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Cisco Nexus vs Dell PowerSwitch N-Series comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Nexus
Ranking in LAN Switching
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
108
Ranking in other categories
Data Center Networking (4th)
Dell PowerSwitch N-Series
Ranking in LAN Switching
9th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
3.9
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the LAN Switching category, the mindshare of Cisco Nexus is 8.7%, up from 8.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerSwitch N-Series is 5.3%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
LAN Switching Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cisco Nexus8.7%
Dell PowerSwitch N-Series5.3%
Other86.0%
LAN Switching
 

Featured Reviews

Fakhar Mahmood - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Network Administrator at i2c
Migration between data centers has strengthened core connectivity and simplified segmentation
The biggest problems during migration were corporate issues, including dependencies on other devices such as F5, HSMs, and firewalls from Palo Alto. Everything was connected over the core switches, which made this a quite difficult part to manage and to onboard the teams and to understand the impact of the migration. We encountered an issue where we have two data centers, and unknowingly we were configuring the devices with the same VPC number on both devices. By doing that, we were not able to terminate the lease lines over those core switches. According to Cisco, we had to change the VPC number of one of the data center's core switches since they are in a VPC. We are still waiting, and it has been more than five to six years just to change the VPC number and migrate back the lease line. Now we are having cabin switches for the lease line and then the core switch. That VPC number issue was quite surprising for us. However, we have a very frequent issue with Cisco Nexus, particularly with the SFPs. Every time a port or the SFP heats up, it gets faulty. We have almost sixteen Nexus switches per data center. In a year, we experience one or two port issues per annum. We have standard Equinix data centers with standard installations, but somehow the temperature is always maintained and there is no ducting, yet the ports and the SFPs heat up or become faulty. This is a very frequent issue with the SFP-based port.
Mahendra Basera - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr.Engineer at Akara Capital Advisor Pvt. Ltd.
Reliable switching has supported secure audits and simplified long-term data center operations
Deploying Dell PowerSwitch N-Series on HA is very simple and easy. If we face any problem, we have our Dell support team to help us during the installation. They provide L2 engineers for supporting us on configuring the basic level configuration, stacking, and peering with others on HA. They have helped us with any faults or hardware issues, and we have taken high level care packs with three hour response time and same day hardware replacement. When we talk about the deployment of Dell PowerSwitch N-Series, when we extended our data center from starting from scratch, we had at that time nearly 170 physical servers. Then we virtualized it from mixed hardware, as we were using HCL, HP, or old heavy servers. Dell came to us and gave us a good solution with VMware, storage of Dell, and network devices. During the deployment, there were three team members from Dell and two from myself on the networking side, and one or two members from OS and server side. Almost five to six team members were there during the deployment from a hardware to a virtualized environment. The best advantages of Dell PowerSwitch N-Series is that it is very much similar to Cisco. There is a little bit of difference at the command level, and it is easy to handle. It is easy to handle whether it is a CLI base or a GUI base, and it is very easy to configure. It is also reliable. We had a low fault issue, and when we talk of switching level, in a time frame of 17 years, we faced a switching issue only one time, which was a hardware failure. That is it. It is as reliable as Cisco.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"This solution has saved us both time and money because we now have the ability to control all of these telephony devices that are deployed nationwide."
"The VPC feature of Cisco Nexus is great because it provides an active-active way of forwarding the traffic and avoids blocking any of the links."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its stability."
"This solution has allowed us to better prepare our network for 10-gigabit."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is that it scales well. It supports a lot of servers. We don't have to come up with different designs for anything. That's the best part about it."
"It is a scalable, reliable, stable and efficient solution."
"It's pretty easy to use and operates at high speed."
"The automated configuration management tools of Dell PowerSwitch N-Series help improve network traffic management."
"For a customer, it is easy to configure and to add ports through the LAN the GUI."
"Port density and port speed performance are both suitable. It has some appealing intangibles."
"The best advantages of Dell PowerSwitch N-Series is that it is very much similar to Cisco, it is easy to handle whether it is a CLI base or a GUI base, it is very easy to configure, and it is also reliable, as in a time frame of 17 years we faced a switching issue only one time, which was a hardware failure, and it is as reliable as Cisco."
 

