What's the best mid-size campus core switch for next 5-10 years? Catalyst 6807XL vs. 9400/9500-series

[ezisaac]

Hi team,

We are design a new campus network infrastructure for a pharmaceutical research client recently. There are around 10 buildings on the new campus (around 10 acres). I am struggling to pick the campus core switch for them for the next 5 to 10 years. I will use Cat-9500 as building distribution switches and 9400/9300 as the access switches. If not using nexus 7K/9K, I used 6807XL for various campus project before. However, I heard lots of rumors about 6800 is going to be EoS soon and I saw lots of people talked about using 9400 as the campus core switch. AFAIK, 6807 switching capacity up to 11 Tbps; that's far higher than 9400. Can you shed some light with me about your campus core switch selection methodology and what's your top choice from the current Cisco portfolio? Any comments are welcome. Thanks in advance,

Isaac

[Reza Sharifi]

Hi,

For campus core, the 6807 is a good choice.  Sup-6T just came out about a year ago and I don't the 6800 being EOL anytime soon.  As for access the, the 9400 is a good fit, as the base is the same as the 4500 series and that platform has been solid. I am not sure if you really need distro switches as these days most core switches have enough port to accommodate all the access switches uplinks connected to both cores directly.

HTH  

[Leo Laohoo · Accepted solution]

Since last year, our SE have been "recommending" the 9300/9400/9500 to replace our switches (over 6800).  I presume they are "prevented" to honestly tell us why the sudden hard-sell of the 9K over 6K.  

One thing I like about the 6K is the maturity of the IOS over the IOX-XE for the 9K.  

IF the design has a lot of 10 Gbps from the access to distro, then I'd say go with 9K.  

Please be aware of a (whole) lot of "gotchas" with the 9K: 

• Until now, the OS stability is still a "work in progress". 
• Stacking/VSS/Virtual Stacking is subject to "progression", i.e. not all versions are supported but is slowly coded in. 

If the network is "simple", like static VLAN assignments, and nothing fancy (like PBR) then 9K is a good investment (like >5 years before the next refresh cycle hits).