Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review Fairly stable and easy to operate - but I haven't any experience with other brands, so I don't have anything to compare with. Fairly fast in the OS. Easy to upgrade - but with some SW issues. Sometimes clearing of log folders is needed. Access to bash is cool. Tips & cool tricks for operations could be nice to share.
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review Continuous system operation: 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 Read full review Cons 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 Read full review 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. Read full review Likelihood to Renew We will use it for a long time, since they are switches with great capacity and positive results, they promote the perfect operation of our data center, I always recommend them, because they are switches with good results.
Read full review Usability In our environment (and especially during COVID and the Work From Home era), I would really like our network devices to be more resilient [against} errors in remote configuration. Having a standard, easy to use, configure, commit/deploy, rollback system should be installed, but it's not there. Other companies have been providing this for over 20 years, and Cisco does this on some of their devices. Why not all?
Read full review Reliability and Availability Our network is very well design. Any components or device failure. Doesn't affect network availability
Read full review Performance 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.
Read full review Support Rating 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.
Read full review In-Person Training Trainer didn't has good handon experience.. he was bookish trainer.
Read full review Online Training Never had it
Read full review Implementation Rating It is reliable and working as expected
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review 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.
Read full review Scalability 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.
Read full review Return on Investment Don't need to buy services - lifetime warranty 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. Read full review We expected the switches to provide ROI and they did as advertised. NX-OS was pretty similar to IOS so the learning curve was pretty low. Being a Non-Profit we need to be extremely cost conscience and buy gear that has a long shelf life. Nexus line of switches met this objective. Read full review ScreenShots