Cisco Nexus Dashboard Reviews

I have been working with Cisco Nexus Dashboard for 15 years in different roles. Sometimes I was directly at Cisco, some years I was in Cisco TAC in the support team, and I have been working with multiple partners for professional services, managed service providers, and resellers. So I have been in many companies.

Optimization is key, and Cisco Nexus Dashboard is more of a data center orchestrator. They bring this whole leaf and spine architecture across the sites. The biggest complex part of a data center is having a layer 2 and layer 3 part of your network extended beyond its own site. That is done very cleanly and easily using Cisco Nexus Dashboard through something called Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator or Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller. Both do the same thing.

It is definitely value for money because now, with big data centers and your data center spanning across multiple places, you do not have to go at every point and start setting up one device at a time. With Cisco Nexus Dashboard, it is a plug-and-play technology. You can set up your network and bring it up to production in nearly no time. You get your return on value as soon as you can.

The biggest benefits are the scalability, the granularity, and the modularity. The design it prefers and the out-of-the-box capabilities and features that it provides are all really good advantages of Cisco Nexus Dashboard.

In terms of features, the orchestration is valuable. The one feature that I really appreciate the most is the day-to-day operations, which is a very smart fault analysis and fault troubleshooting feature called Nexus Insights. That is a very good feature which only VMware has something of that quality. Nexus Insights, which sits along with Cisco Nexus Dashboard, is really good.

End-to-end visibility across the devices and across the sites is really good.

The deployment model is mostly hybrid, but I would say more on-premise and less hybrid.

Cisco Nexus Dashboard is very scalable. Even if you have to scale in or scale out one device or one site or 100 devices and 100 sites, it is just a matter of plug-and-play. When we were turning on 100 devices, they were all happening in parallel. That is exactly how it happens with the sites. If you want to add a site, just make sure they are physically connected to a cable which can pass on the message to Cisco Nexus Dashboard. Cisco Nexus Dashboard can take care of everything from there.

Cisco Nexus Dashboard is very advanced and very smart, and it has a Cisco brand name to it. I have seen HPE's, Arista, and Juniper orchestrators, and all these vendors have their own. I would not say that they are not smart enough, but they are not as smart as Cisco because Cisco has solved the biggest challenge of the multi-site data center better than anyone else. Over the past 10 years, Cisco has been a pioneer in leading all these advanced design solutions. Everyone is doing it now, but Cisco started it. Everyone copies it at this point and does the same thing, but Cisco is still doing it better because Cisco has been doing this for at least a decade, maybe more than that. Cisco is definitely way ahead. Sometimes people say Cisco ACI or Cisco Nexus Dashboard is hard and complex, but I feel Cisco is way more advanced and way ahead of its market. It has given a NASA-level of technology to normal enterprise corporate networks. It is way advanced.

Cisco is definitely smarter than me, so I cannot think of any improvement because they are already bringing in some smart Hypershield switches. Although that is not a new concept, Cisco is just getting motivation from other vendors who have already done it. The biggest selling point for Cisco is Cisco's brand name and the power of Cisco Nexus Dashboard switches. In terms of innovation, they have already brought in switches like Hypershield and the Hyper-smart switches which have built-in firewalls in them. I think they are already way ahead of time.

I have been working with Cisco Nexus Dashboard for 15 years in different roles. Sometimes I was directly at Cisco, some years I was in Cisco TAC in the support team, and I have been working with multiple partners for professional services, managed service providers, and resellers. So I have been in many companies.

There was a time when Cisco had buggy software because when Cisco ACI, actually Cisco Nexus Dashboard, used to be called the DCNM back then, these were all new software. Every new software has a bug, which is fine. But over the years, in the last 10 years at least, and now where we stand, I have never seen a random crash or a random bug happening in their software. Ninety percent of the time, it is human error which is causing a problem. Cisco is automating so many things out-of-the-box that they are not leaving things to human error. They are resolving and doing most of the things fully automated. There is less margin of error by humans. In terms of bugs and stability, once Cisco Nexus Dashboard works, I can guarantee it will always work. If it is not working, you have done something wrong.

