Nagios XI and Cisco DNA Center compete in the network monitoring category. Cisco DNA Center seems to have the upper hand due to its centralized management and automation features.
Features: Nagios XI is revered for its open-source flexibility, permitting script-based customization and support for a wide array of services. Its extensive plugin library allows tailored monitoring setups. Cisco DNA Center, however, focuses on automation and network management, providing seamless integration with Cisco devices and delivering comprehensive network insights.
Room for Improvement: Nagios XI requires advancements in plugin integration to extend services and nurture simpler configurations, and its installation process demands attention. Cisco DNA Center is critiqued for its high cost and basic AI features. Users request better integration with non-Cisco devices and improved data correlation latency.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Nagios XI allows versatile deployment in both cloud and on-premises settings, benefiting from an open-source community that provides ample forums and documentation. Cisco DNA Center is mainly on-premise with costly support, receiving mixed reviews on responsiveness. Nagios relies heavily on community support due to its open-source nature.
Pricing and ROI: Nagios XI is a cost-effective solution, especially with its free Nagios Core version, presenting competitive pricing for enterprise environments aligned with its low-cost implementation enhancing ROI. Cisco DNA Center is generally viewed as expensive, with significant initial costs and recurring licenses. While users acknowledge the expansive network management capabilities, they weigh it against the significant investment required.
Although Cisco DNA Center is expensive, we have seen a return on investment in terms of time savings.
Overall, Cisco DNA Center rates eight out of ten as a complete solution.
The support for Cisco DNA Center is good.
From my experience, we can easily manage numerous devices.
The solution is designed for large enterprise companies.
If the user interface isn’t presenting data well, it becomes difficult to manage when scaling.
When we communicate problems, they solve them effectively.
It is very stable.
The AI-driven insights have contributed significantly to faster troubleshooting and predictive analytics.
The client history in Cisco DNA Center can be longer than 10 days, perhaps extending to 15 or 20 days.
Many tools have poor user interfaces, making them hard to manage and navigate.
The GUI could be improved. It's a bit too basic.
We are using the free, open-source version.
The pricing for the Nagios XI product is good and better than other solutions.
If there is a problem, I can inspect the situation and see what is happening, which is beneficial.
The most valuable features include AI-driven insights which make troubleshooting much easier.
Nagios XI simplifies our setup and reduces the time spent configuring monitoring tools.
The alerting system is very effective.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| Cisco DNA Center | 1.0% |
| Nagios XI | 2.3% |
| Other | 96.7% |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 10 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 9 |
| Large Enterprise | 25 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 22 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 17 |
| Large Enterprise | 21 |
Cisco DNA Center delivers powerful centralized security, automation, and comprehensive analytics for enhanced network management. With an intuitive dashboard and integration with Cisco devices, it reduces errors, boosts efficiency, and ensures seamless wired and wireless network operations.
Organizations leverage Cisco DNA Center for network management and automation, offering increased visibility into traffic flows and efficient device provisioning. It supports real-time data transmission, network segmentation, and integrates with ISE. Features like wireless assurance, centralized management, and AI-driven insights into network health promote an efficient network environment while addressing compliance issues. However, improvements are necessary for better third-party integration, affordability, and more user-friendly documentation.
What are the solution's most important features?In industries like healthcare, finance, and education, Cisco DNA Center's advanced features facilitate the management of complex network infrastructures and aid in achieving compliance efficiently. Its ability to manage LANs and WLANs supports diverse networking environments including greenfield projects and SPN setups.
Nagios XI provides monitoring of all mission-critical infrastructure components, including applications, services, operating systems, network protocols, systems metrics, and network infrastructure. Third-party add-ons provide tools for monitoring virtually all in-house and external applications, services, and systems.
Nagios XI uses a powerful Core 4 monitoring engine that provides users with the highest levels of server monitoring performance. This high degree of performance enables nearly limitless scalability and monitoring powers.
With Nagios XI, stakeholders can check up on their infrastructure status using the role-based web interface. Sophisticated dashboards enable access to monitoring information and third-party data. Administrators can easily set up permissions so users can only access the infrastructure they are authorized to view.
Nagios XI Benefits and Features
Some of the benefits and top features of using Nagios XI include:
Reviews from Real Users
Nagios XI stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Several major ones are its integration options and monitoring abilities, as well as its alerting features.
David P., a senior DevOps engineer at EML Payments Ltd, writes, “We use Nagios as a network discovery tool. We use Nagios to maintain our uptime statistics and to monitor our services. It has allowed us to be much more sophisticated in our monitoring and alerting.”
An IT-OSS manager at a comms service provider notes, “Nagios XI has a custom API feature, and we can expose custom APIs for our integration. This is a great feature.”
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