Cisco Catalyst 6800 Series Switches vs Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches

• In general Cisco Catalyst Switches are a nice piece of kit both in hardware and software.
• You can keep these guys running for years without nary a reboot necessary.
• Even if you have to reboot you have multiple fail overs and redundancies.

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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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• There are some known bugs that cause interface errors and are listed as "cosmetic" and they do not plan to address them. This makes troubleshooting very difficult to determine what are real errors and what are cosmetic.
• We have had a few batches that get stuck in random reboots.
• Cisco foolishly has discontinued R&D for this line of Catalyst when they were finally showing some innovation that set them apart from other vendors.

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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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• It's all about making the right choice in the right time. Let's face it - CISCO Catalyst switches are not cheap. But if you take the time to research and design your network the ROI rate will be faster than you imagine. Having a stable and scalable network is the most important aspect of Catayst - upgrading the core and backbone infrastructure allows you to push the older devices to the outer edges of the network or to new, under/undeveloped regions.

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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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