PANIC! At the Cisco

Unfortunately, high hopes won’t get you very far if you’re trying to purchase and install new Cisco before year end.  Lead times continue to grow and the environmental factors causing extended lead times continue to worsen.

C9300 and C9200 switches are 6 months out.  An order placed today wont arrive until summer, 2022.  So, what do you do if you’re supposed to be upgrading your access and distribution this year?  Have you considered continuing to deploy 3650s and 3850s? Are the 9300s a bit newer and faster? Sure, but does that make them the best fit for your network right now? Maybe not, and the 3850s have the benefit of actually being available.

Despite being End-Of-Sale, 3850s can still be purchased from Edgeium with full warranty and support options. Let’s break down the differences between the two switches and see if your organization can afford the wait.

I think it really comes down to this.  Do you require any of these 4 features below?

9300 Models Only:

• Encrypted Traffic Analytics (ETA): Detect malware hiding in encrypted traffic without decrypting it
• The use of X86 processors (9300s run on about 1.8 GHZ while 3850s at 1.2 GHZ)
• KVM and Container-based hosting environments for Application hosting
• The addition of 25G and 40G uplink modules

If not, then the 3850s are a great option. And as you’re aware, the 3850s DO NOT require DNA subscription licensing! This means that for the cost of a single 9300-48P, you can purchase 2.65(qty) 3850-48Fs. For a sixty switch project, that is a $247k savings

You can also save another $30k annually in maintenance using our CovrEDGE product.

Over the course of 5 years, a total of $415,200 will have been saved in hardware and maintenance!

If you have any other questions about these 2 platforms and their capabilities, please reach out to your Edgeium representative or email sales@edgeium.com.

Stay Sharp!!!