With the use of scripts, IOS offers “so much flexibility, there was almost no problem you couldn’t solve,” Kerravala says. Certainly a sea of network administrators is already familiar with Catalyst’s IOS (Internetwork Operating System), a cryptic but ultimately very powerful operating system. But if you have a Catalyst installed base, then it may be prudent to stick with the Cat. If you have a healthy budget to set up a new data center, the Nexus is indeed the way to go, advises Kerravala. “Campus deployments require user access control and segmentation, application intelligence, wired and wireless convergence, while data center environments require SAN and LAN convergence, virtual machine awareness and workload mobility and cloud security,” says Shashi Kiran, Cisco director of marketing for data center solutions. “This is an issue that my guys in the field face every day, because of the differences in features and philosophies,” says Dan Vargas, a solutions architect lead for IT systems provider CDW.Ĭisco’s own take is, more or less, this: Use the Catalyst switches for the campus - the office environments with worker PCs - and use the Nexus for data centers. So, should you use the Nexus or the Catalyst? Like a response from a non-committal Magic 8-Ball, the answer is, it depends. Cisco today won’t say if it intended Nexus to replace the Catalyst, but the company is still adding features to the Catalyst and hasn’t made any noise about discontinuing that line, at least for a while. The thing is, customers were more or less pleased, or at least used to, their Catalyst switches, which have long been dominant in the marketplace.Ĭisco would be “crazy to kill off,” the Catalyst (shown below), says Zeus Kerravala, head of the IT research firm ZK Research. In 2008, the company introduced its Nexus line as the next generation of virtualization-aware switches. It is hard to tell if Cisco planned to bifurcate its considerable market share for switches. Catalyst adherents appreciate the lower costs and familiarity. Nexus advocates like the speed and the virtualization capabilities. And each side of the debate has its fundamental reasons for sticking with their favored gear. Nexus frequently flares up on the popular Packet Pushers podcast for network administrators. The admin should also specify a preference of Cisco switch – either the widely used Cisco Catalyst 6500 familyof switches or the cutting-edge Cisco Nexus 7000 line. It is not enough for the network admin to say he works in a Cisco shop. These days, Cisco network administrators are a nation divided. data center applications can determine which Cisco Ethernet switch to use

Nexus cisco switch