Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches Reviews

In the project, similar to the project scope, we were focusing on using Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches as top-of-rack switches. We were deploying these switches at the top-of-rack to connect to the servers and the other spines.

Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches have very nice features supporting more than 10G, and I think it has reached 100 gigabits. This gives us an opportunity to improve our bandwidth, control the bandwidth, and fix the bottlenecks and the microburst and drops that we were experiencing. Additionally, since they support a lot of protocols such as BGP and EVPN, it helps us to eliminate the Spanning Tree issues, network bottlenecks, and improve traffic.

Since Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches are very capable and able to download and handle high traffic, they are an excellent choice for using at the top-of-rack. I also remember a colleague who was scoping to use them to connect between other data centers by using the spine and leaf architecture and leveraging BGP and EVPN to eliminate the Spanning Tree.

Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches are deployed in my organization as on-premises infrastructure. I cannot remember exactly, but I believe at that time we used them well as top-of-rack switches.

Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches have positively impacted my organization by helping us to achieve better traffic, more pure traffic, and we are able to control our traffic using QoS. Since they have the ability to use APIs, this really helps us, and since they have two modes, hybrid mode, we can swap between Nexus OS and ACI. We are able to build a data center fabric based on VXLAN EVPN to connect other branches on virtual machines. If you have many servers on virtual machines, this is going to be the best option for you to use them as a top-of-rack or for connecting between the spines.

After using Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches, I found that in the past, the infrastructure was relying on Spanning Tree for the fabric. However, after migrating to Nexus 9300, it has supported BGP EVPN and VXLAN, helping us to use all uplinks at the same time using ECMP, which is remarkable. It really doubles the speed and provides more paths in the network, and it efficiently deals with east and west traffic with very low latency. The latency is barely noticeable because of the amazing processors in the CPUs. Additionally, there are no buffer loads, whereas in the past we were suffering from buffer drops. Since we have Cisco cloud-scale with APIC, it is remarkable how it manages traffic, and there is no wire-latency or any microsecond latency. It is really amazing and helps us to prevent packet loss even during peak times.

The best features that Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches offer include cloud scale and passing the line rate without packet loss. We are talking about zero packet drops. Additionally, since Nexus and Cisco N9300 Series support Nexus OS, there is flexibility in using Nexus OS or ACI without the need for changing hardware. They also provide a very stable virtual port channel and it is easy to use automation through the API.

Regarding my experience with automation or using APIs on Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches, it is really delivering a lot of solutions. They have fixed or eliminated many issues in the data center since we started using them. These protocols are very amazing and help us to eliminate the bottlenecks, the network chokes, the drops, the microburst drops, and the low data drops. It is really amazing.

From a governance and security perspective, Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches are top tier. For the hardware, they feature secure boot and line-rate MACsec encryptions. The granular RBAC integrated with TACACS+ makes them fully compliant with strict enterprise standards. For enterprise usage, this is immensely beneficial. Compared with ACI and Nexus Dashboard, the micro-segmentation and automated processing provide a zero-trust posture through managing the control policies, which requires solid knowledge and awareness of what you are doing. Overall, they are very good for security, and I appreciate them.

Regarding improvements for Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches, I think the only issue that could prevent users from using these devices is the smart licensing, as the license model could be much simpler and more cost-effective. Managing Cisco licensing and tiered subscriptions involves unnecessary operational overhead for deployment and renewal.

Also, if you are planning to use ACI mode, most of the concepts such as VRF, EPG, and tenant will change. When deploying in ACI mode, the architecture has a steep learning curve, as the policy-driven model requires expensive and specialized training, and many concepts will change for traditional network engineers, requiring them to adapt and learn. Additionally, most of the issues I faced are related to hardware cost specifically, so if we could get a model that is less costly and more cost-effective with simpler licensing, it would be much better.

Regarding further improvements, I remember something about the upgrade process. When we did the upgrade for the N9300, changing the image took us around 12 to 15 minutes, which was really a long time. This happened for more than one switch, so I do not know if it is a bug or if this is something normal, but I think they need to address it.

I did not use Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches for a long time, but I participated in a project that involved Cisco N9300 in a company that works as support for a bank to help them with data center enhancement and data center migration.