Some regions in Cisco TAC, like the Sydney region, is really good. The US region is really good, the San Jose one and the other ones. The Indian region, also the Bangalore one, is pretty good, but a few regions in India and some other Asian zones need some better training so they can troubleshoot the issues faster. They take way too long.

VMware, which is now Broadcom, stopped supporting VMM integration with Cisco ACI and Cisco Nexus Dashboard just for the reason that Cisco was able to manage VMware's world to a large extent and people were really loving it. They stopped supporting it with no good reasons just to make customers' lives harder and Cisco's life harder.

In terms of zero-touch provisioning or plug-and-play feature, let us say you have 100 switches and you want to set them all up. To bootstrap those switches, you would need at least 40 minutes per device. That is very aggressive, and it is always more than that. Imagine 40 minutes times 100. You can see how many days you are counting. With Cisco Nexus Dashboard, you simply plug in the cables. The bootstrap, if you really want to count the bootstrap time, is reduced to 15-20 minutes. If you count the time that you are spending, that is nearly one minute. Imagine 40 minutes down to one minute. What was 4,000 minutes is now down to 100 minutes. Not even 100 minutes, because now all the switches are getting bootstrapped in parallel. So it is 4,000 minutes down to one minute. That is amazing.

I have been working with Cisco Nexus Dashboard for 15 years in different roles. Sometimes I was directly at Cisco, some years I was in Cisco TAC in the support team, and I have been working with multiple partners for professional services, managed service providers, and resellers. So I have been in many companies.

The professional services and license is expensive everywhere.

Cisco Nexus Dashboard has its learning curve, but once you do it at least once or twice, it is very straightforward. End-to-end visibility across the devices and across the sites is really good. I would rate this product a 10 out of 10.

Hybrid Cloud

Microsoft Azure

The major use case for Cisco Nexus Dashboard is for developing the solution. Since I am part of FlexPod, I use Cisco Nexus Dashboard to configure Nexus switches. This could be a standard workload or it could be an AIML workload.

The best features that I encounter in Cisco Nexus Dashboard include managing everything with Cisco Intersight if I have invested in Cisco equipment, such as Catalyst or IOS for WAN connectivity, and using Nexus for my data center. That is the first main benefit. The second benefit is the configuration since things are moving from a specialist to a generalist approach, so I don't need to put a lot of effort during my operations. There is now a transition into a graphical user interface where I have templates and options defined. I simply select the right template and configure things properly without worrying about how the configuration will apply. These advantages are applicable to all Cisco devices in my data center.

Regarding end-to-end visibility that Cisco offers with Cisco Nexus Dashboard, my impression is that visibility is very good and top-notch because of the extended packet visibility we have now. With Cisco Nexus Dashboard, I can go beyond having visibility. There is a feature called Cisco Live Protect, which utilizes a Tetragon agent, but I need to be on the correct NX-OS firmware. Once I integrate with Cisco Nexus Dashboard and configure the proper telemetry, I can identify any threats happening to my Nexus switch and immediately prevent those threats due to the deep visibility provided by Cisco Nexus Dashboard.

The advantages of Cisco Nexus Dashboard in data center networking need us to consider two things: classical Ethernet and three-tier topology versus spine-leaf topology. The moment we look into spine-leaf topology, it becomes very complex because of the VXLAN configuration, and I need to have a network which supports zero packet loss for the environment. From a configuration point of view, it is very complex as I need to build a Layer 3 overlay and then do the VLAN segmentation. With Cisco Nexus Dashboard, I have prepopulated templates for that configuration. For example, if I need to build an AI training infrastructure, I need to ensure my back-end network, responsible for carrying GPU to GPU traffic or GPU to GPU communication, has an RDMA-backed lossless fabric. Cisco Nexus Dashboard provides template definitions that I can use, and I just need to map it to the right interface or port channel. If Cisco Nexus Dashboard did not exist, configuring it would be highly complex with a high chance of misconfiguration affecting bandwidth.

