Cisco DNA Center vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform comparison

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4,213 views|2,398 comparisons
88% willing to recommend
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2,493 views|1,749 comparisons
97% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco DNA Center and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 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.
To learn more, read our detailed Cisco DNA Center vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Report (Updated: March 2024).
769,662 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"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 were the monitoring, maintenance, and configuration.""It gives us automation capabilities for pushing out the configuration to branch networks. It also provides visibility into the health of user network devices.""DNA Center is scalable.""Application Assurance works very well.""The best feature of Cisco DNA Center is the visibility page, where you can see everything on the dashboard, and you don't have to be a technical person to view the issues.""It does a lot of things automatically, and that's the big thing with it. They're making the software so that you don't need to be as knowledgeable as me on the switching and routing side to get your work done. If you want, you can have DNA troubleshoot your problem for you and give you solutions or fix it itself, if it was something that's just a configuration issue.""The solution helps with the management and orchestration of campaigns. It helps with visibility and analytics. I also like its SDA configuration."

More Cisco DNA Center Pros →

"It is very extensible. There are many plugins and modules out there that everybody helps create to interact with different cloud providers as well.""RBAC is great around Organizations and I can use that backend as our lab. Ingesting stuff into the JSON logs, into any sort of logging collector; it works with Splunk and there are other collectors as well. It supports Sumo and that helps, I can go create reports in Sumo Logic. Workflows are an interesting feature. I can collect a lot of templates and create a workflow out of them.""It does not require staff for deployment and maintenance. It just works.""The most valuable features of the solution are its configuration management, drift management, workflow templates with the visual UI, and graphical workflow representation.""It has an easy-to-use interface. It is REST API driven, and it integrates with Active Directory. It provides the ability to grant permissions to other users who would not necessarily have those permissions via the GUI so that they could run other people's jobs. For example, you could have the Oracle team grant permissions to the Linux team so that they can use each of those playbooks or each other's code. It is called shift-left.""The most valuable features of the solution are automation and patching.""Since it is in YAML, if I have to explain it to somebody else, they can easily understand it.""The solution is very simple to use."

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Pros →

Cons
"DNA Center has been on the market for a few years and they need to update it.""Integration with analytic tools and API integrations would be ideal.""Technical support could be better. The price could be better, and it could be more stable.""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.""What I want to see in Cisco DNA Center in the future is more support for other platforms so that you can manage third-party products, such as Fortinet.""It seems to be a little bit more centered toward wireless than wired. You've got more options you can do wirelessly than you can with the wired switches, but it works for what we need it to do. We would like to see a little bit more about the traffic, and we're looking at what's out there to see about that. We are looking at something that might give us a bit more insight into the actual traffic. If they had the full functionality on the wired side, as they do on the wireless side in terms of being able to view traffic and everything, it would be good.""The tool's deployment is complex. It also needs to improve its GUI.""They should include UTM features in the product."

More Cisco DNA Center Cons →

"We would like support for the post-integration of this product before cloud frameworks because right now their approach is to avoid using on-premises activities and move everything to the cloud.""The governance features could be improved.""Because Ansible is establishing SSH sessions to perform tasks, there is a limit on scalability.""On the Dashboard, when you view a template run, it shows all the output. There is a search filter, but it would be nice to able to select one server in that run and then see all that output from just that one server, instead of having to do the search on that one server and find the results.""The solution is slightly expensive, and its pricing could be improved.""For Ansible Tower, there are three tiers with ten nodes. I would like them to expand those ten nodes to 20, because ten nodes is not enough to test on.""The product could do a better job at building infrastructure.""There is always room for improvement in features or customer support."

