Cisco DNA Center delivers powerful centralized security, automation, and comprehensive analytics for enhanced network management. With an intuitive dashboard and integration with Cisco devices, it reduces errors, boosts efficiency, and ensures seamless wired and wireless network operations.
| Product | Mindshare (%) |
|---|---|
| Cisco DNA Center | 7.3% |
| OpenText Network Node Manager | 5.3% |
| DX Spectrum | 5.3% |
| Other | 82.1% |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 10 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 9 |
| Large Enterprise | 18 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 305 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 125 |
| Large Enterprise | 557 |
Organizations leverage Cisco DNA Center for network management and automation, offering increased visibility into traffic flows and efficient device provisioning. It supports real-time data transmission, network segmentation, and integrates with ISE. Features like wireless assurance, centralized management, and AI-driven insights into network health promote an efficient network environment while addressing compliance issues. However, improvements are necessary for better third-party integration, affordability, and more user-friendly documentation.
What are the solution's most important features?In industries like healthcare, finance, and education, Cisco DNA Center's advanced features facilitate the management of complex network infrastructures and aid in achieving compliance efficiently. Its ability to manage LANs and WLANs supports diverse networking environments including greenfield projects and SPN setups.
Cisco DNA Center was previously known as DNA Center.
| Author info | Rating | Review Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Network Engineer at NGN Bilgi ve İletişim Hizmetleri | 4.5 | I use Cisco DNA Center for SD-Access and mainly rely on its client history feature, which I find useful, though I wish it covered more than 10 days; overall, it’s stable, scalable, and meets my needs well. |
| Sr. Director, Business Development & Sales Operations at connect professional services | 4.0 | I've worked with Cisco DNA Center for seven years, primarily for troubleshooting. Its AI-driven insights and real-time monitoring are invaluable, despite its cost. The software-defined access feature also enhances our operations, showing noticeable returns in time savings. |
| Cloud Infrastructure Architect at POST Luxembourg | 4.0 | We've used Cisco DNA Center for six years, finding deployment complex and lengthy due to Juniper integration. Support is excellent (9/10), contributing to an overall 8/10 rating, despite our team not directly managing it. |
| Systems technician. IT Office at LNU | 4.0 | I effectively monitor my network with Cisco DNA Center, finding it very stable with good customer service. My main concern is the very high cost and licensing, which Cisco should review to avoid losing customers. |
| Senior Network Engineer at Inside Global | 4.0 | We primarily use Cisco DNA Center for monitoring our wireless network, with a focus on alarms. The platform's most valuable feature is the visual representation of the switch's front panel. However, the setup process could be improved. |
| Solution Architect at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees | 4.0 | I primarily use Cisco DNA Center for greenfield operations, benefiting from its wireless assurance and AI-driven guided remediation. Its GUI-based configuration enhances operational ease, although clustering needs improvement despite being easy to deploy with open APIs. |
| Engineer at AGCO Corporation | 4.5 | I used Cisco DNA Center for monitoring and troubleshooting wireless infrastructure issues, and its AI feature provided valuable insights quickly, such as diagnosing memory leaks in the Cisco wireless controller. However, support for non-Cisco devices would enhance its utility. |
| IT Network Administrator at DHL | 4.5 | Cisco DNA Center facilitates the management of user networks with its intuitive and automated features, providing insights into network health. However, its deployment is complex, and the graphical user interface could use improvement for a better experience. |
| Network Solutions Architect at SPIE ICS | 4.0 | I frequently use Cisco DNA Center for configuration, monitoring, and zero-touch provisioning. Its security features are valuable, but the price and technical support need improvement. I haven't used other solutions or cloud providers with this tool. |
| Chief Technology Officer/ Network Engineer at Dunamis Networks Inc | 4.5 | I am working on a small data center project using Cisco DNA Center, which excels with features like VXLAN and SD-Access. While effective, it is costly for smaller enterprises. An improved UI with helpful tooltips would enhance usability. |
My use case for Cisco DNA Center is for SD-Access, which is for software-defined access and management of devices.
I mostly use the client history feature of Cisco DNA Center.
I didn't use the real-time monitoring capability of Cisco DNA Center because I primarily used it for client history regarding issues and problems. I don't use it for real-time monitoring. If there is a problem, I can inspect the situation and see what is happening, which is beneficial.
