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Cisco Nexus vs VMware NSX 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.4
Cisco Nexus provides strong ROI through reliability, automation, cost-effectiveness, and improved business continuity, justifying its initial investment.
Sentiment score
7.4
VMware NSX saves costs by reducing network needs, enhancing security, and achieving ROI within a year when deployed effectively.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.2
Cisco Nexus support is praised for its responsiveness, expertise, and reliable Smart Net service, despite occasional variability in communication.
Sentiment score
6.7
VMware NSX support is generally reliable but varies in responsiveness and expertise, with improvement needed in certain regions.
Our technicians have a good support experience from the company.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Cisco Nexus is scalable, flexible, and ideal for large deployments, offering high port density and efficient, adaptable networking solutions.
Sentiment score
7.7
VMware NSX is scalable across large infrastructures, praised for adaptability, hardware independence, and seamless integration in various environments.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Cisco Nexus is favored for its reliability and consistent performance, despite minor software bugs and occasional hardware issues.
Sentiment score
8.0
VMware NSX is stable and mature, praised for robust performance and dependability, despite occasional minor upgrade issues.
 

Room For Improvement

Cisco Nexus users desire improved GUI, integration, automation, ACI capabilities, reduced costs, enhanced support, and simplified configurations.
VMware NSX needs enhancements in integration, automation, deployment, and support to address complexity, pricing, and user-friendliness challenges.
 

Setup Cost

Cisco Nexus offers competitive pricing with high initial and renewal costs but provides valuable long-term technology benefits.
VMware NSX pricing is higher than competitors, complex, and may discourage smaller organizations due to potentially unused features.
VMware NSX is a little higher in price compared to the competition.
 

Valuable Features

Cisco Nexus excels in speed, flexibility, and reliability with advanced features, high scalability, and seamless data center performance.
VMware NSX offers micro-segmentation, automation, scalability, and integration, enhancing security and flexibility across virtual environments and clouds.
The most powerful feature of VMware NSX is the micro-segmentation that allows us to separate the different protocols our application works with.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Nexus
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
104
Ranking in other categories
LAN Switching (2nd), Data Center Networking (3rd)
VMware NSX
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
101
Ranking in other categories
Network Virtualization (2nd), Cloud and Data Center Security (2nd), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (6th), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (8th), Network Automation (5th), Microsegmentation Software (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Enterprise Networking solutions, they serve different purposes. Cisco Nexus is designed for LAN Switching and holds a mindshare of 8.7%, down 11.5% compared to last year.
VMware NSX, on the other hand, focuses on Network Virtualization, holds 46.6% mindshare, up 45.8% since last year.
LAN Switching
Network Virtualization
 

Featured Reviews

Joe Benítez - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Tarek Nader - PeerSpot reviewer
It extends Layer-2 scalability on Layer 3
NSX extends Layer-2 scalability on Layer 3, covering the vRO and extending the capability on Layer 3 by decapsulating using a new mechanism. NSX-V was designed to use with VMware products and Success 360, providing more flexibility toward different levels of cloud, containers, and components. NSX-T gives you the ability to stretch your network across different view locations. If you have multiple sites, you can connect them using NSX-T.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which LAN Switching solutions are best for your needs.
831,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
26%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
5%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
 

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.
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.
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.
What are the biggest differences between Cisco ACI and VMware NSX?
There are some very major differences between both the Products and to name a few. -Cisco ACI have physical network gear (9K Switches) where the Code runs in ACI Policy Mode & the UCS server wh...
What are the biggest differences between Cisco ACI and VMware NSX?
Once you know your way around the Cisco ecosystem, using Cisco ACI is not so difficult. It is a global product, so when you change one interface, changes are automatically reflected on every switch...
What do you like most about VMware NSX?
The product has valuable features for security and network extension.
 

Also Known As

No data available
VMware Nicira, Lastline Defender
 

Overview

 

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
City of Avondale, Lumeta, Kroll Ontrack, Heartland Payment Systems, Baystate Heallth, Exostar, Tribune Media, iGATE, NTT Communications, Synergent, California Natural Resources Agency, Bloomington Public Schools, Columbia Sportswear, Join Experience S.A, Schuberg Philis
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Nexus vs. VMware NSX and other solutions. Updated: March 2023.
831,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.