would.

As far as SFP+ transceivers go though I’d buy used Mellanox off of eBay for $8 each.

You're putting Ubiquity switches in a data center? Brave. I would use second hand Nexus instead, doubly so if you are planning to run storage on it.

Only for end point switches for servers that are not super critical.  I've had 2 of the XG-24's in there for about 2 years now on a compute farm, and they've worked just fine for how I use them (basically as unmanaged switches).  Anything I really care about (infrastructure VM pools, file servers that are used by a lot of people at once, etc) get plugged into my Aruba's.

If money was no object, I'd just do Aruba's everywhere.  But that's sadly not the case.

Cool cool. I've had good luck with Entagon's SFPs. We have tens of thousands of ports of them across our DCs with negligible issues.

I’d use Aruba optics in the Aruba switch and Ubiquiti optics in the Ubiquiti switch.

However, see this if the Aruba optics are beyond your budget.

Great minds think alike  Already set that option on my Aruba's.

Personally, I think the enterprise network gear vendors love to play games with "supported" and "unsupported".  The ole "no one ever got fired for buying IBM" bullshit.

Fuck em, I'll save money and still have a good infrastructure

Good to know.  Based on my limited experience and posts like yours - I'm really beginning to believe that unless you have goofy ass switches or routers that are deliberately crippled by the vendor, that any decent SFP transceiver should work.  

Today for giggles, I took an old fiber cable with ancient 10GB SFP transceivers (this cable had to be at least 12 years old), and plugged it into my Aruba 8360V2 and one of my Unifi XG-24's.  I had to set the stupid group speed on the Aruba down to 10GB for the port, but it worked fine otherwise and I was able to do some data transfers at 10gb speed between hosts on the Aruba and the Unifi.

We switched to 3rd party about 10-12 years ago and haven't really had any issues, other than saving a ton of cash. They sell optics flashed to look like the branded ones to fool your network gear. There is usually also a configuration command to get 3rd party optics to work, but TAC may hassle you if they see it in your config. We keep several branded optics on hand at each location for this purpose.

Good info there.  Not too worried about vendor support in the scenario where I'll be using these.  I do have a branded Aruba cable I can use as a tester if the situation arises.