Cisco Nexus Reviews

We use this solution in our data centers.

This solution has given us the ability to use Cisco ISE for security.

The most valuable feature is the ability to integrate with other Cisco security products.

This solution costs a lot.

This solution is very stable.

This is a very scalable solution.

I haven't had to use technical support yet.

We had two Cisco switches, but they were very, very old.

Our initial setup was complex because we were installing the other data center equipment at the same time.

We used a consultant for our deployment, and our experience was not great. We have had a lot of problems with our vendors.

We haven't seen ROI yet because we're still in the middle of deploying it.

This is a product that I can recommend that people use.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We use this solution in our data center.

This solution has allowed us to scale bigger than ever.

The most valuable feature is that it is high-density, ten-gig.

The code quality for this solution has gotten worse and needs improvement.

The hardware is stable, but the code quality has gotten worse.

The scalability of this solution is great.

Cisco's technical support is great.

I have always used Cisco products.

The initial setup of this solution is complex, but that is expected. You have to put a lot of thought into it.

My advice to anybody implementing this solution is to plan ahead six months.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We use this solution as a core aggregated switch.

I can't say that it has improved our organization. We are moving away from this product because it is too much for what we have.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the power.

In the Nexus 3500, you can't do per-port Jumbo frames, so you have to enable it as a global configuration. This is a feature that should be added.

It is pretty stable, although I had the power supply go down twice in this past year. We replaced it the next day in both cases. We do have bad power where we are, so that could be a factor.

Scaling this product is on the pricey side. If you're a top-end enterprise company then you can scale it. You can stack it, or build a solution with redundancy.

I would rate their technical support a nine out of ten.

We are switching away from this solution because it is too much for what we have. We will likely be dealing with CDW because they give us the best pricing. However, we have not chosen a replacement solution yet.

I was not involved in the implementation of our current solution. However, I have set up Nexus switches before and it is is pretty straightforward.

The licensing fees for this solution are approximately $800,000 USD annually.

My advice to anybody researching this solution is to really look at what you have. See if it actually fits into your environment. In our case, a previous employee chose this solution because we had the money. It was the biggest, top-tiered product. When I came in and took over the network, we realized that it is too much for what we have. We're just wasting money.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Our primary use for this solution is enterprise networking.

The ease of integration with existing systems has been helpful.

This is a very feature-rich solution, but the most valuable feature is flexibility.

The interface is as user-friendly as you can make it.

There are too many different model numbers and too much complexity. The Nexus 9K, for example, came from a family of twenty offerings.

This is a very stable solution.

The scalability of this solution is very good.

Technical support for this solution is very good.

Based on client demand, which was moving towards software-defined networking, the Nexus 9000 was the next step. We used the prior generation, Catalyst, before this.

The initial setup of this solution is fairly straightforward. It is very user-friendly.

The return on investment for this solution is very good. It is very practical and versatile.

We did not have other vendors on our shortlist.

This is a very good product, although it would be nice to restrict the number of offerings. My suggestion is to evaluate ACI, SDN, and the Nexus 9000.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The Cisco Nexus is the core of our network, and I am responsible for troubleshooting the device.

The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use. I do have some issues finding the correct commands, at times, but I am familiar with the command line interface.

The only issue that I have with this product is finding help on different commands when I'm trying to make a change. Or, if I'm troubleshooting an issue, finding what commands I need to do certain things. I know what I need to do, but I'm not sure of the exact command.

This is a very stable solution. Its stability means that we do not have any issues.

This solution is very scalable, and we haven't had any issues at all.

Cisco has always been very helpful. I've never had an issue with technical support, and they are always responsive when I call.

This solution was deployed before I joined the company, so I do not know.

This is a good product in my eyes. I've never really had any issues with it, and the support is good.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We have a lot of customers that we implement Nexus platforms for.

This product is made for lossless data, so it's a very high-performance switch. If there's one place you don't want to lose data, it's in the data center. The 9Ks support speeds of 40-gigabit and 100-gigabit, today. They've got pretty good throughput in the box, they've got virtual output queues, things of that nature, which help contribute to the lossless data.

I like a lot about this solution. They are very high-performance switches and they are made for lossless data, so they're a good play in the customer environment. 

The 9K was developed to support ACI, the software-defined data center technology. For this reason, there is no feature parity between the 9K and the 5K or 7K, which means that it is harder to position the 9K to future proof them. If a customer wants to leverage their investment for ACI in the future then it is difficult. I know that Cisco has added some Fibre Channel over Ethernet capabilities to the 9K line, but there are some other features that it does not have capabilities for. For example, virtual device context is not supported. It would be really nice to see some capabilities like that added to the 9K line so that we can position them to future-proof our customers.

