Look closely at port counts at total throughput as you compare the various Aruba CX offerings to Catalyst and Nexus. Historically, Cisco's box pricing has been higher than just about everyone else's. HPE Aruba, consider how important it is for you to be able to choose the size system you need rather than wrangle with two different device architectures and OSes in your enterprise. Aruba has now expanded that series with the modular CX 6400 and the fixed-port CX 6300 that allows an organization to use a single device architecture and OS across the entire enterprise.

Thus, you have two different architectures with two different OSes.Īruba's answer to Cisco's Nexus has been its CX 8000 series - 8400 and 83xx - running its AOS-CX OS. The Catalyst line is for campus core and aggregation switching. You would generally use these switches for core and data center deployments. multiple modelsĬisco's Nexus switch family represents its high end of switches. Use this chart to compare various factors about Cisco and HPE Aruba switches.ĭevice architecture: Single model vs. Below are some key areas of comparison for enterprise class switches. These changes require a whole new approach to comparing the Cisco vs. In October 2019, HPE's Aruba switching business announced new hardware, software, analytics and management capabilities. Meraki was a significant player in the SMB wireless and switching space and was one of the first vendors to provide cloud management for on-premises devices. This was so significant that HPE decided to put all its networking products under the Aruba brand.Ĭisco's main acquisition in the switching space was Meraki Networks in 2012.

More recently, Aruba Networks merged with HPE and added both switching and wireless capabilities to the HPE switch product portfolio. Several years ago, networking pioneer 3Com merged with HPE, bringing along its full switch portfolio.

When HP split, the networking division became part of the enterprise-focused HPE. HP's ProCurve networking line has been a prominent offering for over two decades and has expanded significantly in recent years. Between LAN switches from Cisco Systems and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, or HPE.įirst, some background.

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