Cisco Nexus Reviews

Our primary use for Cisco Nexus is for storage.

It helps for data servers.

It provides a very flexible connection to a server. When you go into history and the VPC, it provides a very flexible connection from it. Once a server goes down I can handle it easily. So the network actually keeps quality even if onsite it is down.

There is some room for improvement when it comes to the frequency on the network.

I don't work in security so I do not deal with this subject. I just make the network available. I think it's probably good. From the networking point of view, we just provide them the network that is going to be Cisco 9000, but they are using the servers. I have not gotten any complaints. We just deployed less than two months ago.

The technical support is very good. I really like the way Cisco handles support. I am building this 9000 network. I had a lot of issues because of the vast complications you find setting up a network. I knew I could get help from Cisco.

We switched to 400G. We provide 100G on our network. I needed something which can carry 100, so next time this has that option. That is the reason we went with this partner.

As a customer of Cisco, we always have had meetings with them on their new products. We tell them what kind of solution we are looking for and Cisco says for this solution you need this kind of thing.

I would recommend this product. It does not give me any headaches. That is the best thing. There are lots of products, but when you use this, it does not give you any headaches.

It is good because when we went to purchase this, we did not have all the information and knowing that there are a lot of options with all those differences, we had some issues, but it is obvious that this solution is going to do everything that we need. That is fine.

Our primary use case is for our core network.

The most valuable features are the great performance, high availability and easy administration.

The price is a con.

Our network is stable.

It's scalable.

If you previously used a different solution, which one did you use and why did you switch?

We needed to upgrade our network and we needed to decide to change our core network.

The initial setup was straightforward, it was simple.

We used our reseller for the implementation. We liked them.

ROI comes after three years.

We used Cisco before. When we made the decision to choose a new solution, we evaluated other vendors and chose Nexus.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten because it's the best.

This solution is used in our data center. It is our layer-two switches that connect all of our servers to the data center firewall. Our data center is a little bit different than most in that we're only layer-two in the data center.

We have increased the throughput of our datacenter. Where before we had switches that were two, one-gig LAG uplinks, we now have eighty-gig. This means that the underlying, layer-two network is not going to be the bottleneck of our data center anymore. It's going to be the other peripherals like our F5 and our Palo Alto that need to be upgraded to provide more throughput.

We leverage Cisco DCNM a lot, which allows us to automate. We're working toward allowing the server administrators to configure their own ports for their new servers that they're spinning up in the data center.

Our only complaint is about the licensing because it can always be a little more cost-effective.

The scalability of this solution is great. We couldn't afford to buy the ASIC solution, so we bought the Nexus 9Ks and put them in a Spine-and-Leaf topology. We then made each of the leaves their own vPC peers as well, so it allows us to have redundancy between servers.

Our local Cisco engineer was amazing during the whole process. He assisted us many times when installing and configuring the system. He also gave us advice on DCNM and how to set it up.

We've opened one tech case where we had to replace a switch because we believed there was a port that was bad. We had the new switch within one business day, so technical support has been awesome. 

We had Cisco switches in our data center that were reaching their end-of-life in a few years. We also had other vendor switches that were coming up on end-of-life, and we as a team, with our manager, decided that we wanted a one-vendor solution. It would make troubleshooting a lot easier because we wouldn't be opening up multiple tech cases to solve problems. Cisco provided the best solution for us.

The initial setup of this solution was only complex because we didn't have Nexus switches in our data center. We had a multi-vendor data center and the Cisco switches that we did have in there were the Catalyst series. So, it was only complex for us because we were learning a new platform. After we got through the learning phase, it was very simple and easy to set up.

We handled the implementation in-house and asked our local Cisco engineer for help when needed.

We have a three-year subscription for our licensing fees. For us, this product is perfect for what we need and it came at the perfect price point.

Arista and Juniper were both on the shortlist. We bought a few Juniper QFX series switches, and we did not like the product at all. We were investigating Arista, but Cisco came in with an awesome pricing plan for us, and a data center solution that met our needs. It was a lot cheaper than Arista, which is why our manager went with that selection.

