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 …
Cisco Catalyst 9400 Series Switches are well suited for data closets in today’s ever expanding network system requirements. Today’s businesses rely on stable, fast, and highly available data connectivity. Businesses perform at such a quick pace now and the need to consume data resources is an integral part of most every business function. There can no longer be outages. Slow data connectivity and sluggish system response is directly related to business success. The Cisco Catalyst platform has provided our company with a network foundation that is fast and reliable so that the business can concentrate on what they do best.
The [Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches] is very well suited for datacenter core and distribution models, they work very well as a replacement for the 3850 switches that many smaller organizations use for core switching. The Catalyst 9500 series switches also works very well as a top of rack aggregation switch for SFP and QSFP connectivity.
The Cisco Catalyst 9400 Series Switches provide reliable connectivity for multiple client device types whether computers, phones, wireless access points, etc.
The Cisco Catalyst 9400 Series Switches has deployment flexibility from traditional IOS-XE deployments to Cisco Catalyst SD-Access and now Meraki monitored solutions.
Multiple switch models allow us to customize each data closet deployment to exactly fit the port density and power-over-Ethernet requirements.
Software needs improvement, where features are added (Stack wise) or removed (GLBP) without solicitation from a wider audience or depreciation, respectively
Software bugs recently in basic features like AAA
Ability to turn off all unused services or features to reduce the attack surface
Cisco CoPP functionality is not like it was on the Cat 6k platform - users cannot create custom policies for use at the control-plane interface
Well the ACI, so the AP, the controller give us good chances to run everything, to configure everything. But the monitoring itself, it's not that easy. You need other products like Nexus dashboard or something else to do the monitoring. This is a little bit of a con. It's another technology so everyone has to think a little bit of others to adapt this knowledge and it takes two years I think for a technician to understand what ACI is really doing and what we can do with it.
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.
The Catalyst switches definitely have a more robust feature set than the Meraki switches but the Meraki switches are intended for a different use case than the Catalyst switches. We used Catalyst switches in our wiring closets because they fit in better with the topology and feature sets that we wanted to deploy.
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.
Stability - even 10 year old devices are still running and doing the job
Sometimes lines of products are on the market for a very short time (eg. 6800 instant access) - it is hard to buy equipment to make the network bigger.
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.
