Cisco Nexus vs Juniper QFabric comparison

Cisco and Juniper are both solutions in the LAN Switching category. Cisco is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.7, while Juniper is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.5. Cisco holds a 8.5% mindshare in LS, compared to Juniper’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Juniper users who would recommend it.

Cisco Nexus

Read 104 Cisco Nexus reviews

1,672 Views
1,179 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Juniper QFabric

Read 10 Juniper QFabric reviews

277 Views
183 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Cisco Nexus

Juniper QFabric

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco Nexus and Juniper QFabric based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two LAN Switching solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Nexus vs. Juniper QFabric Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Nexus vs. Juniper QFabric

March 2025

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Helped 839,319 peers since 2012

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

Ranking in LAN Switching

3rd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

104

Ranking in other categories

Data Center Networking (3rd)

Juniper QFabric

Ranking in LAN Switching

9th

Average Rating

8.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the LAN Switching category, the mindshare of Cisco Nexus is 8.5%, down from 11.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Juniper QFabric is 1.5%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

LAN Switching

Featured Reviews

Joe Benítez

Systems Engineer at GAD Municipal de Guayaquil

Offer high performance capabilities and enables efficient data transmission and processing

Before Nexus, I used to have Catalyst 6500 switches. Those 6500 series chassis gave us a lot of problems. Too many problems, actually. And we had a Cisco ASA firewall blade within those chassis. And they were running outdated software. So, in fact, it was the firewall blade that caused us too many problems instead of the chassis. The chassis itself was working well and performing fine, but the firewall card was not suitable for our needs. That was one aspect. Additionally, those chassis had been in operation for more than five years. As we are a local government, we have a policy to renew hardware every five years. That's because we need to maintain all the hardware and software in the latest versions and keep up with the technology lifecycle of the technology we use.

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Suresh Pathipatti

Senior Information Technology Administrator at Aighospital

Performs well, is easy to set up, and the vendor maintains the product well

QFabric is the core switch. We also have two Brocade switches for the Fibre level The product works fine. It is an excellent product. There are different element systems and different options for each generation of the tool. We maintain the data center and analyze issues. I have no negative…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This solution provides all of the routing and searching features that we need."

"Cisco Nexus is a stable solution."

"The most valuable feature of Cisco Nexus is modularity. It's like the Swiss Army knife of switches."

"This is a very stable solution."

"The in-service software upgrade (ISSU) feature is quite valuable."

"Cisco Nexus provides a reliable switching platform for our data centers."

"This solution has saved us both time and money because we now have the ability to control all of these telephony devices that are deployed nationwide."

"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."

More Cisco Nexus pros

"It's user-friendly."

"The solution is stable."

"Juniper QFabric has various advantages including scalability, simplicity, performance, and flexibility."

"The 40 gig backbone InterConneX was valuable for our use case. It is even faster now. QFabric has spine-leaf technology or topology, which basically makes every single hop only one hop away in terms of connecting from one device to another. It is a pretty good and robust solution. It works pretty well in terms of scalability, and their technical support is amazing."

"The most valuable feature of QFabric for network performance is its stability."

"It is known for being agile, flexible, and cost-effective when working with various vendors."

"The vendor maintains the product well."

"The most valuable features of this solution are the fabric backplane having upwards of 160 GB of communication. It is a top-of-the-rack solution where you have your directors sitting in the main area and then you have your nodes expanded out to your multiple cabinets. It has a very good design and could be your server backbone."

More Juniper QFabric pros

Cons

"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."

"There are limitations on some of the lower level 9K solutions where you can't do the same things that you would normally be able to do, like for instance the number of static maps that you can configure on it."

"The only thing to improve is to continue to get better."

"There is an ongoing problem with the limitation of the TCAM table, which is that it doesn't have enough memory to allow you to be really granular with your policy."

"Some of the DHCP features need improvement."

"I feel that this solution should be more flexible and scalable."

"I would like to see a central management solution in order to have all of the equipment in one place."

"The interface integration of Cisco Nexus with AI can be improved for better infrastructure management."

More Cisco Nexus cons

"I do not use GUI's very much for switch stacks. I am always in the CLI. However, I do know that Juniper in the past has lacked on their GUI's, but they have been working on it."

"The stability needs to be improved."

