Cisco Nexus Reviews

The product is basically used for our entire phone system.

After implementing the product, it made things a lot easier. We have good quality as far as calls and it's pretty easy to roll out new updates. It is very accommodating to provide that for our contact center.

Quality is really the most valuable feature. Being able to interconnect components between different clusters around the globe gives us the flexibility we need. That pretty much makes what we do possible.

I don't really know any improvements that we would need right now as a company. I would say it would be nice to support more phone models in general. For us that doesn't matter as we really stick with one type of phone. There hasn't been a phone refresh — I think — in maybe five years, but I think that's kind of how Cisco rolls. They do have a 10 year run on phones.

Better monitoring would be a big thing to have. The RTMT (Real-time Monitoring Tool) is good, but I also know they're moving to a web-based solution so certain updates to current products won't be on the way. Being able to drill down and have better adaptivity going forward would be nice. But I think that concentrating on the web-based solution is their plan and the way they're going. I'm looking forward to seeing how that works out.

I think the solution is pretty stable. We are going to upgrade soon, but we've been on version 11 of Unified Communications Manager for two years. We usually try to upgrade every year, but we try to wait for a few SUs (Software Updates) and upgrade later on. We try not to be on the latest and greatest, in case of any bugs.

The scalability of the solution is very good. The only thing I don't like is that there's an 80-millisecond requirement between cluster servers. I have to have multiple clusters around the world: I can't just have one giant cluster. There are ways around that requirement, but I wish they could figure it out.

Cisco technical support is good now and has gotten better over the years. The Webex support can be a lot better as far as response. Sometimes I don't get responses for two or three days. But as far as technical support for other products, it's good.

Pretty much the product I always go to is Cisco, so that's my preference. I'm not new to the solution. It's consistent and does what we need it to.

The initial setup was straightforward. I'm the senior engineer so I've had to go through my bumps and bruises, but it's pretty much straightforward if you know what you're doing.

We didn't go with a vendor team for implementation, we did it ourselves. We do use a reseller, Continental Resource. They provide hardware for us and software licensing and all that.

We have definitely seen a return on investment as far as our contact center and when we build new offices, we can build them quickly.

I've never gone with any other type of phone systems. It pretty much has been Cisco all along.

I would rate this solution as an eight out of ten. I think that giving it a ten would be to place it ahead of every other solution and I can't be sure that's the case. I, personally, think it's above everyone else but I haven't tried all of the solutions in order to know first-hand.

I've always been told: you never get fired if you own Cisco.

The primary use case for Nexus in our company is for the data center. Everybody that has access to our remote server rooms throughout the campus wants 10G data ports all the way across. 

This product helps us by resolving the issue of not having to install fiber everywhere. If you use Nexus, it has the 10G copper ports. That way we can just use the current infrastructure. Cisco Nexus saves us money in the long run.

The most valuable feature of this solution is that it scales well. It supports a lot of servers. We don't have to come up with different designs for anything. That's the best part about it.

I would like to have the feature where you can install something like operf on it so you can do troubleshooting without having to configure operf on servers.

We had issues with Cisco Nexus during upgrades. When we first got the system, we were having some issues. The whole system crashed. 

The stability of this product works great.

The scalability of Cisco Nexus is wonderful. It supports the whole data centers. We have no issues with scalability.

They need to understand that when we call them and have an issue, it's our production and sometimes they want us to do repairs that would cause other issues. That's the biggest problem.

We are a Cisco shop. We don't have to worry about learning different commands with Cisco Nexus. It still has different commands because of the platform, but it was a lot easier to understand than if you're going through a different company.

The initial setup was straightforward on Cisco's part. Other customers that we work with didn't understand their equipment.

We installed it ourselves. We just ordered our equipment through a reseller. They weren't involved in any on-site work.

It was Cisco or Juniper.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate Cisco Nexus an eight. When trying to do the upgrades sometimes there are issues. Sometimes you get a bug that Cisco doesn't know about. When you try to explain it to them, they always say it's impossible and can't be replicated.

