Cisco Nexus 3000 Series switches are Fast, Capable and once deployed, just run!

After working with these switches for a few years I can say I am overall happy with how they work. Getting them setup was a little more difficult than when I setup Nexus 5000 series switches. There seemed to be syntax issues as well as some buggy code that stopped me from doing some very basic things. I did set these up with two in one data center, and two on another to work together with load balancers for servers and VDI. Once they were setup they can be a nearly set it and forget it. They run fast and I have had no issues with them keeping the network up 24x7x365 for years. They can have maintenance done during windows but other than that, I have not had any issues since the initial deployment several years ago. I would not recommend someone trying to replace a core switch with these switches. They really should be kept in the data center, and use a switch that has been designed for more core functionality.

The Nexus 3000 series switches are data center switches, so I would say they have similar security ability to other switches in this segment. I don't have a lot of experience doing more than basic ACL security on switches, but I know these can be integrated into other security solutions like Cisco ISE and 802.1x authentication. It could also be integrated into an ACI solution to add micro segmentation, which would bring in other security functions.

These switches are very fast. They've been designed to work within the data center. We connect them to Cisco UCS-B Mini servers with the storage being directly attached. They are able to handle the data traffic pretty easily. We can also move servers pretty fast from data center to data center without overloading them. This has allowed our company to stay running during any kind of conditional outage. We have come to really rely on them for business continuity.