This product has absolutely surpassed our expectation of throughput. The network team used to be blamed for slowness in the data center, but now we can confidently say that it has nothing to do with us. We're providing the organization with eighty-gigs of throughput in all directions to the firewalls. Troubleshooting poorly-performing applications is easier now because we can say that the bottleneck is not in the data center. 

We could be doing much more with our Nexus 9K switches, but they are not doing as much as they are capable of because we only have layer-two in our data center. This is the way our data center was set up and how the executive team wants it to be run. In larger data centers and larger companies, they're using the full capabilities.

My recommendation for anybody who is researching this solution is to ask for a demonstration from your local Cisco support. We had an awesome support engineer who did a demo with us. He brought in four switches and set up DCNM. We got to see the benefits of how DCNM would help us. We're transitioning to more automation because we have fewer people than we did, so the DCNM product is awesome. It used to be a twenty or thirty-minute process to add a VLAN in our data center, and now it takes approximately three minutes. The Cisco DCNM and the 9K switches were the beginning, to show what we can start doing as a network team to leverage the technology that we have.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

We really lag on the AC infrastructure where the configuration and the changes make a difference in terms of troubleshooting.

The product improves us when we see an expert and L1/L2 engineers for support. We have a dependency there. A simple configuration makes a big difference. It can create more chaos inside the network. We need to make sure when we make changes in one platform and it impacts other platforms, that the technical problems don't reach the end users.

There should be better certifications. More training should be provided before we get into this product.

We are just migrating to Cisco Nexus as a newer product. We are looking for similar features in Arista. We are closing the gap from Cisco ASA to an Arista ASA environment. This gives us a very stable network when compared to Cisco.

I get very good support from Cisco. The response was very fast when compared to other vendors. 

I advise anyone to invest in a new solution because we do a periodic refresh every three years. For any product we buy, we ensure it is in the warranty and it is the leader in the market. 

We go through the Gartner studies to understand the leaders in the market. Then, we get the solutions from the partners and go over them. We do a case study with the other competitive companies on the product they use and their experience with it.

The setup was very easy, but managing it in operations was very complex. The VLANs are different. We have a network outside and inside of the ASA infrastructure.

It is not possible to provide privileged access to L1 or L2 engineers. If you provide L3 access, there is a chance that they mess up the network by making smaller changes that you don't want. 

We implemented Cisco Nexus through a consultant.

Another option was Aruba Networks.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate this product a 6 or 5. The reason is that we are into Cisco for a long time. They have been very good supporters since we began the network environment.

For any technology on the education part, for the training and decisions, there are more resources available than when compared to other partner products. Planning technology through Cisco for our training sessions and getting it implemented with other products is what we do now.

Currently, we are assessing the leaders in the market for the data-container environment and SD-WAN solutions. VeloCloud was suggested by colleagues of neighbor companies.

Our primary use case for the Cisco Nexus is for a VXLAN environment with some video multicast.

I don't think we've been using Cisco Nexus long enough to know accurately how it is improving our organization. Our first deployment was about a month ago.

The most valuable features of Cisco Nexus are the performance, flexibility, configuration, and cost. It's not a traditional pricing model from Cisco. They've offered our company a considerable reduction in price. That makes Cisco Nexus now very competitive with other vendors.

One improvement needed is support for Multi-CAD scale that we were concerned about. We're not hitting any limits at this point. There were concerns about the amount of server capacity that was going to be available. We like to see things that are already there as opposed to being told where they will be. 

The stability of Cisco Nexus thus far has been excellent. We had some initial issues with some non-Cisco optics, third parties claiming compatibility when they weren't compatible.

We've not had a scale-out yet. Cisco Nexus looks very valuable. We're starting to deploy them in other environments as well.

Cisco technical support for the 9000 is good. During our issues, we had excellent technical support. The support issues required around 40 hours. We had Cisco engineers available for the entire time. It was impressive.

