Cisco FabricPath vs. NETGEAR ProSafe Managed Switches

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.

Incentivized

Well suited for a small business with minimal IT capital.

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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.

Incentivized

• The switches met the data transfer needs of a small business with about 30 users and 4 servers.
• The web interface was adequate for a business that didn't have the need to dive into a device with a CLI.
• These were wall mounted. Not the best network design, but small businesses cut corners. The mounting holes helped with this "solution".

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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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• Both switches were the same model number, same firmware. One switch needed to be rebooted about every 5 weeks. This problem was never resolved.

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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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The NetGear switches are definitely entry-level switches. They don't have the functionality (or cost) of Dell, HP, nor Cisco. But for the money, a business that is just starting out can't complain.

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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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• The NetGear switches made a positive impact as entry level switches for a startup company.

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