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Nexus 9K offers a lot of power and good features, if you are willing to pay for them
February 23, 2022

Nexus 9K offers a lot of power and good features, if you are willing to pay for them

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

Software Version

Nexus 9000 Series

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Nexus

We use Cisco Nexus 900 Series Switches in all our datacenters due to the heavy traffic that we pass through, both north-south and east-west, to consider lower families of switches such as Catalyst. We use Cisco ACI in conjunction with the Cisco Nexus 900 Series Switches flattening the network topology aiming towards an SDN (Software Defined Network) approach. I admit we are not using ACI the way we should in order to maximize the investment though.
  • Handle really high workloads (>100Gbps) pretty well.
  • Introduces SDN in datacenters via ACI.
  • Very reliable/stable platform.
  • Require high level of specialization to manage.
  • The most expensive family of switches that I'm aware of, any brand included.
  • Hard to quantify ROI only based on switches but it certainly enables large migrations (on-prem and to the cloud), which is part of our larger IT strategy.
  • It also brings in DC SDN in conjunction with applications and additional infrastructure, enabling additional automation and monitoring potentially lowering TCO.
I believe that both brands are good and reliable. In the past, Dell seemed to be more a "follower" than an innovator, which is the reason why we chose Cisco, but I believe that's changed and both brands are closer to each other now. If you have a Dell-based hyper-converged infrastructure such as VxRail, you'd probably be better off with Dell from an integration perspective (Monitoring and Management can be done through the same vCenter console with the right architecture). Cisco Nexus 900 Series Switches probably still stand out from an application-centric infrastructure perspective but again, the switch itself won't do it all. You need to make sure that your apps, servers, and storage are architected to play nice with ACI. Otherwise, you'd probably just be wasting money on expensive super fast switches that you could save if you went with lower brands or families to do regular switching.

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

Yes

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

Yes

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

Yes

Did implementation of Cisco Nexus Series Switches go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Cisco Nexus Series Switches again?

Yes

Nlyte Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM), ServiceNow IT Operations Management, ThousandEyes
Datacenter caliber switches are very specifically designed to support VERY high loads of traffic in an effective way. Also, it would be nice to evaluate its SDN (ACI) capabilities to see if it's worth it to leverage in the company. Warning: the switch itself won't give a FULL SDN experience. The entire application and Infrastructure environment needs to be architected for this. I would strongly suggest avoiding using them for regular site branches unless there are very specific requirements with very high network loads (>100 Gbps). There are plenty of other families and brands that are better suited to serve them at a much lower cost and with easier interaction. Consider training the team in charge of supporting Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Switches as commands and architecture are not the same as Catalyst.