Regarding the accuracy and reliability of Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches' output, I personally did not face any issues with accuracy. These devices are amazing; they are stable, smooth, and fix issues such as bottlenecks, ensuring that traffic flows smoothly. They are stable and can be used at the top-of-rack while connecting other branches, providing high speed and low latency with hybrid mode using APIs to automate the network and infrastructures. Everything is satisfactory for me. They are excellent.

Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches handle growth well if our organization expands.

To be honest with you, we did not need to be in touch with customer support when we deployed Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches. However, all the information we were looking for, we could ask in the Cisco community, which was really powerful. I rarely use the support.

Before implementing Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches, we were relying on standard network solutions, using standard switches in the network with Spanning Tree and older technologies. We faced a lot of bottlenecks and network chokes.

After using Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches, I found that when there are fewer issues in the network, such as drops and traffic loss, you are going to save time for your employees or engineers working in the data center. You will not need to troubleshoot all the time, and also the network will be stable, which will save a lot of time for the admins to focus on other tasks. They are time-savers, effort-savers, and cost-savers actually. When you buy a Cisco device, you are going to forget about it after plugging it in because the device is powerful.

Regarding the pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches, I mentioned that I did not give them an eight out of ten because I am not satisfied with the licensing. The licensing is quite high cost and very complex; you have to differentiate between the smart licensing such as essential and advantage, making it kind of complicated.

Before choosing Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches, we were using Cisco 7K.

I rate Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches an eight out of ten.

I chose an eight because of the reliability and the scalability for the hardware and the CPUs known as cloud-scale, which are really very good and very smooth in how they handle traffic, providing a stable network and traffic. They also support new features and technologies such as BGP, EVPN, VXLAN, and streaming telemetry, which are amazing. The flexibility for swapping between Nexus OS and ACI is also great, utilizing Nexus API, RESTCONF, and NETCONF, making it close to a 10. However, the licensing and the hardware price, along with booting time, prevent me from giving a 10 out of 10. If these issues are resolved, it would be extraordinary because the devices are amazing.

Regarding advice for someone thinking about using Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches, I personally suggest that most data centers with a good budget, where their enterprise is flooded with data, should consider these devices. If you want to maintain and keep your network stable, I really recommend Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches because it is simply plug and forget. You will not need to maintain what is going on, but you should check and maintain the network. I really recommend them, unless someone cannot afford the licensing or is not aware of the new phrases and features in ACI and telemetry.

The major use case that we have with Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches is that our current switches are old and getting into end of life from Cisco. This is the reason we started looking for the right set of switches to get them replaced, and we found Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches is the right model.

There are locations where we have put Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches PoE switches, and we also have non-PoE switches deployed.

We do integrate Cisco ACI with Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches, but we have not yet gone into the ACI configurations. We are in the mode of exploring whether we can introduce NAC. A couple of legacy hardware and integrations are there, and the complex environment means we have not yet gone live with the NAC configurations.

However, configuring the NAC would help me deploy the roaming profile and all that would be much easier, which would help us achieve boundaryless behavior.

The biggest advantage with Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches is understanding the technical side. I found that the backplane and the way it processes is really great. The way it communicates and processes the traffic is excellent. We have multiple business processes for many delivery centers, and it is really very helpful. It can manage heavy, complex metrics or traffic very easily.

Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches backplane really helped us, and the connectivity to the endpoints or the other access switches is where Cisco platform is so stable. The backplane of Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches is really great in how it is architected.

The most beneficial features in Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches include the complete firewall and dual power supply architecture. On the fly I can swap the power supply unit, which is what we are actually looking for.

Wherever it is in the core layer, we are putting those switches with dual power supply and two different sources of power supply to have redundancies in place. Even if it is a single core because of a smaller delivery center, it has power redundancies built into the switches.

Regarding QoS features for bandwidth management, it is definitely one of the areas to deploy or configure with QoS. Another advantage of Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches is that it can have multiple channels. Since I have multiple business processes configured, I can set up the different metrics of my QoS on a VLAN-specific basis, depending upon the voice and data mix. That is another advantage what we have been using widely.

As for any negative points, I think there is nothing significant. The only thing that Cisco may focus on commercially is the SmartNet. From my experience, I have worked with many MNCs where SmartNet would not have been a challenge because that is the standard for my earlier organizations. However, in my current organization, if I go with SmartNet, it would require real justification that I have to build in.

When various customers go for enterprise and SMBs, Cisco needs to look at the balance between the commercials and the product. My expectation is that if Cisco can consider a more discounted price for SmartNet products, then we can really consider SmartNet to be inbuilt for any of our Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches to procure it.

