Item: Cisco Nexus Series Switches
Rating: 10
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Nexus Series Switches

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Currently using Cisco Nexus Series Switches for core switches in my data center environment. Switches are also physical termination points for DIA circuits peering with ISPs via BGP in a dedicated VRF. This allowed us to terminate the DIA circuits on high performance devices without the need for an actual router as we did not have any routers to spare, or the budget for additional hardware. Also using Cisco Nexus Series Switches as dedicated storage switches, keeping storage traffic completely isolated from regular data traffic.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Specifically designed for the data center
High performance switches
Support advanced routing configurations as well as storage and standard L2 switching functions

Cons

NX-OS could stand to be slightly more like IOS-XE with pipe (|) options with show commands (eg: show run | section line)
I'd like to see Nexus ports set for L2 mode by default like other Cisco switches
I'd like Nexus spanning-tree commands to be more like Catalyst commands for spanning-tree

Return on Investment

Using modern models of Cisco Nexus Series Switches increased the performance of our production application by at least 10%.
The Nexus platform is a worthy investment when considering the ability to use the platform for not just data traffic, but dedicated storage ports as well.

Usability

The Cisco Nexus platform is the most flexible data center switching platform on the market of which I'm aware. The ability to create high performing spine-leaf topologies while also providing support for various throughput capabilities and have the option to have dedicated ports for storage traffic on a data switch make the Nexus platform best bang for the buck in my opinion.

Alternatives Considered

I have not evaluated any other switch vendors.

Key Insights

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

Likelihood to Recommend

Cisco Nexus Series Switches are best suited for use in a data center environment or other environments that require high speed traffic flows. Cisco Nexus Series Switches are also well suited for environments that have need or use for devices that have different throughput capabilities which would make use of the multi-gigabit ports available on the Cisco Nexus Series Switches platform.

Comments

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Data Center switching - Cisco Nexus Series Switches for the win!

Software Version