Migration from Catalyst 3K to Catalyst 9K

How to Migrate Catalyst 3K to Catalyst 9K?

Introduction of the Cisco Catalyst 9000 switches has made a lot of enterprises thinking about changing their out of dated Catalyst devices to the latest series. Cisco Catalyst 3850 switch is one of most Cisco’s famous and popular access switches which you might find it in every branches all over the world. Currently, Cisco Catalyst 9300 series switches can be considered as a trustworthy replacement for Catalyst 3850 switches which can enable new features all over the network.

Cisco Catalyst 9300 switches besides their enhanced hardware and flexible and modular IOS XE, are able to represents Cisco Software-defined access architecture. This innovative Cisco architecture can help enterprises enabling Software –denied networking (SDN) technology within their networks in order to automate, manage and monitor numerous applications and their traffic in their network.

Customers can use the following chart in order to map the former Cisco Catalyst 3850 models to the Cisco Catalyst 9300 switches models:

You can find Uplink module types in the below figure:

Customers should be noticed, despite of some Catalyst 3K models such as C3850-24XS-S, which Supports SFP+, Cisco Catalyst 9300 switches do not support SFP+ downlinks. This feature on Catalyst 9K Switches is available from Catalyst 9500 series switches.

Customers must be noted that all Cisco Catalyst devices will operate with their minimum switching capabilities after shipment and all products need online Cisco smart licensing or offline PLR licensing in order to activate full functionalities. Also, for enabling Cisco SD-Access features on Cisco Catalyst 9000 family, Cisco DNA licenses subscription purchasing would be necessary.