What is our primary use case?
I use Cisco DNA Center mainly for greenfield, which is for bringing up the site, adding the devices, and doing day 0 and day 1. With the tool, the key important part handled is in terms of wireless assurance. The tool's Wireless Assurance version provides me with a good amount of data to help me understand how my wireless network functions within the network. The guided remediation helps with the tool's offerings in terms of AI and machine learning, especially if there are a lot of devices and there will be a lot of notifications. In my company, we can select the golden software image, and we can activate and distribute it in bulk. The SIEM compliance part and the integrations that it has in terms of Cisco ISE will form the segmentation in terms of SDN.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it gives some kind of ease in operations, especially since our company is moving from CLI to GUI-based configuration. You can design your network hierarchy and export the wireless heat maps. You can get the data that our company needs to understand how the network is behaving. You can visualize how your network is performing, look at the health course, and whatever it provides in terms of the user and client or from a network perspective.
What needs improvement?
In terms of the clustering part, there are some concerns. I feel like the clustering part is there because it is built on microservices architecture, so by default it is there in the tool. It is not complex to deploy, and it is easy, to be honest. The open APIs are there in the tool, which is fine.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Cisco DNA Center for four to five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The tool's stability is fine.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Similar to the options like XL and XXL that one gets when it comes to clothing sizes to choose from, Cisco DNA Center offers a few options to its users. Based on your network nodes, be it the number of wireless access points or wired endpoints, the tool is scalable, and that is not a problem. The scalability has no limits. If you have increased the scalability limit, you can have one more cluster of Cisco DNA Center, which can be deployed, after which those branches can be there. One need not worry about the scalability process. People also have an AWS option.
My company works with government companies, enterprise-sized businesses, and SMBs. When it comes to SMBs, my company does not prefer to offer Cisco DNA Center. Instead, my company offers SMBs Cisco Meraki.
How are customer service and support?
The solution's technical support is fine. I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
How was the initial setup?
The product is easy to deploy.
The number of engineers or architects required for the deployment and maintenance of the tool depends on the size of the organization. Suppose you are catering to the needs of an organization where there are more than 40 or 50 sites are there with one DNS center, which is deployed in an HQ or a regional center, even if you roughly have a Cisco stack consisting of wired and wireless tools if you have Cisco DNA Center, even if it is based on a twenty-four hours and seven days a week shift, you can able to manage the entire network with around three to four engineers.
The time required to install the product depends on the scale at which you plan to deploy the tool. For just doing the basics related to the deployment part involving or utilizing enterprise port or cluster port, you just make it up and get it connected to the network and reach out to Cisco sites to download anything, which will take maybe one to two hours to just to make it up if every prerequisite is met and are in place.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The tool's licensing may not come across as something that may be friendly for users. Customers may not like the licensing part because if you want to have more features, then you need to go for Cisco DNA Center with SDA, or you will get only the minimum functionalities in the tool.
What other advice do I have?
The product's automation capabilities are fine, especially considering the tool's areas like day 0 and day 1.
The product does offer support in terms of compliance. Even though I have not worked with use cases relating to compliance, I know that it works well.
If you want to use a tool for your operations, and if you want to get visibility on your network, especially if you have Cisco products, and you want and then without having Cisco L3 Switches, if you want to support in terms of troubleshooting, Cisco DNA Center can be a good option.
I rate the tool an eight out of ten.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner