6500 vs Nexus 7k

Dieg0M

Which one do you prefer and why? Is it worth the cost of migrating from 6500 switches to nexus 7k?

Thank you

networker050184

I would have to know the requirements to answer that.

Dieg0M

Let's say a very large firm with several data-centers and a lot of real-time applications that need to communicate securely worldwide. The infrastructure would be mostly 6500's and the network engineers would be familiar mostly with IOS but can familiarize themselves with NX-OS faily quickly.

networker050184

So do you have any need for WAN connectivity (other than Ethernet) from these boxes? MPLS? WCCP? L2TP? Multiple contexts? 100G connectivity?

For most DC environments Nexus seems to be the winner where newer L2 features are important. If you are looking for a core/edge routing and switching platform the Cats are still a better option.

Dieg0M

How are Cats better at core/edge routing? I believe 6500 do not support 100gb/Fiber channel ports.

networker050184

Nope they don't support 100G. If you are going to have a core switch in an enterprise it's probably going to do a lot of routing. VPc doesn't work with L3 bundles so if you want that you need the Catalyst line. If you need enterprise services, FWSMs etc you need the Catalyst line. If you are going to have a WAN circuit other than Ethernet hand off you will need the Catalyst line. WCCP needs the Catalyst line. If you need MPLS (l2xconns are popular) or L2TP you need the Catalyst line.

So unless you are setting up a L2 switched environment needing low latency and 100G infrastructure (aka Data Center) the Catalyst line might still be the best bet for you.

I'm sure there are other things to take into consideration as well, but these are some of the ones we went through when looking at the Nexus line. In the end we still picked the Nexus line because this was a new Data Center roll out and none of the features I mentioned were needed. We went with external FWs and load balancers rather than 6500s with FWSMs and ACEs like previous deployments.

One other thing to be careful about is all the licensing with the Nexus as each feature you enable you need licensing. This was a bit of a headache for us at first when deploying them.

Scales

The new 6800 is the upgraded version of the 6500 and does 100G.
Cisco Catalyst 6800 Series Switches - Products & Services - Cisco Systems