We performed a comparison between Arista Networks Platform and Cisco Nexus based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: In this comparison, the two products received similar ratings across all categories. However, users of Arista Networks Platform reported seeing an ROI while users of Cisco Nexus did not.
"The user-friendly policy manager lets us apply different controls for various user groups easily."
"I like the spine as a leaf model and low latency. The hardware is robust and meets expected latency in all environments, mainly if you belong to the media or trading industry. For multicast-based solutions, Arista is number one."
"It is very stable. It has good hardware and very stable code. It provides good value for its price. They are a very lean type of organization, so they are very responsive, and they're able to focus more on their platform versus having multiple products out there."
"What we like most is its performance to price ratio."
"The configuration capabilities were good."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The best part is the single operating system that they have. Regardless of your model, it's the same operating system functioning across the board, which means you don't have to worry about backward compatibilities between your older switches and the new ones that you deploy."
"The most valuable aspect of Arista Networks products is their ease of configuration, especially when compared to Cisco products. When we implement advanced features for data centers such as BGP EVPN and VXLAN, Arista's configuration process is similar to that of Cisco's process, but at the same time it is simply much easier, clearer, and more understandable."
"Current flexibility and the opportunities for future planning and scaling make this product line an ultimate opportunity."
"It provides a very flexible connection to a server. When you go into history and the VPC, it provides a very flexible connection from it. Once a server goes down I can instruct it easily. So the network actually keeps quality even if onsite it is down."
"The most valuable features are that it is easy to use, provides stability, easy to configure, low latency, and it provides communication to the data center."
"Cisco Nexus meets all of our requirements."
"Cisco Nexus is a stable solution."
"The solution is very expensive. Currently, we pay an yearly licensing cost. I rate the pricing a nine out of ten."
"The setup is straightforward. I'd like to see the firmware and code upgradability to be slightly more intuitive."
"Cisco Nexus and Cisco Catalyst have processing power and offer good utilization of Cisco devices."
"The CVP management platform needs to be improved."
"An area for improvement in Arista Networks Platform is its integration, e.g. it needs to have more integration with its new products. Incorporating more security and cloud is also another area for improvement in the platform."
"The solution is quite expensive. One of the negative aspects of it is the pricing."
"The intent-based networking management, together with the provider of these solutions that are already free, would be beneficial."
"They need to enhance their code and their EOS. They need to improve some security features, and there are quite a number of bugs in their system. So, they need to work on that piece. In the next release, we need to have a modular feature. Instead of providing an integrated solution, they should go for something modular. They need to come up with modular highly scalable models. Even at the chassis layer, I want to see some improvement."
"They should have a more stable code."
"A smoother transition between ISPs during failover would improve the user experience by reducing unnecessary notifications and interruptions."
"Something that you will often hear about Arista products is that the price is a bit too high and, like with Cisco, we sometimes have problems with our customers because of its pricing."
"This solution costs a lot."
"Nexus switches should be able to support network function virtualization (NFV)."
"I would like to see Duo directly integrated with the Nexus hardware, instead of it being through the proxies, like how Duo works today."
"There are limitations on some of the lower level 9K solutions where you can't do the same things that you would normally be able to do, like for instance the number of static maps that you can configure on it."
"I am looking for a GUI that goes alongside them and more SD-WAN built to their core switches."
"In the next release of the solution, I would like to see varying integration between VRF (Virtual Routing and Forwarding) instances so we can integrate BGB into different VRFs in a more organized way. We have some issues with tunnels and VRFs."
"The licensing is the area that we are working that's a challenge."
"For a very small subset, Cisco Nexus caused port flapping within the applications."
Arista Networks Platform is ranked 2nd in Data Center Networking with 21 reviews while Cisco Nexus is ranked 3rd in Data Center Networking with 101 reviews. Arista Networks Platform is rated 8.6, while Cisco Nexus is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Arista Networks Platform writes "Affordable for enterprise-sized companies". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco Nexus writes " Offer high performance capabilities and enables efficient data transmission and processing". Arista Networks Platform is most compared with Cisco Catalyst Switches, Juniper EX Series Ethernet Switches, Aruba Switches, Cisco Ethernet Switches and Meraki MS Switches, whereas Cisco Nexus is most compared with Cisco Catalyst Switches, Juniper QFX Series Switches, Dell PowerConnect Switches, VMware NSX and ExtremeSwitching. See our Arista Networks Platform vs. Cisco Nexus report.
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