Cisco Catalyst Center provides an intent-based platform for managing enterprise networks across campus, branch, and edge environments. It combines automation, analytics, and assurance to streamline IT operations, improve security posture, and reduce manual tasks. With integratedAI/ML-driven insights, policy-based controls, and end-to-end visibility across wired and wireless infrastructures, Catalyst Center empowers IT teams toproactively detect issues, enforce compliance, and accelerate…
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Cisco Nexus Dashboard
Score 8.2 out of 10
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Cisco Nexus Dashboard simplifies data-center networks with automation and analytics. The data-center network helps organizations to meet business demands, and provision reliable data-center networking services as fast as possible, when and where organizations need it. As network infrastructure management is becoming more complex, diverse, and distributed, with multiple configuration points, monitoring tools, and vast amounts of data being generated every second. Cisco Nexus Dashboard is…
Security with identity-based access control and segmentation via integration with Cisco ISE, supporting zero-trust architectures. Centralized Management for a large campus environment with centralized management of wired and wireless equipment. Automation of tasks like: provisioning, configuration, and software upgrade, reducing manual effort of those tasks. It could be improved to Multi-Vendor Support.
Nexus Dashboard is a vital tool for Cisco data center Nexus deployments, in my opinion. By utilizing multiple applications in the suite, a business can utilize orchestration, monitor services and traffic, test deployment scenarios, verify upgrade processes and readiness, etc. The capabilities of the system can allow for SAN MDS controls, traditional Nexus NXOS integration, and/or essential ACI tools
I really like the assurance. I like that I can go through and find problems on the network that could be a mismatch VLAN between two interfaces, port errors, like physical errors that we otherwise probably would need to wait for a customer to complain or we have that we can see that ahead of time and be proactive and say, Hey, I'm noticing that this port is having some errors on it. We might want to check that out ahead of time before it becomes an issue. So that's really useful. And then also being able to configure the network. I think that the programmability part of it, I think I have, I've been having some struggle with that initially, just having to apply. So I have my script, my template that I want to deploy, but in order to deploy it, I have to apply it to a template or a profile and then I have to assign that profile to a group of switches that I want to program. I think it gets a little bit messy and a little bit convoluted, but other than that, I mean it's really helpful. It does automate right now, I think it seems a little convoluted with the process.
It provides monitoring for our overall ACI Fabric which includes the Controller, Spine, and Leaf Switches.
It gives you a single pane of visibility of all of your ACI fabric using Nexus Dashboard, no need to login to each of the multiple ACI fabric controllers.
Provides an assurance analysis to to your ACI fabric before implementing any change in configuration, they have the Pre-change analysis prior to the firmware upgrade.
Gives you the overall health of your Fabric and provides anomaly severity.
The one thing that we had to get used to was really breaking down our wireless. We integrated our 9800 controllers into it, and the breakdown of our tags being floor specific and not just being campus specific was a challenge for us. And so we had to create all new tags and it wasn't necessarily a problem, it just required a little bit redesign on our wireless. And so it would've been nice for us to be able to assign a tag to an entire campus versus a floor, but that's a small complaint.
Flow Telemetry - Need to overcome the restrictions of 20000 flow/sec. No DataCenter is small enough to pump only 20K flows per second. And we want to use this product for proactive monitoring so we cannot decide on a small segment to monitor flow for beforehand.
Creating tags and label for clubbing certain entities so that we can create customized dashboards to monitor and provide access to Operations team
Scheduled Reports and Reporting capability is lacking
I think new products are often "half-baked" or over hyped when they release, as was the case with DNAC. We were well ahead of the curve in acquiring it. But as it has matured it is now a fantastic addition to our infrastructure. I think we are easing into a stage where it is hard to envision a large organization NOT having Catalyst Center in place. If for nothing outside of the mapping and troubleshooting aspects; using it as a "source of truth".
Cisco DNA Center is going to help us in security, simplicity and ease of administration. Cisco DNA Center is complete management and control platform that simplifies and streamlines network operations. Cisco DNA Center offers a single dashboard for every core function in your network. With this platform, IT can become more nimble and respond to changes and challenges faster and more intelligently.
For the end user, it is relatively easy to use. However, some training and practice is a must because the NSO is not as straightforward as the traditional router CLI. For the administrator, Cisco Network Service Orchestrator (NSO) is just like another program running on the Linux system--there is no big difference.
Great and effective automation functionalities and the tools on network security management are the best and easy data reports building. Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller feature for the network monitoring and easy management of various services and even offers the best analytics and also powerful integration tools for easy data migration.
El soporte de CISCO DNA Center es muy bueno, responden a mis dudas pero no he tenido oportunidad de reportar un incidente o determinar un tiempo de respuesta critico. The support of CISCO DNA Center is very good, they answer my questions, but I have not had the opportunity to report an incident or determine a critical response time.
It was informative, but the labs were not available long enough for us to get intimately familiar with CCNA before it was closed. The course instructor was well informed and got us as close to ready as she could.
We went with Cisco Catalyst Center, we evaluated, I think it was called Rainbow from Altel, Lucent Enterprise because we were an Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise customer. But since we seeded with Cisco DNA Center and SD Access back in 2019, we haven't been out to evaluate anything which is a direct competitor. There are tools which we are looking to purchase and implement to provide functionality which Cisco Catalyst Center can't, but they're more value add tools, not to necessarily directly drive the capability of our infrastructure.
The Cisco Nexus Series switches perform admirably in our blended distributed system. We have been dealing with any of these sorts of switches for over 5 years and have been exceptionally happy with their functionality. Several of our other computer networks in our data rooms have proved effective with Cisco equipment. Because of the simplicity of maintenance and the high quality of technical support provided by Cisco representatives, there is a high level of trust in these switches.
The platform is very well done, and to date, I have had no complaints about the implementation of the platform and no security issues or vulnerabilities. Cisco in all its product releases new versions to resolve security issues or bugs that appear on the platform, this is a big plus.
I have used it for upgrading devices, and it's does a great job at that, however out operations team for whatever reason has not adopted the feature.
Overall it feels like Cisco Catalyst Center has been huge waste of time. I feel like my time would be better spent on other projects and looking at other products and tools
Because it guarantees us expandable network services and without any interruption, providing a better service to each of our clients has been possible.
It has allowed us to keep the services innovated, doing this process in a reduced time, since it does not require a long programming, so implementing new services is done at a rapid pace.
Its automation has allowed us to reduce the burden of manual configurations, so having errors has also decreased.
Because it is based on an automation and orchestration model, providing faster and larger-scale services is possible.