You need to understand all the options, the servers and different applications you can run, and how Cisco Nexus supports the overall picture.

This solution is used as the core and access switches in our largest data center. We have several of them that make up our 40-gigabit uplink.

From my perspective, this is a nice solution. These units are easy to work with and they have a lot of features that you can't get anywhere else. It gives me an unparalleled ability to build out my environment differently than I would have if I was going with another vendor. This is true even if I was going with a Catalyst model instead of a Nexus model.

The most valuable feature of this solution is its stability. We don't have any problems with them, ever. It doesn't matter how much we hammer them or load stuff up on them, they never give us any trouble. I cannot say that for many other platforms that I operate, so I am really pleased with that aspect.

The ability to troubleshoot on this model is very good, and far beyond what you get on a different model. We have had some weird issues in our data center, and this has helped us in that regard. Sometimes you need a tech to help you with it because it's a little too complex, but at least you can see the data. I wish I could say that about, pretty much, anything else I have.

I would like to see Duo directly integrated with the Nexus hardware, instead of it being through the proxies, like how Duo works today. The way it works now really irritates me.

There is a lot of depth in the Nexus class, and it would help to make this more accessible to the users. We, for instance, are using them no differently than we would a Catalyst switch with VPCs. With that in mind, some of the more in-depth features would be nice to have, so having easier access to them would be beneficial.

We have been operating for a year and a half, and we've never had one crash. I couldn't say that for most other platforms.

We have not had an opportunity to scale this solution, but it seems very scalable. The VPC, virtual port channels, and the virtual domains, together, allow you to scale endlessly. I have never seen any problems with them.

I love Cisco Smart Net. It is the best thing in the business. I've never dealt with another vendor that comes even close to Smart Net.

This solution was integrated before I started, but we used to have Cisco 7K and 5K models. When we built the new data center, which was necessary after our company split in two, the 9K made more sense. It was the right choice for us at that point.

The initial setup seemed pretty straightforward. These units were a little different, compared to the Nexus 5K that I came from. Some commands are a little different, but other than that, it was easy to do.

There are a lot of more complex features in the Nexus class that we aren't using today, so maybe it would have been harder if we were using some of those. But, for a basic setup, it was easy enough.

We used a third party, Logicalis. The sold us the product and performed the basic installation. The VPCs were built, the management and IP configuration were completed before we took it over.

I felt like we paid for more than we got, but that was ok. They got the job done and we didn't have time for it. At the end of the day, I would rate them a three out of five.

Every Cisco product is more expensive than competitors on the market, which is just a fact, but from my perspective, it is worth it.

Our company is locked into one vendor for purchasing, which is a board decision. The only time we can use another vendor is if they sell it as part of a solution. Logicalis was the only vendor that had the solution we wanted, so that's who we went with.

This solution is ACI compatible, but we did not have time to get them on ACI before we went live. As a result, they will not make it to ACI.

There is always room for improvement, but I really love this solution. These devices do not give me any headaches. I design enough solutions for our company where, if they give me headaches, they come back out. It's that simple. I don't have time to keep going back and cleaning up the solutions that I've already installed.

If you want something that that is rock solid and you don't have to worry about, then go buy yourself some Nexus 9Ks. It's that simple.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

The solution is our aggregation switch. We have all our data services, and users (not end-users) services going through our Nexus. It connects our firewalls and it connects other switches and makes our load balances work. Basically, we were given the switch and then we configured it and we will put it in the network and we maintain it.

The solution seems to be quite stable. We have had to upgrade recently as we were on an engineering release of code, and we don't tend to have problems with the Nexus. 

You can scale the product.

Technical support seems to be okay.

The solution could be improved in general in all aspects. 

When it comes to technical assistance, you cannot speed up things. You can try to escalate, however, there's a process. You have not got them on speed dial. You need to wait.

It would be ideal if there was better integration with various other platforms. 

I've been using the solution since 2015. It's been six years.

The stability of the solution is great. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. the performance is reliable. 

The solution can scale.

