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Cisco Catalyst 3850 Series Switches--globally a good platform
May 02, 2021

Cisco Catalyst 3850 Series Switches--globally a good platform

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • Cisco Catalyst 3850 Series

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Catalyst Switches

  • Catalyst 3850 Series
We use stacks of Cisco Catalyst 3850 Series Switches as distribution switches on our campus and big sites (office and factories). We also use them as layer-3 switches on our small sites, like the dealer sites. They manage the GRE tunnels pretty well, contrary to our old 3750X, which was managed by the CPU (and where the consequence was a high CPU utilization). We also chose these switches because they support the VRFs.
  • Stacking
  • GRE tunnels
  • VRFs
  • Stable platform
  • The price is too expensive
  • We found a bug with a high-CPU utilization; the checks from Cisco on all their platforms should be better given the price of their products
  • New licensing method
  • This platform is quite robust, so it can run for years without any issues. Really important for companies like us where we have facilities that run 24/7.
  • But we encountered a bug and we had to urgently replace a stack of Cisco Catalyst 3850 Series Switches with a stack of old 3750X switches, which cost us time to find and fix the issue. The problem is not really the platform but how seriously the OS versions are tested by Cisco before they release them.
We are currently not using these features especially because we didn't implement the DNA center for now. But it is for sure the future and we will use automation features really soon, I think. And it is more and more the case as we switch, little by little, to the Catalyst 9xxx series.
For now, we don't use advanced customization and manageability, as far as I know. We configure our devices through the CLI and without any external applications from Cisco or another third party. We will probably use features when we deploy and use Cisco DNA Center.
  • We choose Cisco Catalyst 3850 Series Switches to replace our 3750 models.
  • One of the strengths of the Cisco Catalyst 3850 Series Switches is the redundancy capabilities by configuring stacks and the stack power.
  • This is very important in our sensitive environment where the production runs sometimes 24/7.
  • Cisco Catalyst 3850 Series Switches are also more powerful and can easily support VRFs and GRE tunnels, contrary to the 3750, where we had to add a Cisco ISR router to manage the GRE tunnels and not overload the CPU of the 3750.

Do you think Cisco Catalyst Switches delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Cisco Catalyst Switches's feature set?

Yes

Did Cisco Catalyst Switches live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Cisco Catalyst Switches go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Cisco Catalyst Switches again?

No

Cisco Catalyst 3850 Series Switches are really good switches, easy to manage, robust, and globally stable. We use them on a lot of big sites as distribution switches or as core switches on smaller sites. We mount GRE tunnels between these smaller sites and the main sites. By the way, as Cisco pushes to move on the new Catalyst 9xxx platform, with good performance and better prices, we use more and more Cisco Catalyst 9300s instead of the 3850 model.