Cisco DNA Center Reviews

Name: Cisco DNA Center
Brand: Cisco
Rating: 4 (24 reviews)

Vendor: Cisco

3.9 out of 5

24 reviews

448 followers

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Cisco DNA Center is a robust, intuitive network controller and management platform that provides secure, safe access to applications and networks. Cisco DNA Center allows you to take control of your network to increase the effectiveness of your Cisco products, lower your TCO, and improve your ROI.

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Featured reviews

Syed Aathif Hussain

Senior Network Engineer at Tech Mahindra

Oct 6, 2022

An area for improvement in Cisco DNA Center is the latency in data correlation. For example, sometimes, when an issue happens, and I check the logs, I can't find the corresponding log. There's a delay in log replication, so this is what needs improvement in Cisco DNA Center. Reporting in Cisco DNA Center could also be improved because it only has a few templates, and you can't customize it based on your requirements. There aren't many options available in Cisco DNA Center regarding reporting, versus Cisco Prime, which has excellent features for different levels of detailed reports. I'd like to see real-time data replication in the next release of Cisco DNA Center, similar to what's done in Meraki. Data in Meraki is real-time with no delay, so data is immediately replicated in the cloud. Currently, there's a lag in Cisco DNA Center, and addressing that lag is the enhancement I'd like to see in Cisco DNA Center. The solution also needs to be more user-friendly.

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SinaGhozati

Network Solutions Architect at SPIE ICS

Sep 6, 2023

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.

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Olajide Olusegun

Network Team Lead at Atlas Security

Feb 8, 2023

I don't have any areas for improvement regarding Cisco DNA Center that I can share now. However, what I want to see in Cisco DNA Center and Cisco Prime in the future is more support for other platforms so that you can manage third-party products, such as Fortinet. If you can other non-cisco devices on Cisco DNA Center, that would be beneficial, especially to LAN environments here in the UAE with multiple vendors. For example, through ICMP, it can be a minimal management level to manage the availability. Cisco DNA Center can do some pinging to check whether a device is online, and it should be able to show you that this is a Fortinet device and it's a firewall, for example. The tool should show you some information about the product or device type. A feature like this is available in many other monitoring solutions like DNA centers.

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Pricing

"Our licensing agreement is for three years."
"I do know that Cisco does offer some really good promotions for DNA Center to bring the costs down."
"The licensing cost for Cisco DNA Center is not more than that of other solutions."

Valuable Features

"People like to use the dashboards to get an overview of their network."
"It is simple to manage and it is all done from a single dashboard."
"The monitoring features are very useful for network engineers."

Room For Improvement

"There is a limitation with the number of VRFs that you can have in your network, and this has caused us problems with some customers."
"The network, data center, and SD-WAN are all being treated as different services, but I would like to have only one solution to manage all of them."
"DNA Center has been on the market for a few years and they need to update it."

Pricing

"Our licensing agreement is for three years."
"I do know that Cisco does offer some really good promotions for DNA Center to bring the costs down."
"The licensing cost for Cisco DNA Center is not more than that of other solutions."

Valuable Features

"People like to use the dashboards to get an overview of their network."
"It is simple to manage and it is all done from a single dashboard."
"The monitoring features are very useful for network engineers."

Room For Improvement

"There is a limitation with the number of VRFs that you can have in your network, and this has caused us problems with some customers."
"The network, data center, and SD-WAN are all being treated as different services, but I would like to have only one solution to manage all of them."
"DNA Center has been on the market for a few years and they need to update it."

These insights are based on the in-depth reviews provided by peers to help you make a better buying decision.

Download our Cisco DNA Center Buyer's Guide for additional reliable information.

Learn more about Cisco DNA Center

Your organization’s network is an integral part of your business’s success. In today’s aggressive marketplace, organizations need a network management system in place that can effectively automate deployments and connectivity, and manage the health of their infrastructure. Additionally, management systems also need to be able to strategically maintain the quality and safety of their systems so that the organization can direct valuable IT resources to concentrate on projects that can improve the overall effectiveness of the organization. An intent-based network controller such as Cisco DNA center will help your organization do that.

Cisco DNA Center is a group of software solutions that will automate all your virtual devices, provide secure administration of your network, and ensure the best network experience for all users on the network. Cisco DNA Center does away with all the tedious, mundane tasks and simplifies workflow device installations, upgrading from hours to minutes using Plug-and-Play (PnP) and Software Image Management (SWIM).

Cisco DNA Center’s intuitive, robust assurance feature makes every network point a sensor, continually communicating user connectivity and application performance in real time. This ensures all issues are resolved immediately.

Cisco DNA Center integrates with Cisco security solutions, Cisco Umbrella, and Cisco Secure Network Analytics, which provide an extra level of extensive security protection against threats. The entire solution can be easily managed from one single dashboard, making Cisco DNA Center a very robust, secure, complete solution.

Benefits of Cisco DNA Center

Cost-effectiveness: Policy automation and remediation minimizes the amount of time IT staff spend managing mundane network tasks.
Improved performance: AI/ML automation improves workflow and overall user experience. A clean, crisp dashboard makes management easy.
Enhance your network: Cisco DNA Center delivers the latest, most intuitive cloud services and applications to optimize your network.
Improved security: Cisco DNA Center utilizes the most robust zero-trust policies based on overall endpoint user behavior to keep networks secure.

Features of Cisco DNA Center

Easy automation: Cisco DNA Center offers zero-touch device deployment, automated quality of service (QoS), automated device discovery, and drag-and-drop policy creation.
Clear analytics: Cisco DNA Center offers more than 150 workable insights, such as guided remediation, endpoint tracking, context-guided analytics, and more.
Simplified management: Users have complete control from a user-friendly single dashboard that provides a completely transparent view of the network, devices, applications, and services. Additionally, there is integration with Cisco Prime or APIC-EM for the importation of maps or other configurations as needed.
Security: Cisco DNA Center provides a highly secure segmentation, encrypted traffic analytics, and robust threat detection and response, and also uses Stealthwatch and ISE integration.

Reviews from Real Users

Mostafa G., Network and Data Center Supervisor at a hospitality company, says, “Since using the solution, three or four people can do what 10 people could previously. It has been a benefit to the organization. We have many people from the team who manage a lot of devices. By using Cisco DNA Center, it has taken some of that burden away, we are impressed with it.”

Nihar K., Managing Director at Allot Group, relates, “In day-to-day operations, especially post-pandemic, the majority of our customers have to work from anywhere. It's not just work from home, it's work from anywhere. Due to this work from anywhere concept, the traditional silos of a network for the data center architecture, managing everything from anywhere, and having that single integrated dashboard for each and every activity while being able to correlate those activities in line with a business objective, has been very well addressed by Cisco DNA. The solution's most valuable aspect is its simplicity and the complete automation of the network workflow, which we can use that correlate with the business. It's not only limited to STXs or a data center. It completes everything, which really helps us.

Cisco DNA Center was previously known as DNA Center.

Cisco DNA Center is the #1 ranked solution in top Network Management Applications, #1 ranked solution in top Network Automation tools, and #21 ranked solution in best Network Monitoring Tools. PeerSpot users give Cisco DNA Center an average rating of 7.8 out of 10. Cisco DNA Center is most commonly compared to Cisco Prime: Cisco DNA Center vs Cisco Prime. Cisco DNA Center is popular among the large enterprise segment, accounting for 70% of users researching this solution on PeerSpot. The top industry researching this solution are professionals from a computer software company, accounting for 19% of all views.