Cisco Catalyst 3560-CX Series Switches vs Cisco FabricPath

Likelihood to Recommend

They are best suited for edge switching applications. We do have a couple in the data center doing legacy copper VM hosts that perform ok. But edge switching is most definitely the best suited, at least in our specific situation. I know that some of the higher end catalyst switches have the ability to do layer 3 functionality, but that's not something that we've personally delved into with the catalyst line.

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Matthew Cable

Network Engineer II

Hall County SchoolsEducation Management, 1001-5000 employees

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Cisco FabricPath seems to be well suited for larger datacenters where you need the scalability and flexibility that's provided. We've been able to provide our customers with much more bandwidth than they previously had throughout our datacenter and with applications generating much more east/west traffic now rather than large volumes of north/south traffic FabricPath and the nexus switches have given us the ability to provide our customers with the bandwidth that's needed to serve today's applications.

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Verified User

Professional in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 10,001+ employees

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Pros

Simple administration, low occurrence rates, and a wide range of deployment options make it ideal for use in virtually any networking environment.
Great features and good performance combine to form a small and quiet factor.
Servers, printers, and PCs can connect via the Cisco Switch's auto smart ports, allowing zero-touch provisioning of edge devices.

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Nilufa Hossain

IT Specialist

Lamda I-TECHInformation Technology & Services, 11-50 employees

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It scales fairly well.
It's been fairly easy for people to learn and work with.
It has simplified network administration by utilizing Fabric Extenders which are all configured from the same switch and treated as an extension of the switch rather than as a separate entity.

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Verified User

Professional in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 10,001+ employees

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Cons

Cisco's switch code backup tool isn't the greatest and easiest to use.
[It's] a lot more money than competitor's products.
[Cisco Catalyst 3560-CX Series Switch] is a very diverse product line for even one model. [It] can be daunting to find the switch you need without Cisco's help.

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Verified User

Administrator in Information Technology

Oil & Energy Company, 201-500 employees

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We've had a few bugs that have caused random reloads of switches when modifying VLANS.
We've had a bug that reloaded an entire fabric at once.

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Verified User

Professional in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 10,001+ employees

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Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

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Free/Freemium Version

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Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Entry-level set up fee?

No

Starting Price

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General

Free Trial

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Free/Freemium Version

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Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Starting Price

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Likelihood to Renew

Cisco Catalyst 3560-CX Series Switches 1.6

Based on 2 answers

We are extremely happy with the Cisco Catalyst series and don't have any reason to switch. As long as we continue to get great use and service out of the products we'll continue to use them for the foreseeable future.

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Matthew Cable

Network Engineer II

Hall County SchoolsEducation Management, 1001-5000 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Usability

Cisco Catalyst 3560-CX Series Switches 9.0

Based on 2 answers

Cisco by and far does a great job with the Catalyst line. From a layer 2 dumb switch all the way up to ISP carrier grade switching within the Catalyst portfolio. The best part about it is command parity among the various tiers of product. The only differences are going to lie in what features are available per switch.

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Matthew Cable

Network Engineer II

Hall County SchoolsEducation Management, 1001-5000 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Support Rating

Cisco Catalyst 3560-CX Series Switches 8.4

Based on 6 answers

So far we haven't had very many support issues with our Catalyst switches. When we have had issues TAC is always a pleasure to work with. They're prompt, knowledgeable, and take ownership of the case from open to close. Also, this isn't attributed to Cisco support directly. But because they are so widely known and have such a great market share you can find a solution to almost any issue with a quick internet search.

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Matthew Cable

Network Engineer II

Hall County SchoolsEducation Management, 1001-5000 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Alternatives Considered

The Cisco Catalyst switch is a robust switch and has a long lifespan regardless of the cost. it is easy to deploy and configure as a layer 3 device. As compared to other devices like Juniper Switch, it is easy to configure on the network.

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Olumayowa Mosuro

Systems Admin

MultiChoiceBroadcast Media, 1001-5000 employees

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In comparison to Cisco ACI, Cisco Catalyst, and Juniper EX Switches the Nexus switches have stood their ground and we've been fairly happy with them. I like that similar to Cisco's ACI and the Juniper EX switches that I've worked with I can manage multiple chassis from one place. ACI can do this on a much larger scale though. I think Juniper limited the number of devices in a single virtual chassis to 10 or less depending on the device type. ACI can do a few hundred leafs plus their fabric extenders so if you're looking for one place to manage all your devices it can scale well beyond either the Cisco FP or Juniper EX series switches, but it also has a much steeper learning curve and completely different interface. The loop prevention built into FP has been a great improvement vs our old Catalyst switches.

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Verified User

Professional in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 10,001+ employees

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Return on Investment

Expansion has been made in our organization. We recently use a 24 port switch but as the company grew, we required a more robust switch
Core switches are able to do MPLS to reach other locations
Most switches are now 48 port and support fiber ports not only Gigabit ports

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Olumayowa Mosuro

Systems Admin

MultiChoiceBroadcast Media, 1001-5000 employees

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FabricPath is easy enough to learn that the adoption on the team has been fairly quick. This allows us to quickly troubleshoot and allows us to meet and beat SLAs that demand we maintain 99.99%+ uptime for our paying customers.

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Verified User

Professional in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 10,001+ employees

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Cisco Catalyst 3560-CX Series Switches vs Cisco FabricPath