Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) vs. Cisco Nexus Dashboard

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cisco ACI
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) is network virtualization technology.N/A
Cisco Nexus Dashboard
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
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…N/A
Pricing
Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI)Cisco Nexus Dashboard
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Cisco ACICisco Nexus Dashboard
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI)Cisco Nexus Dashboard
Considered Both Products
Cisco ACI
Chose Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI)
I do not found any solution that has the same maturity of Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) with other constructors. I tried NEXUS Dashboard fabric controller to try similar usage with nx-os mode and evpn vxlan. NDFC is quiet near to Cisco Application Centric …
Chose Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI)
We use Cisco Nexus Series Switches on Cisco ACI. It helps to make new and easy connections. It will better if we can use Generative Artificial Intelligence with them. We manage many domains in one place. We manage more than one company’s network, so Cisco ACI is really …
Chose Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI)
Price Deal
Chose Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI)
Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) is better on many aspects. price, bandwidth...
Chose Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI)
Individual device management vs centralized management through Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure.
Chose Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI)
Our organization chose Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) because of the New technology, Scalable
Chose Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI)
ACI makes data center deployments easier, upgrades, overall simpler functionality.
Chose Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI)
was not as good
Chose Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI)
Line level policy & secured versus software based.
Chose Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI)
NSX-T and ACI both are definitely awesome products. I tend to use ACI in networks that have more barebone and/or alternative hypervisors. NSX still works best in VMware heavy networks. Another consideration is where the network is managed, by which team. If the network is …
Chose Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI)
espaccially the Fabric Controller which was not in the List. But this tool really suprised me on that live. It is a better ACI for customers that don't do policy enforcement in their network.
Cisco Nexus Dashboard

No answer on this topic

Best Alternatives
Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI)Cisco Nexus Dashboard
Small Businesses

