Cisco Catalyst Center (formerly Cisco DNA
Center) is a network management system that leverages AI to connect,
secure, and automate customer’s network operations. It harnesses the Catalyst family of switching and wireless through AI-enabled
automation that simplifies the IT experience and streamlines complex network
operations. Offering
operational flexibility, Cisco Catalyst Center can be deployed on-premises on a
physical appliance or in a VMware virtual environment, or in a…
N/A
IBM Instana
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Instana, an IBM company since the December 2020 acquisition, provides APM services for SOA, microservices, containerized applications and Kubernetes, and cloud native applications, as well as discovery and monitoring for IT assets.
If it met their requirements, I'd say it's probably a 10. If they could go down with Cisco route, especially driving software defined access, then it's the only show in town for that. If they didn't want to go down the software defined access route and the more traditional side, there might be other tools that they might want to consider just because of a flexibility which other tools might allow them to have.
I would recommend IBM Instana based on its strengths in automating application performance monitoring, dynamic tracing, and its ability to handle modern, containerized environments effectively. The automatic discovery and mapping feature, along with AI-powered anomaly detection, provide valuable insights for proactive issue resolution. However, I would consider factors such as the organization's specific technology stack, scalability requirements, and budget constraints. Conducting a thorough evaluation, including a trial or proof of concept, would be essential to ensure that IBM Instana aligns with our unique needs and contributes positively to our technology and business objectives.
I really like the assurance. I like that I can go through and find problems on the network that could be a mismatch VLAN between two interfaces, port errors, like physical errors that we otherwise probably would need to wait for a customer to complain or we have that we can see that ahead of time and be proactive and say, Hey, I'm noticing that this port is having some errors on it. We might want to check that out ahead of time before it becomes an issue. So that's really useful. And then also being able to configure the network. I think that the programmability part of it, I think I have, I've been having some struggle with that initially, just having to apply. So I have my script, my template that I want to deploy, but in order to deploy it, I have to apply it to a template or a profile and then I have to assign that profile to a group of switches that I want to program. I think it gets a little bit messy and a little bit convoluted, but other than that, I mean it's really helpful. It does automate right now, I think it seems a little convoluted with the process.
The one thing that we had to get used to was really breaking down our wireless. We integrated our 9800 controllers into it, and the breakdown of our tags being floor specific and not just being campus specific was a challenge for us. And so we had to create all new tags and it wasn't necessarily a problem, it just required a little bit redesign on our wireless. And so it would've been nice for us to be able to assign a tag to an entire campus versus a floor, but that's a small complaint.
I believe that the "live" option in monitoring does not truly update the status in real-time, thus I must manually update to feel comfortable.
The call analysis tool might be improved, third-party resources are restricted, and the pricing is slightly more than competitors in comparable categories.
The first impressions using the tool, led us to believe that it will be very helpful going forward. There's a lot of potential to implement other features in the network
Instana has been able to fulfill our all requirement and provide out of box solution for multiple component like AWS RDS Monitoring and real time alerting setup on basis of that. it is also easy to integrate with other open-source alerting and monitoring tools which makes it easier to incorporate into our solutions
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.
IBM Instana totally alters our monitoring approach since it increases the stability of the system and simplifies the process of problem solving. And since it helps to lower the degree of alert exhaustion that we experience, it is a total game changer for us.
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.
We haven't used anything like this. We looked at the competitors. I think we are quite early in their products, so I think now Cisco DNA center is quite mature, still in heavy development, but compared to the competitors, we think that there is nothing like it out there.
We chose IBM Instana for several reasons, and the most important one is that we didn't have to make changes in our code for nearly all of our applications for it to work. We are happy with the decision we made to use IBM Instana.
Initial cost is pricy, but management needs to understand the value this provides so make them aware
Reporting could be improved in more detail in our opinion, but it gives a great overview of your environment. High level overview for managers would be greatly appreciated with as little or much detail as needed for certain Cisco gear.
Does not work as well with some older Cisco equipment because they want you to buy new, again the cost impact comes into play.