The product provides services for thousands of our customers. If we look at Nexus and the media portals, then we've got millions of customers that will use the end service. That all goes through the Nexus F5.

In terms of technical support, we would go through the third party who would contact Cisco. It's fine. It works quite well at the moment. It would be nice if they could be quicker.

I did not handle any of the initial setup. I can't speak to if it was complex or straightforward. 

I can't speak to the pricing as I am not in procurement. Once it gets delivered, we'll put it in the network and then we'll configure it and then operate it. We are in operations. We don't directly handle licensing.

We are a customer and an end-user.

It's my understanding that we are using version 9, however, I cannot speak to if what we are on is the latest version or not. 

In our organization, there are hundreds of engineers. There are multiple teams. I work in a team that looks after the data center and we are on-premises, although there is also a cloud team.

From an operations perspective, when I look at service availability and the number of failures, I'd say the solution is probably about a seven out of ten.

I would recommend the solution to other users. It is tried and tested in our network, and it works well. It could work for other companies.

The primary use case is for the core network infrastructure of our data centers. We use Nexus and the FEX line of products to interconnect all of the server infrastructure, as well as external connections that come in from our outside vendors. 

This solution streamlines how we have to configure things because we can do everything from one device, whereas if we had individual devices we would have to go to each one and configure them manually.

The most valuable features are the flexibility of the blade infrastructure, as well as the FEX integration.

I would love to see Active/Active FEX connectivity, which is enhanced vPC, where we could also do a vPC from a server in that type of configuration. It's still a limitation that's been carried over from the 7K that I'm surprised is still absent from the 9K. Including this would give us the highest level of redundancy without risking having orphaned ports, which we do have at times.

At this point, I am happy with the stability of this solution. It has been better than the 7K line.

The scalability seems pretty solid. We're not a very large company, so we don't max out any of the limitations of the solution.

I have not dealt directly with technical support, although I have received feedback from my engineers. What little support we've needed has worked out very well.

I have nearly ten years of experience with the Nexus 7K line. Our change was primarily driven by the company's requirement to maintain our equipment. With the 7K line going out of support shortly, we had to move to a supported platform to meet regulatory requirements.

The initial setup of this solution is straightforward. The similarities between the 9K and the older 7K helped with the transition. It didn't complicate things because the functionalities are so similar that it was easy enough to transfer our current configuration over. We were even able to make slight adjustments for improvement.

We used CompuNet to assist us with the implementation.

The engineer was great, but the project manager wasn't so great. He didn't really manage the project. I came in late, in the middle of the project, and ended up putting it on hold because there was no plan. They were trying to implement within a couple of weeks. So, I had to put it on hold for about three months before we actually were able to move our core over to the new 9K infrastructure.

With the implementation of the FEX infrastructure, it is going to save us a lot of time. We are incapable of implementing new connectivity for new hardware devices without having the ability to manage multiple devices.

Besides, the ROI for this solution is that it gets me off of the audit list.

We only have a yearly support contract, as we do not use any of the subscription-based functions at this time.

We only evaluated solutions by Cisco.

With the feature set we are using now, I cannot think of any major changes that we would require. In the future, as we move into a hybrid cloud strategy, I may see opportunities for improvement.

There are still limitations within the product.

My advice for anybody researching this solution is to make sure that it meets your requirements. From a stability standpoint, it works, but not every feature set that you may need or require is there, so you have to look at it closely.

I would rate this solution a nine 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.

We are using the Cisco Nexus for switching. We use the product for LAN switching, overall switching, and for the data center.

We needed to invest in Cisco solutions because of the Cisco environment. To change that would require some additional learning from our resources. That would be a challenge.

With Cisco, you have the continuity. Upgrade changes have been very good.

We are a Cisco shop. We have continuity with Cisco, which provides a very high-end solution. Converting into digital services, we're in a position to provide lifecycle management.

In future releases, it would be good to have more management on those devices.

Cisco needs to provide more training.

The stability, from a civilian perspective, is excellent.

