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 centralized management of the entire network data center, in this case with ACI, is the most valuable feature. By having access to some powerful APIs you can build your own tool to speak to the ACI controller, then with that, you can deploy things really fast. Having the option to build your own tools and then using the centralized management of the ACI to push the configuration to the network devices is very valuable."
"Cisco's technical support team is very good."
"The most useful feature in the ACI is a feature called Service Graph."
"The initial setup was pretty straightforward. We just moved from one platform to another."
"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."
"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."
"With its programmability, you can do stuff to policies to make them more flexible, allowing you to connect devices in new ways."
"One area where it has an advantage... is that you're able to reuse a specific integration. If you add another server, you can use a specific integration and assign it to another port."
"It is easy to implement it."
"The we can actually extend Layer 2 networking across datacenters, and also Layer 3 networking, which comes along with it."
"One significant advantage of VMware NSX is the ability to provide advanced security at the micro-level, focusing on securing applications and workloads rather than just the network structure or virtualization-based network security."
"The alert features are the most valuable."
"The performance is good."
"The Distributed firewall is simple to add to the network and rules are easy to implement."
"VMware NSX is a very good solution. It's also a scalable solution."
"The dashboard is comprehensive and easy to use."
"Because this is new technology, which requires a different way of thinking, it can be hard to understand. Therefore, I would like more documentation or education."
"We faced some issues while configuring the microsegment."
"Where there is room for improvement from ACI is for Layer 2 and Layer 7 packages. Normally, when you're updating your ACI fabric or you're introducing new Layer 4 to Layer 7 devices, there are some constraints, there are some limitations... When you are doing device packages you will not have the functionality of ASM. It's like WAF, web application firewalls. So you need to configure it manually."
"There should be an alternative "ACI Light" solution for smaller-sized enterprises."
"I would rate this solution a five out of ten. Not a ten because I don't have good training for this solution. I am now implementing Cisco ACI in the company. It's not 100% on the network. It's on 25% approx, more or less."
"I would like to see more troubleshooting apps."
"We have had two calls with technical support. They are not the best. We opened a case to diagnose issues and it's taken weeks to get someone on the case and to move forward."
"The initial set up was complex. We had to deploy 120 leads. Migrating from Legacy Cisco network to ACI was complex."
"It could be cheaper!"
"The price is rather high."
"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."
"An area for improvement in VMware NSX is that it uses up more resources and is heavy on the network. What I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is more automation."
"One aspect that needs improvement is the need for further automation."
"The technical support could use some improvement."
"Lacks integration with other solutions."
"Just being more knowledgeable about the different functions."
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, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, Nuage Networks, 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.