We performed a comparison between Cisco ACI and Cisco Enterprise Network Functions Virtualization based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Network Virtualization solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."With ACI, if you need more capacity you can just buy more and plug them in without needing to do anything else. All of the sudden that infrastructure is there for me to use, configure, and add stuff to."
"Now, our customers have tiers of management that have meetings with about the simplest tasks because it has to be approved from upper management and senior management and by the time it gets to the engineer that's going to deploy it, it takes way too long. With the solution, they can delegate a person who would be in charge of running the ACI as a whole, and it will be much faster because it doesn't have to go through the whole chain of command for the simple task of deploying one little machine on one port in the data center."
"The basic functionality that is the most useful is creating a virtual network on a physical device."
"It is easy to use because you have all the information coming from the same technology."
"Configures from a single point and commands don't need to be configured on the spine and leaf side."
"The integration with vCenter means that when I create something on the network, it only has to happen one time instead of many times for our many virtual hosts."
"The best part of Cisco ACI is the server deployment and integration."
"The most valuable feature is the unified fabric."
"Routing, switching, and wireless network security are the valuable features of Cisco Enterprise Network Functions Virtualization."
"Scalability is not a problem."
"The support system that they have in place is very good and they are easy to reach."
"Network Security is one of the most valuable features of Cisco Enterprise Network Functions Virtualization."
"The most valuable feature is its user-friendly management dashboard."
"It is easy to manage, easy to maintain, and stable. If you set up everything alright, it will give years without any issues."
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"It would be great if ACI would include the next generation firewall feature."
"Deploying Cisco ACI was a little complex because we needed to add a lot to the fabric. You need to configure some servers, connect everything, make templates, and deploy switches. It takes five people to deploy and maintain."
"The way the objects are oriented on it are not as straightforward as they should be."
"Quality Assurance could be better, and there are a lot of bugs in each release. We discover these bugs when we upgrade the ACI environment, sometimes resulting in downtime. In the next release, I would like to be able to manage hybrid cloud networking. So currently, if you have an ACI environment running on-premise or Epic in the cloud, we can handle it with the NexSys dashboard. But if Cisco can integrate SD WAN-related features, through which we can do multi-cloud networking, that will be an awesome feature. It should be more flexible."
"The ability for us to figure out the traffic flows, to enable some of the more segmentation parts of it, is really tough with what is built into ACI."
"Technical support needs to be more helpful. It's rare that you get a knowledgeable person."
"The initial setup was a bit complex."
"Customer support for ACI needs improvement. Many customers prefer HPE because their internal support is different and easier to integrate with existing networks. This lack of awareness of ACI's capabilities makes customers stick to traditional networking."
"One of the things that can be improved is trimming all mobile numbers so that it aids in swiftly acquiring information for tablets or any necessary solution."
"There is room for improvement in enhancing compatibility with other solutions and vendors."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say the cost. The SDN hardware especially is much too expensive, specifically 799 and 9000."
"The solution's orchestration part could be improved."
"It would be helpful if they offered modularized upgrades, such as additional memory or a faster processor."
"This is a software solution, which is less stable than a hardware solution by definition."
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Cisco ACI is ranked 1st in Network Virtualization with 96 reviews while Cisco Enterprise Network Functions Virtualization is ranked 3rd in Network Virtualization with 6 reviews. Cisco ACI is rated 8.0, while Cisco Enterprise Network Functions Virtualization is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Cisco ACI writes "Stable, easy to extend, scalable, and has a host-based routing feature". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco Enterprise Network Functions Virtualization writes "Versatile, offering flexibility and scalability". Cisco ACI is most compared with VMware NSX, Cisco Secure Workload, Nuage Networks, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation and Juniper Contrail Networking, whereas Cisco Enterprise Network Functions Virtualization is most compared with . See our Cisco ACI vs. Cisco Enterprise Network Functions Virtualization report.
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