Cat 4K vs Nexus 5K

[dani_bosch]

Hello,

My customer has a single Cat 4510 with dual supervisor as a both campus and data center core infrastructure. This Cat4K has the majority of ports and line cards working at 1 Gbps. There are only two 6-port line cards with 10 Gbps ports. On the other hand they have to invest in a couple of MDS switches very soon.

Does it make sense to position Nexus 5596 UP instead of MDS and tell them it will be able to replace the Cat 4500 of the core?? Or rather is not advisable to position N5K as a core switch for both Campus and Data Center concurrently (as they are doing it right now with the Cat 4K) ??

Thanks a lot,

[Surya ARBY]

You can use the N5k as L2 access for the datacenter part, and use pure FC or FCoE on it, and keep the 4500 for intervlan routing.

[dani_bosch]

That's right, but the customer intention is to purchase MDS 9148...while our initial intention is for them to switch to a Unified Fabric strategy. But for that, they have to purchase a Nexus 5K platform, which is approximately 5 to 6 times the cost of an MDS 9148. If this Nexus could replace the future Cat 4K support renewal, probably the investment would make sense. Other than that, the investment probably doesn't.

That's why I ask you for advise, whether from the technical perspective I could do with this Nexus 5K as a core platform for both campus and data center, replacing the current Cat 4500.

[Surya ARBY]

Yes you can do it technically with an L3 daughter card. If it makes sense from a pricing perspective, I'm not sure.