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

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabri...

Read 27 LogicMonitor reviews

4,380 Views
2,759 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller and LogicMonitor compete in the network and monitoring tool category. LogicMonitor appears to have the upper hand due to its advanced dashboard customization and user-friendly features.

Features: Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller is known for its robust stability, ability to manage admin VDCs of Nexus switches, and graphical connectivity view. It integrates with automation tools. LogicMonitor is recognized for advanced dashboard customization, granular alert tuning, and real-time data visibility, offering comprehensive insights and facilitating issue resolution.

Room for Improvement: Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller needs better integration with external tools, simpler configuration, and improved pricing strategies. Users also report complexities in reporting and desire enhanced automation. LogicMonitor requires enhancements in alert logic, improved SLA calculations, and better topology mapping to refine resource visualization and streamlined data presentation.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller often operates in on-premises and private cloud environments, requiring significant setup complexity. Technical support is generally reliable, with some inconsistencies reported. LogicMonitor supports hybrid and public cloud environments with a straightforward deployment process complemented by flexible customer service, though documentation could enhance the user experience.

Pricing and ROI: Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller is expensive, reflecting its advanced features, offering value through application and ROI. Licensing is straightforward but costly. LogicMonitor has competitive pricing with a scalable licensing model, providing value despite higher costs in large environments, justified by the breadth of features and support provided.

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

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

September 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 869,771 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 Nexus Dashboard Fabri...

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

17th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

LogicMonitor

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

24th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (27th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (23rd), Container Monitoring (7th), Cloud Monitoring Software (18th), AIOps (13th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) is 0.6%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of LogicMonitor is 1.9%, down from 2.2% 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)	0.6%
LogicMonitor	1.9%
Other	97.5%

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…

Read full review

Maxwell Miya

IT Infrastructure Engineer at Ethical Trade SErvices Africa

Has improved service reliability and reduced downtime by providing full visibility into infrastructure

I wish the user interface would be customizable to allow users to create personal context-specific workspaces to hide irrelevant data, rather than trying to have a one-size-fits-all interface. This would go a long way, as would introducing a usage-based pricing model for data ingestion, per GB of metrics or logs alongside a device-based model similar to New Relic, which would be more attractive for cloud-native companies with dynamic infrastructure. While dynamic alerting is great, the overall alerting system can be complex to configure. If LogicMonitor looks into going beyond the topology-based correlation to include AI that can group related alerts from different parts of the stack into a single probable cause incident, that will significantly improve the system.

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."

"The product makes the management of our environment simpler."

"The most valuable features of Cisco Data Center Network Manager are consistency and the core server. The teams have had a good experience."

"The monitoring capability is the best in Cisco Data Center Network Manager. It helps me improve network management tasks and optimize processes."

"The feature I find most valuable, is the stability of the solution."

"The interface of this solution is easy to use overall."

"Monitoring system provides a clear indication of what's going on in the network."

"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."

More Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) pros

"The most valuable feature is the visualization of the data that it is collecting. I have used many products in the past and they tend to roll up the data. So, if you're looking at data over long periods of time, they start averaging the data, which can skew the figures that you're looking at. With LogicMonitor, they have the raw data there for two years, if you are an enterprise customer. If you are looking at that long duration of data, you're seeing exactly what happened during that time."

"One thing that's very valuable for us is the technical knowledge of the people who work with LogicMonitor. We looked at several products before we decided to use LogicMonitor, and one of the key decision-making points was the knowledge of the things that they put in the product. It provides real intelligence regarding the numbers that you see on the product, which makes it easy for us technical people to troubleshoot. Other products don't provide you with such information. You see a value going up, but you don't know what it means. LogicMonitor provides such information. For instance, if a value goes up, it says that it is probably because your disk area was too low."

"The most valuable feature of LogicMonitor is the infrastructure monitoring capability."

