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 is comfortable, easy to deploy, and easy to manage, with non-blocking technology. Additionally, it has a useful CloudVision platform and automation capabilities."
"The configuration capabilities were 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."
"Arista Networks Platform offers straightforward deployment, and has good features. Support for the platform is also good."
"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."
"Arista Networks Platform has a feature that helps with monitoring and management."
"The user-friendly policy manager lets us apply different controls for various user groups easily."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco Nexus is speed compared to what you would get from a Catalyst Series switch."
"The integrations are valuable."
"Cisco Nexus is very safe and stable. I've been here 8 months. We have some devices that have been out for 11 years."
"From a data center implementation, with respect to competition from your data, there isn't really a product recovery for the different tests other than Cisco Nexus. For example, if you take Multi-tenancy for the data center, it's something which, I think, only Cisco has. There are some implementation from HP, but I think it's limited there."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco Nexus is modularity. It's like the Swiss Army knife of switches."
"The flexibility, how accurately the VPCs operate as well as the redundancy built into it with the VPCs are the most valuable features."
"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."
"Cisco Nexus has improved the way our organization functions through the troubleshooting. We had issues where we've seen our links saturated. We were able to determine what was being processed on the link."
"A smoother transition between ISPs during failover would improve the user experience by reducing unnecessary notifications and interruptions."
"The solution’s pricing could be better."
"The product fails to offer functions related to cloud orchestration, making it in areas where improvements are required."
"The stability of this solution needs to be improved as part of the next upgrade."
"The intent-based networking management, together with the provider of these solutions that are already free, would be beneficial."
"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 needs to accommodate new features."
"The solution needs to improve their product range."
"Some of the DHCP features need improvement."
"The implementation process could be easier, which is something that should be improved."
"They could improve on having different technologies between product models."
"One of the biggest challenges, which I see is that there's a constant evolution in the product. For example, our configuration is based on what is known as traditional data center implementation. Today there is the ACI deployment and to implement, to migrate from one technology to another, that's challenging both from a configuration perspective and also from a cost perspective."
"The software is not as mature as it could be and needs some integration improvements with other orchestrators."
"The product could be updated more frequently for other phone model support."
"I would like to see more automation and for it to be easier to use."
"In terms of improvement, the stacking between the two switches in the higher availability model should be similar to Catalyst. It's better to have one interface for configuration."
Arista Networks Platform is ranked 2nd in Data Center Networking with 21 reviews while Cisco Nexus is ranked 3rd in Data Center Networking with 99 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.