ChromeOS (or formerly Chrome OS) is presented a sa cloud-first operating system for enterprises.
According to Google, ChromeOS provides employees with a modern experience and devices that stay fast, have built-in security and deploy quickly. It is augmented with the Chrome Enterprise Connectors Framework, a collection of plug-and-play integrations.
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Cisco NX-OS
Score 8.0 out of 10
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Cisco NX-OS is a network operating system presented as a solution to help network operations move at the speed of business, with comprehensive automation, extensive visibility, and flexible open architectures for data center networks. NX-OS is the network operating system for all fabric architectures, from traditional L2/L3 to overlay-based fabrics.Cisco NX-OS powers the modern data center.
ChromeOS is just as good as Windows. I feel it can be better sometimes because it starts up faster and more efficiently. I like how all the programs have similar interfaces and are easy to learn. There are less issues with ChromeOS than there are with Windows. And security is …
I use ChromeOS for all of my web browsing needs. From Zoom calls to YouTube channel management; from social media posting to content creation, ChromeOS is my browser of choice. The only time I don't use ChromeOS is if I need to keep a personal login separate from a professional account (for example, Canva). I use ChromeOS for my professional Canva account and a different browser for my personal account.
It's definitely very well suited for data center environments and the scale that is sometimes required. We also manage many enterprise environments, and we almost never see Cisco NX-OS or Nexus in an enterprise environment, only specifically on the data center side. Mainly because of the lower bandwidth requirements and so on. But it depends on the hardware, since it's a software product.
Windows Server and Active Directory is very robust and stable, it has been a staple in every IT environment I have worked in during my career. Junior to Intermediate admins can learn Windows Server easily, the user interfaces make administration tasks very easy as well as the documentation available through a vast amount of resources. There are other Operating Systems available with no GUI which has a smaller attack surface, faster update installation and reboot time. Windows Server does have the ability to remove the desktop experience, however it is not something I have had experience with and I believe most administrators choose not to remove it.
Cisco NX-OS does a great job of supporting high dense environments due to Cisco NX-OS based devices having some of the fastest packet switching performance
Cisco NX-OS supports high bandwidth environments really well due to the high throughput links that are typically found in Cisco NX-OS network appliances
Cisco NX-OS provides some of the best redundancy in the way of "Active-Active redundancy" via it's VPC technology. This is especially desirable in data center environments.
I think one thing we'd like to see a bit more in the Nexus space is probably the troubleshooting features. So one would be the I perf feature and being able to test network traffic across links. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of really good features in terms of troubleshooting, but one particular one that we like to see is where we can test network traffic. We can make sure that we have good latency, we got good bandwidth utilization as well. For us that's a big one. We've got to use third party tools to do that. So if the NXOS platform can do it, that's one of the thing we've got to do.
Microsoft needs to minimize the update frequency by making the product more secure. It can become very exhausting trying to keep updated if you don't have a dedicated support team. It can become challenging where the business is unable to allow downtime for reboots as part of the update process.
Prone to security and audit vulnerabilities.
The operating system needs more CPU and memory resources compared to other options such as Linux.
Understanding the licensing model can be abit confusing.
Comes with a standard firewall, but not the most secured one available. Would suggest using a more secured firewall as part of your antivirus software.
Due to the number of vulnerabilities and the operating system being a target for hackers, anti-virus software is a must.
I've carefully reviewed the servers and services currently running on Windows Server 2012, and given the opportunity would renew them as is going forward. There are two systems I currently have in place, one is a very large Linux implementation for a large ecommerce site, and one is a very large backup solution front ended by FTP servers running Linux. Neither are well suited for Windows, but the overall network infrastructure is and will be Windows Server for the foreseeable future.
For everyday surfing the web and checking emails, ChromeOS excels. You won't start seeing ChromeOS slowing down until you start using tools that require more GPU (coding, rendering videos, AI, etc.).
NX-OS has many similarities with the traditional IOS which is quite beneficial when it comes to configuration and learning. As a native Linux system, there are a lot of tools and features that can be enabled for any use case.
Anyone new to IT could easily use the familiar Desktop Experience (GUI) version because we all know how to use Windows, whether a client or server version. Once an IT user is more comfortable with the operating system, they can move on to the Core version, which is the way to go in almost all situations.
Excellent and the best Automation capabilities with Cisco NX-OS which effectively allows easy management of different networks across the whole organization keeping all the business data secure and well managed. With its ability to detect any data threat and effectively fix the issue, Cisco NX-OS has extremely powerful options and its process monitoring capabilities are the best.
Cisco support never fails me. In terms of timely response, no one is on par with them. They really value the impact of having technical issues and potential business stoppage. Also, their support staff are well equipped with knowledge and skills and easily resolve the most common incidents. Most of the time, we can resolve an issue by just calling them once.
Microsoft's support is hugely wide-ranging from articles online to having to contact them directly for the more serious issues. In recent years when I have contacted them directly, I have found the support o be excellent as I have found myself connected to very knowledgeable people in the field in which I needed the support. The online support available is vast and I tend to find most of the time that there is always someone out there who has had the same issue as me in the past and knows something about how to resolve it! This is the advantage of using industry standard and long-established systems such as Windows Server.
Make sure that you have detailed processes in place for every server instance you plan to install/upgrade, if possible get the base OS loaded and Windows Updates applied ahead of time, and if using a VM take a snapshot prior to installing each role, as well as along the way.
ChromeOS is just as good as Windows. I feel it can be better sometimes because it starts up faster and more efficiently. I like how all the programs have similar interfaces and are easy to learn. There are less issues with ChromeOS than there are with Windows. And security is much tighter.
I am much more familiar with the commands in Cisco IOS as it has been around for many more years. I know why NX-OS is a different system and can see the benefits of the fibre channel integration, but I do not understand why the commands had to use a different syntax. With the Nexus switches you don't get a choice of operating system unfortunately.
They are different experiences, and while the other solutions offer enterprise-grade stability and, in some cases, address Windows server shortcomings (such as patching), they all do the trick, but the other solutions require a deeper technical background/configuration of items at the command line, which some people are not fully comfortable with.
Up to now, we haven't had a major ground-shaking attack on our networks but we take no chances by using NX-OS alongside a SIEM. All endpoints and workloads are secure so I would say we have plenty of trust in their security model.
We do have some implementations on Cisco NX-OS and Nexus hardware, and some of these are already quite old, but they are still running pretty smoothly. So they are super reliable, in my opinion. So that's one of the very positive ways it impacts companies.