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Cisco Nexus vs Juniper QFabric 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)
Juniper QFabric
Ranking in LAN Switching
11th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
10
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 Juniper QFabric is 5.0%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
LAN Switching Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Cisco Nexus8.7%
Juniper QFabric5.0%
Other86.3%
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.
Suresh Pathipatti - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Information Technology Administrator at Aighospital
Performs well, is easy to set up, and the vendor maintains the product well
QFabric is the core switch. We also have two Brocade switches for the Fibre level The product works fine. It is an excellent product. There are different element systems and different options for each generation of the tool. We maintain the data center and analyze issues. I have no negative…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features are the great performance, high availability and easy administration."
"It gives me an unparalleled ability to build out my environment differently than I would have if I was going with another vendor."
"Technical support has been very, very helpful and they offer good SLAs."
"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."
"It provides a very flexible connection to a server. When you go into history and the VPC, it provides a very flexible connection from it. Once a server goes down I can instruct it easily. So the network actually keeps quality even if onsite it is down."
"The most valuable feature is the automation that we can do with it."
"We have found that logical tenant segregation to be the most useful feature."
"I like the fact that they are a well-supported product."
"The solution is stable."
"Juniper QFabric has various advantages including scalability, simplicity, performance, and flexibility."
"The most valuable features of this solution are the fabric backplane having upwards of 160 GB of communication. It is a top-of-the-rack solution where you have your directors sitting in the main area and then you have your nodes expanded out to your multiple cabinets. It has a very good design and could be your server backbone."
"QFabric supports redundancy and includes all of the enterprise and service provider features that customers would want in data center or service provider network."
"It is known for being agile, flexible, and cost-effective when working with various vendors."
"The most valuable feature of QFabric for network performance is its stability."
"The vendor maintains the product well."
"The 40 gig backbone InterConneX was valuable for our use case. It is even faster now. QFabric has spine-leaf technology or topology, which basically makes every single hop only one hop away in terms of connecting from one device to another. It is a pretty good and robust solution. It works pretty well in terms of scalability, and their technical support is amazing."
 

Cons

"Overall, I wish it was a more intuitive OS."
"I would love to see Active/Active FEX connectivity, which is enhanced vPC, where we could also do a vPC from a server in that type of configuration."
"One of the biggest challenges, which I see is that there's a constant evolution in the product. For example, our configuration is based on what is known as traditional data center implementation. Today there is the ACI deployment and to implement, to migrate from one technology to another, that's challenging both from a configuration perspective and also from a cost perspective."
"Standardization across iOS and Nexus operating systems would be an improvement."
"In the Nexus 3500, you can't do per-port Jumbo frames, so you have to enable it as a global configuration."
"Areas in which the solution have room for improvement are the interface, management, and reporting."
"There's a couple of really bad incidents lately. Probably luck of the draw."
"There is some room for improvement when it comes to the frequency on the network."
"The pricing structure could be more budget-friendly."
"Having support for all OpenFlow versions would be beneficial."
"The stability needs to be improved."
"It would be nice if Juniper provided the system integrator with training, similar to that of Cisco."
"The disruptive upgrade was an issue for us."
"It works too much on rebooting and there is some memory leakage."
"I do not use GUI's very much for switch stacks. I am always in the CLI. However, I do know that Juniper in the past has lacked on their GUI's, but they have been working on it."
"They are working on the virtualization of the actual fabric layer. They are moving away from the original spine-leaf design to a different infrastructure. Instead of having three tiers, which was the director of the interconnected nodes, they cut them back, and they still have that kind of structure."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's worth the money we're paying for Nexus."
"The problem with Cisco, from what I see, is that their costs are much higher."
"Cisco Nexus is not cheap compared to Fortinet, Palo Alto, and Check Point."
"The subscription model and price could be better."
"This solution should be made more affordable."
"If you compare Cisco hardware to any other vendors, such as HPE, they are more expensive. There is a license to use the solution. If my customer's licenses are about to expire I receive notification from Cisco, this is very helpful."
"The license for Cisco Nexus is one year to three years, in this case for the SMARTnet. It is a price per unit, in terms of this specific appliance."
"In most cases, there is a need to secure perpetual licenses to be able to use the product. When I set up the product, there isn't just a one-time cost that is involved."
"The pricing is high and it is possible to find better pricing option solutions on the market, but the licensing model is quite flexible."
"In terms of price, the QFabric solution is going to be probably in the middle of the road for a fabric solution."
"The pricing is high."
"The price is relatively high, but it offers an advantage over its competitors by providing better performance and functionality."
"Juniper QFabric is a high-level solution but it could be less expensive."
"The price for Juniper QFabric could improve. There are subscription, maintenance, and add-on feature fees."
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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%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise83
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
 

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 do you like most about Juniper QFabric?
The most valuable feature of QFabric for network performance is its stability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Juniper QFabric?
Juniper QFabric is not overly expensive. Licensing is required for certain features like vRRP, but setting up a virtual chassis does not necessitate a separate license.
What needs improvement with Juniper QFabric?
Improvements could be made to QFabric's lifecycle management, particularly in maintaining stable versions and extending product support. The rapid release cycle and short life span compared to comp...
 

Also Known As

No data available
QFabric
 

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
MCB Bank
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Nexus vs. Juniper QFabric and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.