"The solution’s overall reporting capabilities are pretty powerful compared to ones that I have used previously. It seems like it has a lot of customizations that you can put in, but some of the out-of-the-box reports are useful too, like user logon duration and website latency. Those type of things have been helpful and don't require a lot of, if any, changes to get useful content out of them. They have also been pretty easy to implement and use."

"LogicMonitor added AI technology to help understand what's normal and that has helped quite a bit, so that's the feature I found most valuable in the product. The product is also doing quite well with identifying devices and customizing a particular Cisco version or model number. LogicMonitor continues to be active in updating what is available to be monitored, and it's been very good with keeping those things current, so that's another valuable feature of the product."

"The concept of developing a dashboard template for ourselves, then cloning it for every single customer, and only having to change one piece of information, is a godsend. That's one of the strengths. We can develop a template that fits every customer and just change the information that is presented."

"The plugins are easy to integrate, and LogicMonitor provides these add-ons for vendors like VMware. It becomes very easy to integrate them and take the data sources."

"Having a full team at LogicMonitor for support is super helpful as they are available all the time to answer any questions you may have."

More LogicMonitor pros

Cons

"Could integrate better with VMware products."

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

"The visibility of applications is not great."

"The tool should be more user-friendly and improve AI integration."

"The automation feature could be improved."

"Data Center Network Manager is a little complex because it includes a lot of hardware to be installed."

"Automation for the RMA process can be added."

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

More Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) cons

"LogicMonitor has good features, but the ease of use is a little bit confusing. Additionally, we are looking for workflow automation, which is a little bit tricky for LogicMonitor."

"Automated remediation of issues has room for improvement. I don't know how best to handle it, but I know that they're kind of working on it. I know there are some resources that can do automated remediation. I would like them to improve this area so it could be completely hands-free, where it detects an issue, such as, if a CPU is running high. There are ways to do it even now, but it's a bit more involved."

"Their Logs feature is quite new. It is not as feature-rich as we would like it to be. There have been a couple of conversations internally around other log management tools, like Splunk, which may do more for us than LM Logs. The benefit of LogicMonitor is that our staff know how to use it, so we don't really want to move away from it, if we don't have to. I fully expect there to be more development in this area. It is their newest feature, so it is understandable that it hasn't evolved as some of the other stuff. It would be good to see a bit more development in this area, but I think the monitoring side of things is spot on."

"Role-based permissions could be better and updating modules could be smoother."

"While dynamic alerting is great, the overall alerting system can be complex to configure."

"One thing that could be really better is the mapping. Auvik is really good at it. They have a really nice way to give you a visual representation of your network, but in LogicMonitor, this functionality is not as powerful and as good as Auvik."

"I'd like to see more automation in the tool, especially around remediation."

"LogicMonitor can easily easy to pull data from one item at a time. I have yet to find a good way to get LogicMonitor to show me all the WAN devices and how they're doing in terms of capacity."

More LogicMonitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

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

"The solution is very expensive."

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

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

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

"It's an enterprise-grade solution and competitively priced compared to the other solutions that are out there... Our organization is not huge, but LogicMonitor is worth every penny that we pay for it. I've never heard anyone say, "I'm not sure that we're getting good value for money from this product." It's integral to our business."

"The tool's pricing falls into the middle range."

"The licensing side of things with LogicMonitor, is quite simple. It is one license per device. Recently, you have additional licenses with things, like LM Cloud, which does confuse things a bit. Because it's very hard to estimate how many licenses you're going to need until you're monitoring it, so it's quite hard through that process to give a customer price to say, "This is how much this services will cost.""

"As a managed services provider, the licensing model that LogicMonitor provides us is excellent. We are able to scale up and scale down as needed. The pricing is reasonable for the amount of features and support that they provide."

