Cisco DNA Center Reviews

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.

Our primary use case is for building and maintaining networks while adhering to security policies. It offers automation, security enforcement, analytics, and integration with other Cisco technologies, making it a key driver for efficient network operations and compliance with security protocols.

The most valuable features are its life cycle management and the security aspects it provides.

The weaknesses primarily involve pricing and the ongoing need for increased bandwidth and data throughput. These aspects are interconnected with the lifecycle management of the network. Security is also a concern, even though is somewhat implemented. There are no specific requirements except for user-friendly dashboards, but the definition of "user-friendly" can vary from person to person, making it challenging to define a universal standard.

I have used it for a year.

It has good stability capabilities.

It offers good scalability features.

The initial setup was complex.

The partnership price is notably high, but it ultimately depends on the chosen business model.

The choice of the solution depends on the organization's size, network complexity, and whether they have its own maintenance or operational department. Organizations can opt to outsource to Cisco partners, but this decision relies on their specific needs. It's crucial to determine whether to keep network knowledge in-house or rely on external expertise. Skill versions and portfolio updates should be approached cautiously, considering customer requirements and the timing of upgrades to avoid disrupting operations. I would rate it eight out of ten.

The solution is useful when an organization has a mature infrastructure with all Cisco devices.

Application Assurance works very well. The micro-segmentation and Multi-Cisco DNA Center features are also good.

The product has many features that do not work properly. We can’t work on basic DNA activities. The tool has very complex features. It's not stable, and it's not fully estimated.

I have been working with the product for almost one year.

The tool is not stable and reliable.

I don't think there is an issue with scalability. The main issue with the solution is that there is no way to integrate any other vendors with it. It is scalable, but we need Cisco devices.

It's mandatory to have access to technical support because it's a very complicated product. We have SmartNet from Cisco.

The initial setup is very complex. We must have a mature Cisco environment and a well-defined built-in configuration on the devices. Not all the devices would work properly. We must have the latest devices. It's very complex to build it.

It takes at least two months to deploy seven switches on one site. On average, the deployment takes one to two months.

We take help from Cisco partners for deployment. Our team does some of the implementations. It depends on the project and the budget. We need a manager, a technical team leader, and three engineers to deploy it.

We must upgrade all the devices to the optimal stable version to deploy the tool. Then, we must configure the initial IS-IS configuration. We need reachability between the devices for the product to work. Then, we must provision the devices in DNA one by one. Provisioning is the most complex process because the tool will check and verify every single command on the device.

Sometimes, the provisioning fails because of a conflict in configuration. It takes too much time to erase the configuration and redo the provisioning. After provisioning, we must configure the VLANs and the border routing from the overlay to the underlay.

The product is very costly. We must have a DNA license and upgrade it if we use it. Money is a major issue that we have with the solution.

We did not have any user experience issues. I don't highly recommend the tool. Organizations with expert Cisco engineers can use the product. It's not suitable for organizations that don't have any expertise. Overall, I would rate the solution a six out of ten.

Our customers use the solution to manage and centrally apply device policies. Many administrators are moving away from manual configuration, and DNA Center helps automate network management. Some use it purely for assurance, such as troubleshooting, monitoring, and generating network performance reports. The 360-degree view feature is widely used for monitoring networks, and many customers also leverage automation and access control features.

The platform's most valuable features are automation and assurance. Automation helps configure devices without manual intervention, enabling zero-touch provisioning. Devices like switches can seamlessly be added to the network, reducing time and effort. It also ensures policy compliance across the network. In addition, the assurance feature provides detailed insights into network health, which is essential for efficient management.

One area that needs improvement is the upgrade process. The time required for downloading and installing packages during upgrades is too long, often taking around ten hours. This is a significant issue for customers who cannot afford such long downtime. Improvements in reducing upgrade time would greatly enhance the user experience.

We have been working with Cisco DNA Center since its release.

I would rate DNA Center's scalability as eight. It can manage large networks efficiently, and its ability to scale with the organization's growing network requirements makes it a robust solution.

I rate the initial setup around seven to eight. While the physical setup, like rack-mounting, is straightforward, the complexity arises in gathering the prerequisites, such as management IP addresses and other configuration details from the customer. With proper planning, the setup can be completed in about 30 minutes. However, the lengthy upgrade process remains a challenge.

It is mostly deployed on-premises. It comes with UCS appliances, and most customers prefer the on-premise deployment for security and performance reasons. Although cloud deployment options may be available, most of our deployments are on-prem.

The deployment time depends on the size of the customer's network. Smaller setups can take a few days if all prerequisites are in place. However, larger networks, especially those requiring fabric-enabled switches or firewall integration, can take longer. The DNA Center's configuration is relatively simple, but preparing the network infrastructure can extend the timeline.

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. 

I have been using Cisco DNA Center for almost two and a half years.

Cisco DNA Center is a user-friendly solution. When it comes to configurations, they are normally expecting the current up-and-running ports.

The solution’s security side could be improved.

I have been using Cisco DNA Center for almost two and a half years.

Cisco DNA Center is a stable solution. Compared to other software we have from a local vendor, Cisco DNA Center is very convenient and easy to handle.

Cisco DNA Center has good scalability. For one customer, we deployed between 60 to 80 devices. So altogether, we have 160 to 180 devices or users using the solution. We have plans to increase the solution’s usage.

We haven't requested any technical support from Cisco, but during the initial stage, we got some technical support from the local Cisco engineers.

Cisco DNA Center is very easy to set up.

Cisco DNA Center's deployment takes around 20 to 30 minutes. We get direct support from Cisco's local engineers to deploy the solution.

Normally, we get engineering support from Cisco. So when it comes to the solution's implementation and deployment, we get support from on-site Cisco engineers. We have with us a couple of engineers with Cisco certifications. We have downloaded the solution's demo. We get it tested inside our office before implementing it for the customer.

