CentOS Linux vs. Cisco Catalyst Center

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
CentOS Linux
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
CentOS Linux is a Linux distribution is an enterprise OS platform compatible with its source RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Its end of life was announced for December 2021.N/A
Cisco Catalyst Center
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
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…N/A
Pricing
CentOS LinuxCisco Catalyst Center
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
CentOS LinuxCisco Catalyst Center
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
CentOS LinuxCisco Catalyst Center
Best Alternatives
CentOS LinuxCisco Catalyst Center
Small Businesses
Ubuntu
Ubuntu
Score 8.7 out of 10
NinjaOne
NinjaOne
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Score 9.2 out of 10
Intermapper
Intermapper
Score 8.4 out of 10
Enterprises
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
Score 9.2 out of 10
Cisco Meraki Dashboard
Cisco Meraki Dashboard
Score 9.1 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
CentOS LinuxCisco Catalyst Center
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(22 ratings)
8.4
(231 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(7 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(17 ratings)
Support Rating
8.6
(5 ratings)
8.0
(32 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
CentOS LinuxCisco Catalyst Center
Likelihood to Recommend
Open Source
In any role where you need raw server power, CentOS Linux is extremely well suited. It is extremely stable, and in my experience, probably the most stable of the Linux distros available. It has a very wide base of support from 3rd party sources for additional functionality that do not come already in the CentOS Linux distribution itself. It is not as appropriate for situations that are customer facing or end user facing. For those, I recommend Ubuntu Linux. But for everything server & compute related, I recommend CentOS Linux.
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Cisco
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.
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Pros
Open Source
  • First of all, CentOS is one of the most secure and stable OSes straits from the box.
  • High performance on the average hardware.
  • In most of my scenarios—easy and quick deployment.
  • Huge KB community that helps to build and support different services on CentOS.
  • Versions lifecycle.
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Cisco
  • I enjoy having a more modern tool for viewing PSIRTs and CVEs on our catalyst devices.
  • I enjoy all the different views I have for my inventory.
  • I think templates work well for zero day configuration.
  • I love the newer features for showing what configuration is going to be changed and deployed before you deploy it.
  • I like that I can see in-band and out-of-band configuration history.
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Cons
Open Source
  • CentOS is not a great desktop platform. Although some would disagree with that statement, I think that CentOS is better suited to life as a server.
  • Since CentOS is community-supported some software vendors will not officially support it because it isn't Red Hat.
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Cisco
  • Granularity. And so for us, and our use case might not be the same as a majority of customers, but we have a environment which frequently changes. So we're not a traditional corporate environment which stays relatively static or still reprovision. We want to reconfigure our environment to meet whatever the needs of our customers are. And at the moment it's like for some of the ways that we have to configure it, we just want to give something a little tap, but we have to hit it with a sledgehammer, which then often has knock on impacts other services.
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Likelihood to Renew
Open Source
No answers on this topic
Cisco
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".
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Usability
Open Source
It is a very typical server software, so you will have just the console. But it is still very easy to use, you can do anything from there and you have te built in manuals to review any information. For the other hand, if you need a graphical environment is not an issue, you can install any environment you what, Gnome, xfce, etc.
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Cisco
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.
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Support Rating
Open Source
Again, written documentation is excellent, even on the older versions. The support community is the best. It is comprehensive and I would say that it global because it transcends national boundaries. Also, you find all types of people using CentOS to do all sorts of things so you are bound to find someone to talk to if there are problems.
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Cisco
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.
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Online Training
Open Source
No answers on this topic
Cisco
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.
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Alternatives Considered
Open Source
CentOS is based on RHEL, so it really came down to the costs when making the selection between our options. RHEL offered more support and features, but nothing that we specifically needed. CentOS is fully customizable, something Windows Server was also lacking in many ways. The stability and speed was unmatched in comparison to Windows, and we were not utilizing any Windows-specific software to require us to use the Microsoft alternative. My years of experience have also made it a breeze to set up and configure new CentOS instances, leading me to stay where I'm comfortable.
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Cisco
We started out with using Cisco Prime infrastructure and we migrated to DNA center or Catalyst Center from Prime Infrastructure. We found that it wasn't apples to Apples migration. It wasn't exactly, it wasn't a direct upgrade. There were a lot of key differences, but yeah, I think that that was probably the most similar thing
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Return on Investment
Open Source
  • CentOS's support of RPM packages makes it very easy to replicate RHEL servers for development or testing in cheap / free environments
  • CentOS's minimalistic desktop environment requires additional tweaking / packages if you want to have a usable desktop environment with the niceties of other modern distributions. As a result, if developers want to use CentOS, they'll need to spend more time customizing it than other distros.
  • CentOS's easy customization from the command line lends itself well to our virtualization infrastructure where setup can be easily scripted to modify CentOS's configuration files.
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Cisco
  • Yeah, I mean that last one for sure. The software independent of the hardware, I mean, it's just easy. They made it so easy to just, and fast and efficient to upgrade your entire organization within days, weeks, months. And you're not spending, your maintenance windows get a lot shorter. You can schedule more maintenance windows just because you know there's going to be some type of consistency with it and there's just, I'm sure there will be a hiccup one day, but there just hasn't really been too many issues with us using that product, especially for maintenance, window upgrades, things like that.
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ScreenShots

Cisco Catalyst Center Screenshots

Screenshot of AIOpsScreenshot of BaselinesScreenshot of PoliciesScreenshot of HealthScreenshot of Network HierarchyScreenshot of PoE