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Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) vs. Cisco Prime LAN Management (discontinued)

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cisco ACI

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/ACisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) is network virtualization technology.N/A

    Cisco Prime LAN Management (discontinued)

    Score7.7 out of 10
    N/ACisco Prime LAN Management Solution is discontinued. Current users are encouraged to explore Cisco Catalyst Center as a modern solution.N/A
    Pricing
    Cisco ACICisco Prime LAN Management (discontinued)
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco ACICisco Prime LAN Management (discontinued)
    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
    Cisco ACICisco Prime LAN Management (discontinued)
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    Chose Cisco ACI
    LAN, Storage network and compute were already Cisco so we moved from Nexus to Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure as natural alignment and simplified the dc operations.
    Incentivized
    Chose Cisco ACI
    no other produst evaluated
    Incentivized
    Discontinued Products
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    96%
    Would buy again
    113 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    7 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    98%
    Delivers good value for the price
    96 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    7 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    97%
    Happy with the feature set
    115 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    7 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    94%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    82 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    5 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    89%
    Implementation went as expected
    93 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    7 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    Cisco ACICisco Prime LAN Management (discontinued)
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    IBM Cloud Internet Services
    Score9.8 out of 10
    Cisco Meraki Dashboard
    Score9 out of 10
    Enterprises
    IBM Cloud Internet Services
    Score9.8 out of 10
    Cisco Meraki Dashboard
    Score9 out of 10
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    User Ratings
    Cisco ACICisco Prime LAN Management (discontinued)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.5
    (131 ratings)
    9.2
    (12 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.7
    (10 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    5.1
    (8 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Availability
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.1
    (9 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.5
    (11 ratings)
    7.6
    (3 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    6.0
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    8.6
    (9 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    5.5
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco ACICisco Prime LAN Management (discontinued)
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    Although Cisco Prime [LAN Management Solution] is a nice tool and no other 4rd party tools can match its native monitoring and managing capabilities still i have given less rating and that's because it is only for Cisco vendor Devices. Hence if you have only Cisco infrastructure then go for it or else look for another 4rd party tool in conjunction with Cisco prime.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • Wireless file detection and planning mode has helped us expand into new areas of our buildings.
    • Alerting is detailed when we have issues with hardwired and wireless devices, and Rogue Access Points are easily identifiable.
    • Cisco equipment information is much more detailed than other management products' SNMP queries and is an excellent tool for troubleshooting end-device connectivity issues.
    • Our KPI reporting for senior management and centralized management of our WIPS 'Wireless Intrusion Prevention' setup have both benefited significantly from the detailed reporting capabilities.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • Maps. One thing that I miss is the fact that you can't see both wired and wireless equipment in the same topology map. For visualization and troubleshooting purposes, that would help a lot, and I honestly don' t think it's that much harder to implement.
    • I'd love to see an option to show 'live dashboards,' maps, or other visual tools to publish in a NOC room, or even just to broadcast in a big monitor to allow multiple workmates to check that information. Again, I don't think that would be too hard to implement. I remember a similar feature was available in the first versions of the product, way back in the 90's (yes, I'm that old :-) )
    • Sometimes, depending on what screen you are, the solution can be a little slow. I'm not saying the whole system is slow, but sometimes that slowness can bother a little.
    • Talking about areas for improvement, one area I think can be improved is the upgrade process. Even for not so large deployments, it can take a lot of time. Having this time decreased would be the right thing to do.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    We are very happy using Cisco Prime LAN Management Solution for the following reason: 1- Ease of use with the GUI. 2- Very well organized dashboard which can view many statistics on your devices. 3- Customized dashboard for different views ( for technical team and executives ) 4- Schedule configuration templates to use whenever we need on whatever device we want.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    There are various 3rd party tools available in the market which not only supports monitoring of cisco devices but also supports non-cisco devices, even with these capabilities in these 3rd party tools Cisco Prime has maintained a uniqueness in its products being the native tool from Cisco. The uniqueness is about product supportability for given devices and some of the edge features such as configuration management, detailed heatmaps etc
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    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)
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • It has helped us with our quarterly wireless security testing by pinpointing the location of non-approved access points vs. hunting for them via signal strength.
    • Saves time by helping to identify network health issues before they become a definitive problem causing downtime.
    • With errors detected early, we have noticed our wi-fi network is much more stable thus freeing up our engineer's time elsewhere.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots