Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) vs ITRS Geneos comparison

Cisco and ITRS are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Cisco is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.1, while ITRS is ranked #68 with an average rating of 5.0. Cisco holds a 0.7% mindshare in NMS, compared to ITRS’s 0.6% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of ITRS users who would recommend it.

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabri...

Read 26 Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) reviews

1,291 Views
1,239 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

ITRS Geneos

Read 57 ITRS Geneos reviews

4,305 Views
1,292 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabri...

ITRS Geneos

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller and ITRS Geneos compete in the network management and monitoring category. Cisco Nexus is more versatile in network automation and monitoring, whereas ITRS Geneos stands out in real-time monitoring and dashboard customization.

Features: Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller offers strong automation capabilities, comprehensive network management, and integration with various tools and programming languages, facilitating efficient task execution. ITRS Geneos provides robust real-time monitoring, highly customizable dashboards, and extensive plugin support, which is especially beneficial in financial domains.

Room for Improvement: Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller could enhance integration, simplify setup processes, and improve scalability and documentation. Reducing pricing might boost competitiveness. ITRS Geneos needs improvements in cloud capabilities, predictive analytics, and better documentation. Simplifying dashboard configuration and improving mobile integration and historical data access could enhance usability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cisco Nexus is widely deployed in on-premises and private cloud environments and provides reliable customer service, although operational support could be enhanced. ITRS Geneos is primarily on-premises with a move towards public cloud offerings, offering effective support with minimal need for frequent assistance.

Pricing and ROI: Cisco's pricing varies, often bundled with Nexus purchases, and is perceived as expensive with high upfront costs, but justifies this with features and ROI. ITRS Geneos has a higher cost for extensive use but offers flexible licensing. Both solutions provide substantial ROI with specialized functions and long-term reliability.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) vs. ITRS Geneos Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) vs. ITRS Geneos

December 2025

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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

13th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

ITRS Geneos

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

68th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (33rd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (45th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) is 0.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ITRS Geneos is 0.6%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM)	0.7%
ITRS Geneos	0.6%
Other	98.7%

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Jagdev Dhaliwal

Network Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Flow monitoring has improved planning for east-west traffic and real-time capacity decisions

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) helps to understand the flows and data plane capacities, which are the primary use cases. Usually, people struggle with east-west traffic flow when they need to decide on firewalls or products. People typically understand north-south traffic flows but usually miss the east-west traffic flows in data centers. I was focusing more on this so that people can accordingly plan, such as after F5, the number of servers, the number of sessions needed, and whether we need to plan the interface for groups from the line capacity perspective. This kind of information was valuable to us. The real-time telemetry feature was beneficial. When experiencing performance issues, I could determine if there were any issues related to flows or areas where bottlenecks were occurring.

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Durai CT

Head FM Monitoring at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

A stable, scalable, and flexible monitoring tool

Real-time data is one of the unique features that ITRS Geneos offers. For example, if there is an impact on a particular server and a particular application, I want to see what the impact is or what the CPU or hardware usage information is, as well as the service in the same application. I can see the real-time data and the impact by accessing ITRS Geneos and looking at the tree. I don't want a tool that tells me when something is broken. I want the tool to tell me when something is going to break. That is the difference between ITRS Geneos and other tools. I want proactive monitoring, not reactive. I don't need to be notified after the fact that something has broken. If something is broken, I get a notification by email, and some of my customers are going to call me. ITRS Geneos provides proactive monitoring. The great advantage of this tool is real-time monitoring. ITRS Geneos not only alerts us but also gives us a real-time view of the data. This is the tool's first great advantage. It is also lightweight and flexible and can adapt to monitor even low-latency systems, which is the tool's second advantage. Another great feature of this tool is its good presentation layer, which allows us to build custom dashboards to present to business stakeholders. This gives them a high-level status of what is being monitored. If we compare ITRS Geneos to other tools, we will find that each one specializes in a specific area, but the ITRS Geneos tool is more comprehensive. This is its great advantage.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"After installation, you almost forget that it is working."

"Cisco's support I would rate as a 10 compared to all other vendors."

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

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

"Stability is not an issue."

"Fabric suite automation is a great feature."

"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."

"The product has excellent stability."

More Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) pros

"Real-time log monitoring with desktop alerts is valuable as it tells us immediately when there is an issue."

"I always appreciate Geneos's stability and ease of use."

"This tool allows one to analyse, integrate and customize as per the systems and allows you to set your own rules."

"The biggest benefit of Geneos is the fact that we can clearly see, if we have an alert, where that alert has come from. We can see the data around that alert and anything that might be relevant is also shown. We can very easily right-click and see why we've received that alert. That's the best part about it, that you've got all the data there with the alerting."

"One thing we're utilizing in Geneos is the Gateway-SQL. That's really helpful for us. Using Gateway-SQL, we are able to merge two different views into one. Suppose we have to check something in the log and that we have to check something in the database and do a comparison before publishing a result. We can achieve that using Gateway-SQL."