"Having support for all OpenFlow versions would be beneficial."

"The disruptive upgrade was an issue for us."

"It works too much on rebooting and there is some memory leakage."

"They are working on the virtualization of the actual fabric layer. They are moving away from the original spine-leaf design to a different infrastructure. Instead of having three tiers, which was the director of the interconnected nodes, they cut them back, and they still have that kind of structure."

"Improvements could be made to QFabric's life cycle management, particularly in maintaining stable versions and extending product support."

"The pricing structure could be more budget-friendly."

More Juniper QFabric cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is very expensive. Its licensing is on a yearly basis."

"It's worth the money we're paying for Nexus."

"The problem with Cisco, from what I see, is that their costs are much higher."

"We have three hundred to four hundred data centers of Nexus. So the coverage associated with Smart Net is 27 by 4, is basically what we spend each year. If the incentives get better, which I know they're working on, it would be great but right now we're buying year to year."

"The solution is expensive."

"The solution is relatively expensive when compared with Cisco Catalyst."

"Our licensing fees are paid annually."

"Our licensing costs for this solution are approximately $200 USD per month."

More Cisco Nexus pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is high."

"The pricing is high and it is possible to find better pricing option solutions on the market, but the licensing model is quite flexible."

"The price for Juniper QFabric could improve. There are subscription, maintenance, and add-on feature fees."

"Juniper QFabric is a high-level solution but it could be less expensive."

"In terms of price, the QFabric solution is going to be probably in the middle of the road for a fabric solution."

"The price is relatively high, but it offers an advantage over its competitors by providing better performance and functionality."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

25%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Government

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco Nexus?

The product's initial setup phase is very easy.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Nexus?

Cisco pricing is at the same level as many competitors, however, due to competition, they sometimes lower prices and offer large discounts.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco Nexus?

Cisco's security features are in line with other OEMs, however, for data center security in terms of layer seven security, we prefer to have different OEMs rather than relying solely on Cisco.

See all answers

What do you like most about Juniper QFabric?

The most valuable feature of QFabric for network performance is its stability.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Juniper QFabric?

Juniper QFabric is not overly expensive. Licensing is required for certain features like vRRP, but setting up a virtual chassis does not necessitate a separate license.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Juniper QFabric?

Improvements could be made to QFabric's lifecycle management, particularly in maintaining stable versions and extending product support. The rapid release cycle and short life span compared to comp...

See all answers

Comparisons

Juniper QFX Series Switches vs Cisco Nexus

Compared 46% of the time

Arista Networks Platform vs Cisco Nexus

Compared 21% of the time

Cisco Catalyst Switches vs Cisco Nexus

Compared 13% of the time

ExtremeSwitching vs Cisco Nexus

Compared 5% of the time

Alcatel-Lucent OmniSwitch LAN Switches vs Cisco Nexus

Compared 3% of the time

More Cisco Nexus Competitors

No data available

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Nexus

March 2025

Download Cisco Nexus product report

Buyer's Guide

LAN Switching

February 2025

Download Juniper QFabric product report

Also Known As

No data available

QFabric

Overview

The Cisco Nexus family of switches is designed to meet the stringent requirements of the next-generation data center. Not simply bigger or faster, these switches offer the following characteristics: infrastructure that can be scaled cost-effectively and that helps you increase energy, budget, and resource efficiency, transport that can navigate the transition to 10 Gigabit Ethernet and unified fabric and can also handle architectural changes such as virtualization, Web 2.0 applications, and cloud computing and operational continuity to meet your need for an environment where system availability is assumed and maintenance windows are rare if not totally extinct.

Cisco

Juniper QFabric System is composed of multiple components working together as a single switch to provide high-performance, any-to-any connectivity and management simplicity in the data center. The QFabric System flattens the entire data center network to a single tier where all access points are equal, eliminating the effects of network locality and making it the ideal network foundation for cloud-ready, virtualized data centers.The highly scalable QFabric System improves application performance with low latency and converged services in a nonblocking, lossless architecture that supports Layer 2, Layer 3, and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) capabilities.

Juniper

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

MCB Bank

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Nexus vs. Juniper QFabric

March 2025

Free Report: Cisco Nexus vs. Juniper QFabric

Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Nexus vs. Juniper QFabric and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

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