Cisco Catalyst 6800 Series Switches vs HPE Aruba Ethernet Switches

Likelihood to Recommend

Cisco Catalyst [6800 Series] Switches provide good selection of models with various port densities and capabilities. We use Catalyst switches in most location in various functional setups. Chassis switches in Data Centers, stacks of multiple switches at many locations within campus, 24-48 port models at larger branches for routing and switching.

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Jurek Plona

IT Infrastructure Planner/Architect

FortisBC Energy Inc.Utilities, 1001-5000 employees

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HPE Aruba Switches are a good cost-effective alternative to high-end switches. They offer management capabilities which allow the extra features that are necessary in a corporate environment in today's world. Depending on budget, they may still be too expensive for some users.

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Verified User

Professional in Information Technology

Consumer Goods Company, 51-200 employees

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Pros

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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Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Government Administration Company, 501-1000 employees

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REST API capability
Wired & Wireless 802.1x configuration easiness
Wireless Access Points (APs) zero touch provisioning
Its high-end family (running the AOS-CX firmware) supports a virtualization technology called VSX (Virtual Switching Extension) which allows 2 switches to present itself as one virtualized switch under Layer 2, and as 2 separate routers under Layer 3; thereby providing high availability.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Oil & Energy Company, 501-1000 employees

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Cons

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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Tim Lillis

Sr. System Engineer

Kent Intermediate School DistrictEducation Management, 501-1000 employees

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I have had issues finding monitoring software that natively supports Provision/Aruba OS. Most are designed primarily with Cisco in mind.
HPE/Aruba switches have historically had issues with corrupt flash. This seems to be less common in more recent models.
HPE/Aruba's switching portfolio can be confusing. Some models run on the Aruba OS while some others run on Comware. There is some overlap in these model lines so at times is can be tough to tell which switch is right.

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Verified User

Analyst in Information Technology

Government Administration Company, 201-500 employees

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Likelihood to Renew

Cisco Catalyst 6800 Series Switches 9.1

Based on 3 answers

Because they work well at what they do. They are highly innovative with their hub and spoke firmware deployment. Once again Cisco was extremely stupid to stop R and D on them.

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Tim Lillis

Sr. System Engineer

Kent Intermediate School DistrictEducation Management, 501-1000 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Usability

Cisco Catalyst 6800 Series Switches 8.6

Based on 2 answers

Cisco Catalyst switches are the standard for usability. The Cisco command line is 1 of 2 formats for a command line interface in the computer networking industry. They literally define the standard for the industry, so naturally the usability is going to be high -- simply because that's what everyone uses. I rated them as 9 because they have some consistency issues within the IOS for different versions/platforms.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Government Administration Company, 1001-5000 employees

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No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Support Rating

Cisco Catalyst 6800 Series Switches 9.0

Based on 2 answers

They are easy to get a hold of and are very effective.

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Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Banking Company, 5001-10,000 employees

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HPE Aruba Ethernet Switches 9.5

Based on 7 answers

It is a very good product, has almost all the feature you can need to access switches, a simple web GUI management, but not all can be configured from the GUI interface.

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Verified User

Consultant in Engineering

Computer & Network Security Company, 1-10 employees

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Alternatives Considered

The Juniper lineup offers better pricing versus the Cisco line up but you do definitely lose some hardware prowess, and stability that you can count on with Cisco devices. Also the support is not as robust from Juniper as it can take longer and be more frustrating getting a support ticket going with them.

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Verified User

Administrator in Information Technology

Government Administration Company, 501-1000 employees

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I think it compares very favorably against Cisco and others because it is much cheaper and doesn't require continued support costs.

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Chris Hein

Systems Engineer

CIHFinancial Services, 51-200 employees

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Return on Investment

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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Ivan Tushev

CIO (Chief Information Officer)

UltraNET LtdInformation Technology and Services, 51-200 employees

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Ease of deployment has cut back on labor hours.
Ease of management has allowed us to be more proactive to other potential issues that may occur on the network.

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Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Education Management 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

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No