Cisco DNA Center vs Nagios Core comparison

Cisco and Nagios are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Cisco is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.0, while Nagios is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.0. Cisco holds a 1.4% mindshare in NMS, compared to Nagios’s 3.0% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 80% of Nagios users who would recommend it.

Cisco DNA Center

Read 41 Cisco DNA Center reviews

1,783 Views
1,076 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Nagios Core

Read 51 Nagios Core reviews

4,253 Views
3,272 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

Cisco DNA Center

Nagios Core

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

Nagios Core and Cisco DNA Center compete in the network management category. Based on features, Cisco DNA Center holds an upper hand due to its advanced analytics and automation capabilities, although Nagios Core offers flexibility and cost-efficiency.

Features: Nagios Core provides maximum flexibility through its open-source nature, allowing text file configurations and integration with various plugins. It supports comprehensive monitoring of servers and networks with a robust architecture for distributed monitoring and reliable alerts. Cisco DNA Center integrates analytics, centralized network management, and automation, making it ideal for Cisco device deployments. Its seamless integration and advanced automation features enhance user experience.

Room for Improvement: Nagios Core can be difficult to configure and requires significant technical expertise, with limitations in application-level monitoring and scalability. Cisco DNA Center is hindered by high pricing, complex configuration, and challenges integrating with non-Cisco products. Both could improve user interfaces and ease of setup, though Cisco's advances in automation offer benefits.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both Nagios Core and Cisco DNA Center mainly operate on-premises with hybrid and public cloud options. Nagios Core setup demands technical expertise and relies on community support. Cisco DNA Center provides a structured support framework but still requires internal expertise for setup, often underutilized by smaller infrastructures due to costs and complexity.

Pricing and ROI: Nagios Core is open-source, offering significant cost savings and high ROI as there are no licensing fees, only investments in expertise. Cisco DNA Center often faces criticism for high costs, including licensing and deployment fees, posing financial challenges for smaller enterprises, but offers valuable features for large-scale environments.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco DNA Center vs. Nagios Core Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco DNA Center vs. Nagios Core

April 2025

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Helped 849,686 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Cisco DNA Center

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

12th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Management Applications (1st), Network Automation (2nd)

Nagios Core

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

8th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (11th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco DNA Center is 1.4%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nagios Core is 3.0%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

AvrahamSonenthal

Senior Network Engineer at Inside Global

Efficiently manages our wireless network and provides valuable monitoring features

The platform's biggest benefit has been in managing our wireless network. Having a single pane of glass to control all wireless controllers and access points and to monitor activity has been a significant advantage. We're a small federal agency with around 300 network devices, so automation is a minor focus. It's more relevant for larger networks. The main benefits we've seen are in inventory management and the potential for configuration automation. However, I recommend using the DNA Centre only for larger networks with over a thousand devices; otherwise, it may not be cost-effective. Before proceeding, ensure that your devices are compatible with DNA Center, as not all Cisco devices are supported. Also, investing in proper training is different from plug-and-play. I rate it an eight.

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Nishith-Vyas

Tech Lead at STL Digital Limited

Valuable reporting and alert system with room for PDF export improvements

The NetEase reporting structure needs improvement, especially the availability report, which is weak. It should be generated automatically with minimal human intervention and should be exportable as a PDF. Besides that, an integrated PDF export feature for reports is necessary. Also, the alert mechanism and graphing mechanism need to be integrated properly into Nagios Core. Currently, integrating these requires advanced Linux knowledge. Integration of more visualization tools like Grafana and Prometheus for better graphing and visualization is also recommended.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The best feature of Cisco DNA Center is the visibility page, where you can see everything on the dashboard, and you don't have to be a technical person to view the issues."

"I think that their LAN automation is a very good feature."

"DNA Center is scalable."

"Cisco DNA Center is a user-friendly solution."

"The automation features are significant, reducing configuration time. This means outstanding functionality. By deploying the controller automatically, the rest becomes automated"

"What I found valuable in Cisco DNA Center is the Software-Defined Access Network, so the entire LAN network can be centralized and managed from a single dashboard. Cisco DNA Center is suitable for centralized management and lets you deploy switches in a centralized fashion. You can also do multiple switch port configurations simultaneously and segregate your traffic into multiple fabrics. Another valuable feature of Cisco DNA Center is enhanced security through Scalable Group Tags. Cisco DNA Center can be integrated with your Cisco ISE to enhance the port securities, and this paves the way for Software-Defined Networking in the LAN segment, which is the main advantage of Cisco DNA Center. I also like that you can use Cisco DNA Center for data assurance or correlation. The solution shows your network and client health parameters, which I find convenient for troubleshooting."

"The solution has the capability to scale."

"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."

More Cisco DNA Center pros

"The most valuable feature of Nagios Core is it allows us to develop and add as many plugins as we want."

"The most valuable features are the reports and the way it generates the report in a graphical manner."

"Other products are good but from the configuration point of view Nagios is really very lightweight. The price is really good in my opinion. Another important thing is that my Nagios engine still works with Dual core 8GB ram for the last 10 years."

"The application performance monitoring feature is valuable."

"The solution's most valuable feature is that it offers proper alerting capabilities."

"I like the way the solution sends alerts and how it keeps on escalating them."

"I like that it's very simple to install, easy to manage and deploy, and easy to use for monitoring."

"The good thing about Nagios Core is it covers everything."

More Nagios Core pros

Cons

"The product doesn’t have good monitoring capabilities."

"The solution's technical support is an area with which my company's clients have a problem. Cisco doesn't provide good technical support unless a user has a big account that Cisco wants to retain."

"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."

"The tool's IoT integration should be better."