That is the only thing I would say. Otherwise, there is no negative. As far as the technology is concerned, there is nothing there to shortfall. Performance-wise, Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches is a great machine to work with.

Cisco support is definitely very great, and I like the follow-the-sun model which Cisco supports. We have not yet gotten into challenging space where we really have any issues cropped up with Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches till now.

Regarding scalability, it is very much scalable.

I would like to give 10 out of 10 to Cisco support.

I do not want to compare Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches with all the names mentioned, but rather as I am more concerned about the backplane speed and the processing capability, Extreme Networks is another platform which really can be compared with what Cisco is today.

I have worked on the Nexus platform as well, and I think Cisco is really unparalleled. However, Extreme Networks is one of the platforms where I can really compare with Cisco in terms of backplane configurations and performance.

Extreme Networks would be more from an enterprise perspective, but it can also perform excellently on a pure telecom industries level. That is what I can tell you.

The installation of Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches is very much easy. I have my in-house expertise and we are very confident with managing Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches platform.

Regarding value for money, I would definitely say it is very highly effective. In general, if you look at industry standard which is five to seven years, here with Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches, the architecture is as long as Cisco is not going to discontinue this platform.

I think it is very well fit into a 7 to 10 years ROI that we can work on, in comparison to the standard 5 to 7 years. I would like to look at always the 5 to 7 years compared against 7 to 10 years, and I would be happy to say that the platform is so robust that it can very well do the valuations or ROI to be calculated in the segment of 7 to 10 years.

We are not utilizing any Cisco tool as of the current date for real-time analytics, considering the cost is one of the major areas. However, we do have Zabbix as a platform for continuous monitoring and analytics, which to some extent has been giving good results. It is able to provide the monitoring we need, and we are also integrated with all the logs. For security purposes, all the logs are being monitored using CrowdStrike as well.

Regarding VXLAN support, we are not using Cisco SmartNet support as of the current date. We are in discussions with our partners to look at all the new switches which are about to come in our pipeline to replace the current ones. We are considering SmartNet to include in there. Otherwise, all the current switches are with partner's support coverage.

As for network programmability via APIs for operations, it is very well supported. I will not say that we have been using those very heavily, but as I mentioned that monitoring using Zabbix, the API integrations is very much required. We are currently in-house building a lot of automation scripts, and that is where the API integrations are really helping us out.

If Cisco may think of multi-layer with SD-WAN technologies and some sort of in-built security layer with integrations with SIEM, then it will be very futuristic with securing from the outside world, and that would really help. The network OS which is loaded onto the firmware must have that layered architecture so that if I need that module, I can add that on top of the Network Operating System.

I can just add that layer and it will automatically give me the additional features of securing as a core. I am looking at an all-in-one device which has SD-WAN technologies with the complete balance between external and internal traffic routing. I have given this product an overall review rating of 10 out of 10.

We are using Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches for connectivity.

I have been using QoS features for bandwidth management in the 9300s.

I am also using Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches sometimes.

The biggest advantage in Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches for me is that Cisco provides a lot of features, such as DNA or automation. It also includes some AI and automations, which is good. However, I probably do not use them that much.

I am still in IT. We have some Cisco devices but not so many. We do not use Nutanix anymore because we closed some data centers. We are a cloud-first company now.

Regarding Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches, I have ten switches and I have been using them for a long time.

The analytics part, such as real-time analytics, does help to monitor network performance because it is very good. When I check the analytics and when I get what someone is doing and when I create some threshold alerts. If someone creates a lot of traffic and it could affect the other's traffic, so when I see that highest traffic, I can easily cut down that traffic, and then the switch is going to be smooth.

When I use VXLAN, it can easily connect. I can easily create connectivity with other networks or separate networks. I can easily use VXLAN for the branch office or the other office. I can extend my networks with the other branch. I can easily manage all the networks or all the VLANs. For example, an HR department is on the fourth floor and third floor or second floor, it gets the same networks. When the HR person goes to the branch office, it gets the same VLAN ID and same VLAN IPs. That is very good.

API support is very important because I can get some information from the switch. Then I can easily observe the switch. When I get some threshold or something, I can easily create some code via APIs.

From the technical side, I do not see any disadvantages or potential improvements.

I have experience with Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches for five years at least.

