Before Nexus, I used to have Catalyst 6500 switches. Those 6500 series chassis gave us a lot of problems. Too many problems, actually. And we had a Cisco ASA firewall blade within those chassis.

And they were running outdated software. So, in fact, it was the firewall blade that caused us too many problems instead of the chassis. The chassis itself was working well and performing fine, but the firewall card was not suitable for our needs. That was one aspect. Additionally, those chassis had been in operation for more than five years.

As we are a local government, we have a policy to renew hardware every five years. That's because we need to maintain all the hardware and software in the latest versions and keep up with the technology lifecycle of the technology we use.

We switched to Cisco Nexus as it provides more supporting features to our data center.

The way that our airline works, because we've recently been in a merger, is that we're putting two big airlines together. Our primary driver has been the end-of-service lifecycle and the ability to remain PCI compliant. We must also remain compliant with cybersecurity.

We typically wait until the end of service life. As we practice this, we end up doing these refreshes and adding new architecture. We're making decisions now based on features, functionalities, and outcomes for passengers getting on planes to improve their experience.

We had Cisco switches in our data center that were reaching their end-of-life in a few years. We also had other vendor switches that were coming up on end-of-life, and we as a team, with our manager, decided that we wanted a one-vendor solution. It would make troubleshooting a lot easier because we wouldn't be opening up multiple tech cases to solve problems. Cisco provided the best solution for us.

In the production of our network, we've grown in scale, and that's really what it came down to. Previously we wouldn't have thought that a Nexus product was comparable to some of the other vendors, like Arista and Juniper. But the features of the 9000 brought it into line with the capabilities of other vendors that we used.

I advise anyone to invest in a new solution because we do a periodic refresh every three years. For any product we buy, we ensure it is in the warranty and it is the leader in the market. 

We go through the Gartner studies to understand the leaders in the market. Then, we get the solutions from the partners and go over them. We do a case study with the other competitive companies on the product they use and their experience with it.

We are a Cisco shop. We don't have to worry about learning different commands with Cisco Nexus. It still has different commands because of the platform, but it was a lot easier to understand than if you're going through a different company.

We are switching away from this solution because it is too much for what we have. We will likely be dealing with CDW because they give us the best pricing. However, we have not chosen a replacement solution yet.

The old solution was at end-of-life.

We were using the traditional Catalyst 6500 switches with the traditional iOS. It didn't provide us with 10-gigabit ports in the data center, which is why we switched to Nexus.

We're currently also using VMware which is part of our infrastructure. We use vSphere and Horizon.

Both VMware and Cisco compete within the virtualization space. VMware claims that Nexus can work as a virtual appliance in its infrastructure. From my perspective, we've had little experience with VMware networking.

On the VMware side, I use NSX in my infrastructure. I use it as a load balancer. We are planning to use it as a firewall segmentation.

Pretty much the product I always go to is Cisco, so that's my preference. I'm not new to the solution. It's consistent and does what we need it to.

We knew we needed to invest in a new solution because upgrading the network is a must for every company. We had to just take into consideration the legacy switches that we were using were not giving the performance needed for the network. The old hardware did not support the demands of our clients connecting to the network.

At this point, the newest solution was purchased out of necessity for end-of-life gear. It was a refresh. Our previous solution was 7K, 5K, 2K. 

The 2Ks and 5Ks were going end-of-life. We're starting to prepare for the 7Ks going end-of-life. We went with the Cisco Nexus 9K solutions because of this.

We were getting bottlenecks at throughput because our equipment was just getting too old and too slow. The whole architecture was archaic. We saw our chance to make a major change and not just replace a hubcap with a hubcap. We decided to go with a much better solution.

Our existing network had been neglected for a long time before I joined the company. We wanted to become more relevant with the times, knowing that we're pushing a lot of stuff to the edge, trying to get higher bandwidth to our core.

We were comfortable with Cisco's technology and Cisco's footprint, so we started by getting some information from them. After this, we began to have regular meetings with them to discuss our design and how it would be implemented.

Using Nexus was a request from the customer and we installed it based on their request.

We would have preferred to install Catalyst. They are more flexible and the configuration of the high availability features are better than Nexus.

Nexus is the best solution for the data center and not as a solution for a moving environment, such as a yacht, that would have issues related to the power supply. This is why Catalyst would have been better than Nexus.

With my experience with Catalyst, I would rate it a nine out of ten.

I have worked previously with Catalyst version 6500, 4500, and 3750 series, most of them.

We knew we needed to switch solutions because when we migrated to Cisco as a network, we needed a good way to could control a lot of our outside agencies.

As a solution reaches end-of-life you replace it. We're using the Nexus 5K right now, and we're probably going to start looking at the 9Ks as these reach end-of-life.