"The filtering in the Active Console is exceptional. Depending on the user base, some people don't want to see server-level errors, so we have filters set up in the Managed Entities view, which allow us to filter out things that certain groups don't want to see, while allowing them to see other things. It's a great real-time monitoring solution. And you can draw graphs immediately, right from the Active Console, whether they're current graphs or historical graphs."

"Ability to monitor logs for potential issues to prevent app outages before problems get a chance to arise. That's invaluable for our teams in a fast-paced trading environment."

"The built-in plug-ins allow administrators to easily configure monitoring components for market data systems such as Thomson Reuters Enterprise Platform and SRLabs Wombat (formerly NYSE)."

More ITRS Geneos pros

Cons

"If the customer thinks about using additional solutions, Cisco should make sure they are not left out."

"In the next release, I would like to see it merged with Prime and I think that it should be more unified."

"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."

"It's a relatively expensive product for some clients."

"API lacks robustness."

"Automation for the RMA process can be added."

"More integration features would be beneficial."

More Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) cons

"Much of the reporting outside of the user interface is very basic and requires much customization to be useful."

"The deployment method for upgrading is a bit tricky. It takes a little bit of manual effort. If that could be a bit more automated, it would help us a lot."

"Currently, it is difficult to monitor secure websites using SSL or with SSO enabled."

"I would also like to see suggested guidelines to accomplish a monitoring task. The issue is that ITRS is so flexible that there is more than one way to complete a task, each with benefits and disadvantages."

"The ITA, the post-incident analytics, could be improved."

"They have the Webslinger solution where you can see when something is alerting. It's a little bit cumbersome."

"It needs to be easier to configure, especially with the JMX plugins."

"One thing that could be improved in terms of rapid scaling would be more ability to clone aspects of an implementation. It seems like there are opportunities in this area, where we have repetitive tasks to do when it comes to implementing things on new servers or on new gateways. It would be great if there was an easy way to clone something that had already been done."

More ITRS Geneos cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"On average, Data Center Network Manager's pricing isn't too costly unless you choose a premier license."

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

"The solution is very expensive."

"The price of Cisco Data Center Network Manager is expensive compared to other vendors on the market."

"The product is priced quite high. There are pricing options for customers based on the size of the environment and plug-ins used by the monitoring system."

"It is expensive. They have to look at the model around when we move to cloud and how that's going to work. The licensing cost does pay off because of the improvements in support to our business."

"Based on feedback from colleagues and friends working in the financial sector, Geneos is relatively costly. Many companies have been switching from Geneos to Dynatrace, Sysdig, or other monitoring tools in the past two years because of the price."

"The market tools are on par with this solution, but if the solution included more features, then it would be well within the range for the cost."

"Its price is reasonable. It isn't too expensive, and it isn't too cheap, but it also depends on a company's volume and negotiation."

"Pricing is the touchy subject, even here. Upper management always wants us to find a cheaper solution. But we have so much integrated with ITRS... It's expensive, but it does its job very well. And you set it and go."

"The pricing seems reasonable. We're happy enough with it."

"The organization is not just purchasing a license for the product, but also managing services and professional services from ITRS. Another factor is if the implementation is going to be in production, non-production, or both."

More ITRS Geneos pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Government

13%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

70%

Computer Software Company

Construction Company

Outsourcing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	16

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	12
Large Enterprise	39

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco Data Center Network Manager?

I do not believe it integrated well with different infrastructures for hybrid environments. I am uncertain because we have never attempted that in our environment, so they could perform better in t...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ITRS Geneos?

The pricing is high. Licensing fees might be around 500$ per server monthly.

See all answers

What needs improvement with ITRS Geneos?

ITRS Geneos is a legacy system. It predicts or provides proactive measures once an issue is resolved. It doesn't offer any predictive capabilities or root cause analysis. They throw a lot of data i...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for ITRS Geneos?

ITRS offers multiple products, including upgrades for synthetic monitoring and a SaaS platform. Geneos is used for infrastructure monitoring, covering KPIs such as CPU, memory, processes, network l...

See all answers

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Compared 12% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

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Dynatrace vs ITRS Geneos

Compared 15% of the time

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Compared 9% of the time

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Compared 9% of the time

Prometheus-AI Platform vs ITRS Geneos

Compared 6% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs ITRS Geneos

Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM)

January 2026

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) report

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

Buyer's Guide

ITRS Geneos

January 2026

Download ITRS Geneos product report

Also Known As

Cisco Data Center Network Manager

Geneos

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

ITRS Geneos is a real-time monitoring tool designed for managing increasingly complex, hybrid and interconnected IT estates.

Built with financial services and trading organisations in mind, it collects a wide range of data relating to server performance, infrastructure, trading, connectivity and applications, and analyses it to provide relevant information and alerts in real time.

Geneos can give full stack visibility across highly dynamic environments and presents all the information through a single pane of glass and its configurable and customisable dashboards provide end-to-end visibility to both technical and business users.

For more information, please visit https://www.itrsgroup.com/products/geneos

ITRS

Sample Customers

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

ITRS Geneos is used by over 170 financial institutions, including JPMorgan, HSBC, RBS, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs. Clients range from investment banks to exchanges and brokers.

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) vs. ITRS Geneos

December 2025

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