Cisco Nexus vs Brocade VCS

it_consultant

Both seem awesome, neither are cheap. The Brocade interface is basically a copy of the Cisco interface. Cisco is better known in corporate IT but Foundry (now Brocade ethernet) is a staple of datacenters and ISPs. Which would you choose?

*Edit*

It has to be the Nexus line because Nexus is the line of Cisco switches that support "Fabric Path" also known as TRILL.

RTmarc

What Nexus switch? I've used the 7000 and 5500 series. The 5548UP was rock solid but we had a few issues with the 7010.

it_consultant

I haven't gotten the comparative Cisco quote yet so I am not sure which Nexus switch Cisco recommends. This is what Brocade sent us:

Brocade VDX 6730 - switch - 16 ports - managed - rack-mountable - BR-VDX6730-16-F - Fixed (Managed) Switches - CDW.com

swabbies

We are looking at both as well. I like the per-packet load balancing aspect of the VCS as it can make full use of the ports in a port-channel. The only limitation I see with it is that there is a 24 device limit, which may or may not be an issue depending on the size of the datacenter. We are looking thinking about creating several VCS pods for L2 that uplink to Nexus and or 6500's for L3.

it_consultant

Our TRILL fabric will be less than 24 devices. They will terminate all the fiber from our remote offices, the uplinks from our distro switches (not on the fabric) and select 10GB servers. Our distro switches, as specced, are the ICX-6450 POE.