In my opinion, the client history in Cisco DNA Center can be longer than 10 days, perhaps extending to 15 or 20 days. I am using it in a huge factory in Turkey, and sometimes I need to see what occurred one month or 20 days prior.
I have approximately one year of experience working with Cisco DNA Center.
We faced a few problems with Cisco DNA Center when we were setting up devices, but it wasn't significant because we are managing and using it with Cisco engineers who help us. We inform them of issues, and they assist in resolving them. I'm happy with the support from Cisco support. When we communicate problems, they solve them effectively.
Scalability in Cisco DNA Center is good. We are using it for Software-Defined Access solution, and we haven't reached our device limit yet. From my experience, we can easily manage numerous devices. Though we are not using the full potential of Cisco DNA Center, it seems very good so far.
I did not talk with Cisco support directly, but according to my colleagues, the support for Cisco DNA Center is good. On a scale from one to ten, it would rate seven or eight.
Positive
I am just a customer in relation to Cisco.
I don't know anything about prices and licensing of Cisco DNA Center because it's not my job; I'm just using it.
I have Cisco DNA Center deployed on-premises.
I have approximately three years of experience working in my current field.
I rate Cisco DNA Center overall nine out of ten.
We have been working with Cisco DNA Center for ten years. Our clients use Cisco DNA Center for unified visibility/monitoring across Enterprise Campus both LAN & WLAN along with Access and fast technical issues troubleshooting.
The solution provides fast troubleshooting capabilities and fast technical problems solving across both LAN & WLAN platform. The pricing, setup cost, and licensing of Cisco DNA Center are medium expensive.
The most valuable features includes unified visibility and monitoring across LAN & WLAN technologies which make troubleshooting much easier. The real-time monitoring capability of Cisco DNA Center is particularly effective.
We have utilized the software-defined access (SDA) feature of Cisco DNA Center. The AI-driven needs enhancements and Integration and unification of visibility and monitoring to include other areas like Data Center and WAN to have a full visibility of the traffic end to end.
We have been promoting solution since 10+ years.
The solution is now very stable.
The solution is designed for large enterprise companies.
The solution is stable. The technical support rates eight out of ten. Overall, Cisco DNA Center rates eight out of ten as a complete solution.
Positive
The initial setup was of medium complexity.
We have our own in-house expert consultants to do the implementation on very professional level.
Although Cisco DNA Center is expensive, we have seen a return on investment in terms of time savings.
After evaluating other solutions, we will provide feedback.
We did evaluate Huawei SDN Technology called iMaster and we will evaluate Juniper and also Arista SDN.
I am a Cisco Gold partner and currently Managing Director at CONNECT-PS ConnectProfessional Services Saudi Regional Office. The overall rating for Cisco DNA Center is 8 out of 10.
In my organization, we currently have some Cisco devices such as access switches, and we also have infrastructure, but that is not part of our responsibility. We do not manage that infrastructure. We have a software-defined network running, but this is a campus environment, and another team manages it because we specialize in the data center only.
We have Cisco DNA Center, but we are not managing it directly; another team manages it.
The deployment of Cisco DNA Center was complex due to the fact that on the data center side, we have a Juniper infrastructure, which created some complexity, though not significant.
The deployment part is definitely an area for improvement. Cisco DNA Center has some weaknesses that require improvements in that area.
In particular, deployment is where improvements are needed.
We have been utilizing Cisco DNA Center for six years.
For support, Cisco demonstrates themselves as more reactive, and I think they are better than Juniper.
One of the advantages is Cisco support.
I would rate Cisco support easily at nine out of ten.
The deployment of Cisco DNA Center was complex due to the fact that on the data center side, we have a Juniper infrastructure, which created some complexity, though not significant.
The deployment for Cisco DNA Center took approximately six to seven months; I do not remember exactly.
The reason it took so long for the deployment is because they were deploying it building by building.
A team of ten engineers were involved in the deployment of Cisco DNA Center.
To be honest, I did not test all of the comparable solutions for DNS, such as Mist with Juniper, so I cannot provide a comparison for the overall rating of Cisco DNA Center.
I have not worked with Cisco Wireless 9110 access points, and I did not work on the recent models.
I have never worked with Cisco Crosswork technology.
I have never worked on TIBCO Spotfire; I never had a chance to work on it.