Apart from that, Cisco Nexus Dashboard gives me visibility since it has deep integration with Nexus telemetry and Cisco's acquisition of Isovalent, a company providing a container network interface called Cilium. With the EBPF extended Berkeley Packet Filtering capability, I can now look into Nexus switch traffic, and this feature is integrated with Cisco Nexus Dashboard. If I am running the Advantage license, I can look into the packet ingress and egress of the switch and determine if the configuration is done appropriately or if I need to fine-tune my fabric. These are the core benefits I get from Cisco Nexus Dashboard.

The licensing for Cisco Nexus Dashboard could definitely be better.

Based on my use cases with Cisco Nexus Dashboard, I see that most features already exist. While large-level deployments using multi-site functionality might require more features, I am not aware of those aspects because I am not using it for multi-site configuration.

I consider these two points because there is still room for improvement. Given how the product is used and how it helps, I believe an eight is a very good rating for Cisco Nexus Dashboard.

Since I have been using Cisco Nexus Dashboard for just the last year, I cannot think of any disadvantages as I have mostly used it for LAN deployments and have not built multi-site functionality, so I am not in a position to discuss that.

For stability and reliability with Cisco Nexus Dashboard, I found it reliable, as we did not need to reboot for anything.

For scalability, I never faced any problems with Cisco Nexus Dashboard. I worked on different solutions, including AIML training infrastructure, and everything was good.

I would give Cisco Nexus Dashboard support a rating of 7.5 out of 10 as I did for technical support.

The reason I give such a rating is that it relates to where the case is getting landed, which is region-specific. However, since I need to rate it globally, this is why I am giving 7.5.

I do not think I have worked with a similar product to Cisco Nexus Dashboard on the market.

The deployment of Cisco Nexus Dashboard is usually straightforward; I have options to deploy directly on servers as bare metal or also on a VMware-based environment. It is straightforward, but I need to understand what features I want to use from Cisco Nexus Dashboard. Based on that, I select my appliance. Customers may first want to see the capabilities, so they can deploy a single instance to have telemetry or visibility of their Nexus environment. If all advanced features are desired, there is a recommended guide indicating how many servers to deploy. I think it is straightforward as I just need to follow the guide.

Regarding the return on investment for Cisco Nexus Dashboard, I believe it is 100 percent effective because of the capabilities it offers. Configuring a VXLAN-based fabric is not easy and requires a lot of expertise due to its complexity. With Cisco Nexus Dashboard, I can simply go and configure what I need. This is one of the biggest unique selling points or ROI as it saves me time on operational aspects, and deployment can be seamless.

Cisco Nexus Dashboard definitely optimizes my experience in a hybrid or distributed enterprise setup. Even until now, I was talking about LAN; in a SAN environment, I can also do MDS configuration and Fiber Channel configuration using Cisco Nexus Dashboard, as it has SAN module support. There is a product called Cisco Nexus One that enables me to integrate my existing environment and manage everything, including Cisco ASA, Nexus, and Catalyst environments, with a single pane of glass. I gave Cisco Nexus Dashboard an overall review rating of 9 out of 10.

On-premises

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Our main use case for Cisco Nexus Dashboard is to ensure that all devices have the correct code and to identify any configuration changes between the leaves. If they are not in sync, we try to have that notify us so that we can go and rectify it.

What I like the most about Cisco Nexus Dashboard is the easier way to know exactly which device is connected to where. It paints a pretty picture, and if there is a link that is down, it color codes it to indicate that you need to pay attention there, among other things. Those are my favorites.

I think Cisco Nexus Dashboard can be improved by making it easier to onboard devices because it is a little hard to onboard devices in my opinion, at least from what I remember. At least that was the case with the previous deployment where we were not using VXLAN technology. The newer version we are about to deploy again for this spine-leaf setup, and I hope it is easier to onboard.

