TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) vs. OpenVPN Access Server

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    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

    OpenVPN Access Server

    Score8.6 out of 10
    N/AOpenVPN headquartered in Pleasanton allows users to create secure access to a private network in the cloud or on-premise with Access Server. Access Server is available to deploy directly on various cloud platforms like Amazon AWS, Google GCP, Microsoft Azure, DigitalOcean, and also available as ready-to-deploy virtual appliances for Microsoft HyperV and VMWare ESXi. Alternately, OpenVPN Access Server Virtual Appliance is a full-featured secure network tunneling VPN virtual appliance solution…

    $27

    per month 3 connections (minimum)

    Pricing
    Cisco ACIOpenVPN Access Server
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    3-99 Connections
    $9
    per month per connection
    2,000 Connections
    $3,100.00
    per month per connection
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco ACIOpenVPN Access Server
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details—More connections reduces cost per connection, as does going with an annual plan versus a monthly price.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Cisco ACIOpenVPN Access Server
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    No answer on this topic
    OpenVPN
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    96%
    Would buy again
    113 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    98%
    Delivers good value for the price
    96 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    97%
    Happy with the feature set
    115 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    94%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    82 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    89%
    Implementation went as expected
    93 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Features
    Cisco ACIOpenVPN Access Server
    Virtual Private Network
    Comparison of Virtual Private Network features of Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) and OpenVPN Access Server
    Feature
    Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI)
    -
    Ratings
    OpenVPN Access Server
    8.4
    2 Ratings
    6% below category average
    AES 256-bit Encryption00 Ratings8.52 Ratings
    Kill Switch00 Ratings9.52 Ratings
    Multi-Platform Support00 Ratings8.02 Ratings
    Split Tunneling00 Ratings8.02 Ratings
    IP Address Masking00 Ratings8.02 Ratings
    No-Logs Policy00 Ratings8.52 Ratings
    Multiple Server Locations00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
    Automatic Wi-Fi Protection00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
    Simultaneous Connections00 Ratings9.52 Ratings
    Customer Support Services00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Cisco ACIOpenVPN Access Server
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    IBM Cloud Internet Services
    Score9.8 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    Enterprises
    IBM Cloud Internet Services
    Score9.8 out of 10
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cisco ACIOpenVPN Access Server
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.5
    (131 ratings)
    9.5
    (3 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.7
    (10 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    5.1
    (8 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Availability
    9.1
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.1
    (9 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.5
    (11 ratings)
    -
    (0 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 ACIOpenVPN Access Server
    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
    OpenVPN
    If you looking for a reliable, light weight and secure VPN server, than OpenVPN Access Server is the one. Easy to install and manage, OpenVPN will provide secure remote connections, with a very good integration with almost all LDAP directories, for user management. With my experience, I don't see any scenario that OpenVPN won't be able to handle.
    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
    OpenVPN
    • Speed of logging in.
    • Lengthy session times.
    • Ease of troubleshooting.
    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
    OpenVPN
    • some times error logs are not clear
    • Configuring 3rd party apps can sometimes be problematic
    • Limited functionality for iPhone users, but I believe that is due to an apple issue.
    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
    OpenVPN
    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
    OpenVPN
    Whatever console or firewall you are running OpenVPN Access Server, it's configuration is very easy to do. You can create multiple tunnels, with different pourposes and authetication methods. It also has a quick and easy view of the connections opened, with possible actions, such as a very efficient kill switch and reconnect options.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    OpenVPN
    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
    OpenVPN
    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
    OpenVPN
    No answers on this topic
    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
    OpenVPN
    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
    OpenVPN
    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
    OpenVPN
    OpenVPN had a better UI and usability for our team. It was more straightforward, had better SAML integration, and allowed our team to be on the VPN and on our network in seconds. We had some issues getting Nord to work for our use cases, and have run into pretty much zero issues with OpenVPN.
    Incentivized
    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
    OpenVPN
    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
    OpenVPN
    • Only 2 free users, it would be nice if they would expand to 5.
    • Easy way to establish a VPN backbone between two locations
    • Great for work at home or BCP events.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    OpenVPN Access Server Screenshots

    Product screenshotProduct screenshot