Scalability depends on when there's no hardware available. We just add another rack and another switch. From an overall perspective, it's a very good product

The TAC, i.e. the technical support for the product, is excellent. That's what Cisco is known for and that's why we like them.

Before, we were all Cisco. Whenever there is a new product, we look at it.

Setup is fairly straightforward. We are a Cisco shop. This is for a lifecycle upgrade from the previous generations, i.e. 3750/3850 to 9000. It's excellent. We are using the 3700.

The return of investment is excellent for the lifecycle. The support gives us a level where we are already in line with the future. 

The licensing is the area that we are working that's a challenge. With smart licensing, it's all new to us. It used to be, we purchased something and the license was IP-based.

With advanced services, you go in and add more depth or details to the license.

I would rate this product with an 8/10 because it is an excellent product but the licensing is the problem. Everything else is good.

I would get as much training as you can.

Mostly what we use Cisco Nexus for is in our access layer and distribution networks on our campus.

I'm the person that makes the decisions on purchasing. I have a manager above me that gives a budget, but I decide on products and spending. Some of it is previous experience with the hardware. We also trust our partners and the people that deploy it for their recommendations. We're looking across model lines. 

We're a large enterprise. We're nationwide. We tend to have limitations within a certain scope. We purchase so that we can keep our costs down and also support anything we want.

There are some limitations and we have to pick from the list of available options. 

Some of the previous Cisco equipment that we've had, i.e. the 2948's and 3560's, are similar.

The most valuable feature of this solution is stability. We have a pretty large campus. We need the redundancy options and diverse paths that are required. Also, some of the capacity that the Cisco Nexus has.

The only major improvement required would be stability. With some of the products we had before, we had a little more downtime than we would like.

We had to spend more time either dealing with parts that needed to be replaced, or issues that we had in configurations that we needed to upgrade. The Cisco Nexus is a lot more stable and doesn't have all of the bugs when it has to do with upgrades.

Some of the fiber optic capacity increases will be good because we're already looking at 40 GB and 100 GB at a reasonable price. 

Fiber capacity is going to be something we're starting to look on our roadmap, how do we increase what we have available.

We use Cisco Nexus and haven't had any problems. We've been happy with it.

Scalability for us is great. We can use Cisco Nexus for what we need it to do. In the future, I don't see any obstacles this would create. It works great.

Cisco always does a great job. Sometimes it's difficult to get to the level of engineer that you need for support. Overall, the experience that we get is fine. Eventually, we'll be able to get the support that we require to get the issue fixed if there's a problem.

Cisco Nexus is straightforward for deployment. If we had to have any kind of hands-on support, we could access them. If you want to you can always pay for someone to come for services. 

We may need to have services on site to be able to help us with deployment. We've used that in the past. For some of this equipment, we have enough experience within our team to be able to deploy it. Then if we run into problems, we can just call in for help.

We have a contractor that already has contracted out to do that work locally in our facility. They take care of all that for us. Our experience with that partner was good. We're happy with them. They did a good job.

From an improvement on an availability metric perspective, we have seen ROI.

We do yearly licensing. I don't directly pay for Cisco Nexus. Enterprise, above me, pays for all our licensing across the United States. I know we do pay a yearly fee for our portion.

In our enterprise organization, we're a little bit different than the government. We buy into the economy of scale. Since we have centers all across the United States, we try to centralize and enterprise manage our equipment. We tend to go with one vendor and that decision is above me.

I don't get to evaluate the days of local control within our infrastructure. We moved away from that about 10 years ago so that we can take advantage of economies of scale.

I would say take advantage of the resources that Cisco has in regards to some of the marketing and sales reps. They can provide you at least a guide on the options.

Sometimes you get locked in on a particular product, even though it's still biased. Within the company, opportunities exist to talk about other options. 

A lot of times Cisco will bring a technical engineer, it's not just a sales rep trying to sell something. They'll bring their technical representatives that understand the environment and consider other options within the brand.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Cisco Nexus at a nine. I'm not sure I know everything about it to give it a ten.