Cisco Meraki equipment is easier to configure, setup, and deploy as well as manage. The only thing I will say for the other gear is that they have their special niche requirements, protocol options, and special configuration options that not all Meraki gear has. Meraki gear …
Meraki MS switches don't offer the very high-end configuration options as Cisco Nexus switches, and we needed some of those high-end options in our core switch stack. So we bought the Cisco Nexus for our core and bought some engineering time from a contractor to help us set it …
I am able to go deeper into analytics and troubleshooting. A lot more updated and features that are far different than others evaluated or had used previously on the network
Cisco Nexus Series Switches are built perfectly in terms of scalability and efficiency. Performance monitoring and the planning of new networks and excellent tools. Although Cisco Nexus Series Switches are costly they are worth the money.
Cisco Nexus switches are the Cadillac in switching. All the other switching we have and use is for lesser demanding requirements and for most cost effective implementations.
I'd say the thing is I don't think there's any environment where it's less suited unless it has to be maybe in a rugged environment where it would be susceptible to environmental issues. But yeah, I think it performs really well in every scenario we placed it.
Cisco Nexus Series Switches is well suited, for any spine and leaf architecture has it could be done through ACI, EVPN, or use as L2 only it could be used in different environments and thanks to these high scalability it could be evolve easily. Some advanced solutions like AI or centralized management, are less easy to integrate and need other solutions to interact and also not always planned since the installation.
Dashboard - Up/Down ease of checking up/down devices status
The template config, easy to copy and bulk deploy config to multiple switches. This can be used to fix a bunch of MS switches simultaneously too which is very helpful.
The integrated features such as Cisco Umbrella and guest WiFi. The customer really appreciated the rapid possibility of getting a site up and running without tinkering through complex configurations.
Multicast configuration in the L3 settings was very easy to setup and get running. (Snooping Querier)
Maintenance, upgrades, and software certification can be performed without service interruptions because of the modular nature of NX-OS and features such as In-Service Software Upgrade (ISSU) and the capability for processes to restart dynamically
FabricPath:
Enables each device to build an overall view of the topology; this is similar to other link state routing protocols. Each device in the FabricPath topology is identified by a switch-id. The Layer 2 forwarding tables are built based on reachability to each switch-id, not by the MAC address. Eliminates spanning-tree to maximize network bandwidth and flexibility in topological configurations, as well as simplify operational support and configuration. This enables a tremendous amount of flexibility on the topology because you can now build FabricPath topologies for Layer 2-based networks the same as for Layer 3-based networks
Overlay Transport Virtualization (OTV): Enables the Layer 2 extension between distributed data centers over any transport Layer 3 network
I think the biggest improvement is actually being able to see the hardware status, like the actual CPU status, memory status. Is there something, if there's an issue, one of the biggest issues that we've had is we could see whether some port information, we can see some ups and downs, but we don't, unlike the Cisco Catalyst series which we use also, we are able to dig in and confidently look at like, Hey, why is this device having an issue? We can't really do that with Cisco Meraki. We just kind of have, see if it's up or down and we like, well, we don't know exactly why it's down or we don't know why it could be having an issue.
Implementing jumbo frames on interfaces of its fabric extender series (N2k, etc.) by editing the network QoS does not have to be a global configuration that would affect all its interfaces. It can be improved to become just an interface configuration.
Licensing on the NXOS is a bit complicated and expensive. I understand that the Nexus is made for core data center switching but it does not have to break the bank.
OTV technology is for Nexus only. Based on the advantage of the technology, it should be made vendor-neutral to accommodate other vendor devices.
Being on the cloud its very easy to manage. We have layer 7 visibility and Cisco has introduced stackable MX switches which is even better! The Meraki portal can be accessed via SSO which is important to my organization (although it was a bit difficult to get that implemented initially!)
Because its the best tech out there and all our engineers are very used to working on Cisco switches. It is great for troubleshooting issues on L2 and L3. It provides bandwidth and throughput like no other switch out there. We are a ACI shop so the Nexus blends nicely with that
The platform has a good performance. The major issue is all the bugs you can discover across the operations, and it can be a big challenge depending on the number of Cisco Nexus Series Switches you have deployed. In our case, we own more than 200 Cisco Nexus Series Switches 9k, and we face an upgrade process, it could be a long time project to grant a new software deployment in all our switches platform.
These switches are very fast. They've been designed to work within the data center. We connect them to Cisco UCS-B Mini servers with the storage being directly attached. They are able to handle the data traffic pretty easily. We can also move servers pretty fast from data center to data center without overloading them. This has allowed our company to stay running during any kind of conditional outage. We have come to really rely on them for business continuity.
Meraki support is excellent. They are also highly proactive. They literally replaced all of a particular model of our MS switches when it was discovered that they were not sure about the longevity of a particular chassis fan inside those switches. Without us having to do anything other than ask, they shipped us all new replacements (with a better fan in them) for the 10 or so of the switches that were in the affected model group, and we shipped the defective ones back to them int he same packaging, prepaid. None of the recalled switches had ever experienced a fan failure, but they were not willing to let them run in a production environment. I like that. Meraki MS support staff are also quick to get back to you and very knowledgeable about their product. I actually contact our Meraki rep to instigate a support case (although i could call support directly), and he gets the details from me first, then opens the ticket for us and explains it to support. This means that I only even need to talk to one person, and I like that, too. Meraki MS switches are designed to be essentially "plug and play", so support is generally not needed unless the end user is not following the deployment and operation guides
Overall, Cisco has great products and I believe that they believe in the philosophy of a great customer experience. Although there have been a few technical support issues that caused a lot of company anxiety, in most cases, Cisco has gone above and beyond in making a valiant effort to help the customer solve any issues.
Well, we've been using it for quite a number of years, so I guess I have evaluated, this is on the wireless side, the Ruckus platform, and it did not compare to the Cisco Meraki dashboard as far as the way it is utilized.
The Cisco 9000 stacks up quite well against the Cisco Catalyst 3850 switches. The additional features available in the Nexus 9000, such as VPN, FCoE, 40 gigabits, give us the ability to support the future needs of the company in our data center. The Nexus 9000 allowed us to condense our core and aggregation environment that comprised of 2 Catalyst 6504 and 2 Catalyst 6509 to a port of Nexus 9000. Although the Catalyst 3850 would be sufficient to handle routing, those features in the Nexus 9000 made it the clear choice for us.
I would say probably eight. I think there's a lot of, the scalability is very nice and I've definitely deployed a lot of sites quickly. I think for us right now that we have to pivot away from manual configurations and using automated configurations. And so just being sure we prevent things like drift between sites is kind of important right now for us. And so I think that's the next steps for us in that product. And so I think if there was better documentation or better best practices about how to automate and deploy standardized, I think that would help.
The Nexus 3000 series switches are data center switches, so I would say they have similar security ability to other switches in this segment. I don't have a lot of experience doing more than basic ACL security on switches, but I know these can be integrated into other security solutions like Cisco ISE and 802.1x authentication. It could also be integrated into an ACI solution to add micro segmentation, which would bring in other security functions.