The hardware that existed pre-5K was replaced before I joined the company.

This solution was integrated before I started, but we used to have Cisco 7K and 5K models. When we built the new data center, which was necessary after our company split in two, the 9K made more sense. It was the right choice for us at that point.

Before, we were all Cisco. Whenever there is a new product, we look at it.

The previous solution we used was the Catalyst 6506 series. We switched to 7706 at that time because it was pretty much comparable to that. It was either a 6506 or moving to a 6807, which was the Catalyst's next series for the next device. The difference between the Catalyst and the Nexus was that Catalyst was doing VSS, where you kind of had two physical switches acting as one logical switch. We had had some issues, especially with upgrades of VSS, so we were trying to avoid using VSS. The 7706 is just more stable than what the Nexus 9000 was at the time we were purchasing this. The Nexus 9000 wasn't fleshed out enough yet to use as the core, so it just made sense to go with the 7706 instead.

We were using the Legacy Cisco 6509, but it did not have virtualization built in.

Management is in the habit of buying Cisco. I like the product. I don't dissuade them from that.

We switched because we needed automation and because the 7000s were reaching end-of-life.

We didn't use any other solution previously.

We switched because our current product was end-of-life and falling out of support.

I have nearly ten years of experience with the Nexus 7K line. Our change was primarily driven by the company's requirement to maintain our equipment. With the 7K line going out of support shortly, we had to move to a supported platform to meet regulatory requirements.

Prior to using this solution, we used Avaya switches. We experienced some hardware failures so we wanted to get a more reliable product. This is why we changed to the Cisco Nexus line. We also wanted more modularity, because when a part failed with our previous solution, you had to replace the whole switch.

The choice to move to this solution was based on our business strategy. It is a top-down approach, where the business strategy is passed down and the technical architecture is evaluated. After this is complete, a decision is made to either invest in a new solution or continue to rely on the old one.

In our case, this was the solution that we needed to accommodate our business strategy.

For Cisco, we use Nexus and 2900.

The Nexus 9000 platform is by far the best-selling and most popular, and there are a couple of reasons for that. It's less expensive than a 7K or 5K solution and in fact, we hardly sell the 5Ks anymore. The 9000 really works well in the spine-and-leaf, which is the current architecture.

We moved to this solution because it is an ever-growing field. You need to stay ahead, and uptime is crucial.

Prior to this solution, we used ePlus. We switched in the move to newer technology. 

I joined the company after this solution had been implemented.

We did not use a 10-gigabit solution prior to this. The purchase of this solution was driven by the fact that we needed 10-gigabit ports, and they go to all of our devices.

We needed to invest in a new solution because of speed. We used older versions of Cisco Cloud. The reason why we switched was just adapting with the times.

We had our Cisco account rep and they helped us figure out what the right solution was for us.

I have always used Cisco products.

Previously, we had other switches (I don't know exactly which vendors as that was before I was with the company) and those were very a big investment. These new ones are not cheap, but provide more value for the money.

We were using Nexus 6000 and now we're moving towards 9000. We switched because we are doing a cleanup. We are building up our infrastructure from the ground up, adding more new devices, revamping our infrastructure, and revamping our data center. It's just a need because we got too comfortable using our old devices, which are not supportive so we lost our patching. We ourselves were creating security holes. We have a need now for this solution.

All of our old stuff was end of life. We used Catalyst 4948 before.

We have been using the Nexus line for more than ten years. I don't remember what the previous model was, but it had good reliability and everybody knew how to use it, so we just upgraded.

We did use another solution prior to this one. We have had a lot of different switches.

We had two Cisco switches, but they were very, very old.

I have experience with the A2K and the Nexus.

Prior to this solution, we used older Cisco products, and we wanted to upgrade to newer technology.

We are always a Cisco shop.

We did not have a voice network infrastructure in our stores and we wanted to support it. However, our existing equipment was antiquated and it had to be upgraded. We were still using Cisco equipment, but it was dated and did not have support for voice and the other things that are required today.

We switched to 400G. We provide 100G on our network. I needed something which can carry 100, so next time this has that option. That is the reason we went with this partner.

We used to have another solution and used other products. This product provides us with better high-performance support at a good price.

Based on client demand, which was moving towards software-defined networking, the Nexus 9000 was the next step. We used the prior generation, Catalyst, before this.

We needed to upgrade our network and we needed to decide to change our core network.

We did not have a previous solution.

We didn't have any previous solution.

When I was the systems analyst, we discovered a need for Cisco Nexus. We had limited encryption support. We didn't have any similar solutions before.

No previous solution used.

Our previous solution was no longer supported, which is why we changed it.