Cisco Nexus Dashboard vs. Grafana

Nexus Dashboard is a vital tool for Cisco data center Nexus deployments, in my opinion. By utilizing multiple applications in the suite, a business can utilize orchestration, monitor services and traffic, test deployment scenarios, verify upgrade processes and readiness, etc. The capabilities of the system can allow for SAN MDS controls, traditional Nexus NXOS integration, and/or essential ACI tools

If I was starting over on an Observability platform, Grafana would be my number 1 choice due to the flexibility and ability to act as a single platform either on its own or combining multiple data sources. The trick however, is that it can be fairly complex to learn and setup, so time is needed to make it a successful implementation. There is a level of cognitive load required

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Alerting through many different medium as Slack, Email, Webhook etc
• Beautiful and unlimited number of dashboards to view your metrics and tweak them as you please
• Log aggregation and powerful Logql to filter and view your logs
• Microservices monitoring
• Large number of plugins and data sources to collect your metrics from almost anywhere

Incentivized

• 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.

• There are some settings which we can't configure from UI (Web Console).
• We've open[ed] up configuration files in command line text editors and manually do the settings e.g. LDAP/SSO configuration.
• In terms of visualization, it's best, but it doesn't support log analysis otherwise it could destroy business of all other visualization tools.

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.

Incentivized

It is infinitely flexible. If you can imagine it, Grafana can almost certainly do it. Usability may be in the eye of the beholder however, as there is time needed to curate the experience and get the dashboards customized to how it makes sense to you. I know one thing they are working on are more templates, based on data sources

Incentivized

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.

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.

Incentivized

Grafana blows Nagios out of the water when it comes to customization. The ability to feed almost any data source makes it very versatile and the cost is great.

Incentivized

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.

• 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.

Incentivized

• Time-consuming reports reduced
• Spotting trends in services
• Preventive maintenance

Incentivized