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Our primary use case for Azure Virtual Network Manager is centrally managing connectivity and security policies and network topology across multiple Azure subscriptions and regions. We use it to standardize network configurations, automate VNet peering, and enforce consistent security rules for large enterprise and multi-customer Azure environments.
Azure Virtual Network Manager has positively impacted our organization by helping us standardize network governance across large Azure environments while reducing manual administration. It has improved security consistency, accelerated customer onboarding, and made it much easier to manage multiple subscription and multi-region deployments from a central location.
The best features of Azure Virtual Network Manager are centralized network management, automated VNet connectivity, secure admin rules, and network group-based policy deployment. We also value its ability to consistently apply networking and security configurations across multiple subscriptions and regions, which greatly simplifies enterprise-scale operations.
The feature I rely on the most is Security Admin Rules in Azure Virtual Network Manager. It allows us to enforce baseline network security policies centrally across all VNets, regardless of individual NSG configurations. For a managed service provider, it is extremely valuable because it ensures consistent security, simplifies governance, and reduces operational effort across multiple customer environments.
Another feature that stands out for us is Network Group with automated VNet membership, which allows newly deployed VNets to inherit the correct connectivity and security policies automatically. This has made large-scale Azure deployments much easier to manage and significantly reduced manual configurations and policy drift across customer environments.
Azure Virtual Network Manager could be improved with richer topology visualization, more detailed troubleshooting tools, and better reporting for policy compliance across large environments. We would also like deeper integrations with third-party network security platforms and more granular automation options for complex multi-region enterprise deployments.
We would also like better change impact analysis before deploying network configuration updates, so we can validate policy changes across large environments with greater confidence. Support for more advanced traffic analytics and easier rollback of network policy changes would further improve day-to-day operations in enterprise-scale deployments using Azure Virtual Network Manager.
I have been using Azure Virtual Network Manager for two years.
A good example of my day-to-day work with Azure Virtual Network Manager is a customer with multiple Azure subscriptions across development, test, and production. We use Azure Virtual Network Manager to centrally deploy hub-and-spoke connectivity and apply the same security admin rules to all VNets instead of configuring each network individually. This reduces configuration effort, eliminates policy inconsistencies, and makes onboarding new VNets much faster.
We also use Azure Virtual Network Manager to automate network governance as customers expand into new subscriptions and regions. It helps us maintain consistent connectivity, security policies, and compliance across large Azure estates without increasing operational overhead.
We have reduced network provisioning and policy deployment time by 40 to 50 percent by centrally managing connectivity and security policies instead of configuring each VNet individually. We have also seen a 30 percent decrease in network configuration errors due to standardized policy enforcement and automation, allowing the same engineering team to manage a larger Azure footprint more efficiently.
From my experience, Azure Virtual Network Manager is not an AI-focused product, but its governance and security capabilities are excellent. Centralized security admin rules, network groups, role-based access control, and Azure Policy integration help us enforce consistent security controls and governance across large multi-subscription Azure environments.
Since Azure Virtual Network Manager is not an AI-driven service, I evaluate it based on the accuracy and reliability of its policy deployment and network management. In my experience, policy application and connectivity configuration are highly consistent and predictable, giving us confidence when managing large-scale enterprise Azure environments.
My advice is to implement Azure Virtual Network Manager early in your Azure adoption journey rather than after the environment becomes large and complex. Define network groups, IP addressing, and security baseline upfront. Then automate policy deployment with infrastructure as code. This approach greatly simplifies governance, reduces configuration drift, and scales much better as your Azure footprint grows. I would rate this product an eight out of ten.
I predominantly work on switching and routing, specifically utilizing products like Secure Access, UCM, or something similar from Cisco. Currently, we are working with Catalyst 9000 series for the switches and Catalyst 8000 series for the routers. From the router, we use 8200 and 8300 series, and from switches, all 9200, 9300, and 9500 series. We use Catalyst Center in at least one or two cases.
