Nexus Switch Questions

[visitor68]

Has anyone here configured the new NEXUS switches?

How different are they in terms of operation, functionality, management and configuration from the Cisco Catalysts?

Are they much different than the Catalyst Series?

For example, how different is it to configure a Nexus 5000 from a 6500 or even a fixed configuration switch?

What I am getting at is if someone asked an engineer, who has never worked with Nexu switches before, to deploy them in a data center to support a server farm, lets say, how much of a learning cuve is there?

Thanks

[Collin Clark]

There is a learning curve, but how steep depends on your current experience. Take a browse through the configuration guide and that should give you a rough idea.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/datacenter/nexus5000/sw/configuration/guide/cli_rel_4_0_1a/CLIConfigurationGuide.html

Hope that helps.

[nate-miller]

The engineer could probably configure and deploy the Nexus product line. Having tools that support the nexus in the same fashion as your existing infrastructure may be the tricky part- lots of the features we've become used to using in Ciscoworks (user tracking is a big one) isn't supported. Switchmap doesn't parse it properly. Lots of scripts we have written need minor tweaking.

That's a pretty big operational difference.

[visitor68]

OK, my engineer has skills enoughto easily configure a L2 switch: Configure switch ports, create vlans in L2, configure etherchannels, configure (r)STP, trunking, IOS code revisions, file system management, etc.

So, I am wondering if it is any different configuring these services on a Nexus.

Also, I am wondering what MAJOR features differ from, say, a 6500 switch running as L2.

Thanks

[nate-miller]

The differences are minor- you'll need to get used to enabling features and the biggest difference I can think of is the fact that there's no "spanning-tree portfast"- the system uses a concept of edge ports.

THere's an out-of-band management interface and wrapping securty around features of the box is a different beast.

The tools the engineer uses on the back end to keep track of these devices may not support the nexus.