Nexus at an enterprise LAN switching core?

[smunzani]

Team,

What's your opinion on using NX5548 or NX5596 for LAN switching core for enterprise? Following are requirements.

1. 10G to closet switches. Closet switches would be using stackwise. 1G copper with 10G uplink.

2. QoS for Video, Voice, ERP apps.

3. Avoid spanning tree while offering redundancy.

4. Layer-3 switching.

5. WAN link termination to core via ethernet feed.

6. Active BGP and OSPF routing for MPLS. No need for full internet BGP table.

7. HSRP

8. Standard LAN and securitybest practices features.

9. IP SLA monitors

10. NetFlow Reporting

From price point it looks like Nexus would do everything we need. However some people said NX is made for data centers and 6509 for enterprise and I would be better off with 6500s in enterprise market. However they could not tell me a solid reason.

What I would gain extra from 6500s that Nexus would not do? I don't need to do DHCP on the switches. What's logical reason to choose 6500 over Nexus for the core switches in enterprise?

Thanks,

Sam

[Gregory Snipes]

The 5500s are meant to be access switches. Their roll is really for high flow low complexity forwarding. When the device is fronting a bunch of servers that sending and receiving the exact same traffic non stop for five years they work great. They do not have the kind of heavy lifting power that platforms meant for the core have.

As an example, the layer 3 cards in the 5596 can handle up to 16000 IPv4 routes and 8000 IPv6 routes. This may seam like a lot and is possibly more then you need, but compare this to a core centric platform like the 6500 Sup2Ts up to 1 million IPv4 routes and half a million IPv6 routes and you get a pretty good idea of the difference in processor and table performance of the two. The Sup2T is geared to handle a much dynamic environment with a lot more kinds of traffic and varied needs.

If you were talking about a core centric Nexus platform like the 7k or the 6K it gets a little muddier.

[Leo Laohoo]

Hmmmm Nexus 5K as a core?  I don't think this one's got enough grunt to push Layer 3 packets.

Don't look at the model to match your requirements.  Look at your requirements and match the model.

If you want to do routing like OSPF, BGP and such, Nexus 7K with M1/M2 would be sufficient.

10 Gbps?  No sweat with Nexus 7K.  40 Gbps?  No problem.  How about 100 Gbps?  Sure.  Nexus 7K.

This is also where you aggregate Nexus 6K/5K when you are using Nexus 7K. 

[Reza Sharifi]

One of your requirement is MPLS.  The 5K series switches don't support MPLS currently.

HTH