Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches vs. Colasoft Capsa

The NEXUS 9000 series is well suited to data center issues. It is ideal for extended L2 without spanning tree issues, as the VTEP is as close as possible to the equipment. Cisco provides various types of controllers for configuring these switches as fabric switches in simple and complex environments.

This equipment is really designed for data centers. For a campus, it is better to turn to the Catalyst product lines.

Incentivized

Capsa is highly recommended to be used in small dense areas of a network where it makes sense to be able to run analytics off of a mirror port to gain insight into traffic trends. It is a costly product to install in branch locations, and requires a decent spec hardware to run appropriately

Incentivized

• Routing data between idf's
• Secure access to core server infrastructure
• User interface for configuration changes
• Quality of service for different network devices

Incentivized

• Robust Application. Able to handle traffic that most businesses will throw at it.
• Easy to use. Easy to setup captures and filter down to specific traffic types.
• Relatively cheap for what it's able to accomplish.

Incentivized

• Nexus 9000 could have smaller model for a lower pricepoint
• Nexus 9000 Features could all be turned on
• IKE security keys could automatically refresh on their own

Incentivized

• Needs options to scale to 10Gb/s networks. The cutoff for performance looks to be around 3Gb/sl
• Needs API access to trigger capturesl
• Needs Agents for remote capturesl

Incentivized

The N9Ks have served us well. A bit pricier than the competition, but everyone is familiar with NXOS and Cisco

Incentivized

It's a good product, perhaps a little expensive but with a long service life. Overall, the NEXUS 9000 series does not have many technical limitations. The update process has always gone smoothly so far, but it is important to follow the upgrade path provided by Cisco, as there is one.

Incentivized

Nexus 9000 works together with Netskope to provide connectivity between data centers, the cloud, and remote branches. Both provide scalability, redundant architecture, and security to the network. In some sense both provide end to end security and the ability to store and troubleshoot packet captures to improve operations and security postures.

Incentivized

Colasoft performs more like the traditional wireshark as opposed to other solutions that tend to focus on graphs instead of giving you the raw data. I personally prefer the raw data, and then the ability to build graphs upon this (which Capsa can do). This allows for quicker analysis and makes it easier to relate to.

Incentivized

• Repeat customer based off core industry standards
• Does all that we need and more
• Easy to find and keep support for Cisco gear

Incentivized

• While the product doesn't detect malware, it has helped track down malware infected machines by using data from other applications to run filters to look for known traffic destinations for that malware. For me this is a huge ROI since malware can be the great unknown.
• Relatively cheap compared to the feature set.

Incentivized