As a cloud-managed network management solution, the Cisco Meraki Dashboard enables users to provision, configure, and troubleshoot global networking and IoT deployments.
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SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM)
Score 8.3 out of 10
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SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is network diagnostics and troubleshooting technology, from Austin-based SolarWinds.
Cisco Meraki Dashboard is great for NOC teams with little network experience at helping give them all the tools they need to do the job and become more efficient with networks. From easy RMA processes to metric gathering the Cisco Meraki Dashboard does it all very well. The licenses are a problem for a lot of companies since there are no guarantees the product stays online and certain integrations like ThousandEyes are overlooked due to the additional cost despite it being a great product.
There was a need to find an old configuration of a network switch that was accidentally wiped clean. Fortunately, SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM) kept and archived a backup copy of the switch device in question! We were easily able to upload the configuration file to the switch and restore the device back on the network in a matter of minutes!
More granular controls over devices. It definitely feels like, especially when you come from a CLI environment and you're working in a command line interface and then going into the dashboard, you can feel restricted sometimes because if they don't have the button you can't press it. So more buttons.
For our use case, it does everything great and some of the features we underutilize but I would like to be able to set a configuration baseline when initially adding a node instead of after the configuration is pulled but it's not a particularly big deal to let it pull the configuration then set it as the baseline.
Medium complexity to set up in the beginning if using any non-standard devices or configurations, else fairly easy (e.g. Cisco Nexus or IOS-based devices). Reports are fairly straightforward to set up. Updates to the platform are fairly straightforward and don't take a major effort. Easy to add or remove devices.
At the time of writing this, it appears that Cisco Meraki Dashboard has finally integrated a Cisco IOS XE output window into the dashboard. This is a massive step in the right direction and something that it was dearly missing. At the moment, we do not have this integration and so a lot of the times, we have to navigate via several tools menus to get the info we need instead of being able to run a quick command.
The user interface is lacking. It is difficult to navigate at times and things can be done multiple ways. Quite often I am confused by how their notification structure works. It is not very intuitive. They do offer a free Academy. They also offer a community of other technical folks. I have enjoyed both.
To be fair, I have not had to involve Support in a number of years, but when I did, I was greeted with enthusiastic engineers who wanted to understand and solve the issue. It was a fairly complex scenario and I have discovered in my most recent implementation that engineering included that option as a standard now.
Solarwinds has actually produced new training since I last used it that is available on their site at any time. Their previous training was more than enough to get us started but now there is significantly more content. Since I'm comfortable with the Orion platform and the products we use I haven't checked the new training out yet but we have new staff go through portions of that training and they always come away with an understanding of the platform and ready to use it
A number of networks we've taken over were using Ubiquiti Unifi, which is an okay solution, but a lot more cumbersome to manage. We've found the Cisco Meraki Dashboard system much more intuitive and way less time-intensive. Simple things like setting up dedicated DHCP entries or poking holes in VLAN firewalls are way easier in Cisco Meraki Dashboard.
At the time SolarWinds was the biggest player in the space and their whole portfolio was very comprehensive. As time progressed and newer technologies came about (i.e. SDWAN) their products couldn't keep up with the consumer demands and changing market. Security became such a big focus that once Solarwinds got hacked we had to remove all their products from our environment
When there's an issue with communication to the cloud. EX: unable to fetch configs. This due to like new device being installed or if you have to factory reset the device. This has been a negative impact.
Incorrect status. Sometimes the status of the device or network is not reflected as it should be. This has had a negative impact in the past. However, for the most part, the Status is fairly accurate.
Incident response has been very good. Anytime an issue has been reported to Cisco regarding Cisco Meraki Dashboard, the issue is quickly investigated and doesn't take long to resolve.
Customer support and Cisco's technical team has been very helpful and responsive.
Saves 100s of hours a year in man hours over manual configuration.
Saved easily 50k in lost revenue when a switch rebooted with months old unsaved configuration. NCM let us quickly restore a snapshot of the running config from the previous day.
Saves us several man hours per week of config auditing by reducing all changes to a summary email.
