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."People like to use the dashboards to get an overview of their network."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco DNA Center is the AI (Artificial Intelligence) that provides us with valuable information."
"I like that we can easily configure any new hardware. It's also easy to deploy and easy to troubleshoot."
"I think that their LAN automation is a very good feature."
"It gives us automation capabilities for pushing out the configuration to branch networks. It also provides visibility into the health of user network devices."
"It is a stable solution."
"The product offers an intuitive and automated way to manage user networks. It gives me an insight into the network health."
"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. We did the investment in CAPEX, but in the OPEX was very low."
"The features we find most valuable is the configuration backup automation, the configuration compliance, the security vulnerability detection and upgrading devices."
"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."
"We push all our configurations to the servers with ease and the logs capture almost all the transactions needed for an internal audit."
"What's nice with NCM is you can set up policies that you can then check against the configs to ensure that your device configs adhere to a baseline or standard that you've set in place."
"The most valuable features the solution offers are compliance, reliability, and information about reliability."
"It is a stable solution."
"It is pretty straightforward to set up."
"The feature that I really enjoy is the ability to script changes across all of your devices."
"They should include UTM features in the product."
"Cisco DNA Center was a new technology for us, at the beginning, it was not easy to do, but Cisco did a lot of training with us to a level we could handle everything. The team is managing itself now without the assistance of Cisco."
"The solution can be quite pricey."
"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."
"Cisco DNA Center should improve its configuration management. It is better to have a dev version before pushing it."
"When it comes to deploying wireless fields, integrating defaults into the DNS interface can be challenging."
"Technical support could be better. The price could be better, and it could be more stable."
"The solution’s security side could be improved."
"The solution could improve by being more secure."
"I'd like to see additional features like support for devices that don't use CLI for configuration backups, expanded inventory support for other vendors beyond Cisco, and compatibility with newer SD WAN devices. These enhancements would further improve the product's versatility and utility for users. we hope for future enhancements, especially in supporting security devices that lack CLI backup options."
"When it comes to the way of managing the network devices, SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager should provide the simplest way that devices can relate to the server. For example, when we want to get the devices on board, we go by SSH to make the SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager create the connectivity with the device. After that, we pull the configuration. It would be helpful if they could combine both so that everything will be done in one step."
"We want to be able to store it in a data warehouse format and integrate it with Google single sign-on."
"It would be great if they include a network service manager, network performance manager, or a privileged assessment in the next release."
"When we run the SolarWinds NCM jobs at the cellular line, it runs in the morning. They're just not finishing. We're getting false processing."
"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."
"Our experience has shown that most of the problems we've had with SolarWinds NCM are related to software issues."
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Cisco DNA Center is ranked 1st in Network Automation with 36 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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