No answers on this topic

No answers on this topic

Medium-sized Companies
Cisco Catalyst Center
Cisco Catalyst Center
Score 8.5 out of 10
Dell PowerConnect Switches (discontinued)
Dell PowerConnect Switches (discontinued)
Score 8.1 out of 10
Enterprises
Cisco Catalyst Center
Cisco Catalyst Center
Score 8.5 out of 10
Cisco Nexus Series Switches
Cisco Nexus Series Switches
Score 9.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI)Cisco Nexus Dashboard
Likelihood to Recommend
8.2
(94 ratings)
8.0
(50 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(6 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
7.1
(7 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.1
(9 ratings)
8.8
(6 ratings)
Support Rating
8.2
(10 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.0
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.6
(9 ratings)
8.8
(6 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
5.5
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI)Cisco Nexus Dashboard
Likelihood to Recommend
Cisco
The ACI solution is perfectly fit for a large or multi-site data center environment. It permits simplifying deployment, management, automation, and security. ACI is especially valuable when strong scalability, automation, security, and segmentation are required. However, ACI is less suitable for a small environment due to its complexity and high cost.
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Cisco
We used Cisco Nexus Dashboard specifically for automating the creation of networks in our private cloud environment using a VXLAN EVPN multisite environment. It integrates into Infoblox well. It's also very suited in network troubleshooting for past and present issues. Where I don't see it being used much is in the campus but it's nice to know we have the ability to add catalyst if needed.
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Pros
Cisco
  • Cisco ACI, The object model is very complicated. It's something difficult to understand and also because there is a user interface, there's a web user interface, but it's not optimal to use it because if you want to deploy a large amount of VLAN or a large amount of tenants, it's quite difficult to do it or it's quite challenging. Maybe if you want to configure a large amount of ports using the web interface, it's not appropriate because it takes a lot of time. It also provides APIs to do that, but as I say, the object model is very difficult to understand and there is very little documentation about automation of the ACI and maybe there is but it's not so easy to find.
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Cisco
  • It is a flexible tool that helps streamline and facilitate the development of new services.
  • Ideal for automating tasks such as network modification, configuration, and removal, which provides great time savings.
  • Ensures services without interruption and without difficult scheduling.
  • It has a simple user interface and excellent support, made up of several providers.
  • It facilitates the administration of managed services.
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Cons
Cisco
  • I think something I've just went to a session with hyper fabric and the ideas that hyper fabric has. Keep it really simple because Cisco ACI is a complex system and adopt some of the ideas behind hyper fabric, bring it to ACI that will be really beneficial. So as I said, automation is a great thing, but it's still, you need to have the background and the really complex stuff that happens behind the scenes to leverage the value of that solution. And by adding more simplicity to it, I think that will be a great thing. And also integrating with other applications in terms of the automation.
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Cisco
  • With the latest version release of Cisco Nexus Dashboard to version 3.0.1 I can say that most of the features have already improved but one of the wishlists that I want for ND is the possibility of extracting lists of Anomaly.
  • Include older versions of Firmware in the list of choices when doing the firmware upgrade analysis, currently only the recommended is in the list of choices.
  • If possible, include all the prechecks in the Firmware pre-upgrade analysis same in the script provided by Cisco.
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Likelihood to Renew
Cisco
Provided with the intensive fault isolation for the CISCO ACI, we are glad that we have this Data Center Solution in place and we will continue to renew as long as the future needed requirements are meet and more helpful features will be enabled in the future with the integration of security
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Cisco
We observe significant product development with each release, along with substantial expansion of functionality. The program code has been consolidated into a single image, which simplifies installation and routine system update operations. Additionally, it is possible to install it outside the production network, which further enhances the solution’s availability.Additionally, the new graphical interface is very simplified and user-friendly.
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Usability
Cisco
You'll need a lot of training and hands on experience to get the most out of the product. There are a lot of very useful features in the ACI product. Often times there are a lot of ways to get to a solution for chalanges in the field. The solutions might be different eacht time. Knowing which one to implement is somtimes a challenge.
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Cisco
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.
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Reliability and Availability
Cisco
It allways works. If there are problems with links going down by accident (say someone accidentally unpatches something they shouldn't have), we rarely miss more then one packet over the link. Also, using VPCs we are able to upgrade the software on the switches without the attached EPs ever noticing.
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Cisco
No answers on this topic
Performance
Cisco
Day to day operations on Cisco ACI do not require much human intervention, the platform ticks over without any major faults. Being able to rapidly replicate the communication between two groups of machines across multiple sub networks speeds up new application delivery, and the integration into vmWare allows multiple teams within IT to work together to problem solve rapidly.
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Cisco
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.
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Support Rating
Cisco
Cisco provides users and partners with a multitude of data for you to consume. I think that the stuff in the public domain goes a long way to assisting you find any answers you may need, plus insights and information from areas such as DevNet provide you with access to more than just the traditional release notes and the like
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Cisco
here was never a need to contact support, as the system includes several commands that allow for self-healing. Even if, after the upgrade process, one of the processes was not running, I was able to quickly find the appropriate sequence of commands that definitively resolved the issue. The entire architecture was designed in such a way as to be resilient to the failure of one node in a three-server setup.
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In-Person Training
Cisco
The Cisco ACI training provided by Cisco was in depth, covered all of our requirements, and allowed us to implement and maintain the platform without issues.
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Cisco
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Cisco
Being involved in the implmentation gives you more overview on how things are supposed to be working and communicating, you can easily performce troubleshooting and understanding the troubleshooting scenario
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Cisco
Honestly, the product implementation took 1–2 days to comprehensively manage the client’s entire infrastructure. The delivered on-premise solution, provided as physical servers, quickly builds the required environment in which individual data centers are rapidly added. The data collection process takes some time but also depends on the number of devices in the network.
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Alternatives Considered
Cisco
Actually we start our learning in networking career with Cisco. So it is very useful or easier to learn this product. And honestly speaking, I didn't work in any other data center solution other than Cisco. So I cannot compare what it gives us more than other popular stuff. But this is very nice product like from Cisco.
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Cisco
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.
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Scalability
Cisco
Cisco ACI scales well and is suited in scenarios such as multi-cloud or large data centre implementations. It is not suited to smaller deployments as the efficiencies that it provides are not fully realised. It is well suited in large environments that contain both virtual and bare-metal machines allowing a great deal of flexibility. It is also perfect to support multi-tenancy platforms.
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Cisco
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.
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Return on Investment
Cisco
  • We've definitely spent quite a bit of time relearning how to do things in ACI, but I think the investment has been well worth while considering that we can now deploy tenants and leaves from the ground up in a matter of seconds.
  • We can if we choose to upgrade an entire datacenters worth of switches in a single night. (We've chosen to break it up for availability requirements, but if you didn't require 99.999% uptime like us you may be able to do it)
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Cisco
  • Bit pricey.
  • Need to be purchased with vendor support. As far as I know, now support other vendors.
  • It's upgrade from DCNM and worth looking into.
  • It's still evolving and may need minor cosmetic adjustment
  • Easy to create and maintain vxlan and non vxlan fabrics.
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ScreenShots

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Screenshots

Screenshot of 9324C-SE1U N9300 Smart SwitchScreenshot of 9324C-SE1U N9300 Smart SwitchScreenshot of N9348Y2C6D-SE1U N9300 Smart SwitchScreenshot of N9348Y2C6D-SE1U N9300 Smart SwitchScreenshot of N9348Y2C6D-SE1U N9300 Smart SwitchScreenshot of 9324C-SE1U N9300 Smart Switch