Cisco Catalyst 3850 Series Switches vs Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches | TrustRadius

What users are saying about

Score 8.6 out of 10

Based on 70 reviews and ratings

Score 9.4 out of 10

Based on 27 reviews and ratings

Switch Selector Tool

Pros

They meet the need in office on a desk to out on a warehouse or factory floor
Have the PoE power to support everything a company will need
have a matching product for your need from a few ports to 48 PoE port with uplinks that connect back a MDF or DC Distribution

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Senior Solution Architect

Entisys360Computer & Network Security, 501-1000 employees

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Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches are capable of 10g/40g with a great selection of ports for these speeds.
The Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switch is a very capable piece of kit, supporting a lot of Cisco's new feature sets.
Cisco IOS is the gold standard for switch operating systems.

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Verified User

Administrator in Information Technology

Higher Education Company, 201-500 employees

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Cons

Price point has always been higher and a concern as compared to other products.
Ongoing support costs are also pricey, but if you have a large enough quantity installed, you can purchase a couple of spares and self-insure at a lower cost.

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Verified User

Professional in Information Technology

Government Administration Company, 1001-5000 employees

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The 9500C does not have dedicated stackwise, in order to stack these switches you must consume some of the available ports on the switch itself.
Virtual Stackwise is a little cumbersome to configure and get running properly
The newest iteration of Catalyst switches REQUIRE the DNA licensing platform, even though it will not be used.

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Daniel Aldridge

Network Administrator

Arkansas Federal Credit UnionBanking, 201-500 employees

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Likelihood to Renew

Cisco Catalyst 3850 Series Switches 9.6

Based on 3 answers

We rely heavily on this product line and feel comfortable supporting it.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Higher Education Company, 10,001+ employees

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Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches 8.1

Based on 2 answers

Based on the site load and requirements, the switches meets our processing and fiber ports requirements. Also they have great potential for future programmability options we are looking into.

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Verified User

Engineer in Engineering

Transportation/Trucking/Railroad Company, 10,001+ employees

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Usability

Cisco Catalyst 3850 Series Switches 9.5

Based on 3 answers

Everything can be improved, the Catalyst devices are great but some more advanced issues get very complex and if you aren't doing it every day it is easy to lose knowledge and need help.

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Hawkinson, John

Senior Network Engineer

City of WichitaGovernment Administration, 1001-5000 employees

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Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches 9.0

Based on 1 answer

It has great potential. It can support 10, 40, 100 Gig ports. The chipset are high processing capabilities

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Verified User

Engineer in Engineering

Transportation/Trucking/Railroad Company, 10,001+ employees

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Reliability and Availability

Cisco Catalyst 3850 Series Switches 9.1

Based on 2 answers

We have had very few unplanned outages with all of our Cisco Catalyst products. The biggest issue I have seen is when a device has been powered on for a very long time and it gets powered off and reused later. Sometimes, the switch will not come back up. In most cases, these are switches that are way past end of life. I can't say we have really seen any other issues with the availability of the Catalyst family of switches

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 10,001+ employees

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No score

No answers yet

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Performance

Cisco Catalyst 3850 Series Switches 7.3

Based on 1 answer

The Catalyst switches on our network perform very well, given the amount of users and servers on our network. We have older Catalyst switches that are at their End of Life, and they are still performing as well as needed

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 10,001+ employees

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No score

No answers yet

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Support Rating

Cisco Catalyst 3850 Series Switches 8.5

Based on 4 answers

If I am unable to locate the support I need to complete a task from the data sheets which are provided online I can utilize the other resources available to me. Some of those resources are the Cisco Connection Program Community where there are many questions asked for similar issues or by utilizing the TAC team as mentioned before. Either resource I am able to resolve any issues I experience.

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IT Infrastructure Supervisor

Holy Cross EnergyUtilities, 51-200 employees

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Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches 9.0

Based on 1 answer

Cisco TAC engineers are very responsive and supportive.

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Verified User

Engineer in Engineering

Transportation/Trucking/Railroad Company, 10,001+ employees

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Implementation Rating

Cisco Catalyst 3850 Series Switches 7.3

Based on 1 answer

Automation was the key to minimizing the initial update and configuration.

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Hawkinson, John

Senior Network Engineer

City of WichitaGovernment Administration, 1001-5000 employees

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No score

No answers yet

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Alternatives Considered

All the products that we evaluated we felt were all good products that have plenty to offer but for our edge switches, we felt the 3850 had the most to offer. We were looking for not only a very reliable switch but one with many features that would not get used in a lot of other types of deployments. Juniper came close to providing what we wanted but we didn't feel it offered anything more than the 3850 did, and with our existing relationship with Cisco it simply made sense to stick with the 3850.

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James Jakimowicz

Network Engineer

Synergy FiberInternet, 51-200 employees

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The Catalyst 9400 was not out when we were looking at new core switches. We thought about using a Nexus 9k but neither were as good of a fit as the 9500. Between price and performance it was a no-brainer for us to look at the 9500. We have not nor in the future would we consider other brands for core switching.

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Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Mining & Metals Company, 501-1000 employees

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Scalability

Cisco Catalyst 3850 Series Switches 8.9

Based on 2 answers

Catalyst switches are extremely scalable. , using any of the Cisco validated designs. The same family of switches can be used for access, distribution, and core, making the overall integration much smoother. Cisco also supports multi-gigabit ethernet ports to allow for scaling of 1 gbps up to 10 gbps over the same port, using different types of cables, and supports PoE. So you don't have to buy all new switches because access points are suddenly 2.5, 5, or 10 gig uplinks

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 10,001+ employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Return on Investment

Cisco switches have enabled us to deploy the switches and manage them remotely using Cisco management applications. This makes management much easier, without having to telnet into each one to make config changes, thereby lowering support costs.
Cisco Catalyst switches enabled us to expand without replacing all of the existing network equipment because of their multi-vendor interoperability.
Stable code and quick bug fixes. Bugs that cause major operational or security problems have been extremely rare in my experience which leads to 99.99999 uptime.

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Verified User

Former Employee in Information Technology

Food & Beverages Company, 51-200 employees

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These switches did require a purchase of the DNA license on top of standard switch licensing, even if the functions are no needed in the environment.
The increased SFP & QSFP connectivity enabled for faster processing within our compute environment. While the system is too new to quantify the value added in this, it undeniably will help with its ROI.

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Daniel Aldridge

Network Administrator

Arkansas Federal Credit UnionBanking, 201-500 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

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

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