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Cisco NX-OS vs. SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Cisco NX-OS

    Score8 out of 10
    N/ACisco NX-OS is a network operating system presented as a solution to help network operations move at the speed of business, with comprehensive automation, extensive visibility, and flexible open architectures for data center networks. NX-OS is the network operating system for all fabric architectures, from traditional L2/L3 to overlay-based fabrics.Cisco NX-OS powers the modern data center.N/A

    SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset

    Score7.6 out of 10
    N/ASolarWinds® Engineer’s Toolset (ETS) helps users monitor and troubleshoot a network with over 60 tools for network management. ETS allows users to monitor and receive alerts in real time on network availability and health, and perform network diagnostics for faster troubleshooting and resolution of complex network issues. With ETS users can deploy an array of network discovery tools including Port Scanner, Switch Port Mapper or advanced Subnet Calculator, manage Cisco® devices with specialized…

    $1,585

    Per Instance

    Pricing
    Cisco NX-OSSolarWinds Engineer's Toolset
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    One Time Price
    $1,585
    Per Instance
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Cisco NX-OSSolarWinds Engineer's Toolset
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    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 NX-OSSolarWinds Engineer's Toolset
    Considered Both Products
    Cisco
    No answer on this topic
    SolarWinds
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    13 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    11 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    12 Answers
    90%
    Delivers good value for the price
    9 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    13 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    11 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    92%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    11 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    10 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    11 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    10 Answers
    User Ratings
    Cisco NX-OSSolarWinds Engineer's Toolset
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.6
    (17 ratings)
    8.6
    (11 ratings)
    Usability
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Performance
    8.1
    (14 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.9
    (3 ratings)
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    7.6
    (14 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Cisco NX-OSSolarWinds Engineer's Toolset
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Cisco
    It's definitely very well suited for data center environments and the scale that is sometimes required. We also manage many enterprise environments, and we almost never see Cisco NX-OS or Nexus in an enterprise environment, only specifically on the data center side. Mainly because of the lower bandwidth requirements and so on. But it depends on the hardware, since it's a software product.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    I have found the toolset especially useful for scanning subnets to discover devices, and for setting up temporary real-time monitors when we are troubleshooting or setting up new connections. The most useful aspect has been the ability to apply the tools to help troubleshoot and pinpoint intermittent issues. More general tools like Orion often do not have the granularity to detect issues like intermittent packet loss which are especially impactful to applications like Voice. The toolset gives us another level of capability to dig into issues.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Cisco
    • Cisco NX-OS does a great job of supporting high dense environments due to Cisco NX-OS based devices having some of the fastest packet switching performance
    • Cisco NX-OS supports high bandwidth environments really well due to the high throughput links that are typically found in Cisco NX-OS network appliances
    • Cisco NX-OS provides some of the best redundancy in the way of "Active-Active redundancy" via it's VPC technology. This is especially desirable in data center environments.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • Various monitoring
    • Stores history
    • Suggests indices
    • Helps to find the SQL query text
    • Helps to see what machines/users the bad queries are coming from
    • Shows current blocking session
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Cisco
    • I think one thing we'd like to see a bit more in the Nexus space is probably the troubleshooting features. So one would be the I perf feature and being able to test network traffic across links. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of really good features in terms of troubleshooting, but one particular one that we like to see is where we can test network traffic. We can make sure that we have good latency, we got good bandwidth utilization as well. For us that's a big one. We've got to use third party tools to do that. So if the NXOS platform can do it, that's one of the thing we've got to do.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • The unifying component that is intended to be the initial interface to the tools seems clunky. I prefer to start the tools individually rather than using it.
    • The port scanner could use some improvements to make it easier to use.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Cisco
    NX-OS has many similarities with the traditional IOS which is quite beneficial when it comes to configuration and learning. As a native Linux system, there are a lot of tools and features that can be enabled for any use case.
    Incentivized
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    SolarWinds
    Very easy to use and intuitive. Just be careful with the WAN Killer...it does what it says.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Cisco
    Excellent and the best Automation capabilities with Cisco NX-OS which effectively allows easy management of different networks across the whole organization keeping all the business data secure and well managed. With its ability to detect any data threat and effectively fix the issue, Cisco NX-OS has extremely powerful options and its process monitoring capabilities are the best.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Cisco
    Cisco support never fails me. In terms of timely response, no one is on par with them. They really value the impact of having technical issues and potential business stoppage. Also, their support staff are well equipped with knowledge and skills and easily resolve the most common incidents. Most of the time, we can resolve an issue by just calling them once.
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    Our organization uses it regularly. It is reliable, and we keep finding new uses for it
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Cisco
    I am much more familiar with the commands in Cisco IOS as it has been around for many more years. I know why NX-OS is a different system and can see the benefits of the fibre channel integration, but I do not understand why the commands had to use a different syntax. With the Nexus switches you don't get a choice of operating system unfortunately.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    I haven't compared any tools similar to SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset. This might be because I'm pretty biased when it comes to monitoring, and reporting solutions. I've found that SolarWinds provides the biggest bang for the buck in my opinion. I'm sure there are other solutions on the market that compete, but I haven't tried any of them because I've been very satisfied with SolarWinds.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Cisco
    Up to now, we haven't had a major ground-shaking attack on our networks but we take no chances by using NX-OS alongside a SIEM. All endpoints and workloads are secure so I would say we have plenty of trust in their security model.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Cisco
    • We do have some implementations on Cisco NX-OS and Nexus hardware, and some of these are already quite old, but they are still running pretty smoothly. So they are super reliable, in my opinion. So that's one of the very positive ways it impacts companies.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    SolarWinds
    • Spend less time downloading free buggy tools
    • All the tools in one spot, so you don't have to look around for tools
    • Get to the solution sooner
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset Screenshots

    Screenshot of Perform network stress tests with Engineer's Toolset WAN Killer. You don’t need to use real traffic for studying network activities, like testing traffic and load balancing. Instead, deploy Engineer's Toolset WAN Killer to help interactively test connections and adjust the IP traffic generated to achieve the desired network load based on your requirements.Screenshot of Quickly troubleshoot your network with enhanced ping capabilities and packet route tracing, among other network bandwidth usage and monitoring tools included in ETS.Screenshot of Using ETS, you can run scans to gain insight into how routers, hubs switches, and other devices are configured by analyzing SNMP queries and viewing MIB attributes. ETS is designed to help you more easily understand whether your network and ports are using appropriate settings.Screenshot of Config Compare, a part of ETS, is built to compare the running configuration of a Cisco router with the startup configuration. With the Cisco configuration compare tool, you can easily detect the changes made to the network, switch, and router configurations that are not committed to non-volatile memory (NVRAM).Screenshot of Manage your IP network from discovery to address tracking. Discover subnets on a seed router and scan the subnet or a range of IP addresses, generate a list of subnets along with their mask, size, range, and broadcast address and actively monitor subnets to identify and track which IP addresses are in use on your network.