I have been in my current field for a little over 15 years.

The first time when we got Cisco deployed, for some reason, it was not as scalable as how we wanted because the leaves stopped growing after approximately 150 or something. We needed to be scaled much larger, and that is when we pivoted from Cisco to Arista. However, I think it is coming back as they eliminated that problem.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate technical support at a ten because if you do not know something, the TAC guys are going to walk you from end-to-end.

Prior to adopting Cisco Nexus Dashboard, we were using Cisco devices as one of our main switches that we work with.

I would describe my experience with deploying Cisco Nexus Dashboard as not that bad.

We do not use any of the providers like AWS, GCP, or Azure.

I have been using Cisco Nexus Dashboard for three to four years initially, and then got switched to Arista, and now it is coming back again as we just deployed the servers for those who are in the process of setting it up.I do not think Cisco optimizes the experience of a hybrid or distributed enterprise setup because we have Arista in our network too.I do not know how end-to-end visibility from Cisco affects my organization's troubleshooting capabilities.The first time when we got Cisco deployed, for some reason, it was not as scalable as how we wanted because the leaves stopped growing after approximately 150 or something. We needed to be scaled much larger, and that is when we pivoted from Cisco to Arista. However, I think it is coming back as they eliminated that problem.I would rate this review at a nine out of ten.

On-premises

Other

Cisco Nexus Dashboard serves as a dashboard to ensure that all Nexus devices are properly set up.

The feature I appreciate most about Cisco Nexus Dashboard is the ability to control everything in one centralized place.

This centralized place feature benefits my organization because most of our devices are Cisco, so I can see if something is going on with the device, if something is going wrong with the port, and other issues. It is literally a centralized place where I can see everything.

Cisco Nexus Dashboard is pretty solid, so I do not know what can be improved or what additional features should be included.

I have been using Cisco Nexus Dashboard for almost two years.

My impression of the end-to-end visibility offered by Cisco Nexus Dashboard is that it is excellent because you can see from one side to the other side.

Cisco Nexus Dashboard scales with the growing needs of my organization. We are a large organization, but not enormous. I will assess scalability further as my organization continues to grow, but for now, it works well.

I evaluate customer service and tech support for Cisco Nexus Dashboard as good, but sometimes it is challenging, and I have to escalate the case.

When I write a ticket for support, they respond immediately. I have no issues with that. It is just when they need to fix the problem that some people have to escalate because they do not have the knowledge or understanding of what is going on.

Prior to adopting Cisco Nexus Dashboard, I was using a solution called Splunk to address similar needs.

I considered the change to Cisco Nexus Dashboard because at the time I got Splunk, it was more command line oriented, with people doing coding and other technical tasks. Cisco Nexus Dashboard provides GUI visibility, so you can see what is actually going on through an interface rather than through commands.

My experience with deploying Cisco Nexus Dashboard is that everything went well because once you connect with the engineers, they will help you get everything connected. It is not difficult to do.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cisco Nexus Dashboard is that it is expensive. They are not going to lower the price. If you want it, you are going to have to pay for it. It is good though. Once you have it, it is very good. Cisco Nexus Dashboard is expensive, as are most other Cisco products.

I did not consider any other solutions before selecting Cisco Nexus Dashboard because I always have Cisco equipment, so I am not going to any other provider.

I do not have any specific challenges with hybrid and distributed enterprise networks that Cisco addresses, because everything is set up so well that I do not have any problems.

The end-to-end visibility affects my organization's troubleshooting capabilities in that I do not use it as the main software. I have other software that I use to troubleshoot issues, but it is one of the tools that I can use. Most of the troubleshooting I do is through another software called Splunk, which is also owned by Cisco, and I prefer the coding part because I can track things better than just looking at Cisco Nexus Dashboard.

I rate this review as a 10.