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Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (Cisco ACI) vs. Perforce Puppet

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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

    Perforce Puppet

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/APuppet Enteprise is an IT automation and configuration management solution that enables users to manage and automate infrastructure and complex workflows. The vendor states Puppet Enterprise combines both model‑based and task-based capabilities in a way that enables organizations to scale their multi-cloud infrastructure as their automation footprint grows, with more flexibility from both agent-based and agentless capabilities.N/A
    Pricing
    Cisco ACIPerforce Puppet
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco ACIPerforce Puppet
    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 ACIPerforce Puppet
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    No answer on this topic
    Perforce Software
    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
    Best Alternatives
    Cisco ACIPerforce Puppet
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    Salt
    Score6.2 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    IBM Cloud Internet Services
    Score9.8 out of 10
    Ansible
    Score9.1 out of 10
    Enterprises
    IBM Cloud Internet Services
    Score9.8 out of 10
    Salt
    Score6.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Cisco ACIPerforce Puppet
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.5
    (131 ratings)
    7.0
    (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)
    8.0
    (1 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 ACIPerforce Puppet
    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
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    Perforce Software
    Puppet is good enough to get the job done, you can use it to automate deployments and maintain files and configurations, if this is all you're looking for it's great. If you're looking for more control over your systems as a whole without having to write your own scripts or install multiple configuration management systems then Puppet is not what you're looking for.
    Incentivized
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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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    Perforce Software
    • Provides a clear map of how a system is configured
    • Eases the creation of a system in a specific cluster as it is scripted in code
    • Simplifies configuration changes to a cluster or to every system such as rolling out vhost configurations, updating ldap roles, NFS mounts, etc
    • The syntax is very easy to read and carries a lot of fluidity once the language is learned.
    Incentivized
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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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    Perforce Software
    • The setup of Puppet is a nightmare compared to ansible. Anyone watching a youtube video can easily set up ansible with minimal IT knowledge. All one needs is the source IP addresses and we are good to go. Setting up Puppet is a more hands-on task and pushing the puppet agents to all the boxes is another issue. If the installation and setup were simplified like ansible that would attract a lot of people to this platform
    • The syntax of the code for Puppet is not as easy as ansible. Ansible simply follows a YAML format and it's like typing in normal English. Even complicated tasks can be written by just understanding YAML syntax. Perhaps Puppet needs to revisit the lanugage used and try to come up with a much simpler lanugage for writing code. This will make day-to-day usage easier.
    Incentivized
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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
    Incentivized
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    Perforce Software
    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
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    Perforce Software
    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
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    Perforce Software
    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
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    Perforce Software
    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
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    Perforce Software
    Puppet has top class support. You can simply mail them with their query and they will respond to your query in a timely manner. We do have enterprise license for puppet. Also there is a vibrant community for puppet out there. So even if you dont purchase a premium support option you can simply google your queries and get answers
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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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    Perforce Software
    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
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    Perforce Software
    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.
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    Perforce Software
    HPSA is a licensed product and incurs significant upfront investment costs due to COTS licensing. Puppet Data Center Automation has a significantly lower upfront investment and product documentation is more readily available. Chef is a very similar offering, however, at the time our decision was considered, the adoption of Chef vs. Puppet was significantly less in the community.
    Incentivized
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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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    Perforce Software
    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)
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    Perforce Software
    • Cut deployment times down to around 1 hour from 4-5 hours.
    • Allows us to get a fully running system up from scratch in around 30 minutes.
    • Allows for a more clear view of what is required to get a host running.
    Incentivized
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