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

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabri...

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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: April 2025).

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

April 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

18th

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

9th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (11th), Container Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (13th), AIOps (6th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 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 LogicMonitor is 1.9%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

OusaidAbaz

Security Network Architect at Inmac

Provides spine-leaf architecture and support integration with programming languages

Configuring Cisco Nexus switches is relatively straightforward, especially if you're familiar with configuring Catalyst switches. The primary differences between Catalyst and Nexus switches lie in their system architecture and CLI commands. Nexus configurations can differ by about 20-30% from Catalyst configurations. For instance, while certain features may be enabled by default on Catalyst switches, they need to be explicitly enabled on Nexus switches. Maintaining a solution like this involves several support options, such as Cisco Smart Net. Smart Net is a support program that provides SLAs if the Nexus switches go down. With Smart Net, you can choose different levels of support, such as 2-hour, 4-hour, or 2-business-day response times. This ensures that Cisco will provide a replacement switch as quickly as possible if a Nexus switch fails or is out of service. The Nexus switches are known for their stability and high performance, so they have a higher price tag. Due to their cost, they are typically suited for large enterprises rather than small or medium-sized businesses. Major corporations, such as banks, multinational companies, and large industrial firms, have the budget for these high-end switches. The investment is justified by their advanced features and reliability, making them ideal for large-scale environments. Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

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Henry-Steinhauer

Systems Engineer at LifePoint Health

They have an active community of users who are willing to share their experiences and how they have extended the solution to do unusual things.

I'm a learn-by-example person, so it would be nice to have a cookbook for enterprise management. They have a rich API process, but there aren't many examples of how to do enterprise-style work. It is peculiar about how to do it for one device, but not necessarily thousands. LogicMonitor can effortlessly pull data from one item at a time. I have yet to find an excellent way to get LogicMonitor to show me all the WAN devices and how they're doing in terms of capacity.

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

"I don't have to rely on the on-site engineer who can do the configuration. I can have our team just plug the devices and perform remotely. I can also do the templates."

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

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

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

"We use the product to manage access points."

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

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

"The automation capability is more than enough. It depends on how we consider and integrate the automation engine. We need to ensure the automation engine and then how to perform it. It depends on the policy making, API integration, and other integrations."

More Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) pros

"The dashboarding is very useful. Being able to create custom data sources is one of its biggest features which allows quick time to market with new features. If one of our vendors changes their data format or metrics that we should be monitoring, then we can quickly adjust to any changes in the environment in order to get a great user experience for our customers."

"It has improved our organization with its capacity planning. We have a performance environment that we use to benchmark our applications. We use it to say, "Okay, at a certain level of concurrency, we know where our application will fall over." Therefore, we are using LogicMonitor dashboards to tell us that we're good. Our platform can handle X number of clients concurrently hitting us at a time."

"We have very fine-tuned alerting that lets us know when there are issues by identifying where exactly that issue is, so we can troubleshoot and resolve them quickly. This is hopefully before the customer even notices. Then, it gives us some insight into potential issues coming down the road through our environmental health dashboards."

"We get full visibility into whatever the customer wants us to monitor and we get it pretty rapidly. That is very important. Only having certain metrics that other platforms will give you out-of-the-box means you only get a small picture, a thumbnail picture. Whereas with LogicMonitor, you get the entire "eight by 10 picture", out-of-the-box. Rather than some availability metrics, you get everything. You get metrics on temperature, anything related to hardware failure, or up and down status."

"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."

"Another feature from the technical aspect, the back-end, is the ability to allow individual users or customers to have their own APIs. They're able to make changes using the plugins covered by LogicMonitor. That is a very powerful feature that is more attractive to our techno-savvy customers."

"LogicMonitor is good for getting a full view of your topologies. They have LiveMaps, which give you a visual representation of your infrastructure."

"We only have one monitoring tool, and that is LogicMonitor. It does pretty much everything we need under one roof. They are very good at rapidly releasing new features. It's not like we have to wait six months or a year between new features and data sources. There is very quick development. If there is something that doesn't do it for us, I know I can just raise it with support or our delivery representative, and there is a good chance that that will be looked at. If it's not too much effort, we will see it released in the next few months. So, the solution is very good from that perspective. We have everything in LogicMonitor."

