What users are saying about

Cisco NX-OS vs FreeNAS

Cisco NX-OS
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13 Ratings
FreeNAS
17 Ratings

Cisco NX-OS

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13 Ratings
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Score 7.9 out of 100

Based on 13 reviews and ratings

FreeNAS

17 Ratings
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Score 8.5 out of 100

Based on 17 reviews and ratings

Likelihood to Recommend

Cisco NX-OS

Cisco NX-OS is designed to run on data centre switches, and for me the key benefit is the ability to merge Ethernet and fire channel management into a single switch hence reducing cabling and management. However we don't require fibre channel at present so these are just being used for the fact they offer 10GbE on every port, which is still a useful feature in the data centre core.Given we don't use the fibre channel features, having to learn the difference in commands from iOS is a little frustrating at times.

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Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Verified User
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FreeNAS

If the user has system administrative experience and is willing to spend time learning FreeNAS, then FreeNAS is well worth it. If the user does not have much experience or does not have the time to learn FreeNAS, then using a COTs product that is more intuitive and easy to use might be beneficial.
FreeNAS is very powerful and can do basically anything you want it to do. The user just needs to spend the time to learn it as it may not be clearly intuitive how to implement the features that are needed for the user's organization.

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Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Verified User
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Pros

Cisco NX-OS

  • easy to configure
  • easy to configure and deploy the VPC technology
  • easy of administering the nx-os and overall easy configuration and support available

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Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Verified User
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FreeNAS

  • The FreeNAS web interface is modern looking. It makes tasks like provisioning drives into raid volumes easy.
  • The ZFS raid option allows you to add in an SSD as a cache drive to increase performance.

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Chris Thibeau | TrustRadius Reviewer
Chris Thibeau
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Cons

Cisco NX-OS

  • Stability of the software (in the early days).
  • Lacks some of the features of regular IOS.
  • The command syntax is sometimes just that little bit different from iOS, causing issues for automation, scripting, etc.

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Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Verified User
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FreeNAS

  • The NAS User Interface could be made more user-friendly and easier to configure, but in the most recent version improvements have been made.
  • It could be easier to back up the encryption key and configuration so they can be easily restored.
  • We have seen isolated issues when streaming large files (8GB+) across the network, specifically video files. Uploading and Downloading is fine, when but streaming live sometimes we see an issue.

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Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Verified User
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Usability

Cisco NX-OS

Cisco NX-OS 8.2
Based on 1 answer
NX-OS has many similarities with the traditional IOS which is quite beneficial when it comes to configuration and learning. As a native Linux system, there are a lot of tools and features that can be enabled for any use case.

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Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Verified User
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FreeNAS

No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic

Performance

Cisco NX-OS

Cisco NX-OS 7.9
Based on 7 answers
Our switches running NX-OS have provided solid consistent throughput. We haven't had any issues with it not being able to handle what we threw at it. The latency is extremely low. It also has multiple management options that we hope to pursue in the future.

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Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Verified User
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FreeNAS

No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic

Support Rating

Cisco NX-OS

Cisco NX-OS 7.9
Based on 3 answers
Cisco support never fails me. In terms of timely response, no one is on par with them. They really value the impact of having technical issues and potential business stoppage. Also, their support staff are well equipped with knowledge and skills and easily resolve the most common incidents. Most of the time, we can resolve an issue by just calling them once.

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John Patrick Duro | TrustRadius Reviewer
John Patrick Duro
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FreeNAS

FreeNAS 8.0
Based on 1 answer
There were some things that can be found by other users on forums and Google and some things that were not.

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Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Verified User
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Alternatives Considered

Cisco NX-OS

We studied the solutions from both vendors but we went for Cisco because it's powerful out of the box and has great support. It's also easy to find knowledge and support communities, and we already had a relationship with Cisco.

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Girgis Hady | TrustRadius Reviewer
Girgis Hady
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FreeNAS

If you are ready to build it yourself, FreeNAS is the best. I tried so many alternatives, including paid versions, and nothing compares to the power of FreeNAS. If you need an enterprise-grade NAS, you would go with an HPE or Dell because of the support, not the features. If you want a middle-range - QNap, Sinology, Netgear - they have an awesome product with powerful features, but you need to buy the hardware and software from them, with fewer options, and very basic support.

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Tommy Boucher | TrustRadius Reviewer
Tommy Boucher
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Scalability

Cisco NX-OS

Cisco NX-OS 7.9
Based on 7 answers
Security is something I know Cisco take seriously and there are many security features across all their devices. I don't think features like zero-trust are enabled by default though, so it does require reading the relevant guide and applying commands that suit your environment which can mean the implementation is not always as robust as intended.

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Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Verified User
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FreeNAS

No score
No answers yet
No answers on this topic

Return on Investment

Cisco NX-OS

  • It is serving the purpose from last few years.
  • Need to spend multiple manpower cycles to do the reload/code upgrades.
  • We need to request for downtime from the user to do the reload/code upgrades.

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Ramesh Kaka | TrustRadius Reviewer
Ramesh Kaka
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FreeNAS

  • Backing up FreeNAS is not simple, as it does not have a built-in option to backup.

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Chris Thibeau | TrustRadius Reviewer
Chris Thibeau
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Pricing Details

Cisco NX-OS

General

Free Trial
—
Free/Freemium Version
—
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—
Entry-level set up fee?
No

FreeNAS

General

Free Trial
—
Free/Freemium Version
—
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—
Entry-level set up fee?
No

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