Cisco Catalyst Center DNAC
Updated August 01, 2025

Cisco Catalyst Center DNAC

Dominic Romandi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • Analytics Assurance

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Catalyst Center

We are trying to level up our use of CatC more and more. Currently we are using it for network maps and AP placements, basic assurance, and troubleshooting. I am currently in the process of trying to get our alerting setup to run completely through CatC over to Webex. We eventually want to use it for dashboards for each facility we support (hospitals).

Pros

  • Device issue logging and tracking
  • AP mapping
  • Template editing
  • Access management for different categories of users

Cons

  • IPAM! This is sorely needed. The basic IPAM interface is terrible, seems like an oversight to simply have an IPAM UI similar to Solarwinds' basic tree. I cannot stress this one enough.
  • Event alert customization to really tweak and tailor how alerts are sent and when and with which frequency.
  • Training for CatC. It isnt particularly new user friendly or organized or comprehensive. A lot of marketing terms and not necessarily real world application or use cases.
  • Some of the menu layouts in the UI are not always as intuitive as one would expect. Sometimes they are counter intuitive.
  • Not a ton yet to be honest. The AP mapping and integration with 9800 WLC's has been nice but a minor ROI change. Still a positive change.
  • Network scaling
  • Centralization of management
  • Countless hours saved with configuration templating for several large batch projects we have had. Not to mention the potential mitigation of problems related to typos.
  • ThousandEyes
  • Cisco AnyConnect
  • Cisco Umbrella
Capacity planning and management is always a challenge with these things. Especially a company of our size. Each stage of the connection is its own entity to deal with and that came out in the migration. But again it has worked well. Moving towards more consolidated solutions will continue to be nice.
The impact has been improved performance for remote employees. Having more of a centralized management and one solution as opposed to several small things different groups used. Im sure I dont need to speak too much as to the benefits of consolidating solutions. But that is the biggest area of benefit we saw.
Improved work life balance, improved management of the solution and its components, better performance. Simplified user access management of course is another piece. Again instead of having multiple components and just streamlining everything through one point you can rely on a better access setup structure. Again just all the obvious benefits of consolidation.
I have not used any other products similar to Catalyst Center.

Do you think Cisco Catalyst Center delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with Cisco Catalyst Center's feature set?

Yes

Did Cisco Catalyst Center live up to sales and marketing promises?

No

Did implementation of Cisco Catalyst Center go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Cisco Catalyst Center again?

Yes

I think for larger organizations the IDEA of CatC is fantastic. Sometimes it is the implementation that is frustrating. The IPAM example specifically. Among other minor things. If in the correct environment I think the use case is strong regardless and on that I would recommend. The direction that the industry is headed makes a bigger case for CatC integration; having a single source of truth for the network specifically can help a lot.

Using Cisco Catalyst Center

100 - The most in depth user base would be the variants of network engineers. Mostly network engineers in the strictest sense. More of our engineers focused on unified communications are beginning to use it more, as are the field technicians which we have stationed at each hospital in the field. The latter uses it in a limited capacity, of course.
100 - Support for catalyst center certainly falls more squarely on the laps of the network engineering community in the company. The number is well over 100 but we are a large organization so I am not quite sure of the exact amount. Skills required to support of course include some OS knowledge, Linux in particular. System services and relations, databases, so on. Python and API knowledge could certainly enhance use.
  • Wireless AP placements on the facility map
  • Historical data aggregation for troubleshooting devices and clients
  • Templating for device configurations
  • Troubleshooting extent was a surprise and come to be more used
  • Sharing access to field technicians to assist with various functions
  • The templating is much more useful than I realized it would be admittedly
  • Ideally expanding our templating functions and integrating it into profiles
  • I would really like the IPAM feature to actually become a usable IPAM
  • Custom functions and queries using Python and the API
I think new products are often "half-baked" or over hyped when they release, as was the case with DNAC. We were well ahead of the curve in acquiring it. But as it has matured it is now a fantastic addition to our infrastructure. I think we are easing into a stage where it is hard to envision a large organization NOT having Catalyst Center in place. If for nothing outside of the mapping and troubleshooting aspects; using it as a "source of truth".

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