Cons

"The product's high price is an area of concern where improvements are required. Cisco Nexus should lower its current prices."
"Areas in which the solution have room for improvement are the interface, management, and reporting."
"The solution is more expensive than other options on the market."
"It would be nice if the solution offered multiple types of port support."
"The cost of the support can be improved. We had critical operations, and we needed 24/7 support for 365 days, which was quite expensive. We had to go for a very costly support contract, which was really a concern. The availability of spare parts, especially in a remote location such as Egypt, can also be improved."
"Currently, the switches don't behave like the 4500 switches in terms of acting as one physical chassis. So the multi-chassis PortChannel feature is not applicable in this case. Nevertheless, virtual port-channel feature covers this."
"We have encountered some software bugs."
"The product could be updated more frequently for other phone model support."
"Customers do not prefer this to connect to multiple cities."
"The disadvantages of Dell PowerSwitch N-Series is that only the booting time is a weak point."
"Instead of competing at the enterprise level with that product, they should probably scale it. With all of the ports, they should develop a good mid-level business to truly scale it and gain adoption before attempting to go after the enterprise."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The subscription model and price could be better."
"The solution is expensive."
"All of our costs including subscription, licensing, and support services are bundled together, and the cost is approximately $100,000 USD per year."
"Cisco Nexus is not a cheaply priced product."
"Licensing is annual or every three years. We were one of the big customers, and we used to get good prices, but the cost of the support can be improved."
"We have three hundred to four hundred data centers of Nexus. So the coverage associated with Smart Net is 27 by 4, is basically what we spend each year. If the incentives get better, which I know they're working on, it would be great but right now we're buying year to year."
"We have a virtual license."
"It is very expensive. Its licensing is on a yearly basis."
"You are selling it to larger customers and in larger environments, where it's a less expensive model than Cisco, which is attempting to use the same approach Arista did, but with a completely different programming language."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Educational Organization
11%
University
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise83
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco Nexus?
The product's initial setup phase is very easy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Nexus?
We are a reseller, and we sell products to our customers.
What needs improvement with Cisco Nexus?
Cisco Nexus may not be very popular because of the requirements that we come across, as it will go into the core data centers, whereas we work with most of the corporate sectors, so Cisco Nexus is ...
What needs improvement with Dell-Force10 Campus LAN Switches?
We don't leverage the open networking standards of this Dell PowerSwitch N-Series capability. In the high availability direction, better clustering or stack functionality to connect all Dell switch...
What is your primary use case for Dell-Force10 Campus LAN Switches?
The main use case for this product is network switch for all network, including management network, network for the user, and network for the SAN.
What advice do you have for others considering Dell-Force10 Campus LAN Switches?
We don't work with solutions such as Aruba or Cisco. There are routers in our infrastructure, but they are not our responsibility or accountability. We work with servers and storage, specifically s...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Advanced Medical Transport, Banco de Guayaquil, Baylor Scott & White Health, BH Telecom, Bowling Green State University, Calligaris, Children's Hospital Colorado, City of Biel, Del Papa Distributing, Department of Justice, Dimension Data, Dualtec Cloud Builders, Electricity Authority of Cyprus, Grupo Industrial Saltillo (GIS), Hertz, K&L Gates , LightEdge, Lone Star College System, Management Science Associates, Mindtree, NBC Olympics, Quest, Sony Corporation, The Department of Education in Western Australia, Valley Proteins
Norwich University of the Arts, Shelby American, City and Islington College
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Nexus vs. Dell PowerSwitch N-Series and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,665 professionals have used our research since 2012.