

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller and Centreon compete in infrastructure management, catering to network and systems management. Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller holds an upper hand in integration and stability, whereas Centreon leads in flexibility and ease of use for monitoring.
Features: Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller is recognized for stability, connectivity monitoring, and integration capabilities, alongside extensive automation and unique management features. It offers a comprehensive view of data centers through its integration with Cisco tools. Centreon is noted for flexibility, robust monitoring capabilities, customizable dashboards, and integration abilities, providing adaptability to various requirements.
Room for Improvement: Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller could improve pricing strategies, integration with third-party tools, and simplify setup processes. Enhancing reporting features and expanding automation capabilities are suggested. Centreon is advised to enhance cloud monitoring, develop more dynamic visualization options, and improve plugin support and API functionalities.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller is mainly available for on-premise deployments, benefiting from strong developmental and operational support, although further operational assistance improvement is noted. Centreon supports hybrid and public cloud environments and is often described as easy to deploy. Users value its ease of integration and customization, with some noting documentation and real-time response systems could improve.
Pricing and ROI: Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller's pricing is high but justified by its comprehensive feature set, offering considerable value and ROI in complex environments. Licenses are bundled with Nexus switches, adding convenience yet contributing to costs. Centreon offers a cost-effective alternative with open-source availability; however, its Enterprise version entails additional expenses. Users find Centreon's value noteworthy despite frequent changes in pricing models and licensing terms.
Centreon provides timesaving and costsaving benefits as it lets us manage multiple devices on a single platform.
It significantly saves time by automating monitoring tasks and reduces costs as it requires fewer resources.
We do not have direct access to Centreon's technical support.
If issues arise, like services appearing as down in Centreon, technical support helps check the polar-server communication.
Technical support from Centreon responds within 24 hours and resolves issues quickly.
Cisco's support I would rate as a 10 compared to all other vendors.
Occasionally, for several hours, we do not receive any alerts, causing a business impact.
We use other tools for adding and deploying configured devices, but direct access from Centreon would be beneficial.
Centreon is a much more straightforward and stable tool compared to Icinga.
Sometimes we do not receive alerts, causing business impact, and users ask why no alerts were received.
Enhancements are needed in identifying configuration issues, providing real-time alerts in case of issues, and improving the HTTP configuration tasks.
While Centreon excels at server-level monitoring, it lacks the ability to track web app availability and latency, unlike Dynatrace, which is efficient in this area.
Reliability is sometimes an issue. Centreon has a developer mode and production mode, but sometimes alerts don't come through in production mode.
I do not believe it integrated well with different infrastructures for hybrid environments.
Centreon's pricing is not very expensive.
Centreon's real-time monitoring, despite having some manual aspects, supports us in managing our operations effectively.
Monitoring is a fundamental pillar of technical support, and Centreon streamlines this process, reducing the need for extensive manual checks.
Centreon allows us to monitor all of our devices on one platform.
People typically understand north-south traffic flows but usually miss the east-west traffic flows in data centers.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| Centreon | 1.7% |
| Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) | 0.7% |
| Other | 97.6% |


| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 11 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 5 |
| Large Enterprise | 14 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 10 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 6 |
| Large Enterprise | 16 |
Centreon is an all-in-one IT monitoring solution that is a network, system, applicative supervision, and monitoring tool. It is free and open source, and one of the most flexible and powerful monitoring softwares on the market.
Centreon Features
Centreon has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:
Centreon Benefits
There are several benefits to implementing Centreon. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:
Reviews from Real Users
Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by Centreon users.
PeerSpot user Thor M., CEO at a tech services company, says, "The single-pane view provides us a view of all of our network infrastructure, and it is one of the most important tools that we use to see the status of our customers' networks. It provides a nice benefit when it comes to helping align IT operations with business objectives. The top-down views, dashboards, and business context reporting are things that are nice to have because you want to be able to show the customer that everything is working, that problems have been addressed, and that you're providing value.”
Thomas C., Managing Director, Canada at Eva, comments, “The most valuable feature of the solution is the flexibility, the ability to integrate all kinds of equipment. As long as something has an IP you can monitor it. What we try to achieve all the time is not only saying a company's system is available, but to give additional data on the performance of the equipment. So the flexibility is what matters the most to us, where we can script everything. Centreon has a lot of Plugin Packs, meaning they support, by design, a lot of devices. And on top of that, we have the ability to add our own scripts and do whatever we want and display the data as we want in the central dashboards.”
Marcilio L., President at ITS Solucoes, expresses, "The dashboards are valuable because they ease troubleshooting and viewing. It becomes easier to locate the source of a problem... The dashboards make it easier to communicate with our clients. They don't want to see the alert console, they want to see a beautiful dashboard representing their network and their business and to watch it in case something is wrong in their environment."
Florent Q., Network Engineer at a computer software company, mentions, "The most valuable feature is that we can manually configure everything we need. After it comes inside the interface of Centreon, you can display it. Because the interface is quite user-friendly, you can manually configure the configuration very deeply, which is very pleasant and useful because you can monitor and see everything on your service list, dashboard, or MAP. The most useful feature for me is that you can create your own plugin and monitoring query."
The Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (NDFC) offers a comprehensive solution for managing Cisco NX-OS switches in hybrid-cloud environments, providing automation, visibility, and consistent operations. Designed to simplify and enhance data center management, NDFC integrates with Cisco Nexus Dashboard to streamline network connectivity, reduce deployment times, and ensure seamless transitions with minimal disruptions. Its modular architecture, new user interface, and support for non-Nexus OS platforms make it a robust tool for LAN, SAN, and IP Fabric for Media management. Additionally, NDFC enhances fabric reliability, automates workflows, and supports cloud connectivity with AWS and Microsoft Azure, making it ideal for businesses adapting to increasingly complex digital environments.
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