In the production of our network, we've grown in scale, and that's really what it came down to. Previously we wouldn't have thought that a Nexus product was comparable to some of the other vendors, like Arista and Juniper. But the features of the 9000 brought it into line with the capabilities of other vendors that we used.

The setup is straightforward. Nexus uses options that our engineers are familiar with. The advantages were that we could leverage the knowledge that we already had.

On a scale of 1-10, I would rate it a 9. Cisco is very competitive with the other companies that are out there. I would recommend them. We've had very good luck.

Cisco is a leader. They help us with the deployment at a lower cost.

We use Cisco Nexus primarily to check the health of our links. We use it to make sure if our links are good or not. It really helps with troubleshooting.

Cisco Nexus has improved the way our organization functions through the troubleshooting. We had issues where we've seen our links saturated. We were able to determine what was being processed on the link. 

It has reduced the complexity of our network monitoring because I'm able to drill down quickly and figure out what's going on. 

It has helped us make sure that we have the best uptime that we can have. 

Although it could be better, you can get the granularity depending on the amount of time that you drill into it.

I would like to see more granularity. 

The stability of the solution is very good.

It scales very well.

We did not have a previous solution.

Cisco Nexus is straightforward to set up. We just pointed our logs to it. It's pretty easy. 

We used a consultant. I didn't install it, I don't know exactly how it was done.

We have seen ROI based on the fact that we have more uptime.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate this product a seven because it's helped out a lot in terms of troubleshooting.

Our primary use case of this solution is for our data center environment.

The flexibility, how accurately the VPCs operate as well as the redundancy built into it with the VPCs are the most valuable features. 

I would like to see improved ISSU.

It's a stable solution, but there are a few bugs here and there in it and it would be nice if they weren't there. The Mac looping is an issue as well. 

The ISSUs sometimes go down.

It's very scalable. You can go up or down in size as much as you want. 

Their technical support is outstanding. We had some issues at the core layer in our Nexus data center, and the 7Ks were hitting a bug, and we couldn't figure that out until we got really deep into debugs. Their tech support was able to resolve that. 

We had our Cisco account rep and they helped us figure out what the right solution was for us.

The initial setup was rather complex because it was my first time deploying Nexus, and you have to turn on all the features to make them all work and that's something that you don't have in any other Cisco switch. It threw me for a loop. But once you figure out the resources and setting up the VDCs and everything, you're good.

I deployed this solution myself. 

We definitely got ROI from Nexus and a pretty short term because the pure redundancy and the uptime, is a real value add for us.

We were using another solution and we went with Cisco because it has more features. Also because Cisco is reliably good; nobody ever got fired for choosing Cisco.

We were looking at Arista and Juniper, but we ended up going with Cisco, mainly because of the features.

I would rate this product a pretty solid eight out of ten because it's been pretty reliable and good and it's done what it's supposed to do. There's been a little bit of bugginess in the code, but that happens.

I would consider the cost and functionality that you need and consider this in between ACI and a Nexus deployment. Right now, ACI isn't super mature, and if you don't have people that are able to actually dig in and really learn ACI, Nexus still might be the best solution.

We use it for data center connectivity and we integrate it with ACI. 

We are a Cisco shop. This solution is better compared to other options. 

It's easy to use. 

I would like to see more automation and for it to be easier to use. 

Stability is much better than it was. 

Scalability is good. 

Their technical support is better than other companies. 

The setup can be easy and complex depending on the product and features we're using. 

We used in-house resources for the deployment. 

Our licensing costs are yearly. 

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. Nexus is better than other switches so I would advise going with this solution. 

We got it for its port density. Our primary use case of this solution is so we can connect all of our other departments and agencies. It'll be the main connection to our core routers. I don't work directly on it, I work with the router that connects to it. 

It has improved our organization because we have aggregated ports and we're able to put multiple agencies on the multiple different interfaces that we have going there. We're able to separate them out with the use of VLANs and whatnot.

The VLAN is a little more hand driven now. I don't know exactly why the split screen does that.

If we could get some more automation integrated into it, it would make it easier.

As far as I know, it's been stable the entire time we've had it. 

