9200Ls vs MS150s Capacity/HW Comparison

[Mloraditch]

Now that the 9200Ls are orderable as Meraki SKUs I was doing a comparison and this is what I came up with:

I'm specifically comparing the 48MP-4X vs the 48PXG-4X-M (with stacking module) and the key differences I'm noting are:
MS150 is ~1400USD More (at List)
12 up to 10G mGig PoE+ (9200) vs 16 up to 5G mGig 60W PoE++ (150)
Slightly higher switching capacity on the 9200L (392 vs 304 Gbps)

9200s can do Dual PS and thus offer more total power
Otherwise they appear to have the same hardware features

I'm ignoring the IOS-XE vs MS differences at the moment, most use cases have feature parity at this point with a few extra items available for IOS-XE and couple of exceptions.

Am I missing anything else key? Basically the decision (at least for me) is going to be do you need more capacity overall or do you have mGig devices that need more than 30W. I'm more worried about powering WiFi 7 APs in Full Power mode so I'm going to go with MS150s.  I'd prefer to have IOS-XE based devices, given the additional features available and eventually becoming available, but the Wifi needs are more important to the end users.

How are you deciding which to use/position?

[alemabrahao]

There is no magic formula, it all depends on the customer's needs. But your line of thinking is correct.

[RWelch]

The C9200s have dual replaceable PS, redundant fans and cross stack ether channel - if that matters in your equation?  

If you need advanced routing/high processing headroom the C9200 would be better choice.
If you only need VLANs and static routes MS150 series would be sufficient.

[Mloraditch]

They don't usually matter for me, but this is the kind of stuff I'm trying to figure out. I've sold only Meraki for so long, I've forgotten some of these Catalyst Features that could be useful in certain cases.

Thanks!

[RWelch]

The C9350s are what one would look at / for / toward in high density (large scale) environments.

I would enjoy seeing these perform in a high density deployment.

[cmr]

The 9200L can do OSPF routing and run a DHCP server, can the MS150?

The PoE on the MS150 has perpetual and fast PoE, one designed to keep devices on when switches are rebooted and the other to get them powered up within a couple of seconds of the switch powering up.

[Mloraditch]

How did I not know about the perpetual PoE?!? Have MS always had that? It actually explains some things I've thought were odd.  You learn something new every day it seems.

I also just learned while googling those features exist in IOS-XE, albeit it's not enabled on Meraki managed units at the moment.

[RaphaelL]

Pretty sure the first MS to support both  Fast PoE and perpetual PoE is the MS150

[GIdenJoe]

What do you mean exactly orderable as Meraki SKU's.  Do they have a -M variant now?
Cisco places all 9200's 1 tier above the MS150.

If you want some advanced possiblities, then go for 9200 however not too advanced.  Dunno if VRF's will be possible in C9200 based switches in Meraki.  Since that is a case for routed campus or at least routed distribution layer with adaptive policy and only inter VRF routing if you need traffic to pass a firewall.  Of course this is only for the C9200 since that one has 4 VRF instances while the C9200L only supports 1.

The moment you want to go fabric then 9300 is the absolute minimum.

[cmr]

9200L-M is out now, so yes!

[PhilipDAth]

I no longer feel that Cisco IOS-XE is a stable platform—this has nothing to do with Meraki.  I'm talking about the core OS.

For example, I would not feel confident in turning on a Cisco IOS-XE switch and leaving it running for 12 months.  It's likely to experience a memory leak or another issue that requires a reboot.

For the next couple of years, I will likely stick to the MS series for edge switches.  For "core" switches, I'm not sure.

Here is a question for everyone.  Tomorrow, a bug gets discovered.  Which platform will it get fixed on first?  MS and Catalyst?

[Mloraditch]

I'm not sure I know the answer, but I sure wish I could access the Meraki bug database and compare it with the IOS-XE one and find out!!

[PhilipDAth]

100% yes.

[GIdenJoe]

I would personally counter following personal experiences:
- In recent times I had two instances where after a power outage MS switches came online but mysteriously failed to forward traffic over port-channels (aggregates) on 1 link.  This issue happened at 2 totally different customers where one is on MS225's and the other on MS425.  You have zero troubleshooting methods, no debugs nothing, only a switch that has a white led and is online according to dashboard.
- I have multiple C9500 core stacks running 24/7 where one is in a hospital where they don't even upgrade the switches unless it is absolutely necessary.  Outside of a power outage test to see how the system would recover that was the only time those switches went down. They have been purring along nicely doing port-channels, VTPv3, and basic PIM/IGMPv2 for TV streams.
- With the Catalyst switches in dashboard we at least have some CLI available and can do some deeper troubleshooting than what dashboard offers.  The only thing that is missing is a full debug feature.

[MRCUR]

Glad to know it's not just us feeling this way. 

[CarolineS]

@MRCUR Always nice to see you stop in here! 👋 

[MRCUR]

👋

[Brash]

Also, the MS150 looks and feels nicer... so there's that too... 😉

[GIdenJoe]

The biggest thing that is always missing from the MS overview documentation is the raw platform stats to truly compare the platforms.

If you look up the datasheets for Catalyst platforms you get RAM, ACL maximums, QoS details, MAC and host/route maximums, SDM template layout and sometimes even forwarding delay/buffer sizes.  These details are never given on MS switches which is a shame.  We are still on a 128 ACE limit and have a very limited group policy ACL limit that even has to share TCAM with QoS rules.  So I can only summize that the CAM/TCAM capacity of the typical MS platform is quite a bit lower than the typical Catalyst platform.