Sometimes I use Firepower firewalls and sometimes I go for the Cisco ISE solution, ISE licenses, ISC licenses. We also work with wireless solutions like Meraki as well as Catalyst wireless. I am using Cisco ISE for network virtualization.
ACI is predominantly on the Nexus platform. We have deployed Cisco ACI for a couple of our customers where they migrated from the traditional Catalyst or traditional enterprise solutions to a Nexus platform for their data center network. We use Cisco ACI infrastructure for the SD-WAN and for the data center SDN solutions.
We have deployed Cisco ACI for a couple of our customers where they migrated from the traditional Catalyst or traditional enterprise solutions to a Nexus platform for their data center network. We use Cisco ACI infrastructure for the SD-WAN and for the data center SDN solutions.
For Cisco ACI, we predominantly use it for the data center software-defined network, where customers will have more control on their applications and it will have a matrix kind of architecture and it can have seamless connectivity and seamless access to applications without being moving from a traditional architecture of a data center. This is where they will have more visibility into their network and they can add any workloads in their network easily rather than pushing the configurations or doing the configuration from scratch. Configuration templates are already available in Cisco ACI, which we can push to the next workload which is getting connected to Cisco ACI infrastructure.
Cisco ACI infrastructure is predominantly for the server infrastructure. It is not the traditional VLANs or those things getting configured. It is basically the VXLANs and Data Center Bridging solutions would come in. There is a spine-leaf architecture where the spine controls the control plane of all the leaf, and the leaf will connect the nodes or the workloads of the servers to that. For the data center management team or the IT team, it will be easy to deploy any new workloads. Instead of taking days or multiple days for a deployment of a server or application, they can do it immediately within minutes because all the configuration templates are already there in the control plane, which we can push immediately when the new server gets added. This provides operational simplicity and visibility, making it easier for the data center IT team.
Analytics can be used, and AppDynamics can also be integrated into Cisco ACI for application-level monitoring, enabling analysis of applications and determining which application is taking how much of network loads. This kind of integration is possible, and Nexus Dashboard can also be useful in highlighting and providing a single dashboard to view all performance and any issues that may arise, which helps in faster troubleshooting.
Deployment could be made a bit simpler and the licensing part could be a bit easier as well, along with improvements on the costing.
There could be improvements such as a sort of C-worm, which is Cisco Workload Optimization Manager, where if there is a Cisco ACI infrastructure integrated with that, workload optimization could be done and perhaps also integrate security. There have been improvements happening towards that as well.
I would rate stability for Cisco ACI at eight.
Integration with third-party tools like VMware, OpenStack, or Microsoft Azure is definitely possible.
Cisco has a Customer Experience team and other professional services coming in, so their support seems to be good, and they try to solve issues as early as possible. Support is really good.
We are a Gold Partner for Cisco and a global Gold Partner for Cisco, so we resell Cisco products and have skill sets to provide services for Cisco. We have certified resources across our country and every country, and we utilize them for deployment and other professional services. We don't do marketplace; we go through direct Cisco. We sell directly through Cisco, discuss with the customer, and arrange a back-to-back ordering with Cisco instead of going through a marketplace.
I have seen Arista as one of the competitors of Cisco ACI, and in some places, we have seen Juniper Networks as competition as well.
We are still working with Cisco products. I have not much used Cisco ACI, but we have proposed it to customers. I have been working with Cisco ACI for almost three to four years.
Cisco ACI infrastructure is predominantly for the server infrastructure. It is not the traditional VLANs or those things getting configured. It is basically the VXLANs and Data Center Bridging solutions would come in. There is a spine-leaf architecture where the spine controls the control plane of all the leaf, and the leaf will connect the nodes or the workloads of the servers to that. For the data center management team or the IT team, it will be easy to deploy any new workloads. Instead of taking days or multiple days for a deployment of a server or application, they can do it immediately within minutes because all the configuration templates are already there in the control plane, which we can push immediately when the new server gets added. This provides operational simplicity and visibility, making it easier for the data center IT team.
Automation processes can definitely be done as well. I am totally satisfied with the functionality of Cisco ACI. My overall review rating for Cisco ACI is eight.