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Our licensing agreement is for three years."
  • "I do know that Cisco does offer some really good promotions for DNA Center to bring the costs down."
  • "The licensing cost for Cisco DNA Center is not more than that of other solutions."
  • "Licensing for Cisco DNA Center is a little bit expensive, just like any Cisco solution. Its cost could still be improved."
  • "We have a three-year license with them."
  • "Cisco DNA Center is a licensed product with multiple levels of licensing available such as basic, advanced, and essential. I don't have the exact figure, but Cisco DNA Center is costly. For example, the box has information about the essential license and costs a considerable amount of money. You need to pay extra to use advanced features in Cisco DNA Center. My company sees Cisco DNA Center as a solution that's worth the money, which is why it invested in the solution. If you want centralized management for your network, especially when upgrading it, Cisco DNA Center is perfect, but it's more suitable for a large-scale rather than a small-scale network."
  • "The price could be better. It's a very expensive tool."
  • "It is an expensive solution."
  • More Cisco DNA Center Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Like many Red Hat products, they have a no-cost version of the web application (AWX, formerly Ansible Tower), but you are on your own to install and it is a little more complicated than just installing Ansible."
  • "The cost is high, but it still works well."
  • "We went with product because we have a subscription for Red Hat."
  • "Ansible Tower is free. Until they lower the cost, we are holding off on purchasing the product."
  • "Red Hat's open source approach was a factor when choosing Ansible, since the solution is free as of right now."
  • "You don't need to buy agents on servers or deploy expense management when using the solution, which affected our decision to go with it."
  • "The cost is determined by the number of endpoints."
  • "We're charged between $8 to $13 a month per license."
  • More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The automation features are significant, reducing configuration time. This means outstanding functionality. By deploying the controller automatically, the rest becomes automated
    Top Answer:When it comes to deploying wireless fields, integrating defaults into the DNS interface can be challenging.
    Top Answer:Red Hat Satellite has proven to be a worthwhile investment for me. Both its patch management and license management have been outstanding. If you have a large environment, patching systems is much… more »
    Top Answer:Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager takes knowledge and research to properly configure. The length of time that the set up will take depends on the kind of technical architecture that your… more »
    Top Answer:The most valuable features of the solution are automation and patching.
    Ranking
    1st
    out of 22 in Network Automation
    Views
    4,213
    Comparisons
    2,398
    Reviews
    26
    Average Words per Review
    465
    Rating
    7.8
    2nd
    out of 22 in Network Automation
    Views
    2,493
    Comparisons
    1,749
    Reviews
    26
    Average Words per Review
    502
    Rating
    8.7
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    DNA Center
    Ansible
    Learn More
    Overview

    Cisco DNA Center is a robust, intuitive network controller and management platform that provides secure, safe access to applications and networks. Cisco DNA Center allows you to take control of your network to increase the effectiveness of your Cisco products, lower your TCO, and improve your ROI.

    Your organization’s network is an integral part of your business’s success. In today’s aggressive marketplace, organizations need a network management system in place that can effectively automate deployments and connectivity, and manage the health of their infrastructure. Additionally, management systems also need to be able to strategically maintain the quality and safety of their systems so that the organization can direct valuable IT resources to concentrate on projects that can improve the overall effectiveness of the organization. An intent-based network controller such as Cisco DNA center will help your organization do that.

    Cisco DNA Center is a group of software solutions that will automate all your virtual devices, provide secure administration of your network, and ensure the best network experience for all users on the network. Cisco DNA Center does away with all the tedious, mundane tasks and simplifies workflow device installations, upgrading from hours to minutes using Plug-and-Play (PnP) and Software Image Management (SWIM).

    Cisco DNA Center’s intuitive, robust assurance feature makes every network point a sensor, continually communicating user connectivity and application performance in real time. This ensures all issues are resolved immediately.

    Cisco DNA Center integrates with Cisco security solutions, Cisco Umbrella, and Cisco Secure Network Analytics, which provide an extra level of extensive security protection against threats. The entire solution can be easily managed from one single dashboard, making Cisco DNA Center a very robust, secure, complete solution.

    Benefits of Cisco DNA Center

    • Cost-effectiveness: Policy automation and remediation minimizes the amount of time IT staff spend managing mundane network tasks.
    • Improved performance: AI/ML automation improves workflow and overall user experience. A clean, crisp dashboard makes management easy.
    • Enhance your network: Cisco DNA Center delivers the latest, most intuitive cloud services and applications to optimize your network.

    • Improved security: Cisco DNA Center utilizes the most robust zero-trust policies based on overall endpoint user behavior to keep networks secure.

    Features of Cisco DNA Center

    • Easy automation: Cisco DNA Center offers zero-touch device deployment, automated quality of service (QoS), automated device discovery, and drag-and-drop policy creation.

    • Clear analytics: Cisco DNA Center offers more than 150 workable insights, such as guided remediation, endpoint tracking, context-guided analytics, and more.

    • Simplified management: Users have complete control from a user-friendly single dashboard that provides a completely transparent view of the network, devices, applications, and services. Additionally, there is integration with Cisco Prime or APIC-EM for the importation of maps or other configurations as needed.

