Last week I got lucky to be a part of discussion with a customer about Cisco Nexus range of switches and new NX-OS from Cisco. Our customer was not happily ready to accept Cisco Nexus as a new member to his network. His concerns were somewhat genuine, Let me tell you what did he exactly said -
" I cannot hire someone just to manage a nexus switch while I have complete team already managing my entire network and If I have to train my team for this new thing, then I would not like to pay Cisco a premium on pricing just because its a global brand name. I would rather buy something equally good from Juniper or HP and have my team trained on it. Atleast I would save some money"
This made me think what had gone wrong with Cisco NX-OS and this took me back into the basic when we start learning our networking. When we study CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate), we are basically learning the IOS. The command line remains same on almost all products from Cisco, whether you are configuring 1600 & 1700 Series or MSR series or ISR G1 or even ISR G2 and 6500 series, Its all the same command line and if it is not, There is very very little learning curve which actually doesn't bothers anybody.
With the release of NX-OS, Cisco had tried to bring all the good things into single package. Though it is a robust modular platform but the command line had changed to a great extent which is disappointing for lots of Cisco fans. Lets have a look at OSPF configuration on both the platforms.
The way we do it on IOS
interface e0
ip address 192.168.2.1 255.255.255.0
!
router ospf 1
network 192.168.2.1 0.0.0.0 area 0
!
The Way we do it on NX-OS
interface e1/2
ip address 192.168.2.1/24
ip router ospf 201 area 0.0.0.0
!
(To me the later one seems quicker & easier)
But its not about me. The guys who had been working on Cisco IOS for years now
and not ready to move away from it, Instead they are willing to settle down for
Cisco 6500 series switches.