My overall rating for this solution is eight out of ten.
I use the system to manage our network effectively.
The monitoring is very valuable to me. I can easily monitor all my clients through Cisco DNA Center at this point.
The system is working fine for me currently.
I have been with Cisco for about five years.
The system is very stable.
The scalability is okay for me.
I have contacted customer service once or twice, and it was very good. I rate it between nine and ten.
Positive
The previous solution was also from Cisco. It was Cisco Prime infrastructure. Since Cisco Prime is an old solution and end of life, Cisco upgraded it to Cisco DNA.
The setup is not complex when setting up Cisco DNA, however, it's not easy either.
The implementation was completed by me.
It's a very good product, however, it comes with a very high price. The customer needs to pay a license for each client inside Cisco DNA, each switch, and each access point to get it to work.
The cost is very high.
Cisco needs to review the pricing of the Cisco DNA license. Otherwise, they might lose customers.
I rate the overall solution between eight out of ten.
We primarily use the platform for monitoring, especially within our wireless network. Additionally, we have started registering our 9300 and 9400 switches, although the primary focus remains on monitoring and alarming purposes.
One notable aspect of Cisco DNA Center is the code it injects into switches during enrollment—approximately 1,200 lines for telemetry and other configurations. Compared to other solutions, such as SolarWinds, which requires far less code to gather the necessary information, this seems excessive. They could improve this process by making it lighter and more efficient.
The product's most valuable feature is the visual representation of the switch's front panel. It provides a clear, at-a-glance view of each port's status, color-coded based on its status.
The solution's setup process needs enhancement.
We have been using Cisco DNA Center for five months.
The product stability has been good so far.
We are working with a small network of about 300 devices. Thus, I can only briefly comment on scalability. For our requirements, the platform's capacity is more than sufficient.
The initial setup requires extensive training. Like many Cisco products, it is complex and cannot be learned without proper training.
The platform's biggest benefit has been in managing our wireless network. Having a single pane of glass to control all wireless controllers and access points and to monitor activity has been a significant advantage.
We're a small federal agency with around 300 network devices, so automation is a minor focus. It's more relevant for larger networks.
The main benefits we've seen are in inventory management and the potential for configuration automation. However, I recommend using the DNA Centre only for larger networks with over a thousand devices; otherwise, it may not be cost-effective.
Before proceeding, ensure that your devices are compatible with DNA Center, as not all Cisco devices are supported. Also, investing in proper training is different from plug-and-play.
I rate it an eight.
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.
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.
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.
I have been using Cisco DNA Center for four to five years.
The tool's stability is fine.
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.
The solution's technical support is fine. I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.
Positive
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.
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.
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.
In my former company, we used Cisco DNA Center specifically for monitoring. I also used the solution as a troubleshooting tool to investigate issues on the wireless infrastructure.
The most valuable feature of Cisco DNA Center is the AI (Artificial Intelligence) that provides us with valuable information. Otherwise, we would have to spend a lot of time trying to understand what's going on. I really appreciate the reports provided by the solution's AI for the wireless.
For example, we had issues with the Cisco wireless controller and spent a lot of time troubleshooting it. In just a few minutes, Cisco DNA Center provided us with valuable information regarding the memory leaking in the controller. That helped us to fix the issue. For me, the most valuable feature of Cisco DNA Center is the intelligence inside the tool.
As a user, it would be good if I could plug in controllers, suites, and devices from other vendors to Cisco DNA Center. Users could use the intelligence in Cisco DNA Center for the entire environment.
I have been using Cisco DNA Center for three or four years.
I faced a few problems during the solution's upgrade process, and TAC took a few hours to fix it. I'm pretty comfortable with the solution's technical support.
Positive
I previously used Cisco Prime and other monitoring tools.
Cisco DNA Center's initial setup is pretty easy.
Overall, I rate Cisco DNA Center a nine out of ten.
Cisco DNA Center helps to manage user networks.
The product offers an intuitive and automated way to manage user networks. It gives me an insight into the network health.
The tool's deployment is complex. It also needs to improve its GUI.
I have been using the product for three years.
I rate the product's stability a nine out of ten.
The product is scalable. My company has 500 users.
Cisco DNA Center's deployment takes three weeks to complete.
Cisco DNA Center is expensive.
