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Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) vs Datadog comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

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 Nexus Dashboard Fabri...
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Datadog
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
187
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (1st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (2nd), Log Management (3rd), Container Monitoring (2nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (2nd), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Datadog is 3.3%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Upul Abhayasena - PeerSpot reviewer
Robust management tool with an easy setup and room for more features
DCNM is used by one of the airline customers in Qatar to manage many data centers and rack switches running on normal Nexus or NX-OS mode. They required a controller platform to manage these Nexus switches, and thus, they utilized DCNM as a Fabric controller. Given that ACI deployment is very low…
Kevin Palmer - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful log aggregation and management with helpful metrics aggregation
Datadog provides us value in three major ways: First, Datadog provides best-in-class functionality in many, if not all, of the products to which we subscribe (infrastructure, APM, log management, serverless, synthetics, real user monitoring, DB monitoring). In my experience with other tools that provide similar functionality, Datadog provides the largest feature set with the most flexibility and the best performance. Second, Datadog allows us to access all of those services in one place. Having to learn and manage only one tool for all of those purposes is a major benefit. Third, Datadog provides significant connectivity between those services so that we can view, summarize, organize, translate and correlate our data with maximum effect. Not needing to manually integrate them to draw lines between those pieces of information is a huge time savings for us.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We use the product to manage access points."
"Data Center Network Manager is absolutely stable."
"Monitoring system provides a clear indication of what's going on in the network."
"The most valuable feature is the connectivity monitoring."
"After installation, you almost forget that it is working."
"Fabric suite automation is a great feature."
"You can integrate all the networks into the software."
"Automation of the ILS."
"The most valuable feature I have found is the elastic container service."
"Being able to filter requests by latency is invaluable, as it provides immediate insight into which endpoints require further analysis and optimization."
"It has scaled great. I haven't run into any problems anywhere that I've used it. They have handled everything that we have needed them to."
"The dashboards and the performance of the software have been great."
"The most valuable aspect is for us to have everything in one place."
"We can handle debugging and find out why things are breaking in our applications."
"Dashboards are helpful for reviewing occasionally to get a higher-level overview of what's happening."
"APM is great and has provided low-effort out-of-the-box observability for various services."
 

Cons

"Data Center Network Manager is a little complex because it includes a lot of hardware to be installed."
"The reporting is not very intuitive and has room for improvement."
"Automation for the RMA process can be added."
"The solution needs to improve reports."
"API lacks robustness."
"It's a relatively expensive product for some clients."
"It would be nice to have the ability to more easily collect information from other software when doing some types of analysis."
"The tool should be more user-friendly and improve AI integration."
"​It would be nice to be able to graph metrics by excluding certain tags (like you can do in monitors)."
"One thing we have run into is that it is so easy to add monitoring that we turn on things without really understanding the costs."
"The cost is pretty high."
"The current way accounts are billed could be vastly improved - especially when involving multiple organizations across multiple accounts in combination with reserved commitments."
"If there were a more cost-effective manner of deploying the tool, we'd be more likely to adopt it more widely."
"It would be great if usage metrics were automatically created and we could create custom metrics, instead we ended up building some of our own stuff to track and alert on our own usage."
"We need more visibility into the error tracking dashboard."
"The product could do better with its notifications."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is very expensive."
"The product is licensed with contracts that work on a yearly basis rather than a monthly model."
"On average, Data Center Network Manager's pricing isn't too costly unless you choose a premier license."
"The price of Cisco Data Center Network Manager is expensive compared to other vendors on the market."
"When we purchase a Nexus box, the MDS CM license comes with it."
"I would say that the pricing offers great value for the money."
"We usually opt for a yearly plan, commonly for three or five years upfront. Some customers may not utilize all the features included in the product, and this can lead to them paying for functionalities they don't need."
"The tool is always expensive, but their service, product quality, and support are good. We're happy with it, but it's still an expensive solution. There are cheaper alternatives but no similar platform across all domains."
"Datadog does not provide any free plans to use the solution. When I start with a proof of concept it would be sensible to have a free plan to test the tool and check whether it fits the requirements of the project. Before the production stage, it is always good to have a free plan with some limited features, number of requests, or logs."
"The solution's pricing depends on project volume."
"Licensing is based on the retention period of logs and metrics."
"The cost is high and this can be justified if the scale of the environment is big."
"My advice is to really keep an eye on your overage costs, as they can spiral really fast."
"Sometimes it's very hard to project how much it will cost for the monthly subscription for the next month when you add certain features. Having better visibility of the cost would give a better experience."
"Our licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis."
"It has always scaled for us. Cost scales up too, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. It's reasonable for what they're providing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Real Estate/Law Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Educational Organization
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco Data Center Network Manager?
It uses push technology, which pushes the changes to all relevant devices to ensure they are updated accordingly.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Data Center Network Manager?
The tool is always expensive, but their service, product quality, and support are good. We're happy with it, but it's still an expensive solution. There are cheaper alternatives but no similar plat...
What needs improvement with Cisco Data Center Network Manager?
In a mixed architecture where Nexus switches are used as border devices and are connected to a Palo Alto firewall (e.g., version 9.1 or 10.1), you might encounter issues with BGP peering. For insta...
Any advice about APM solutions?
There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...
Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?
With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several times lately using the dashboards we have created with Datadog; they are very good c...
Which would you choose - Datadog or Dynatrace?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Datadog or Dynatrace network monitoring software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Dynatrace. Dynatrace offers network ...
 

Also Known As

Cisco Data Center Network Manager
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Banco de Guayaquil, Cox Communications, Kuwait Petroleum Italia, Roper St. Francis, University of British Columbia
Adobe, Samsung, facebook, HP Cloud Services, Electronic Arts, salesforce, Stanford University, CiTRIX, Chef, zendesk, Hearst Magazines, Spotify, mercardo libre, Slashdot, Ziff Davis, PBS, MLS, The Motley Fool, Politico, Barneby's
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) vs. Datadog and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
862,077 professionals have used our research since 2012.