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…
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Dell PowerConnect Switches (discontinued)
Score 8.0 out of 10
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Dell PowerConnect were a series of managed and unmanaged ethernet switches for data centers, discontinued by Dell. They have been superseded by the PowerSwitch line of switches, from Dell.
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
We work in the electric industry. These should not be used in a high-heat environment. We like to keep the temperature of the room in the low 60's so they are not suited for our Substation locations due to extreme heat and cold. However, they perform great in a server room.
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.
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've had fans burn out after the warranty period. In a way that is a positive and tells you just how long the fans last. However, it would be nice if the fans lasted a bit longer.
In a perfect world, it would be nice if the switches were not so loud.
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.
The Dell PowerConnect switch is a great switch in certain use cases. It really works well when training users to set up their own vlans in a technology class. We have a lot of different scenarios happening at this company, with 8 different buildings and multiple different affiliate entities. For some of the departments, the budget is the most crucial element. That is where the Dell PowerConnect switches are a really great option.
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.
Dell ProSupport is outstanding. Dell ProDeploy is likewise outstanding. I prefer them even over traditional Cisco support. I've had repeated cases where Dell immediately addressed or fixed an issue with US-based support, including firmware hotfixes. Not even Cisco can boast that.
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.
I selected Dell mainly due to previous experience using them in a business environment. I've never had a unit fail on me and when my budget for equipment like network switches has been less than a training class on how to use those switches, it's incredible to be able to find quality equipment at the price point Dell offers and even more so when their enterprise support has been as excellent as I have been accustomed to dealing with. In all honesty, even if I had a larger budget, I would have bought these same switches since they were exactly what I needed to suit my needs. We looked into HPE/Aruba network switches, and while they would have performed everything we needed and more, they were almost four times the cost of these Dell network switches. That's a hard sell when it comes to planning a tight budget.
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.
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.
