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 8.6, while Juniper is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.5. Cisco holds a 8.7% 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 105 Cisco Nexus reviews

1,564 Views
1,090 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Juniper QFabric

Read 10 Juniper QFabric reviews

253 Views
165 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 845,040 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

105

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 April 2025, in the LAN Switching category, the mindshare of Cisco Nexus is 8.7%, down from 11.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Juniper QFabric is 1.5%, down from 1.6% 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 And they were running outdated software.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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OusaidAbaz

Security Network Architect at Inmac

Ensures reliable operation and consistent performance but lifecycle management need improvement

QFabric simplified our data center network architecture by reducing configuration complexity compared to Cisco devices. It required fewer CLI commands, making configuration quicker and easier, especially for scalable deployments. QFabric improved scalability in our data center by simplifying the addition of new switches to existing configurations. The process was straightforward to manage. Implementing QFabric can affect overall IT infrastructure costs differently based on configuration needs. For small businesses with stable configurations, costs remain unchanged. However, for scalability and expansion, additional configuration and time may increase costs. My advice for those using Juniper is to ensure staff are well-trained and certified in Juniper technologies, such as JNCIA, JNCIS, JNCIP, or JNCIE. With these skills, you can effectively manage and troubleshoot Juniper solutions, minimizing potential issues and maximizing performance. Overall, I would rate Juniper QFabric as a seven out of ten.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The integrations are valuable."

"The most valuable feature is the HSRP (Hot Standby Router Protocol)."

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

"The setup was very easy, but managing it in operations was very complex."

"Cisco Nexus has good overall reliability and configuration options. It is fairly straightforward to access the switching platforms."

"The product's initial setup phase is very easy."

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

"Nexus provides inner redundancy. It allows us to perform updates on individual switches, while still maintaining reliability and uptime on the server."

More Cisco Nexus pros

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

"It's user-friendly."

"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."

"The solution is easy to use and has good performance."

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

"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."

"The vendor maintains the product well."

More Juniper QFabric pros

Cons

"The price could be better."

"We have encountered some software bugs."

"The operating system needs to be improved. There should be stability in the operating system, and it should not have as many vulnerabilities."

"There's been a little bit of bugginess in the code, but that happens."

"They need to offer fibre switches in the 9K series."

"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."

"Some of the DHCP features need improvement."

"The flexibility and configuration could be better."

More Cisco Nexus cons

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

"The stability needs to be improved."

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

"The disruptive upgrade was an issue for us."

More Juniper QFabric cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"Cisco's licensing structures can be complex across different technologies, for example, unified communications."

"Our licensing costs for this solution are approximately $100K a year for the switching part."

"The price of this solution is good when compared to others in the market."

"This solution should be made more affordable."

"If you compare Cisco hardware to any other vendors, such as HPE, they are more expensive. There is a license to use the solution. If my customer's licenses are about to expire I receive notification from Cisco, this is very helpful."

"We consider Juniper switches to be more affordable."

"The price of the product is reasonable."

More Cisco Nexus pricing and cost advice

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

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

"The pricing is high."

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

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

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

24%

Financial Services Firm

10%

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?

The price of Cisco Nexus is on the higher side due to the premium services Cisco offers. Despite the cost, it offers valuable features and services.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco Nexus?

When I talk about data centers, which are critical infrastructure and centralized application hubs, the Nexus platforms should be highly stable. Initially, the codes I received through ACI were qui...

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

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Compared 45% of the time

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Compared 20% of the time

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Compared 12% of the time

ExtremeSwitching vs Cisco Nexus

Compared 5% of the time

Dell PowerSwitch N-Series vs Cisco Nexus

Compared 3% of the time

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No data available

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Nexus

March 2025

Download Cisco Nexus product report

Buyer's Guide

LAN Switching

March 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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