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Cisco Nexus vs HPE A-Series [EOL] comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Nexus
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
LAN Switching (3rd), Data Center Networking (4th)
HPE A-Series [EOL]
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Fakhar Mahmood - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Network Administrator at i2c
Migration between data centers has strengthened core connectivity and simplified segmentation
The biggest problems during migration were corporate issues, including dependencies on other devices such as F5, HSMs, and firewalls from Palo Alto. Everything was connected over the core switches, which made this a quite difficult part to manage and to onboard the teams and to understand the impact of the migration. We encountered an issue where we have two data centers, and unknowingly we were configuring the devices with the same VPC number on both devices. By doing that, we were not able to terminate the lease lines over those core switches. According to Cisco, we had to change the VPC number of one of the data center's core switches since they are in a VPC. We are still waiting, and it has been more than five to six years just to change the VPC number and migrate back the lease line. Now we are having cabin switches for the lease line and then the core switch. That VPC number issue was quite surprising for us. However, we have a very frequent issue with Cisco Nexus, particularly with the SFPs. Every time a port or the SFP heats up, it gets faulty. We have almost sixteen Nexus switches per data center. In a year, we experience one or two port issues per annum. We have standard Equinix data centers with standard installations, but somehow the temperature is always maintained and there is no ducting, yet the ports and the SFPs heat up or become faulty. This is a very frequent issue with the SFP-based port.
Mohamed-Mousa - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at a media company with 201-500 employees
Stable and scalable with a good user interface
Overall, everything related to the interface is very good Some follow up from our user-partners would be useful. Letting users know what is up and coming or providing better documentation would be helpful. Overall, the solution could offer its users better support. I've been using the solution…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"This solution improves network speed and provides high availability for our users."
"Cisco Nexus has good overall reliability and configuration options. It is fairly straightforward to access the switching platforms."
"This solution provides all of the routing and searching features that we need."
"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 instruct it easily. So the network actually keeps quality even if onsite it is down."
"The most valuable feature is the HSRP (Hot Standby Router Protocol)."
"Current flexibility and the opportunities for future planning and scaling make this product line an ultimate opportunity."
"The VPC feature of Cisco Nexus is great because it provides an active-active way of forwarding the traffic and avoids blocking any of the links."
"The solution is very expensive. Currently, we pay an yearly licensing cost. I rate the pricing a nine out of ten."
"The solution is very stable."
 

Cons

"I would like to see more on-device programmability, as it seems to be lacking in this platform."
"One of our switches died last week and we were able to RMA it. Within four hours it arrived on time and worked."
"Areas in which the solution have room for improvement are the interface, management, and reporting."
"The installation process lasted too long, taking 16 to 24 hours for full completion."
"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."
"In the next release of this solution, I would like to see a focus on backplane deployment, so you can stack more."
"They need to offer fibre switches in the 9K series."
"It would be ideal if there was better integration with various other platforms."
"Some follow up from our user-partners would be useful. Letting users know what is up and coming or providing better documentation would be helpful. Overall, the solution could offer its users better support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's worth the money we're paying for Nexus."
"Our licensing costs for this solution are approximately $100K a year for the switching part."
"We consider Juniper switches to be more affordable."
"We only have a yearly support contract, as we do not use any of the subscription-based functions at this time."
"This solution should be made more affordable."
"This is a very expensive product."
"The price of the product is reasonable."
"The licensing fees for this solution are approximately $800,000 USD annually."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise83
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco Nexus?
The product's initial setup phase is very easy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Nexus?
We are a reseller, and we sell products to our customers.
What needs improvement with Cisco Nexus?
The biggest problems during migration were corporate issues, including dependencies on other devices such as F5, HSMs, and firewalls from Palo Alto. Everything was connected over the core switches,...
Ask a question
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Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
A-Series, HP A-Series
 

Overview

Information not available
 

Sample Customers

Advanced Medical Transport, Banco de Guayaquil, Baylor Scott & White Health, BH Telecom, Bowling Green State University, Calligaris, Children's Hospital Colorado, City of Biel, Del Papa Distributing, Department of Justice, Dimension Data, Dualtec Cloud Builders, Electricity Authority of Cyprus, Grupo Industrial Saltillo (GIS), Hertz, K&L Gates , LightEdge, Lone Star College System, Management Science Associates, Mindtree, NBC Olympics, Quest, Sony Corporation, The Department of Education in Western Australia, Valley Proteins
SEED Infotech, Weta Digital, BlueShore Financial
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Dell Technologies, Arista and others in Data Center Networking. Updated: February 2026.
882,886 professionals have used our research since 2012.