Cisco Secure Workload Reviews

We have many use cases for Cisco Tetration. Examples of this are micro-segmentation and the visibility of applications.

The most valuable feature is micro-segmentation, which can be used to deploy endpoint security along with the visibility of application and connection matrix

This product is simple to deploy, and provides visibility of connectivity between the endpoints/application.

There is some overlap between Cisco Tetration and AppDynamics and there are few DC tools, It would be great  to have a single pane of glass, rather than have to jump between different tools.

I have used Cisco Tetration for few months in POC last year 2019

With respect to stability, we haven't seen any issues so far with it.

We have evaluated in my last organisations as part of POV with about 1,000 endpoints and we have incorporated Kubernetes as well. Scalability depends upon what hardware you're using or what model of Tetration you're using. If you're using it on-premises then the scalability numbers are different than a cloud-based deployment.

So far, we have not had any trouble with scalability. However, we have just completed our proof of concept, so we do not have many actual users yet.

We have not been in contact with technical support.

We have not used anything quite like Cisco Tetration in the past.

The initial setup is straightforward. It doesn't take long to deploy. You just need to install the agents on the machines and if you want to install it on-premises then you use the cloud servers to help with the setup. The entire process takes a week or two. 

The price is based on how many installation of software sensors you're going to install it on.

We did not evaluate other options because there are not many products in the market that offer this functionality. In fact, I think that Cisco is specifically covering the market for micro-segmentation and visibility of applications.

The suitability of Cisco Tetration depends on the strategy of any given organization. If your organization has a micro-segmentation strategy then this is a good solution. It works to improve visibility by creating connection metrics between applications and having the proper policy in place.

Overall, this is a really good product and I am happy with it.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Our primary use case is for process discovery and for the data center. 

One thing for sure about improvement to our organization and that is we do have several applications with no servers. It's hard to identify what port every application is using. So by using Tetration, it runs an agent and will let us know all the processes running within that server. We can quickly turn around and be able to secure the server by blocking the unused ports.

The most valuable feature right now is to do with having visibility on the network — especially on our servers — and to be able to enforce some type of security measures. This is mostly to combat processes that shouldn't be running on the servers.

The data analytics and all the data that it gathers are very useful. It creates a fast turn around to improve the speed of decision making so we can decide what we need to do to remain secure.

A feature that I was looking for was emailed alerts and notifications so we'd get them right away. I don't know if it is there or not yet but I haven't had enough time to explore and find it.

The search capabilities can be improved as well.

So far the stability has been reliable.

Scalability all depends on how many agents you buy. If Cisco makes it more affordable to buy agents, then it will be more scalable for us. The limitation right now is the cost and not the system.

So far tech support has been great. Every time we call, they're always available to help us troubleshoot or help us get around in the application.

It was very straightforward since we're doing cloud-based management.

If you have a somewhat limited budget you may find the scalability limited. The product does not seem to be.

For me, the solution is a nine out of ten. I really like it. It's a great tool that will help give visibility to a data center and network, understand processes that are running within the data center and be able to enforce rules and regulations for all your processes.

Our primary use case for the Cisco Tetration solution is for troubleshooting network incidents. 

The most valuable feature of the solution is that we don't have to do packet captures on the network. 

Cisco Tetration needs more flags and system alerts that we should get with network capture. We haven't gotten into the security aspects of it. 

From a troubleshooting perspective, there are a few areas they can improve. There should be more types of data.

It is very stable.

The scalability of Cisco Tetration is very good.

We did not have a lot of experience with Cisco support.

We didn't have anything like Cisco Tetration before. We were previously considering ACI. We decided not to use it.

The setup was complex because of how our network is structured. In the network administration setup, Cisco Tetration requires some planning.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate Cisco Tetration an eight or nine. I'd like to see better documentation for advanced features. The documentation is fairly basic. I would also like to see better integration with other applications. 

It's still a maturing product at the beginning of the lifecycle right now. 

The product is primarily used for automating micro-segmentation.

Cisco Tetration provides visibility into networks and additional security. This improves the entire organization by saving time, resisting attacks, and allocating resources properly.

While automated micro-segmentation is in itself valuable, application dependency mapping is time-saving and efficient. 

While the product does its job and more than any organization currently needs, the entire interface could be improved. It's ugly and uninviting. The biggest competitor has a very nice, modern-looking GUI. Tetration tends to be a lot more cumbersome and it's not very intuitive. It is a good thing for consultants, but not for a typical end user.

The product is very stable. We have never had an issue after an implementation.

Cisco Tetration has scaling capabilities that surpass the realistic needs of any organization. 

We augment Cisco customer service and support for the product, so we generally do not require support. However, Cisco support is excellent and we never have any issues. We will always get the support that we need, whether it be from the business unit that developed it directly, or from the Cisco TAC.

The complexity of the setup depends on the version being installed. The cloud version can be up and running in a couple of hours. The other version could take a couple of weeks. Customers who do not already know the product shouldn't really be deploying it on their own. Once it's up and running, a single person can manage and grow the entire environment in a fraction of the time it would take to do manually. Some organizations will allow as little as 2-3 hours a week and some will have to spend a lot more time on it. The resource allocation really just depends on what it is being used for.

