Cat6509-E replacement (cat 9500 or nexus?)

Hey everyone,

So i'm faced with replacing our current very traditional environment with collapsed core/distribution switch, C 6509-E with the Sup2T (VS-S2T-10G). We have two identical chassis running in VSS mode. It's contractual so i cant replace modules or anything like that. The new core will be running for 5 years.

The whole chassi and all modules has to go.

Besides the Sup, we have the following modules:

16 x 10GE using 11 of these for connections to main firewall, wireless controllers, server farm, WAN

24 x 1000mb SFP using 10 of these for headquarter Multimode fiber to the main building switches )

48 x 10/100/1000 mb Rj45 mostly for management to other devices. will move to an oob mgmt switch

We have a layer 2 WAN, 50 sites with 130 L2 switches. 400 AP:s

Obviously Cisco told us the whole DNA story and want us to replace it with Cat9500, the C9500-48Y4C (48 x 1/10/25 gig + 4 x 40/100 gig)

To build the DNA campus fabric we would need:

• Cisco Wireless (which we dont have now, and are not planning to change)
• Layer 3 access switches (which is not realistic, we have around 100 sites with all layer2 switches.
• Cisco ISE - not planning on buying this, we have another solution.

So, basically switching out most of our current environment. Which is out of the question :)

The cat 9500 does seem like an ok switch though, but if i compare it with the nexus 93108YC-EX i would get alot more bang for the buck. Basically Cat9500 with 1.6 Tbps compared to Nexus 3.6 Tbps.

I dont really need any fancy stuff, just pure l2/l3 and vrf support.

Cat 6800 is out of the question, oversubscribed ports and does not seem future proof.

Also, it almost seems like a downgrade to go from Sup2T to Cat9500, fewer routes, fewer mac addresses, etc. (i do understand that the comparison is not that easy, im comparing a chassi switch with a 1 RU unit).

The plan is to implement WAN routers in order to move the L2 to L3 termination point and then run pure layer 3 between Core and WAN routers. Right now the Core is very vulnerable to loops in the WAN.

I cannot run anything else than Cisco for this solution unfortunately.

Any experience with the nexus model above? found some caveats? ( i know, no ip sla or netflow) Happy with your C9500, which model?

have you regretted going from chassis switch to fixed core?

i would get around 25 free 1/10/25 gig ports, and 4 or 6(depending on the choice) 40/100gig.

would love to hear your thoughts on this.