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.
"Arista Networks Platform offers straightforward deployment, and has good features. Support for the platform is also good."
"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 user-friendly policy manager lets us apply different controls for various user groups easily."
"The most valuable feature is the Linux shell, which is useful for troubleshooting or capturing traffic."
"It's an extremely reliable platform for the network switches we use."
"They support open standard features."
"The most valuable features of the Arista Networks Platform are the EVPN and VXLAN. It has comprehensive features."
"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."
"The ability to tenant-out the traffic and segment it, without having to get into separate physical hardware or trying to figure out VDCs manually, has been really powerful and extremely useful for us."
"The product has a stable and strong server panel switch."
"Cisco Nexus has been very stable. No issues. It's been rock solid. We haven't had any issues with it in the last twelve months."
"The most valuable feature is performance."
"When it comes to data centers, Cisco Nexus is the best."
"The interface is easy to use. It is not much different from iOS, but you can use it on a larger scale in data centers."
"Nexus has improved my organization in the way that it provided enhanced security in a point in the network that was critical."
"You can scale the product."
"I want the solution to include a unified controller."
"The overall price of the Arista Networks Platform is expensive. It should be reduced."
"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 CVP management platform needs to be improved."
"The solution is a bit pricey."
"My company does face issues in terms of interoperability when it comes to the product, making it an area that needs to be fixed."
"The product fails to offer functions related to cloud orchestration, making it in areas where improvements are required."
"The intent-based networking management, together with the provider of these solutions that are already free, would be beneficial."
"Nexus switches should be able to support network function virtualization (NFV)."
"The initial setup was pretty complex, mostly because of our environment, having to do multi-context. That's where you have a lot of different logical routes that are in one physical device, and it can get kind of complex trying to think about how to set all that up. You really have to whiteboard it out a lot."
"The licensing is the area that we are working that's a challenge."
"They need to offer fibre switches in the 9K series."
"There are too many different model numbers and too much complexity."
"I would like to see better collaboration with other, low-end devices."
"One improvement needed is support for Multi-CAD scale that we were concerned about. We're not hitting any limits at this point."
"The GUI interface could be improved to make it more user friendly."
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 Juniper QFabric. See our Arista Networks Platform vs. Cisco Nexus report.
See our list of best Data Center Networking vendors.
We monitor all Data Center Networking reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
