We performed a comparison between Cisco ACI and VMware NSX based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Cisco ACI is a solid, robust solution but can be complex to understand and manage for users not familiar with the Cisco ecosystem. VMware is considered a solution that is easy to learn and manage and offers great security with a distributed firewall. This added security and micro-segmentation make VMware NSX a trusted, complete value-added solution.
"The initial setup was trivially simple and easy. It builds itself because it is automation. You don't have to do too much."
"Configures from a single point and commands don't need to be configured on the spine and leaf side."
"The most valuable feature is the throughput that it offers."
"All the features provided by Cisco ACI including orchestration to layer seven, service training, load enhancements and firewalls."
"The stability is perfect. We have had no problems with Cisco ACI."
"In a very general way, the ease of access, ease of use, and ease of connecting the system is a valuable feature in itself. The solution doesn't really increase detection rates as that is not what it was created for. Threat prevention comes in from other devices that might be connected into the Cisco ACI that monitors external traffic. It maintains what end-of-life products would be doing and offers other opportunities to unify solutions."
"We had different networks and combined them with ACI so we could have the control of one controller-based network. Also, everything is combined now."
"The stability is quite good."
"This is a good firewall and overall it is rich in features."
"VMware NSX offers some of the best features for security, such as micro-segmentation."
"One of the big improvements between the NSX-V and NSX-T is that in NSX-T you are no longer dependent on V-Center anymore."
"The micro-segmentation and the ability to create policy rules are valuable."
"Has a great firewall."
"NSX extends Layer-2 scalability on Layer 3, covering the vRO and extending the capability on Layer 3 by decapsulating using a new mechanism. NSX-V was designed to use with VMware products and Success 360, providing more flexibility toward different levels of cloud, containers, and components. NSX-T gives you the ability to stretch your network across different view locations. If you have multiple sites, you can connect them using NSX-T."
"The performance is good."
"NSX's stand-out function is the distributed firewall. The firewall system is just top-notch, and I haven't seen another solution like it."
"The only drawback that we are seeing is the user interface is still a little complex and difficult to use. It needs a more user-friendly interface."
"So far we've had very few issues, a couple of routing things that were glitches within ACI."
"Cisco ACI would be improved by providing a cloud offering; otherwise, it risks becoming a niche product."
"My complaint about this is: We purchased the ACI gear, but to do monitoring, to do stats, to do telemetry statistics, etc. we have to purchase another product from Cisco."
"I would like to be able to test the upgrades in a simulation before implementing them in production because not everyone has a lab."
"The CLI needs to be improved."
"It is still not mature and has room to grow. As with any product out there, it requires time to develop."
"Compared to VMware, it needs more virtualization technologies."
"We've have had good and bad experiences with them. We don't always find them to be so impactful. Sometimes the support guy isn't so on top of resolving the issue and it can take a while to sort out."
"The price is rather high."
"Quite a complex solution."
"It was stable for one year, there was no impact. In the last two months, we had two big incidents."
"Some configuration maximums are limiting to the user, especially when it comes to the deployment of very, very large environments."
"Occasionally the licensing is not very clear. They should make it easier to understand."
"The integration with other brands is not the best."
"The solution is only sold as part of a bundle and not as an individual product."
Cisco ACI is ranked 1st in Network Virtualization with 96 reviews while VMware NSX is ranked 2nd in Network Virtualization with 93 reviews. Cisco ACI is rated 8.0, while VMware NSX is rated 8.0. 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 VMware NSX writes "Allows for seamless micro-segmentation and the support is exceptional". Cisco ACI is most compared with Cisco Secure Workload, Nuage Networks, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, Juniper Contrail Networking and HPE SDN, whereas VMware NSX is most compared with Nutanix Flow Network Security, Illumio, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, Cisco Secure Workload and Cisco DNA Center. See our Cisco ACI vs. VMware NSX report.
See our list of best Network Virtualization vendors and best Cloud and Data Center Security vendors.
We monitor all Network Virtualization 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.
There are some very major differences between both the Products and to name a few.
-Cisco ACI have physical network gear (9K Switches) where the Code runs in ACI Policy Mode & the UCS server where APIC software runs.
-VMware NSX doesn't have any physical network gear of its own, VMware NSX software runs on ESXi hosts(Any Vendor) & even NSX Bare Metal Edge runs on any Vendor hardware(check compatibility)
-Cisco ACI offers both Underlay & Overlay functionality
-VMware NSX is a software and it builds an Overlay tunnel for (VM/Container) communication on top of an already established IP network which can be build on hardware network gear (Cisco Legacy/ACI/Juniper etc.)
-Cisco ACI: To use micro-segmentation on a VM or Container level you will need some other Cisco products
-VMware NSX: Micro-segmentation can be done Out of the Box because DFW Distributed Firewall are applied on the vnic of a VM i.e. on the ESXi kernel.
Being different in many manners but they still define the SDN realm with L2-L7 Network services and what you choose over the other may depend on many other factors like what network gear you already have or if its Green or Brownfield deployment. For example if your infra already have something other than Cisco 9K switches and is well configured then it will make more sense to use NSX to make use of all the SDN functionalities. This is just an example not a recommendation.
Once you know your way around the Cisco ecosystem, using Cisco ACI is not so difficult. It is a global product, so when you change one interface, changes are automatically reflected on every switch. Cisco ACI can connect with both virtualized networks and physical networks.
As with many Cisco solutions, Cisco ACI has a steep learning curve. It is not user-friendly and most of our team would like to see a better GUI. It would be great if we could test upgrades in a simulation before implementing; this could save a lot of rework and downtime.
The key component for us with VMware NSX is the distributed firewall. VMware NSX can segment every application and server based on the ports with which they need to communicate. We can activate the ports we need and disable the ones we don’t. This really helps to keep things very secure and makes VMware NSX very flexible.
We would like to see VMware NSX integrate better with other open-source solutions; integration can be very complex leading many to simply choose not to use VMware NSX at all. We found some maximums can be very limiting, especially with very large environments. VMware can only be used with virtualized networks.
Conclusion:
Cisco ACI and VMware have many similar qualities and features. The fundamental difference is that Vmware NSX’s primary focus is on virtualized networks, while Cisco ACI can connect to both virtual and physical networks.
Vmware NSX can provide better levels of granularity and visibility into how your workload performs and functions. Cisco ACI does not provide this.
Because Cisco ACI is more robust and can handle both physical and virtual networks, Cisco ACI might be a more appropriate solution. At the end of the day, it really depends on your organization’s ecosystem and applications, features and utilities needed, and, of course, cost of implementation. You may need one of these solutions or both.