Cisco products are very strong and stable. I trust Cisco devices.

Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches are very good. They are highly scalable.

Technical support from Cisco is good. When I call and create a ticket, they return very fast. They understand what my problems are and then they can solve it by the end of the day.

I am not still working with Cisco products, especially Nutanix, because I have changed my job.

It is very easy to install Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches because the documentation is very nice. In the sector, a lot of people, engineers, know the Cisco CLI, Cisco iOS, and everything. So it is easy.

I am a customer of Cisco.

I see the return on investment. It has a return on investment because it makes my connectivity clear, and it is valuable. Some other switches or other vendors also do that. In the twentieth century or the 2020s, Cisco was a very big company and provided a lot of things, but nowadays, there are a lot of competitors in the sector. They also have the same features but at a lower price.

The price is something negative for Cisco that I see.

The competitors I talk about are HP and Forti. FortiSwitch also does that.

I like the most to manage Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches centrally with the DNA. I can also easily see all the traffic on Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches easily with the observations or something. I can easily manage the traffic.

Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches are very good. They are highly scalable.

The QoS features are effective because if someone creates a lot of traffic, it affects the others. We are using QoS.

I do not integrate Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches with Cisco ACI. Before that, I did it, but not now.

When I did it before, it was very helpful. It was very helpful because when I integrated the ICE with Cisco, I can easily see who is creating the traffic and who is going somewhere or where, I can easily see. I can easily give the access control with the Active Directory group, security group, or something. I can assign the VLANs with the Active Directory security groups. For example, if someone in Active Directory is in the HR group, I can easily assign the VLAN to them automatically. For example, when someone uses the network cable on the third floor, it gets the HR VLAN. When he or someone moves to the second floor and plugs in the cable, it automatically gives that VLAN. I do not need to configure VLANs per user. Every user contains their VLANs, and I can easily separate the departments' networks. It also works with the Wi-Fi.

Sometimes, I am using Cisco devices such as Cisco switches and the 9200 model.

It is Nexus.

I am not working with Meraki by chance or Enterprise Routers.

Regarding Catalyst, we do not have it. We use the access switch and some access points, which is the Aruba. All the servers are gone because we do not use them anymore. We are a cloud-first company.

My overall rating for this product is eight out of ten.

Nowadays, essentially no one uses routers. They are using firewalls instead of routers. Previously, routers were used and maybe due to VPN or specific work requirements, they could be used, but not for every case.

Whenever you use a firewall, security comes by default and you can configure it.

Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches is a very good product. The control plane and data plane are completely different. You can configure VPC so that if one goes down, another one can take care.

Whenever data flow occurs and you have configured something, the configuration will not take any effect on data access. Data flow will work smoothly and CPU utilization is very low. VPC is the best feature of Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches because it was the first to introduce VPC before any other company. The control plane and data plane being different is why this works so well.

Whenever you have configured QoS, you have to prioritize. Priority is ordered as follows: video first, then voice, then SAP and other important applications, and finally the internet.

If you configure VXLAN, the multiple VLAN size will be increased. In general, you can configure 4094 VLANs in a normal switch, but it is more than a thousand for VXLAN.

I have worked in both pre-sales and post-sales capacities.

Cisco ACI is not integrated with Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches. I have done the spine-leaf configuration, but ACI is not integrated. SDN was not there, but other features were. I have not configured the analytics part. For analytics, it is required for IoT, but if not for that purpose, then I think it is not required. I have not seen this configured on Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches.

I have been using this solution for 26 years.

Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches is 99% stable.

There are no limitations with scalability.

The technical support is very good. Whenever you contact support, you can get a support level such as S1 or S2, and the Cisco team communicates immediately.

I worked with a partner and integrator.

The initial setup requires following specific steps for any devices. If you follow the steps, then it will work.

Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches is expensive. Compared with Aruba and Dell, it is a little bit costly.

Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches is more advanced than competitors. The integration is very good and CPU utilization is very low so that multiple users can work without any problems. Other options like Aruba and Dell can configure VXLAN, but it is a lower model and their efficiency is a little bit lower.

I am currently at a customer's site. Previously, routers were used and maybe due to VPN or specific work requirements, they could be used, but not for every case. I am interested to become a reference for Cisco for this product so they could publicly refer to me as an expert with Cisco N9300 Series Smart Switches if I wish. I gave this review a rating of 10.