hybrid vs native mode

[jlazzaro]

Curious what people's preferences are when it comes to hybrid vs native mode.

I dont mind logging into 2 different OSs...in fact I find it easier to make some changes (ie grouping vlan ports) via CatOS.

Features like distributed switching arent a factor in my case. However, i read somewhere that you take a performance hit when running both, but i was unable to verify that with any Cisco documentation.

comments/opinions?

 

[spidey07]

Native only. CatOS is dead and with the new whitney software release it's officially dead, there is now full feature parity between catOS and IOS. If you have ANY catOS you need to start making plans to switch.

There is no performance hit when running hybrid.

I had a meeting with the product managers just this week and one of the big things is the roadmap for the 6500 software/hardware. Lots of good stuff coming. Like 80 Gbs fabric connections for all blades, full fabric connections for the crippled 6513, etc.

The take away from my post should be - do NOT deploy catOS and start making plans on migration within the next 12-18 months. IIRC the official end of life for catOS is 2HCY08.

 

[w0ss]

I agree Native is the way to go. For the most part you can run anything in hybrid or native but I know at one point some things only worked in either/or.

 

[Brovane]

We just converted our Core 6500 Sup 720 from Hybrid to Native mode. We did see a drop in CPU utilization from about 25% to around 10%.

Overall IOS is the way to go since CatOS is at a dead end. All of the new access layer switches we are deploying are IOS so it makes it easier when you just have to work with one set of commands. By the end of next year we will not have anymore switches on CatOS.

 

[spidey07]

Also, until the latest release (SXJ - aka Whitney) there was not total feature parity. CatOS did things that IOS couldn't and vice versa. Over 200 features were added to whitney specifically to get rid of catos and with it's release they are fully identical feature wise - specifically QoS, port security, 802.1x and autoQoS.

-edit-
forgot - SXJ is whitney 2. SXH is the current train/whitney 1.