Wired Intelligent Edge

I am needing to connect my Sonicwall NSa 6700 to my two Aruba 8325 core switches VIA a 40G QSFP+ lag.  Do you know if there is a DAC or twinax available that will work on both appliances or would I have to use different vendor specific fiber modules and a MPO fiber patch cable?  Is there any thing on the Aruba 8325 or the Sonicwall NSa 6700 that could be disabled to allow the other vendors DAC to work? 

Hi,

Each vendor will stick to its own DACs, AOCs, transceivers etc. Aruba is no exception. Unfortunately the only supported way to connect equipment from different vendors is to use Aruba transceivers on Aruba side, Sonicwall's transceivers on FW side and optical cable connecting both transceivers.

So for your question "if there is a DAC or twinax available that will work on both appliances" the answer will be "there is no officially supported by Aruba third party DACs".

Aruba 8325 supports following QSFP+ transceivers, DACs and AOCs:

Aruba 40G QSFP+ LC ER4 40km SMF Transceiver Q9G82A  
HPE X142 40G QSFP+ MPO SR4 Transceiver JH231A  
HPE X142 40G QSFP+ LC LR4 SM Transceiver JH232A  
HPE X142 40G QSFP+ MPO eSR4 300M Transceiver JH233A  
Aruba 40G QSFP+ LC Bidirectional 150m MMF 2-strand Transceiver JL308A  
HPE X242 40G QSFP+ to QSFP+ 1m Direct Attach Copper Cable JH234A  
HPE X242 40G QSFP+ to QSFP+ 3m Direct Attach Copper Cable JH235A  
HPE X242 40G QSFP+ to QSFP+ 5m Direct Attach Copper Cable JH236A  
Aruba 40G QSFP+ to QSFP+ 7m Active Optical Cable R0Z22A 
Aruba 40G QSFP+ to QSFP+ 15m Active Optical Cable R0Z23A  
Aruba 40G QSFP+ to QSFP+ 30m Active Optical Cable R0Z24A  
HPE BladeSystem c-Class 40G QSFP+ to 4x10G SFP+ 3m Direct Attach Copper Splitter Cable 721064-B21 

Regarding your question "Is there any thing on the Aruba 8325 or the Sonicwall NSa 6700 that could be disabled to allow the other vendors DAC to work?" - you can still try unsupported transceivers in Aruba 8325, however you do it on your own risk with no support for this configuration from Aruba TAC:


So will a Sonicwall DAC work flawlessly (or work at all) on Aruba switch? No idea, but you can try. But if you want to stay on the "light side of the force" ;-)  this is the way - "I have to use different vendor specific fiber modules and a MPO fiber patch cable". Thus in case such connection goes wrong both vendors will be left with the only target to blame - the cable :-D

Hope it helps!

Here is Sonicwall's supported transceiver list. Based on the lack of anything HPE/Aruba branded on it, I would say that if you want a fully supported solution from both vendors then you are stuck using fiber and appropriate transceivers rather than DACs.  This is actually what we are doing with our Sonicwalls. 

With that said, the sheer number of vendor optics on that list (especially generics, along with Finisar who makes many first party optics) suggests that the Sonicwall device probably isn't going to care about your Aruba coded DAC and things will probably work fine.