I rate the product a nine out of ten.
My company uses the solution frequently for configuration, monitoring, and ZTP, which is Zero-touch provisioning. The solution is for configuration purposes, making it a centralized configuration tool.
The most valuable features of the solution are all of its security features.
Price is an area with certain shortcomings in the solution that needs improvement.
The technical support team of Cisco needs to improve the support they provide to users of their products.
I have been using Cisco DNA Center for five years. My company is a platinum partner of Cisco. I work as an integrator. There is an update each time we work with the solution in our company, so we always use the latest version.
It is a highly stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight to nine out of ten.
It is a highly scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
Around 30 to 40 percent of my company's clients use Cisco DNA Center, which may consist of more than a hundred users.
Most big companies opt for Cisco DNA Center. The smaller companies may find Cisco DNA Center to be costly.
The solution's technical support is an area with which my company's clients have a problem. Cisco doesn't provide good technical support unless a user has a big account that Cisco wants to retain. I rate the technical support provided by Aruba, Huawei, or Extreme Networks to be way higher than what Cisco provides.
I rate the technical support of Cisco a four or five out of ten.
Neutral
I rate the initial setup phase of the product a five on a scale of one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy. The initial configuration is not a problem, but working with Cisco DNA Center is hard, so there is a learning curve for all the clients.
It is really complex to speak on how Cisco DNA Center can be improved, but there are products equivalent to Cisco in the market, like Aruba Central, which is way easier to work with, including the dashboard and everything. Cisco offers a wide range of features in their management tool, making it hard for the client to work on it. It is hard to wrap your head around all the functionalities provided by Cisco, and you have to learn about the solution to get a hang of it.
The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.
The deployment time taken for the solution depends on the requirements of the company's clients. The time taken for deployment may range from a day to two weeks.
For Cisco DNA Center's deployment, there is a need for a server and an OVA file. There is also a process for configuring Cisco DNA Center by itself, and then there is another process for adding all your devices. At the end of the deployment phase, we get templates to push into the configuration part.
I rate the product's pricing an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is very cheap, and ten is very expensive. The solution's price could be a problem for smaller businesses. There are a lot of customers who want Cisco products but are startled when they see Cisco's pricing model, which includes Cisco DNA Center. So Cisco forces its customers to purchase DNA Center with everything. If you don't buy Cisco DNA Center, then the product you purchase from Cisco won't work.
When customers see the prices of Cisco products, they change their minds and opt for other products like Aruba or Huawei.
There are no costs in addition to the licensing cost of the solution. Cisco offers a wide range of products, which is the problem with Cisco's portfolio of products since they offer different options like three years, five years, or seven years. Suppose you don't pay after three years to renew the license, then they provide you with a period of sixty days, after which the product won't work anymore, but this is not the case with products from other vendors like Aruba. If you don't have Aruba Central, you directly connect it to your suite and use it traditionally, but with Cisco, it's an obligation to have a license and renew it. Since Cisco is the leader in the market, it uses the power to force others with their terms, which is a normal strategy.
Cisco DNA Center is pretty much a complete product.
I won't recommend Cisco DNA Center to anyone, and I would rather suggest that they use Aruba.
Cisco offers good products, and I believe they have the most solid products in the market.
I rate the overall solution somewhere between eight and nine out of ten.
Currently, we are working on building a small data center for a client. The goal is to connect all their branches and host various in-house developed services, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications.
We are utilizing Cisco DNA Center with at least 9000 series switches and a couple of SD-WAN solutions. With Cisco DNA Center's single interface, we can efficiently manage and deploy devices across all branches.
There are many valuable features, but one I would highlight is VXLAN. It's a protocol that has been around for some time, but the practical implementation and operational capability of Cisco DNA Center bring it to life. It enables seamless movement of machines from one location or branch to another with the same settings and parameters. So, there's no need for reconfiguration. This is just one example of the many features available in DNA Center.
Another feature I like is Access Control Lists. There are many other things. Same with DNA Center. You have SD-Access. So, SD-Access is also a powerful feature that Cisco claims to be a replacement for the LAN (Local Area Network) from their perspective.
For me, there is room for improvement in costs. Affordability is a problem because it's created for large enterprises only. So, some customers, even if their engineers want the solution, might have problems with budget limitations.
