Cisco Nexus product family is such a big data center switch family that includes Nexus 9000, Nexus 7000, Nexus 5000, Nexus 3000, Nexus 2000, Nexus 1000V and MDS 9000. New users may not know where each Nexus series is best positioned in the Data Center.
Cisco Data Center Networking
A More Intelligent Network for Your Applications across Physical, Virtual, and Cloud Deployments
In the following part we will list the main use cases of the Entire Cisco Nexus Portfolio. Which one will meet your needs? Check the Table of Cisco Nexus Positioning as follows.
Cisco Nexus Positioning: 2 and 3 Tier
Innovation and Investment Protection across the Entire Cisco Nexus Portfolio
| Use Case | Access and Leaf | Aggregation and Spine | Core and Backbone |
| Traditional enterprise applications (SDN and overlay conversations) |
Cisco Nexus 2000 and 9000 Series Cisco Nexus 2000, 5000, 6000, and 7000 Series |
Cisco Nexus 5000, 6000, and 7000 Series |
Cisco Nexus 7000 Series |
| Private and hybrid cloud and XaaS | |||
| Big data | Cisco Nexus 9000 Series | Cisco Nexus 9000 Series | |
| High-frequency trading and high-performance computing | Cisco Nexus 3000 Series | Cisco Nexus 5000 and 6000 Series | |
| LAN and SAN convergence with Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) or Fibre Channel bridging to SAN and Cisco FabricPath | Cisco Nexus 2000, 5000, 6000, and 7000 Series | Cisco Nexus 2000, 5000, 6000, and 7000 Series | |
| Web 2.0 and massively scalable data center (MSDC) | Cisco Nexus 3000 Series
|
Cisco Nexus 9000 Series
Cisco Nexus 5000, 6000, and 7000 Series |
|
| Business continuity, disaster recovery, and data center interconnect | Cisco Nexus 7000 Series | Cisco Nexus 7000 Series | |
| Campus core | Cisco Nexus 7000 Series |
Primary recommendations are shown in black and secondary recommendations are shown in blue.
Info from https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/solutions/collateral/data-center-virtualization/application-centric-infrastructure/acip-poster-side2.pdf
