Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) Primary Use Case
DCNM is used by one of the airline customers in Qatar to manage many data centers and rack switches running on normal Nexus or NX-OS mode. They required a controller platform to manage these Nexus switches, and thus, they utilized DCNM as a Fabric controller. Given that ACI deployment is very low and most setups are just using it in a management-only mode, the majority of the DCNM deployments are used as fabric controllers.
View full review »I have used the Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller in two different scenarios. The first scenario involved using it with a spine-leaf architecture, incorporating BGP and IS-IS for overlay routing. This setup allowed us to utilize various Layer 3 and 4 protocols to manage end-to-end connections.
In the second scenario, I used it in a data center with another Cisco Nexus device configured as a virtual chassis. This setup was not based on a spine-leaf architecture but a dual-core configuration.
View full review »We use the tool for better performance in our data center network, including BPA, BPC, and cloud-centric networks. It's integrated with the ACI network, NSX network, content delivery network, and multi-cloud systems.
View full review »Buyer's Guide
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM)
July 2025

Learn what your peers think about Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: July 2025.
861,170 professionals have used our research since 2012.
We use Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (formerly DCNM) to manage all the Nexus switches at the airport. We have around 40 of them. We use the solution to check the health and performances of the boxes, the environments (CPU/memory), the VPC and port channel links, the fabric module, power, the supervisor engine, line card modules, and the transceivers. It manages and monitors all the VDCs using SNMP and Syslog. Patch updates and upgrades of the NXOS are implemented using DCNM. We raise RMA directly from it anytime we have to replace a faulty module or switch. I think it is still the best data center management solution out there.
View full review »The daily use case involves implementing changes in policies and rules across switches using Cisco Data Center Network Manager. We need to ensure that when we change in one place, it updates all others simultaneously. This process uses push technology, which pushes the changes to all relevant devices to ensure they are updated accordingly.
We use the solution to manage switches.
View full review »We use it to simplify the maintenance of servers and the network infrastructure for data centers. This means a single pane of glass from where we can easily manage the data center.
We can configure things, check the host setup, and apply this to the policies. In addition, we also upgraded the OS version to fulfill the compliance requirements. We can also manage the progress and develop updates or check the health status and upgrade of home-based solutions.
View full review »We use the solution in data center to manage Nexus features and ECS servers.
View full review »I am an integrator and I provide this solution to customers.
My customers use Cisco Data Center Network Manager for data centers.
View full review »We use the solution to build private clouds in government data centers. Government institutions mainly use their own data centers. We come in when they want an update or something in addition to their data centers. We work on any addition or update requirements in these data centers.
We are system integrators who also take part in purchase and selling. We architect solutions and implement them for all activities as part of a business.
View full review »SI
SyedImran
Tech Specialist, Client Network DeliveryTech at AT&T
We recently deployed our supply value for architecture and connected it to DCNM.
We are customers of Cisco and I'm a system engineer.
View full review »Our primary use case of the solution is for automation. We're an airline so a lot of people buy from us. We are vendors and I'm an IT manager.
We are a solution provider and this is one of the products that we implement for our customers. I am in a networking environment and this is a solution for monitoring the activity and connectivity in a Cisco network.
View full review »Our primary use case is for monitoring and protecting companies from malware attacks as well as providing secure VPN. I'm an IT solution consultant.
HF
HongFang
Solution Consultant at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
We use this product as an enterprise network troubleshooting solution and also the operator of the VPN (Virtual Private Network) solution for our enterprise network.
AS
Ashraf-Sadek
CSD Manager at BTC
Our primary use case of this solution is for system network monitoring. We also use it for the implementation of Cisco projects and for gateway documents. We recently did a big implementation, and we did most of the features and configuration through Cisco Data Center Network Manager. So we are basically using this product to implement another one.
View full review »Our primary use case of this solution is for network monitoring and security components.
View full review »The primary use case of this solution is to manage our customer's storage network, collect their data, and to back up their data.
Customers want us to monitor the data samples, or they may request that we do some management of the network devices.
The deployment model we are using is a stand-alone, on-premises. For each site, they had six different types and for all of them, we used only one Data Centre Manager.
AG
Adolfo Gonzalez
Systems Consultant Director at Dasit
I use Cisco Data Center Network Manager to store information for different clients or customers in the data center.
View full review »We use the product to manage access points.
View full review »Buyer's Guide
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM)
July 2025

Learn what your peers think about Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: July 2025.
861,170 professionals have used our research since 2012.