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Cisco Catalyst 9300 Series Switches: stable and a touch pricey
February 13, 2022

Cisco Catalyst 9300 Series Switches: stable and a touch pricey

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

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Catalyst 9300 Series Switches

  • Catalyst 9300 Series
We use our Cisco Catalyst 9300 Series Switches to support connectivity from our partners on a dedicated layer-2 network that sits behind our firewalls in individual partner DMZs. We recently purchased a layer-3 license upgrade for them, if/when we need to migrate the network to layer 3, to locally terminate BGP sessions.
  • Stable
  • Consistent configuration with past Catalyst switches
  • Good feature set
  • Can be cost-prohibitive, especially at layer 3
  • Positive since connectivity of our vendors is stable
  • Easy to manage so operational overhead is low after setting up initially
  • Licensing is annoying and overly complex
We do not use these automation, scale, or analytics features, as they require advanced licenses and we have no need to use them. We have dual deployments in two data centers and do not use them anywhere else; however, we may consider these or the 9200s for user-access switches when our 3850 switches go end-of-life.
We only use the basic features of the Cisco Catalyst 9300 Series Switches. We use the dedicated management port for general management functionality. We really just need the switches to be stable, easy to manage, and secure, providing dense, cost-effective, and operationally efficient connectivity.
Ultimately we needed a small form factor and the capability to perform advanced layer-3 functionality in case we needed to perform routing on the devices. If we didn't need this, we would have gone with the 9200-series switches. The 9400-series chassis are overkill and the 1000-series switches are too low-end and don't have the feature set.

Do you think Cisco Catalyst 9300 Series Switches delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Cisco Catalyst 9300 Series Switches's feature set?

Yes

Did Cisco Catalyst 9300 Series Switches live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Cisco Catalyst 9300 Series Switches go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Cisco Catalyst 9300 Series Switches again?

Yes

LogicMonitor, Rapid7 InsightVM (Nexpose), Sumo Logic
  • Great for low-complexity data centers or as branch office access switches.
  • Can get a little pricey if adding on layer-3 licensing with the Advanced DNA recurring licensing.
  • Not as useful where high 10 Gbps density is needed, given there is a fairly small module for this functionality, though to be fair, the device is not meant to be a 10 G aggregation switch.