More LogicMonitor pros

Cons

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

"The initial setup is challenging."

"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."

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

"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 solution needs to improve reports."

More Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) cons

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

"The topology mapping is all based on the dynamic discovery of devices that could talk to each other. There is no real manual way that you can set up a join between two devices to say, "This is how this network is actually set up." For example, if you have a device, and you're only pinning that device and not getting any real intelligent information from it, then it can't appear on the map with other devices. Or if it can appear, then it won't show you which devices are actually joined to it."

"The ease of use with data source tuning could be improved. That can get hairy quickly. When I reach out for help, it's usually around a data source or event source configuration. That can get challenging."

"One thing I would like to see is parent/child relationships and the ability to build a "suppression parent/child." For example, If I know that a top gateway is offline and I can't talk to it anymore, and anything that's connected below it or to it is also going to be offline, there is no need to alarm on those. In that situation it should create one ticket or one alarm for the parent. I know they're working towards that with their mapping technology, but it's not quite to that level where you can build out alarm logic or a correlation logic like that."

"Some more application performance type monitoring would be nice. For example, an APM type solution, which would not necessarily completely replace it, but be able to tie into to what we're seeing on the application performance side so we can correlate what's going on with the application versus the underlying infrastructure."

"Dashboarding capabilities could be enhanced. It is cumbersome, you must do it all at once, and then you must repeat the process every now and then."

"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."

"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 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."

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

"The solution is very expensive."

"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."

"The license is annual, and I'm not fully aware of what it costs. We have a through-cycle that we go through, and they've been generous with us going above our limit. They're not strict on it. At the end of the year, they got us to renew. We always add some cushion for what we expect. Also, if you need custom monitoring or design work, you can pay them for consulting services."

"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 pricing can be a little aggressive. Right now, it's a bit much for smaller organizations to adopt it. But comparatively, it also provides good features."

"We've had customers who have reduced their costs by not having multiple platforms for monitoring. That said, especially with super-large environments, the cost model for LogicMonitor is the one area where we run into issues."

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

"In terms of pricing, I would rate LogicMonitor four out of five."

"We pay for the enterprise tech support."

More LogicMonitor pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Government

12%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

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 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...

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Product Reports

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM)

May 2025

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) report

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

Download LogicMonitor product report

April 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 provides infrastructure and network monitoring, alerting, and reporting across environments like AWS, Azure, and on-premises.

LogicMonitor aids businesses and managed service providers in maintaining system health, performance, and availability. It supports various technologies including Citrix, Cisco Voice systems, operating systems, virtual machines, and network devices. Businesses benefit from dashboards and data insights for proactive management, customizable data sources, and integration with third-party applications like Slack or ServiceNow. AI technology enhances monitoring capabilities by recognizing normal behavior and updating monitored elements, while multiple monitoring features consolidate data sources into one interface.

What are LogicMonitor's key features?

Dashboards: Instant, interactive access to data for easy monitoring.
Customizable Data Sources: Robust, adaptable monitoring with logic modules.
Granular Alert Tuning: Enhances issue identification and resolution.
Reporting Capabilities: Detailed oversight and forecasting.
Third-Party Integration: Expands functionality with applications like Slack and ServiceNow.
AI Technology: Recognizes normal behavior and updates monitored elements.
Consolidated Monitoring: Combines diverse data sources into a single interface.

What benefits or ROI should users expect?

System Health: Ensures optimal system performance and availability.
Data Insights: Facilitates proactive management with comprehensive data.
Scalability: Adapts to different environments and technologies.
Efficiency: Streamlines monitoring with a single, efficient interface.
Predictive Analysis: Provides detailed oversight and accurate forecasting.

LogicMonitor is utilized across diverse industries by managed service providers to ensure seamless monitoring and management of clients' systems. This includes application performance monitoring, manual topology mapping, SLA calculations, and improvement of role-based permissions. Companies also seek enhanced resources view, better collector upgrade processes, and streamlined customization for monitoring from the repository.

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