The user interface is quite user-friendly, but what I would like is to have a small information pointer available somewhere. It could be a plus feature that I want to implement. When I hover my mouse over the user interface, it should provide a brief explanation. It would be helpful to have it incorporated into the UI.
So, in summary, when I hover over the small "i," it should display relevant information about the feature or functionality I want to implement.
Currently, from a technological perspective, I don't have any limitations. However, I have my own limitations in terms of affordability and cost.
Initially, when Cisco DNA Center was launched, we had to acquire the physical gear, such as switches that DNA Center runs on, in order to practice with it.
As engineers, we needed access to the physical devices. Cisco announced the 9000 series, and that's when we got involved. Also, as part of my enterprise infrastructure training, we were given lab access to work with Cisco DNA Center and gain experience on the implementation side. So, in terms of practical experience, I would say it's been around one year.
I would rate stability a ten out of ten. Since we deployed the solution, we haven't encountered any issues related to stability. We haven't experienced any downsides from the solution or any problems with the running switches or installers. Our devices have been running smoothly without any stability concerns.
I would rate them a nine out of ten. My impression of scalability is that the solution can scale to any size, whether it's just a few nodes, containers, or perimeter servers in your data center. The scale doesn't matter.
So it can accommodate any scale you need. The only potential limitation would be the license, but that can be upgraded by contacting Cisco. The license is not a problem, and upgrading it is always an option by reaching out to Cisco.
If we're talking about devices, we have more than 500 devices. And in terms of users, we have over 800. Our clients are mostly medium-sized businesses.
The customer service and support were good.
Neutral
Cisco aims to ensure that all its solutions can coexist through the use of APIs. So if you want to, you can link them together and have the power and control as an administrator. From a technical perspective, I think they have done a lot.
When it comes to the initial setup, I will rate it a six, where one is difficult and ten is easy. It wasn't as straightforward as just clicking buttons on a graphical interface. Understanding the concepts and design perspective was necessary before implementation.
The reason is that it involved transitioning from the command-line interface (CLI) to using the user interface (UI) and automation tools like Python scripts to configure devices.
It was a new technology for us, and we were accustomed to configuring devices through the CLI. Other companies, like Palo Alto with their firewalls, offer a graphical UI, but with Cisco, it was a different story. As someone who was more familiar with the CLI, getting used to the UI and other features took time.
It wasn't as simple as clicking here and there on the GUI. You needed to grasp the underlying concepts and design considerations before proceeding. So, onboarding wasn't easy.
The deployment took us approximately three months. The planning phase was crucial, where we had to consider different aspects, such as top-level management buy-in, budgeting, and designing how the existing solutions would fit into the architecture. From a design perspective, it took some time before we could move on to implementation.
I would rate the pricing as ten, where one is low price, and ten is high price.
There are additional fees to the standard license. The licensing depends on the deployment. If you use Cisco DNA Center on the cloud as a SaaS, you may have an annual subscription fee. However, if you deploy it on-premise, you would only have the standard licensing fees.
If a company is considering Cisco DNA Center, it's important to have competent engineers who understand the technology and have experience working with Cisco networking solutions. They should also be familiar with Cisco's vision and direction in piloting technology. However, companies that have engineers specializing in other solutions like Palo Alto Networks, Juniper Networks, or Aruba Networks may have a different approach and may find it challenging to implement Cisco DNA Center without additional study or external consultants, which can lead to extra costs.
Overall, I would rate it a nine out of ten. The reason I gave it a nine is because Cisco revised its certifications after 2018 when networking changed the way companies connect and design their networks. From a design perspective, everything changed with the evolution of SD-WAN (Software-Defined Wide Area Network) and software-defined access. So, bringing in a solution like Cisco DNA Center at the heart of an enterprise, especially at the data center, is significant. Our data center is essentially the same as an optical data center for this solution. So, running Cisco DNA Center at the data center and across the enterprise gives complete control because it works alongside Cisco I. It means the network engineer has the ability to implement and control all devices across the enterprise, whether it's a mobile user, desktop computer, server, router, switch, or any other device in any branch or location. Full control over these devices is possible. Furthermore, Cisco DNA Center, working alongside I, enhances security by providing user access to specific resources and offers a new approach to setting up and securing enterprise networks. It brings improvements in security, scalability, and performance.
