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

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) vs. InfluxDB

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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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

InfluxDB

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

23rd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Non-Relational Databases (2nd), Open Source Databases (9th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (24th), NoSQL Databases (3rd)

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 InfluxDB is 0.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Upul Abhayasena

Manager - Technology at a engineering company with 10,001+ employees

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…

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DeepakR

Site Reliability Engineer(Observability) at Sapiens

An open-source database that can be used to insert data

InfluxDB is generally stable, but we've encountered issues with the configuration file in our ticket stack. For instance, a mistake in one of the metrics out of a hundred KPIs can disrupt data collection for all KPIs. This happens because the agent stops working if there's an issue with any configuration part. To address this, it is essential to ensure that all configurations are part of the agent's EXE file when provided. This makes it easier to package the agent for server installation and ensures all KPIs are available from the server. Additionally, the agent cannot encrypt and decrypt passwords for authentication, which can be problematic when monitoring URLs or requiring authentication tokens. This requires additional scripting and can prolong service restart times.

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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

"You can integrate all the networks into the software."

"It has a very nice dashboard so you can see what's currently happening in the network and the performance of the back story."

"I like that is easy to work on and straightforward."

"Data Center Network Manager is absolutely stable."

"It uses push technology, which pushes the changes to all relevant devices to ensure they are updated accordingly."

"The tool's most valuable feature is the consolidated dashboard, providing insights into parameters and overall usage of network features. It allows us to easily summarize insights through the dashboards. The solution offers automation capabilities, particularly in the context of connecting LAN sites with websites."

"Stability is not an issue."

"VCNM provides a unique capability of managing the admin VDCs of Nexus boxes."

More Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) pros

"InfluxDB's best feature is that it's a cloud offering. Other good features include its time-series DB, fast time-bulk queries, and window operations."

"InfluxDB works as expected with excellent scalability and stability, which is critical for our application."

"The user interface is well-designed and easy to use. It provides a clear overview of the data, making it simple to understand the information at hand."

"InfluxDB works as expected with excellent scalability and stability, which is critical for our application."

"InfluxDB is a database where you can insert data. However, it would be best if you had different components for alerting, data sending, and visualization. You need to install tools to collect data from servers. It must be installed on Windows or Linux servers. During installation, ensure that the configuration file is correct to prevent issues. Once data is collected, it can be sent to InfluxDB. For visualization, you can use open-source tools like Grafana."

"The platform operates very quickly. It is easy to configure, connect, and query and integrates seamlessly with Grafana."

"The most valuable features are aggregating the data and integration with Graphana for monitoring."

"The solution is very powerful."

More InfluxDB pros

Cons

"It's very costly."

"It is not very easy to monitor or to browse."

"The tool's pricing strategy could be improved to compete more effectively in the market, especially against competitors like Huawei, Aruba, and Juniper."

"More integration features would be beneficial."

"The delivery Cisco Data Center Network Manager could improve if it was easier. Additionally, some feature improvement is needed."

"One of the biggest challenges is that we aren't always able to push the configuration onto the target device. Whenever this happens, we have to do a factory reset, put on the script, and then reconfigure it again. In the next release, I would like to have a troubleshooting feature."

"Sometimes the product gives us problems that require support."

"The configuration is too complicated and you have to create templates and use a lot of menus."

More Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) cons

"InfluxDB can improve by including new metrics on other technologies. They had some changes recently to pool data from endpoints but the functionality is not good enough in the industry."

"One area for improvement is the querying language. InfluxDB deprecated FluxQL, which was intuitive since developers are already familiar with standard querying."

"I've tried both on-premises and cloud-based deployments, and each has its limitations."

"The solution's UI can be more user-friendly."

"It is challenging to get long-running backups while running InfluxDB in a Microsoft Azure Kubernetes cluster."

"In terms of features that I would like to see or have, in the community version, some features are not available. I would like to have clustering and authentication in the community version."

"It is challenging to get long-running backups while running InfluxDB in a Microsoft Azure Kubernetes cluster."

"The error logging capability can be improved because the logs are not very informative."