"Requires more focus on the digital side of things."

"Cisco DNA Center was a new technology for us, at the beginning, it was not easy to do, but Cisco did a lot of training with us to a level we could handle everything. The team is managing itself now without the assistance of Cisco."

"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 solution needs to improve the dashboard."

More Cisco DNA Center cons

"I would like to see a sensor that shows the traffic of a user and what they're doing on the network."

"Nagios Core can improve the graphical interface, it would make things a little easier."

"Nagios Core is limited in terms of distributed setups, and there is no central view for remote data centers."

"The alerting mechanism in Nagios Core could be improved."

"Would benefit from aggregations if a particular server goes down."

"It is a bit slow due to latency."

"The tool needs to improve the integrations."

"The mapping is a little hard."

More Nagios Core cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an expensive solution."

"The tool is medium-priced."

"I rate the product's pricing an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is very cheap, and ten is very expensive."

"Cisco DNA Center is a licensed product with multiple levels of licensing available such as basic, advanced, and essential. I don't have the exact figure, but Cisco DNA Center is costly. For example, the box has information about the essential license and costs a considerable amount of money. You need to pay extra to use advanced features in Cisco DNA Center. My company sees Cisco DNA Center as a solution that's worth the money, which is why it invested in the solution. If you want centralized management for your network, especially when upgrading it, Cisco DNA Center is perfect, but it's more suitable for a large-scale rather than a small-scale network."

"The product is very costly."

"Affordability is a problem because it's created for large enterprises only. So, some customers, even if their engineers want the solution, might have problems with budget limitations."

"Licensing for Cisco DNA Center is a little bit expensive, just like any Cisco solution. Its cost could still be improved."

"The licensing cost for Cisco DNA Center is not more than that of other solutions."

More Cisco DNA Center pricing and cost advice

"Nagios Core is free to use."

"It's free."

"The Nagios Core (PNP4Nagios + Core) is free and can be setup by Netadmin within a few hours. The only additional cost is the cloud server."

"The solution is expensive."

"The enterprise version has technical support. The version we are using is free."

"We are using the free version of Nagios Core."

"We are using the free version."

"The product is cheaply priced."

More Nagios Core pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

16%

Government

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco DNA Center?

The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it gives some kind of ease in operations, especially since our company is moving from CLI to GUI-based configuration.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco DNA Center?

The cost is very high.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco DNA Center?

The system is working fine for me currently.

See all answers

What do you like most about Nagios Core?

What I like about Nagios Core is that it helps me ensure everything is running smoothly by checking the status of hosts and services.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nagios Core?

Nagios Core is a free and open-source product. We don't charge for the product itself, but we charge for the man-hour costs related to installation, configuration, ongoing operation, and maintenance.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Nagios Core?

The dashboard should be improved. It's very simple. I don't have a very clear or specific suggestion. You can change the skin of the dashboard, however, it's good for me.

See all answers

Comparisons

Cisco Catalyst Center vs Cisco DNA Center

Compared 11% of the time

Juniper Mist Wired Assurance vs Cisco DNA Center

Compared 7% of the time

SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager vs Cisco DNA Center

Compared 6% of the time

Fortinet FortiManager vs Cisco DNA Center

Compared 6% of the time

Meraki Dashboard vs Cisco DNA Center

Compared 5% of the time

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Icinga vs Nagios Core

Compared 26% of the time

Nagios XI vs Nagios Core

Compared 17% of the time

Zabbix vs Nagios Core

Compared 14% of the time

Centreon vs Nagios Core

Compared 9% of the time

OP5 Monitor vs Nagios Core

Compared 4% of the time

More Nagios Core Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco DNA Center

April 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Nagios Core

April 2025

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Also Known As

DNA Center

No data available

Overview

Cisco DNA Center offers a comprehensive platform for network automation and management, providing detailed analytics, enhanced security, and streamlined operations for both wired and wireless networks.

Cisco DNA Center integrates with Cisco infrastructure to deliver efficient network automation and management, helping organizations improve network visibility, security, and control. It supports AI-driven analytics and automated workflows to enhance operational efficiency and reduce errors. Challenges include compatibility with third-party systems, steep learning curve, and complex deployment. Its interface facilitates centralized control, vital for troubleshooting, policy management, and configuration management, with support for zero-touch provisioning and SD-Access.

What are the key features of Cisco DNA Center?

Robust Analytics: Provides detailed insights into network health with AI-driven analytics.
Centralized Security: Integrates with ISE for comprehensive security management.
Automated Device Management: Simplifies device provisioning and configuration transfers.
Wi-Fi Analytics: Offers deep insights into wireless network performance.
Zero-Touch Provisioning: Streamlines new device deployments with minimal human intervention.
Scalable Segmentation: Efficiently segments network traffic ensuring security and performance.

What benefits should users consider?

Operational Efficiency: Automation reduces potential errors and streamlines workflow.
Enhanced Security: Integration with Cisco ISE bolsters security capabilities.
Network Visibility: Comprehensive dashboards and analysis tools enhance monitoring.
Troubleshooting: Real-time monitoring aids in identifying and resolving issues swiftly.

In sectors such as healthcare, finance, and retail, Cisco DNA Center is utilized for its ability to enhance security and compliance, manage large-scale networks, and provide detailed analytics for better operational decision-making. Its support for location tracking and policy automation ensures efficient network management across diverse environments.

Cisco

This is IT infrastructure monitoring's industry-standard, open-source core. Free without professional support services.

Nagios

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel

Buyer's Guide

Cisco DNA Center vs. Nagios Core

April 2025

Free Report: Cisco DNA Center vs. Nagios Core

Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco DNA Center vs. Nagios Core and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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