Cisco Nexus vs Juniper QFabric comparison

Cisco and Juniper are both solutions in the LAN Switching category. Cisco is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.7, while Juniper is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.5. Cisco holds a 8.7% mindshare in LS, compared to Juniper’s 1.4% 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

1,898 Views
1,368 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Juniper QFabric

Read 10 Juniper QFabric reviews

318 Views
237 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: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Nexus vs. Juniper QFabric

January 2025

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Helped 832,138 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

2nd

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

8th

Average Rating

8.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the LAN Switching category, the mindshare of Cisco Nexus is 8.7%, down from 11.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Juniper QFabric is 1.4%, down from 2.0% 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 And they were running outdated software.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

"The most valuable feature is that it is high-density, ten-gig."

"This product has improved the way our organization functions through the ability to do things in a maintenance window while allowing other teams to continue to work."

"We have a much more stable network now using the Cisco Nexus."

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

"Cisco Nexus and Cisco Catalyst have processing power and offer good utilization of Cisco devices."

"Its low latency is most valuable. Its performance is good, and it is also very stable."

"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."

"This solution has given us the ability to use Cisco ISE for security."

More Cisco Nexus pros

"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."

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

"The solution is stable."

"QFabric supports redundancy and includes all of the enterprise and service provider features that customers would want in data center or service provider network."

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

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

"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

"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."

"I would like to see better collaboration with other, low-end devices."

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

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

"Multi contexts would be nice to have to separate different tenants logically and securely."

"It would be nice if the solution offered multiple types of port support."

"I would like to see a lighter platform."

"The product's high price is an area of concern where improvements are required. Cisco Nexus should lower its current prices."

More Cisco Nexus cons

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

"It would be nice if Juniper provided the system integrator with training, similar to that of Cisco."

"The disruptive upgrade was an issue for us."

More Juniper QFabric cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"Costs more than most, but the reliability pays for the difference."

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

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

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

"Our licensing fees are paid annually."

"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."

"Our licensing fees are approximately $2,000 USD per year."

More Cisco Nexus pricing and cost advice

"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 pricing is high."

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

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

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

"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

26%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

17%

University

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

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 14% of the time

ExtremeSwitching vs Cisco Nexus

Compared 5% of the time

Dell PowerSwitch N-Series vs Cisco Nexus

Compared 2% of the time

More Cisco Nexus Competitors

Cisco FabricPath vs Juniper QFabric

Compared 43% of the time

More Juniper QFabric Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Nexus

February 2025

Download Cisco Nexus product report

Buyer's Guide

LAN Switching

January 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

January 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: January 2025.

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