"The features were very valuable to us because we could consolidate them into one platform and have a good user experience with the platform, our accounts, and the support team. That was the key driver for us. That was what we were looking for. We looked for a comprehensive solution that could provide advanced features all in one platform, and LogicMonitor was the solution that we chose. It definitely has a premium price. However, you are getting what you pay for in a very effective way. That was important in our decision-making.The features were very valuable to us because we could consolidate them into one platform and have a good user experience with the platform, our accounts, and the support team. That was the key driver for us. That was what we were looking for. We looked for a comprehensive solution that could provide advanced features all in one platform, and LogicMonitor was the solution that we chose. It definitely has a premium price. However, you are getting what you pay for in a very effective way. That was important in our decision-making."

"They are expensive for the cloud."

"The solution is not expensive."

"I know we are saving at least several hundred thousand dollars in that we're not buying Cisco Prime."

More LogicMonitor pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Monitoring Software solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

869,771 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	15

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	8

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 is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?

It actually depends on the exact purpose or requirements. Some tools are better for only network devices while others are better from a cloud monitoring or APM monitoring perspective. You can check...

What do you like most about LogicMonitor?

LogicMonitor helps us prevent potential downtime. It's pretty good. It generates low-level warnings that aren't necessarily preemptive but can still alert us to issues we should investigate. These ...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for LogicMonitor?

The pricing can vary yearly or monthly, depending on the clients we're working with and their size and scale. For example, the pricing for a customer with ten thousand licenses versus a hundred lic...

Cisco DNA Center vs Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM)

Comparisons

Compared 54% of the time

Zabbix vs Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM)

Compared 16% of the time

SolarWinds Network Automation Manager vs Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM)

Compared 12% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM)

Compared 10% of the time

Icinga vs Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM)

Compared 8% of the time

More Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) Competitors

OpsRamp vs LogicMonitor

Compared 8% of the time

Zabbix vs LogicMonitor

Compared 7% of the time

Azure Monitor vs LogicMonitor

Compared 6% of the time

ThousandEyes vs LogicMonitor

Compared 6% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs LogicMonitor

Compared 5% of the time

More LogicMonitor Competitors

Product Reports

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM)

October 2025

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) report

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

Download LogicMonitor product report

October 2025

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

LogicMonitor offers flexible IT monitoring with customizable dashboards and robust alerting capabilities. It integrates seamlessly with third-party apps like ServiceNow and provides a single-pane view for diverse IT environments, aiding in proactive issue resolution and enhancing operational efficiency.

LogicMonitor stands out with its capability to monitor diverse infrastructures including Cisco Voice systems, data centers, and virtual environments. Supporting servers, storage, networking devices, and applications, it provides seamless integration with cloud services like AWS and Azure. Users leverage its scalability and flexibility, benefiting from dynamic thresholds, anomaly detection, and detailed visualization. All these features contribute to improved management of IT assets and streamlined operations. Users suggest improvements in mapping, reporting, and automation for remediation, desiring more customizations and an expansive application performance monitoring toolset.

What are LogicMonitor's key features?

Customizable Dashboards: Allows personalization of monitoring views.
Robust Alerting: Offers advanced alert configurations.
API and Plugin Support: Ensures integration with apps like ServiceNow.
Dynamic Thresholds: Facilitates proactive issue resolution.
Anomaly Detection: Aids in identifying potential issues early.

What ROI should users look for in reviews?

Operational Efficiency: Enhanced by detailed visualizations and dashboards.
Scalability: Supports growing IT environments effortlessly.
Proactive Management: Facilitated by flexible alerting and monitoring.
Flexibility: Customization in monitoring diverse environments.

LogicMonitor is widely implemented across industries, providing monitoring for infrastructure in sectors like telecommunications, cloud computing, and managed services. Managed service providers particularly value its ability to track client environments, deliver proactive alerts, and generate comprehensive reports, while its integration with cloud platforms like AWS and Azure offers users centralized management and visibility into IT assets worldwide.

Sample Customers

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

Kayak, Zendesk, Ted Baker, Trulia, Sophos, iVision, TekLinks, Siemens