[c-nsp] nexus 5548 versus C4900M

[Mike Hale]

We have a very similar setup.

Our nexus 5548s are pains in our ass.  We have ten dead ports between the
two, encountered huge issues upgrading the code and attempting to replace
them with RMA units from Cisco.  They also run incredibly hot, eat copper
sfps for breakfast and are in general annoying to work on.

We also have a 4500 acting as a core, and that works wonderfully for us.
We too have a mix of gig and 10g interfaces.  Plus, it handles all layer 3
stuff we've thrown at it (unlike the nexus).
On Nov 21, 2012 12:32 AM, "Holemans Wim" <wim.holemans at ua.ac.be> wrote:

> We have a service cluster build around a C4900M : it concentrates a mix of
> 10G (intercampus) connections and 1G connections (some backup lines and
> central services such as DNS, VPN servers,...)
> This works fine but to be able to connect all these, I had to add the 20
> port 10/100/1000 UTP card and the extra 8x 10G card (with X2 convertor to
> provide for fiber SFPs). At the time that seemed a good and reasonable
> priced solution. This C4900M only does L2 traffic for the moment but will
> do some minor static (500Mb) IPv4 L3 routing in the near future.
>
> Now I have to create a new, similar  service cluster. The first idea was
> to copy the setup but as we are also looking at Nexus for our datacenter, I
> noticed the Nexus 5548UP. This gives you out-of-the-box 32 1G/10G ports and
> costs (based on the prices I have seen) 25% less than the above C4900M
> configuration.
> Anyone has a reason why we should stick to the C4900M (or maybe similar
> C4500 solution) and not put a Nexus in place, apart from the obvious
> differences between IOS and NXOS for management ?
> I think, when adding the L3 card to the Nexus, the 25% price difference
> will disappear but are there any limits you see (arp table, mac address
> table size, buffering, IPv6 support..) that would take the Nexus out of the
> picture ?
>
> Greetings,
>
> Wim Holemans
> Netwerkdienst Universiteit Antwerpen
> Network Services University of Antwerp
>
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