We get a yearly license at the time we buy the product. The solution's pricing depends on the discounts we get from the local CSCO.

I am using the latest version of Cisco DNA Center.

We have two engineers for the solution's implementation. We have four dedicated engineers for monitoring Cisco DNA Center, going through the dashboard, and updating the customers.

Overall, I rate Cisco DNA Center a nine out of ten.

We are using Cisco DNA Center for network management and wireless assurance.

Our business functions better by using Cisco DNA Center because we have better visibility of wireless and configuration deployment.

The most valuable features of Cisco DNA Center are wireless assurance and visibility.

The features of Cisco DNA Center and Cisco Prime could have more parity.

In a future release, there should be more deployment features.

I have been using Cisco DNA Center for approximately two years.

The stability of the solution is good.

I rate the stability of Cisco DNA Center an eight out of ten.

The latency limits our scalability. 

We have approximately 10 network engineers using the solution.

We might increase our daily usage of the solution.

I rate the scalability of Cisco DNA Center a seven out of ten.

I have not used the support.

I previously used Cisco Prime and witched because it was enterprise-grade.

The setup is complex and involves clusters. The network address allocation is complicated just between the Cisco DNA Center hardware.#The first part of the implementation is setting up the hardware and then onboarding all of the hardware. It can take a lot of time.

I rate the initial setup of Cisco DNA Center a five out of ten.

We did the deployment of the solution. We used two or three network engineers.

I rate the return on investment of Cisco DNA Center a four out of five.

The price of the solution is expensive. The hardware is licensed on the device, but the hardware on the server is expensive.

I rate the price of Cisco DNA Center a two out of ten.

I did not evaluate other options before using Cisco DNA Center.

We have one network engineer for the maintenance of the solution.

My advice to others is for them to make sure their building diagram are to scale

I rate Cisco DNA Center a seven out of ten.

It does a lot of things automatically, and that's the big thing with it. They're making the software so that you don't need to be as knowledgeable as me on the switching and routing side to get your work done. If you want, you can have DNA troubleshoot your problem for you and give you solutions or fix it itself, if it was something that's just a configuration issue. That's a plus, but it doesn't help new people learn switching well. If you're depending on all the software to do it, you won't be able to figure it out yourself.

It's a very hard software to learn. It's very deep, and when we first got it, there wasn't a whole lot of documentation on it. There's more now, but you really have to know what you're doing to use it to its full functionality.

It seems to be a little bit more centered toward wireless than wired. You've got more options you can do wirelessly than you can with the wired switches, but it works for what we need it to do. We would like to see a little bit more about the traffic, and we're looking at what's out there to see about that. We are looking at something that might give us a bit more insight into the actual traffic. If they had the full functionality on the wired side, as they do on the wireless side in terms of being able to view traffic and everything, it would be good.

The configuration jobs part could be better. Basically, it's very easy to make mistakes when you're writing the little config file that you need to push in. You've got to do it exactly right. It's not based on CLI commands or whatever. It's got its own little format syntax. It needs to be synced up NTP-wise and time-wise. Otherwise, it doesn't work. I've had other management software where the time could have been off on both of them, and it wouldn't have been a big deal. 

I would like to see them make it like the old CiscoWorks did where when you wanted to run a command, you could just type in the command on your command line on the switch, instead of having to jump through the hoop to get the config pushed out to the new devices. I'd like Cisco to give more control to people who are using it and not keep it for themselves. It's one of those things where you've got to have the right image, and they all have to be on that image, or it doesn't work. NTP has to be synced up. There are a lot of little issues there to get it to work. When we first got it three years ago, there wasn't that much documentation, and we were sometimes just fumbling around in the dark. They've gotten better on the documentation, but they have a tendency to make it a little more complicated because they want you to have them do it, not do it yourself. It looks like that's where they're going with this software over the years. I've been doing this for 22 years, and it looks like they're trying to take the control away from the end-users and take it back for themselves. I've seen the younger generations coming out, and they don't seem to want to learn the switching and routing at the depth they need to in order to become a third-tier engineer. So, personally, I understand why they're doing it, but I'd like to have more control on my end. While I would like to have more control, there are people who work for me who I wouldn't want to have that control.

They don't have a good training plan. We had a guy who walked us through it and other things, but he was searching. We've had it since earlier on, and he was searching for stuff just like I would've been doing. He didn't know that well. So, they need a little bit better training plan or something on the initial buy to get people to realize exactly how everything works, how it's all tied together, and what you can do with it. I've learned a lot of stuff that this guy didn't show us. There are ways to do things, but he never showed those to us. He just showed us how to set it up and not how to monitor a bunch of stuff or push the configs out.

I have been using Cisco DNA for about three years.

It has been pretty stable. We've had a few issues with it, but that's because the software guys didn't keep it updated. We've got them, and they're going to keep it updated now. It is a fairly stable piece of software. It is just very deep, and you've got to know it well to take full advantage of its functionality.

Scalability is based on the number of licenses you buy. That's expensive sometimes. It's just software. So, you just buy more licenses. At some point, if you had a big enough network, you might have an issue, but we haven't had any issues with roughly 350 networking devices and 7,000 end devices. It hasn't reached its own limit yet with us, but I could see where it might, and it's just a matter of buying more licensing to expand it.

I've contacted their support a couple of times. It depends on who you get. You get a good one, and you get one who is not really that good. I've had to ask to speak to somebody else on a few occasions because the person didn't know a whole lot, and you're told to do things that any normal person would do before they call tech support.

I would rate it a seven out of ten because it is functional, and you can do a lot with it, but you really have to know it. So, I'm going to knock them down a few points because they don't have a good training plan.