DNAC
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We mainly use DNAC for managing our Cisco hardware and for its Assurance tools. It gives us good information about the experience of our 8000+ end-users on both our wired and wireless network, and it is a very good tool for troubleshooting when those users are having problems. I like the inventory control tool that enable us to be notified when devices go down or are removed from the network. It is a nice one-dstop shop for managing those devices because commands, IOS upgrades, configuration changes can all be pushed out to the device or multiple devices.
Pros
- Monitoring hardware uptime and reporting outages
- Monitoring end-user experience and repoting problems that occur
- Image management
Cons
- Upgrading is always scary; sometimes updates work, and sometimes they result in a TAC call.
- Sometimes outages are not reported in real time, and sometimes they are not reported at all.
- It is sometimes difficult to determine the root cause of a problem Sometimes all DNAC will tell you is that yes, a problem occurred.
- Image management can be clunk at times, especially when multiple models are lumped together under one series (i.e. Catalyst 2960G switches are lumped in with Catalyst 2960X switches even though a different gold-star image is used with each).
Return on Investment
- It has saved us time when provisioning hardware.
- Like Prime Infrastructure before it, it provides nice graphical views of your network, particularly wireless.
- Assurance data can be used to justify purchases to improve end-user experience.
Other Software Used
ThousandEyes, Cisco Firepower 4100 Series, Cisco Catalyst 9300 Series Switches
