Question about Nexus and Catalyst

[waqas gondal]

Hi,

I have a few questions about the Nexus switches and how they compare with the Catalyst.

With the Nexus 2248TP can it be managed without needing a parent switch like the Nexus 5k?

Would it be a good consideration to choose Nexus over Catalyst?

Which Nexus switch would be a good replacement for Catalyst 3850?  This is in terms of cost and bandwidth capacity.

When buying SPF+ transievers for these switches, do they come in pairs for both switches or just one transiever?

Regards,

Waqas

[Reza Sharifi · Accepted solution]

Hi,

With the Nexus 2248TP can it be managed without needing a parent switch like the Nexus 5k?

No, 2k switches need a parent switch, it could be a 5k, 6k or a 7k.

Would it be a good consideration to choose Nexus over Catalyst?

It depends in your need.  The 3850 is mainly a copper switch with fiber uplink.  5ks on the other hand are mainly a fiber switch with copper modules you can purchase.  The Nexus series don't support POE, but the 3800 series do.  So, it all depends on your applications.

Which Nexus switch would be a good replacement for Catalyst 3850? This is in terms of cost and bandwidth capacity.

Nexus series is designed for data center with lower latency, faster chips, more throughput, etc... if you are designing a data center, you want the Nexus series.  Usually, Nexus is more expensive than the 3800, but that is not always the case.

When buying SPF+ transievers for these switches, do they come in pairs for both switches or just one transiever?

When you buy the 2ks, they come with 8 FETs, which can be used to connect a 2ks to 5, 6 or 7ks via 4 uplinks.  FETs are Cisco propriatry optics and can only be used between the 2ks and the parent switches.

If you need any other optics, you have to order them separetly.

HTH

[waqas gondal]

Thanks Reza

[glen.grant · Accepted solution]

  Also with the 2k's as Reza has indicated it has to be attached to a parent nexus.  Also they are really kind of a dumb box as they do no switching locally , if you have say 2 servers on the same 2k  and they want to talk all traffic has to go uphill to the nexus and back down .  Always thought that was a real drawback  and just adds unneeded traffic to those uplinks .

[Reza Sharifi]

Glen,

Juniper has a Qfabric solution that switches local traffic between hosts on the same switch.  But they don't have a good solution for Gig NICs.  It is designed for 10 and 40Gig.

http://www.juniper.net/us/en/local/pdf/whitepapers/2000443-en.pdf

HTH

[Vasileios Bouloukos MSc, ITIL, CCIE]

Take a look to the next article.

It will help you to answer your questions.

http://www.firewall.cx/cisco-technical-knowledgebase/cisco-data-center/1201-introduction-nexus-family-nx-os-ios-differences.html