We do all our own deployments so there is no need for a vendor team. However, it is not recommended that end-users install this without prior knowledge and consultancy.

There is an immediate ROI when deploying this product. While it is hard to count in dollars, an organization will experience functionality that they never had before. The product creates cost savings in the allocation of resources but that goes much further than that. As an example, it is possible to recreate a database server that had no documentation and no backup. If that database were to go down, it would cost a company millions. Tetration can gather enough information to be able to rebuild that same database server and have immediate tell over and avoid that type of disaster.

The cost depends on the size and the implementation. The larger the implementation the more cost effective it becomes. There are two different types of licenses. If you want to add enforcement there's an extra cost to turn it on. You can just go with the network visibility it provides without the enforcement. That's the basic difference between the two license types. The price is nominal between the two packages and it is possible to negotiate with Cisco to make the pricing almost equal between the two as Cisco will prefer organizations to have the enhanced utility.

The only other product we considered before deciding on Cisco Tetration is Illumio, which is a direct competitor. It is possible to string together multiple tools from the VMware side that can create similar functionality.

This product does everything that you need it to do and more. I would definitely rate it a 10 out of 10. It does a lot to provide visibility in a network environment, save time and money, and makes the organization IT operate in much more of a streamlined fashion. We could have chosen other products, but this is the horse that we picked to go in the race.

The primary use case for us and our clients is to give the auditors the tools and the view on the network that we're in sync and that we're audible in what we do.

Instead of proving that all the access control lists are in place and all the EPGs are correct, we can just point the auditor to a dashboard and point out that there aren't any escaped conversations. It saves an enormous, enormous amount of time.

The most valuable feature is the auditing. They prove that we don't have out of scope conversations between servers that are not allowed.

They should scale down the hardware a bit. The initial hardware investment is two million dollars so it's a price point problem. The issue with the price comes from the fact that you have to have it with enormous storage and enormous computes.

I would also like to see them develop more flexible export from other trades to third-party products or to form links to a third-party product. Make reports in the form that the auditor wants using a third-party product, for example.

It's rather stable. It's stable but huge.

Scalability is enormous and it can keep data longer than the other products I know in the space.

The people we deal with for technical support are very good. We haven't had to book official cases yet. 

The initial set up took some time because we wanted to test some different client scenarios before we offered it as a service to clients. To get a good set up for the different scenarios and to make sure that we had a good procedure to wipe all the disks and that we had the necessary proof that the disk was securely wiped before going to integration with the next clients. It took some time to see how could we do that.

We implemented directly through Cisco. We had a good experience with them. 

We have a 50% gain on auditing time. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

I would advise you to give it a try. Call Cisco and get a demo, try it in a lab, and go for it. 

For the gas and oil company, who is our customer, they are mainly using it for their networking sites.

Scalability is its most valuable feature.

It is not so easy to use and configure. It needs a bunch of further resources to work, which is mainly the biggest downside of it. The deployment is huge.

It is very stable. We haven't had any problems with it.

We started off with one node. Then, it grew over six months to a year, so we bought two more nodes for a total of three nodes. It is huge right now, especially since the tracer comes with a half a rack.

We have had two pretty straightforward cases with the technical support.

We were not using a previous solution.

The initial setup was complex, because it had a bunch of little details that needed to be tied together.

The price is outrageous. If you have money to throw at the product, then do it.

We possible looked at a vRealize solution, but our customer did not want to consider VMware because it was not Cisco. The customer was a Cisco shop and did not even inquire regarding the price of the Tetration solution.

The product should be easy to use, but it is not. Comparing it to other products, it was very complex. 

There are cheaper products out there which are simpler to use than Tetration.

Our primary use case of this solution is to analyze traffic. We have a route cluster of 2,500 nodes right now just in case the application is facing any delay or latency we wanted to have the visibility. It allows for insight into our data center.

With the analysis we have, we are only looking at the features of application sales and our books during the month. What we really needed was to know how the traffic flow is and what the latency is. We have a server team which comes back to us and they complain about the latency that our app is facing and we are not able to determine what the issue is. They want to back the network itself and we end up substituting nothing. With Tetration insight, we are able to get that latency on our level accounts and we are able to determine whatever the issue is with the application latency itself.

The telemetry gives me the visibility on the particular path. It helps to analyze the whole fabric itself. I also get to know what condition we have and on which interfaces. We look at heavy traffic so we can share the particular load across to other interfaces as well.

The problem is that we can only deploy the particular solution where we have the hardware with Cisco. This is only FX series switches, which have the hardware sensor built, and we have to deploy the software sensor.

It is stable.

This solution is scalable but there is a limitation that it is only available on Cisco devices. It is highly scalable for us. We have around 4,000 auto machines and a load of around 35,000 users.

Tech support is good. We have not had any issues. Only once did we really have an issue.

We initially only had the network monitoring and insight software. The network monitoring solution, SolarWinds, was the first. We also went back with Riverbeds as a unit model draft of the quality but that did not make sense to us. We tried integrating the application monitoring along with the network itself using a net flow but we were still not able to get the regular insights and the regular results that we're getting right now with the Tetration solution.

The implementation is pretty straightforward.

The pricing is a bit higher than we anticipated.