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Great product
May 11, 2021

Great product

Sébastien Vandenbussche | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches

  • 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
  • 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.

Do you think Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches's feature set?

Yes

Did Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches again?

Yes

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, ...)

Using Cisco Catalyst 9500 Series Switches

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