I understand why it is that they don't have some of the features from the older Nexus models, but we get into some scenarios where the customers need those features, and they have to go with a 7K or a 5K. Ideally, I would prefer to position a 9K if I could, to future-proof them and lead them along that path to ACI, eventually.

With respect to the stability, I can't think of any major issues I've ever come across with it.

I think that these units are made to scale, but it depends on how they're deployed. If they're deployed within an ACI environment and that's the customer's expectation, they work fine.

If they're deployed, say, a 9500 model in a non-ACI role, a traditional data center switching role, and the customer decides that they want a virtual device context then we could not support it in that scenario. In this particular case, it wouldn't really scale. That is why it's tough sometimes, in a non-ACI environment, to implement the 9K.

In general, Cisco has always got good technical support.

They're responsive, their people are always available, and they respond relatively quickly. Compared to competitors such as HP, Aruba, Dell EMC Networking, etc, the support from Cisco is always a head and shoulders above those other competitors.

There is some complexity to the initial setup of this solution.

There are a lot of facets to configure a network. It's one thing to configure VLANs and things like that, but when you're configuring quality of service, for example, on a Nexus device, it's all class maps, service policies, mapping queues, and things like that. There is no auto QOS functionality like you might have on a Catalyst switch line, so they're a little bit more complex.

It is not really a big deal because once people have worked with them a little bit, they master it and move on.

They don't see additional revenue from it, but they do see cost savings. With the 9K in NX-OS mode, there's still a lot of touch points with them, although the support for bash and pipe can really simplify that. In an ACI mode, certainly, there are savings because of the orchestration and automation that's occurring as part of the software-defined network.

Cisco's licensing structures can be complex across different technologies, for example, unified communications. The ACI licensing is not so bad.

As they are moving to the DNA Essentials, as opposed to the old Cisco One Advantage-type solution, it is adding a little more complexity to the licensing scenarios. But in general, I think that Cisco is moving toward synching everything up and trying to get everything licensed in a similar way, whether its a data center switch or a campus network switch.

I'm fine with where Cisco is moving to.

There are a lot of competitors out there. For example, the VMware NSX, which is a pure overlay, it's more network virtualization. The ACI solution is more full-featured, and you get visibility under the underlying overlay. It's very performing, and where we've deployed it for customers they are extremely happy with it. There's a learning curve in deploying it because you do things a little differently, but overall it's a solid solution.

When we lead with a software-defined data center, we lead with Cisco.

I'm a pre-sales engineer, and I help customers blueprint out and design their future data center. We really like this solution. It's a great switch. If there is a data center switch we try to lead with, it's the 9K. I like the Cisco ACI solution in general, that the Nexus 9K is a foundation of. I would certainly recommend it.

If a competitor like VM or NSX tries to position their solution and they try to say, "You don't really have to replace the network or re-design the network", that's not really true because the overlay is only going to be as performant as the underlay. If they deploy that technology on an old-age network that's not deployed in a spine and left topology, then the customer is going to have to do that anyway. The Cisco solution takes all of that into consideration as part of the deployment, so it is an optimized software-defined network when it's deployed for the customer.

Overall, they are a pretty good switch, although it doesn't have some of the features that some of the previous lines have had.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use this solution for our data center switches.

The most valuable feature of this solution is its reliability.

We have encountered some software bugs.

I have a positive impression of the stability of this solution.

I'd say that this solution is very scalable.

This solution has really good technical support. They generally respond by email, and it is really quick. They usually respond within a couple of hours.

I joined the company after this solution had been implemented.

My understanding is that the initial setup was pretty straightforward.

This is a really good product and something that I'm really familiar with. Anybody who has decided to implement this solution is making a good choice.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case for the Cisco Nexus solution is network connectivity.

It's based on the Cisco line of products, so a lot of people are trained with them.

The most valuable feature of this solution is user configurability.

In the next release of this solution, Cisco should keep trending on ease-of-use, with more human or regular language and commands.

Maybe they could add some machine learning and AI integration. Ease-of-use and making things more human-readable is most important.

Cisco Nexus is very stable.

It is very scalable.

The Cisco Nexus technical support is very good.

We needed to invest in a new solution because of speed. We used older versions of Cisco Cloud. The reason why we switched was just adapting with the times.

The initial setup is straightforward with the right training. Search out there, find a lot of knowledge before you begin.

I did the setup myself.

The license on a yearly basis is $200,000.

Cisco was on the shortlist with Extreme and Juniper. We chose Cisco because there was integration with other Cisco equipment in the data center.

On a scale from one to 10, I would rate Cisco Nexus an eight to nine.