    • Security: Cisco DNA Center provides a highly secure segmentation, encrypted traffic analytics, and robust threat detection and response, and also uses Stealthwatch and ISE integration.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Mostafa G., Network and Data Center Supervisor at a hospitality company, says, “Since using the solution, three or four people can do what 10 people could previously. It has been a benefit to the organization. We have many people from the team who manage a lot of devices. By using Cisco DNA Center, it has taken some of that burden away, we are impressed with it.”

    Nihar K., Managing Director at Allot Group, relates, “In day-to-day operations, especially post-pandemic, the majority of our customers have to work from anywhere. It's not just work from home, it's work from anywhere. Due to this work from anywhere concept, the traditional silos of a network for the data center architecture, managing everything from anywhere, and having that single integrated dashboard for each and every activity while being able to correlate those activities in line with a business objective, has been very well addressed by Cisco DNA. The solution's most valuable aspect is its simplicity and the complete automation of the network workflow, which we can use that correlate with the business. It's not only limited to STXs or a data center. It completes everything, which really helps us.

    Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is a powerful network automation solution that allows organizations to handle every aspect of their application launch process within a single product. It enables users to share their automations so that teams within an organization can collaborate on various projects with ease. Ansible Automation Platform is designed to be used by all employees involved in the network automation process.

    Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Benefits

    Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform include:


    • Maximum benefit for reduced overhead. Ansible Automation Platform is an all-in-one solution that can enable users to do the jobs of multiple products with one. Users do not need to purchase multiple products to handle their network automation and application development needs. It is equipped with prefabricated content from more than one hundred companies that are partnered with it.


    • Scalable. Ansible Automation Platform is a highly scalable solution. It can easily be scaled up so that automations can be extended across the various devices that make up an organization’s network.


    • Flexibility. Ansible Automation Platform is highly flexible. It enables users to tackle any and all automation-related tasks.


    Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Features


    • Automation analytics. Ansible Automation Platform comes equipped with an automation analytics feature. This feature enables organizations to measure the effects of their automations and plan how they are going to implement automations moving forward. It makes it easy for administrators to spot anomalies in their automations and resolve them before they can escalate and become major issues.


    • Integration suite. Ansible Automation Platform gives organizations access to a wide variety of integrations that enable them to connect to Ansible’s partners. Now users can augment their capabilities without needing to purchase additional solutions that will enable them to run features that are not normally a part of Ansible’s array of tools. The Ansible environment is built to handle the wide variety of integrations that their partners offer. In order to accomplish this it includes the APIs that users need in order to fully benefit from the integrations. 


    • Centralized interface. Ansible Automation Platform comes with a centralized GUI interface that enables users to manage all of their network automation and application creation activities from a single location. Businesses can guarantee that their operations are going to be handled efficiently and according to a single standard. The management process is greatly simplified. All of the tools that users need are located in one place.


    Reviews from Real Users

    Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is a highly effective solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Two major advantages it offers are its automation manager and its comprehensive centralized GUI-based management interface.

    MD J., a solution architect at STBL, says, “The automation manager is very good and makes things easier for customers with multi-cloud platforms.”

    Aankit G., a Consultant at Pi DATACENTERS, writes, “We like the GUI-based interface for the tower. Before, we only had a command-line interface to run all the Ansible tasks. Now, the Ansible tower provides the complete GUI functionality to run, manage, and create the templates and the Ansible jobs. This includes the code and YAML file we can create. The GUI interface is the added advantage of this solution, including some integration with the different plugins.”

    Sample Customers
    Information Not Available
    HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider19%
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Hospitality Company10%
    University10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company20%
    Government9%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Healthcare Company6%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm21%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Healthcare Company12%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization25%
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Government7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business24%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise61%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise70%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business31%
    Midsize Enterprise10%
    Large Enterprise59%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business13%
    Midsize Enterprise32%
    Large Enterprise54%
    Buyer's Guide
    Cisco DNA Center vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco DNA Center vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    769,662 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Cisco DNA Center is ranked 1st in Network Automation with 37 reviews while Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is ranked 2nd in Network Automation with 58 reviews. Cisco DNA Center is rated 7.8, while Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is rated 8.6. 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 Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform writes "Capable of broad integrations with easy-to-operate infrastructure and user controls". Cisco DNA Center is most compared with Cisco Prime, Aruba Airwave, SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager, Huawei eSight and NetBrain, whereas Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is most compared with Red Hat Satellite, Microsoft Configuration Manager, VMware Aria Automation, Microsoft Azure DevOps and Automic Workload Automation. See our Cisco DNA Center vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform report.

    See our list of best Network Automation vendors.

    We monitor all Network Automation reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.