We haven't surpassed the scalability at this point. 

I haven't had to use their technical support for this solution but I have used Cisco support in general. They're outstanding. 

We knew we needed to switch solutions because when we migrated to Cisco as a network, we needed a good way to could control a lot of our outside agencies.

We did the deployment ourselves and we have a reseller that sells us the equipment. 

We do yearly licensing. 

I would rate this solution an eight or nine out of ten. 

I would advise someone considering this solution to research what your actual needs are so that you size it correctly. You can always upgrade size. It's harder to downgrade.

The pros of the Cisco Nexus are the simplified integration with the data center and the end platform before building a data center.

Our primary use case of this solution is for the data centers. 

This product has improved the way our organization functions in the way that the rack-based design allowed us to eliminate chassis-based designs. The chassis design is more complicated to manage and maintain in field operations.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the ease of management.

I would like to see network function virtualization with no hardware.

I would like to see the integration of the products into something where it's seamless where an engineer never touches the switch again, never does CLI and you move to an application based network organization.

The stability of the solution needs to get a better handle on the vulnerability in recent code releases that aligns better with the DCN product. We'd like to avoid the need for continual upgrades and potential outages in our data centers and having to reboot the switches for each OS upgrade.

Cisco Nexus is stable, but then, in February of 2017, a cyberwar started. Cisco is getting hammered and we're seeing that evidence in very frequent updates to the OS system. If you have six data centers or you've got multiple locations around the world, these efforts take many months to update successfully to every device. 

When it takes us multiple months and two or three releases in the middle, we invest a lot of money in maintaining the device. The hacker community is the issue. 

The scalability is fine. 

The solution's technical support is used by my architects. I don't use it personally. 

The way that our airline works, because we've recently been in a merger, is that we're putting two big airlines together. Our primary driver has been the end-of-service lifecycle and the ability to remain PCI compliant. We must also remain compliant with cybersecurity.

We typically wait until the end of service life. As we practice this, we end up doing these refreshes and adding new architecture. We're making decisions now based on features, functionalities, and outcomes for passengers getting on planes to improve their experience.

We initially started a couple of years ago with Cisco Nexus. We started the design with 9Ks and 5Ks, we ended up reevaluating the situation features and going with more 2Ks to lower the costs for what we need. 

For the deployment, we used our staff engineers and Cisco people. We worked together with Cisco on finding the right solutions for implementing the product.

I am intimately aware of what the licensing costs are with Cisco Nexus. It depends on what we decide, how much margin, and what our strategy is when we have an intersection point to where we think won't be spending money on equipment we aren't going to use. 

I have already had conversations, here and at the five portals required to manage the licensing, with the new OS releases and the requirement to use the smart license portal. There are too many portals. We need a manager. 

Cisco Nexus is similar to other licensing costs but it's painful right now. I've sent everything to our account executive to work with for our systems integration and logistical partners. They need to solve this and help train the team. There's a big gap in there.

Cisco Nexus is very costly for the service. It's insurance in case something happens. We have a very good strategy that we're happy with, it's just the renewal process that is problematic on the license. 

When I walked through the customer experience center and explained the situation, they got a good feel for how much pain and suffering it's been. Cisco needs to understand how hard the renewals are each year for us. 

Even having the SmartNet Total Care portal, having a person dedicated to the distributors, etc. it's still a mess. If the incentives get better, which I know Cisco is working on, it would be great, right now, we're buying the license year-to-year.

We have three hundred to four hundred data centers of Nexus. So the coverage associated with Smart Net, 27 by 4, is basically what we spend each year. 

We did look at another vendor. Cisco is found around the world with good support and credibility in the industry. It was an easy choice even though the functionality from the competitor was more.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate this product an eight for the way I work with my team. They select the product, I serve them. I rate it from a perspective of what the quality of life my team has from using this product. How simple, risk-free, and smooth can we do this without putting the data centers in jeopardy.

Make sure you do your comparisons and make the right decision with the right product before you decide. I would recommend taking a good hard look at Cisco and the Nexus product line and what it could do for you.