More InfluxDB cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is licensed with contracts that work on a yearly basis rather than a monthly model."

"I would say that the pricing offers great value for the money."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"When we purchase a Nexus box, the MDS CM license comes with it."

"The solution is very expensive."

"We are using the open-source version of InfluxDB."

"InfluxDB is open-source, but there are additional costs for scaling."

"The tool is an open-source product."

"InfluxDB recently increased its price. It is very expensive now."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Government

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Real Estate/Law Firm

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

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...

What do you like most about InfluxDB?

InfluxDB is a database where you can insert data. However, it would be best if you had different components for alerting, data sending, and visualization. You need to install tools to collect data ...

What needs improvement with InfluxDB?

It is challenging to get long-running backups while running InfluxDB in a Microsoft Azure Kubernetes cluster. Replicating data for on-prem development and testing is difficult. Having a SQL abstrac...

What is your primary use case for InfluxDB?

InfluxDB is the main component in our large enterprise-scale streaming data application for maritime vessels. We collect position data from vessels around the coast once per second, put it on a Kaf...

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Product Reports

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM)

Download Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) product report

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) report

InfluxDB

Download InfluxDB product report

Also Known As

Cisco Data Center Network Manager

No data available

Overview

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.

Cisco

InfluxDB is open-source software that helps developers and enterprises alike to collect, store, process, and visualize time series data and to build next-generation applications. InfluxDB provides monitoring and insight on IoT, application, system, container, and infrastructure quickly and easily without complexities or compromises in scale, speed, or productivity.

InfluxDB has become a popular insight system for unified metrics and events enabling the most demanding SLAs. InfluxDB is used in just about every type of industry across a wide range of use cases, including network monitoring, IoT monitoring, industrial IoT, and infrastructure and application monitoring.

InfluxDB offers its users:

Infrastructure and application monitoring: Collect, process, and analyze real-time data from edge devices to help optimize distributed infrastructure.

IoT monitoring and analytics: InfluxDB is designed to store large volumes of time series data and quickly perform real-time analysis on that data. Gain insights from all the sensor data and use the collected data to create and perform automated tasks.

Network monitoring: Manage responsive and high-performing networks with widely distributed resources.

InfluxDB Benefits

There are several benefits to using InfluxDB . Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

APIs and ready toolset: InfluxDB can be accessed via a set of powerful tools enabling users to get started quickly, with less programming required. This includes a REST API, extensive client libraries, a wide variety of open-source integrations, and Flux - a functional data scripting language for querying, analysis, and events. The InfluxDB API can be used to write data from edge devices to the InfluxDB instance

Time series engine: Get any data - events, logs, traces - from any edge device - systems, sensors, queues, databases, and networks. This data is stored in a powerful and high-performing engine capable of ingesting millions of data points per second.

Community: InfluxDB has a large community of cloud and open-source developers ready to assist users.

Ready-made templates: Use InfluxDB Templates, a set of tools with a packager and other ready monitoring solutions. These tools allow users to share their monitoring expertise with coworkers and other community members around the world. The Templates gallery offers available templates for some of the most popular tools and applications.

Enhanced UI: InfluxDB’s UI includes an explorer, dashboarding tools, and a script editor. Use it to easily browse the collected metric and event data and apply common transformations. The dashboarding tool comes with a variety of visualization options that help users view insights from the data. The script editor assists users to quickly master Flux with easily accessible examples, auto-completion, and real-time syntax checking.

Reviews from Real Users

InfluxDB stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its flexible integration options and its data aggregation feature.

Shalauddin Ahamad S., a software engineer at a tech services company, notes, “The most valuable features are aggregating the data and the integration with Grafana for monitoring.”

InfluxData

Sample Customers

Banco de Guayaquil, Cox Communications, Kuwait Petroleum Italia, Roper St. Francis, University of British Columbia

ebay, AXA, Mozilla, DiDi, LeTV, Siminars, Cognito, ProcessOut, Recommend, CATS, Smarsh, Row 44, Clustree, Bleemeo

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) vs. InfluxDB