Juniper EX4200 Questions

I recently picked up a couple EX4200-48PX switches and am testing them. This is my fist time using Juniper HW so i am still figuring them out. Anyone know of any issues or have any helpful tips dealing with Juniper?
How is the management? I noticed it has a web ui but I haven't looked at it yet because it keeps complaining about needing an update.
How does one go about getting updates from Juniper? I created an account but it looks like I need something on maintenance to get access. Any tricks like buying something cheap just to get an active account?

 

I have never used their WebUI but the cli is quite simple and intuitive. If you have ever worked with Cisco gear, think a cleaner version of that which actually makes sense when you read the config.

As for updates, supports contracts tend to be expensive and not really worth it for home labs. PM me about a current junos for the 4200.

 

JWeb is really handy only to get different summarized / alternative views of things, but everything is possible in the CLI. The CLI is also far faster than jweb on every juniper device I have ever used. I highly recommend just learning the cli and ignoring jweb. Use of the CLI is so common that the newer switches ship with a stripped down mini jweb instance that gives you basic status and a way to upgrade the software packages on the switch, and install the enhanced jweb if you need to.

Most juniper devices also have a few license levels, to unlock things like IGMP/PIM, BGP etc. Typically you can commit configurations that need extra license levels but it will warn you only have X days to add the license before you can't commit the config with the statements needing the extra license. X=30 if I recall correctly from spinning up BGP4 on a ex3300 to fix temporary problems earlier this summer. When you remove the config items that need the license, it stops complaining.

 

Jweb is trash IMHO...so slow. The cli is pretty great, although not Cisco-like. Commit-confirm method for applying config changes is a really nice feature.

 

Issues? No. Things I can tell you? Sure.

First things first - JunOS is basically forked FreeBSD, so somewhere on the switch is the ability to get a bash shell on a switch.
Second, the onboard hardware is a Freescale (now NXP) MPC8533 PowerQuicc III, it's an e500 core (think of it as like a stripped down PowerPC G5 chip minus the 64 bit general use registers) combined with 1GB of RAM. The flash supposedly reside on a USB-DOM.

As for the UI/CLI? J-web is...meh. I have it enabled on my SRX100H2, but it's not really necessary. The CLI is a godsend. Autocompletion, time triggered rollbacks, very intuitive compared to the bleh-ness and inconsistencies of Cisco.

JunOS availability? Oh, the switch has been EOLed for the past 2 years. If you know what you need, I am pretty sure people here can oblige.

 

Thank you for the responses. I am hoping to dive into it next week.
I was able to find a copy of 15.1R7.9 which looks like the latest OS for this model.
I picked up a couple 10g cards to test out too.

@Blinky 42 Thanks for the advice. I hadn't even thought about license levels. It will be awhile before I have the time to look at BGP though.

@WANg Thanks for the info. It looks like the CLI is the way to go.

 

Just hit my first speed bump.
I am trying to setup vlans and would like the default vlan be 1 and a tagged vlan of 500 on each port. So each port will default to 1 with untagged traffic and it will allow 500 traffic if tagged.

I tried setting up the two vlans and then running the following for each port but it didn't seem to work.
set interfaces ge-0/0/0 unit 0 family ethernet-switching port-mode trunk
set interfaces ge-0/0/0 unit 0 family ethernet-switching native-vlan-id 1

Any advice on what I missed?

 

Never tried setting a vlan by its numerical id on a Juniper so that might be your issue. Below is what I have configured on one of my switches:

set interfaces ge-0/0/40 unit 0 family ethernet-switching port-mode trunk
set interfaces ge-0/0/40 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members Server
set interfaces ge-0/0/40 unit 0 family ethernet-switching vlan members Desktop
set interfaces ge-0/0/40 unit 0 family ethernet-switching native-vlan-id Server