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."I like the visibility, instant build, network, policies, and the ability to control access. I also like that you can visualize your whole network."
"The monitoring features are very useful for network engineers."
"It is very versatile in terms of analytics."
"It is simple to manage and it is all done from a single dashboard."
"The most valuable features of Cisco DNA Center are wireless assurance and visibility."
"DNA Center is scalable."
"People like to use the dashboards to get an overview of their network."
"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."
"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."
"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 configuration compliance aspect of SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager allows for easy comparison of configuration settings across branches, ensuring adherence to security guidelines and best practices. Automation capabilities have greatly impacted workflows, enabling tasks such as configuration backups, template deployment, and firmware upgrades to be automated, thereby streamlining processes and saving time. Compliance reporting features provide valuable insights into network compliance, offering pre-built security audit reports and customizable options to meet specific requirements."
"This solution has helped our organization by allowing us to store all the device configurations for the various network devices in NCM and making it easy for us to retrieve and look them over."
"The most valuable features the solution offers are compliance, reliability, and information about reliability."
"The most valuable Real-time fault detection is beneficial as it enables the identification of changes made to a device's configuration through the SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager. This makes it easy to pinpoint which configurations were added or removed, potentially causing network issues. Such changes are saved in logs for future reference."
"SolarWinds NCM provides updates on the status of your network infrastructure. If any issues arise, such as a link failure or a device going offline, you will receive notifications and alerts. Additionally, if someone unplugs a cable, SolarWinds NCM will detect it. It also features a Topology Mapper that displays the connectivity of your network devices, giving you a visual representation of the network's structure. With SolarWinds NCM, you have a clear understanding of what's happening within your network and can generate comprehensive reports."
"We push all our configurations to the servers with ease and the logs capture almost all the transactions needed for an internal audit."
"The features of Cisco DNA Center and Cisco Prime could have more parity."
"There is a limitation with the number of VRFs that you can have in your network, and this has caused us problems with some customers."
"Integration with analytic tools and API integrations would be ideal."
"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."
"When it comes to deploying wireless fields, integrating defaults into the DNS interface can be challenging."
"They can improve the network visibility. Licensing and its maintenance are also needed."
"The solution needs to improve the dashboard."
"The product doesn’t have good monitoring capabilities."
"Its look and feel can be improved. They can also put in more effort into building the THWACK community and use the information about various customer issues and requests to build the new releases."
"The network logs could be improved. When the error logs come across with those false positive alarms in the error logs."
"For each device, when you open the network performance monitor, it will give you all of the information about the device, but many of the natural configuration management features are not on that page."
"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."
"The third-party plugins available in the solution could improve. I have received some issues with the templates."
"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."
"The network flow is a problem for this solution."
"Releasing a product compatible with operating systems other than Windows would be advantageous."
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Cisco DNA Center is ranked 1st in Network Automation with 37 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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