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Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches

Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches

Overview

What is Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches?

Cisco offers the Catalyst 9500 series of campus LAN switches.

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Recent Reviews

We like 9500s

10 out of 10
June 18, 2020
We use them as our new edge-core devices where we can do routing and it gives us the flexibility to have high speed interconnects to our …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Video Reviews

2 videos

Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Review | Core Solution for one user
03:14
Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Review | How a Software Developer Really Feels
06:15
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Pricing

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What is Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches?

Cisco offers the Catalyst 9500 series of campus LAN switches.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://engage2demand.cisco.com/lp=567?…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Alternatives Pricing

What is Cisco Nexus Series Switches?

Cisco Nexus is a series of network switches.

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Product Details

What is Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches?

The Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series is presented by the vendor as the first 100/40-Gbps switch purpose built for the enterprise campus, and recognized as CRN's 2017 Overall Network Product of the Year. Designed for security, the Internet of Things (IoT), and the cloud, the vendor describes their Catalyst 9500 fixed-core switches as high-density building blocks for a next-generation, intent-based network.

Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches Competitors

Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Cisco offers the Catalyst 9500 series of campus LAN switches.

HPE Networking Switches and Dell PowerConnect Switches are common alternatives for Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches.

The most common users of Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(45)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-3 of 3)
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Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
Core switches with optical interfaces, distribution switches
  • uplink port choices
  • performance
  • Virtual stacking
  • Price
  • Innovation
  • 3rd party Integration
Enterprise core switching well suited, DC not so much appropriate
  • Big budget required at the beginning
  • Long lifetime
  • High availability and reliability guaranteeed
By script we save a lot of time in switch configuration and change management
We took advantage especially form manageability thanks to we set up mesh of core switches organized by couples of VSS.
We set also interfaces for our network monitoring software
Price per value is really better in Cisco product
100
A lot of customers (food & beverage, manufacturing, logistic,...) and service department which deliver the post sales tasks to them
20
Cisco specialist CCIE, Cisco specialist CCNA, Network systems engineer
  • Multisite core switches system distributed thanks to Stackwise virtual
  • DC core for small customers
  • SD-Access Embedded Wireless
  • BGP routing
  • Application hosting
  • New Meraki dashboard
I don't want to substitute them. They are stable and reliable
May 11, 2021

Great product

Sébastien Vandenbussche | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Catalyst 2960 X/XR Series
  • Catalyst 9500 Series
Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches are both used in our infrastructure to fulfill 4 main goals:
- Wired and wireless access to end-users of our hospitality (fairs/congress)
- Provide up to 10gbps connectivity between nodes
- Network connectivity inside our offices
- Provide a strong resilient network and infrastructure (vm's, access points, ups).

This with the support of our provider (proximus)
  • Excellent quality (hardware and software)
  • Very good support (provider/cisco TAC)
  • Long-lasting
  • Sometimes expensive depending the features needed (hardware or software)
  • Fans always noisy
  • Monitoring solution (prime) sometime a little bit long to configure
Very well designed for fixed infrastructures. However, might be a plus for Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches to gather information around the world about venues/concert/hospitalities/congresses, the way they proceed and/or operates. The IT in this field of "Networking" is very recent and expands at an increases growth very quickly. The desires of end-customers might change within a week or a day, and they need to reconfigure the switching side cans be easier (ie: cron's, easiest QoS, P2P or not, ...)
  • Might be expensive on purchase but very well invested
  • Good ROI since no downtimes/crashes
  • More reliable than other brands
  • Compatibility
We use virtualization for almost all our servers and Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches gives a huge leap in the bandwidth: we did come 12 years ago from a 100/1000bmps infrastructure to a full 10gbps infrastructure. Improvements in terms of virtualization (vMotions) but also IOPS on server (needed by appliances) have been sustained by this great product.
Cisco Prime Infrastructure in parallel with open-source solutions (such as LibreNMS) gives us great manageability on what's going on and what are the problems when they are occurring. Next evolution foreseen: implementing WLC-addon to our Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches and get rid of the two WLC 5508. Hoping in the next months/years.
2
We are a crew of two : myself and my manager (but external contractors such as support have access to our catalyst). But we deliver connectivity and speed (with access switches 2960x) to end-user for wired or wireless use up to 5000pax.
1
Internally: myself
Remotely: our support staff and our contactors
  • Event with up to 3 gbps internet access
  • Wireless and wired access up to 5000 pax
  • Multiple streaming
  • Implement WLC inside the 9500 series
  • Long term: upgrade of firewall to higher bandwidth
  • Longterm: if technically possible: up to 40gbps between nodes
Very good quality and new features
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Catalyst 9500 Series
We are currently using CAT 9500-40X and 9500-32C at our campus and branches. The switches are used at either distribution or core layer.
  • It supports programmability
  • It supports 10, 40, 100 Gig interfaces
  • It can be used as fusion router in the SDA deployment
  • 9500-32C is not supported in the DNA
  • There are some bugs on the stackwise virtual stacking uses. The stacks get splitted and manual reboot is required to fix it
Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches is well suited if the requirement is for fiber ports. The Catalyst 9500 Series Switches has only fiber ports. The chip sets on the 9500 series switches are powerful. So, they are recommended on the aggregation layer on the larger deployment at the campus or branches. However, they are not suited if there are requirements for copper ports and traffic load is not huge.
  • I think it has potential for future use. We can even run the guestshell on it. So, if you want to run container environment, it fits well.
  • Also, they are good if the plan is to use programmability and API to manage/maintain the switches.
We haven't used any virtualization and programmability features of the CAT 9500 yet. However, we are planning to use programming/API to configure and manage the switches. Right now we are using DNA Center for automating the switches deployment.
Other than using the DNA center to manage/configure the switches, we haven't used any advanced customization and manageability features of the CAT 9500 switches.
I have used H3C 7500 and H3C 5800 at the distribution and core layer of the network. Also from Cisco product family, CAT 4500 and 6500 series switches.
  • It is suitable at the distribution and core layer of the large sites
  • It can be used as the SDA fabric switch
  • It has high processing power to handle the heavy switching and routing loads
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Existing Relationship with the Vendor
The main reason is existing relationship with the vendor. So, you trusted the product after doing some POC with the switches.
I will recommend to use DNA PNP feature to provision the switches and use Day-N template to configure the remaining configuration.
As they are our existing vendor, it is very easy to work with them.
They are attentive in the post-sale as that of pre-sale.
We didn't use the advance services. We occasionally got the help from the different levels of Cisco support but not advance services.
30
All of the users are network engineers.
30
We have resources with different levels (Level 1 to Level 4) of knowledge.
  • Only innovative ways we have used so far is using DNA center to provision the switches
  • In the future we want to use the API and programmability features of the switches to automate the network infrastructure
Based on the site load and requirements, the switches meets our processing and fiber ports requirements. Also they have great potential for future programmability options we are looking into.
Yes
We replaced some H3C 7500 switches with CAT 9500-40X
Of course the switches are costly. Yes, we could look into cheaper whitebox solutions.
Not Sure
Yes
It has not been resolved yet. The case was regarding DNA not supporting Cat 9500-32C.
They are very responsive for the TAC cases. I am very happy with their responses.
Cisco TAC engineers are very responsive and supportive.
  • If used as the legacy networking, it is not complex
  • Be careful if you want to use stackwise virtual. Due to the bug, the stack will be split and you have to reboot the switch manually
It has great potential. It can support 10, 40, 100 Gig ports. The chipset are high processing capabilities.
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