Cisco SD-WAN review after 3 projects
January 17, 2023

Cisco SD-WAN review after 3 projects

Axel Robbe | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco SD-WAN

Multiple wan lines to branches, dynamic steering, single dashboard for config and mgmt, cloud on-ramp for better cloud integration.

Pros

  • Upgrades
  • Wan steering and metric reporting
  • Easier design because app aware routing etc.
  • Simplify mgmt

Cons

  • Config history (git like)
  • Readability and quality of the main dashboard
  • More clearly indicate resource/hw requirements when wanting to activate services
  • Cisco iOS-xe in controller mode is seriously hampered. Stp didn’t arrive until 17.4/17.5 code and streaming telemetry is still impossible.
  • Centralized mgmt and dashboard
  • Better metrics visibility (compared to classic snmp)
  • It helps deal with specific designs (hub with point2point and a neighboring hub with point2multipoint makes for awkward qos)
  • Absolutely the visibility on the isp performance. All of a sudden the issues became very apparent and we came up with plans to deal with it.
  • An upside is that it runs still on current gen hardware such as isr4k. It helps the sell to clients that aren’t yet at the end of their hw lifecycle
  • General i feel the cost is decent with the controllers etc. One downside is smaller clients have limitations in the number or cloud controllers they can have, which matters with global deployments.

Do you think Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN's feature set?

Yes

Did Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN again?

Yes

Cisco DNA Center, Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE), Fortinet FortiGate
Good: manage a lot of similar sites. Also suits design with a mix of connectivity to centralize QoS deployment. I’m currently recommending this to a client because we cannot solve their issues (properly) in a different way. it might not be a good solution for public transport such as busses etc. Currently investigating this, but prolonged power loss and areas without proper coverage are major concerns.

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