Wednesday 31 August 2011

Feature Comparison of the Nexus 7000 and Catalyst 6500 Series Switches

After looking at the Nexus 7000 series switches , I concluded they were a lot like the Catalyst 6500 series switches without the service modules.I reviewed the configuration guides for both devices for a comparison of what options each supported today. (These options will change in new OS versions.)
OverviewThe current focus of the Nexus 7000 is to provide high density 10Gb Ethernet switching for LAN traffic primarily in the data center. (Cisco is planning to provide unified I/O supporting SAN traffic on the Nexus 7000 in the future.) My understanding is that service modules or WAN modules in the high performance backplane of the Nexus 7000 would not be very cost effective, so that an external appliance or service layer should be used to provide these features. The NX-OS is based on the Cisco MDS 9000 SAN-OS Software, and focuses on modularity. As needed, you need to enable the features with the feature feature-name configuration command. In the NX-OS 4.1, the following features can be enabled:
feature bgp
feature cts
feature dhcp
feature dot1x
feature eigrp
feature eou
feature glbp
feature hsrp
feature interface-vlan
feature isis
feature lacp
feature msdp
feature netflow
feature ospf
feature ospfv3
feature pbr
feature pim
feature pim6
feature port-security
feature private-vlan
feature rip
feature scheduler
feature ssh
feature tacacs+
feature telnet
feature tunnel
featur udld
feature vpc
feature vrrp
feature vtp
(Some features are available through licensing, others are bundled in the base NX-OS.)
The focus of the Catalyst 6500 is for all purpose enterprise switching and routing, and it supports a multitude of interface types and service modules. The Catalyst 6500 is a work horse of switch. Typically all features in the operating system license are preloaded, and just need to be configured for your specific environment.

Option Summary of the Cisco Nexus 7000 and Catalyst 6500:

Option Nexus 7000 Catalyst 6500
Operating System NX-OS 4.0 12.2SXH
switch virtualization support VDC VSS
service module support -- yes
NSF w/ SSO yes yes
enhanced Fast Software Upgrade -- yes
sup engine redundancy yes yes
48 port 10/100/1000 Ethernet yes yes
four port 10GE linecard -- yes
eight port 10GE linecard -- yes
thirty-two port 10GE linecard yes --
T1/E1 WAN -- yes
T3/E3 WAN -- yes
HSSI -- yes
T3/E3 ATM -- yes
OC-3 ATM -- yes
OC-3 Packet over SONET -- yes
OC-12 -- yes
OC-48 -- yes
OC-192 -- yes
SONET -- yes
centralized forwarding -- yes
distributed forwarding yes yes
PoE for GE -- yes
EtherChannel/Port Channel yes yes
Multichassis EtherChannel yes yes
VLANs yes yes
private VLANs yes yes
802.1Q tunneling yes yes
Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol -- yes
RPVST yes yes
MST yes yes
MPLS -- yes
AToMPLS -- yes
FRoMPLS -- yes
EoMPLS -- yes
MPLS VPNs -- yes
iBGP and eBGP yes yes
OSPF yes yes
EIGRP yes yes
ISIS yes yes
VRRP yes yes
HSRP yes yes
GLBP yes yes
IP Multicast yes yes
IGMPv1/v2/v3 yes yes
IGMP Snooping yes yes
PIMv1/v2 yes yes
MSDP yes yes
SSM yes yes
IPv6 routing yes yes
IPv6 Multicast routing yes yes
Policy Based Routing yes yes
QoS - LLQ -- yes
NBAR -- yes
VLAN ACLs yes yes
CoPP yes yes
DHCP Snooping yes yes
IP Source Guard yes yes
Dynamic ARP Inspection yes yes
802.1X Authentication yes yes
NetFlow v8 -- yes
NetFlow v9 yes --
SPAN/RSPAN yes yes
Cisco TrustSec yes --

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