DNAC
Updated June 14, 2023
DNAC
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Modules Used
- Analytics Assurance
- Automation
Overall Satisfaction with Cisco DNA Center
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.
- Monitoring hardware uptime and reporting outages
- Monitoring end-user experience and repoting problems that occur
- Image management
- 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).
- 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.
I haven't evaluated similar products.
Do you think Cisco Catalyst Center delivers good value for the price?
Yes
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?
No
Would you buy Cisco Catalyst Center again?
Yes
- Webex Meetings
Making it functional and easy for our end-users, yet maintaining security.
From my team's perspective, DNAC significantly reduces troubleshooting time when addressing end-user issues. It also helps us be more proactive. I appreciate the management features like image deployment, inventory management, etc...
Cisco Hybrid Work
- Working from anywhere (e.g., coffee shop, airport)
- Working from an office or other company space
- Working from home
We are finished with our implementation. However, after seeing this morning's keynote, I can see that our having a mix of direct connect, and VPN connect to our applications can be cumbersome for our end-users, so I may be revising our plan.
We chose Cisco because they provide educational institutions with very good pricing and EA models. Therefore we are a Cisco shop, and really didn't compare other products. A key component to our securoty is our Cisco Firepower firewall. We had Fortigate firewalls previously, and we were very happy with them, but they were outdated. We upgraded to Cisco firewalls. There was quite a learning curve, and initially, not all of the features worked. We are hammering out the bugs, and getting more and more happy with them.
WebEx meetings, Zoom, Teams