We performed a comparison between Cisco DNA Center and SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Network Automation solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."It gives us automation capabilities for pushing out the configuration to branch networks. It also provides visibility into the health of user network devices."
"What's most valuable in Cisco DNA Center is the ability to manage any Cisco infrastructure and device through it. Setup was straightforward."
"The monitoring features are very useful for network engineers."
"The product offers an intuitive and automated way to manage user networks. It gives me an insight into the network health."
"The most valuable features of the solution are all of its security features...It is a highly scalable solution."
"I like that we can easily configure any new hardware. It's also easy to deploy and easy to troubleshoot."
"I like the visibility, instant build, network, policies, and the ability to control access. I also like that you can visualize your whole network."
"It enables monitoring of various components such as access points, switch cards, and other elements within the company's solutions."
"It is a stable solution."
"I use it for monitoring the entire network for the company. We oversee nodes down, we oversee devices heading up to crossing the threshold for CPU usage. We oversee power so power backups on the switches, we oversee if they're down or if they're failing. We oversee any node down or any router from any vendor."
"The features we find most valuable is the configuration backup automation, the configuration compliance, the security vulnerability detection and upgrading devices."
"It allows us to manage backups in big companies. It is also useful in managing the configuration changes."
"The configuration compliance aspect of SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager allows for easy comparison of configuration settings across branches, ensuring adherence to security guidelines and best practices. Automation capabilities have greatly impacted workflows, enabling tasks such as configuration backups, template deployment, and firmware upgrades to be automated, thereby streamlining processes and saving time. Compliance reporting features provide valuable insights into network compliance, offering pre-built security audit reports and customizable options to meet specific requirements."
"Compared to other vendors, like NetBrain, managing the solution is easy. They made it very user-friendly."
"The scanning features have proven to be highly valuable, particularly due to the comprehensive information they provide."
"The solution's view is very nice, and they have a great customized dashboard."
"The solution's integration feature can be better."
"The weaknesses primarily involve pricing and the ongoing need for increased bandwidth and data throughput."
"There are some software problems from version to version. It takes a long time for DNA Center to recognize the video and control access devices."
"There should be an option for automation of template deployment by using the stored data. It is not easy to save configuration information for lots of devices without using other tools. There should be a tighter, better repository of information that can be merged with the templates."
"They can improve the network visibility. Licensing and its maintenance are also needed."
"Cisco could improve the security side of their solutions."
"The network, data center, and SD-WAN are all being treated as different services, but I would like to have only one solution to manage all of them."
"The tool's IoT integration should be better."
"The only thing that requires some experience, and training doesn't fix, is how to set up your custom policy-based reports to check compliance."
"For each device, when you open the network performance monitor, it will give you all of the information about the device, but many of the natural configuration management features are not on that page."
"Our experience has shown that most of the problems we've had with SolarWinds NCM are related to software issues."
"Its look and feel can be improved. They can also put in more effort into building the THWACK community and use the information about various customer issues and requests to build the new releases."
"It would be great if they include a network service manager, network performance manager, or a privileged assessment in the next release."
"I would like to see more integration tools. Something like dialysis, for example."
"Releasing a product compatible with operating systems other than Windows would be advantageous."
"The solution could improve by being more secure."
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Cisco DNA Center is ranked 1st in Network Automation with 37 reviews while SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is ranked 3rd in Network Automation with 22 reviews. Cisco DNA Center is rated 7.8, while SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Cisco DNA Center writes "Practical implementation of VXLAN is good and provides centralized control". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager writes "Network configuration is done well; great pricing". Cisco DNA Center is most compared with Cisco Prime, Aruba Airwave, Huawei eSight, Juniper Mist Wired Assurance and Fortinet FortiManager, whereas SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is most compared with Cisco Prime, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, OpenText Network Node Manager i, VMware NSX and IBM Tivoli NetCool. See our Cisco DNA Center vs. SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager report.
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