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Cisco Nexus Dashboard vs Cisco Optical Networking comparison

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Executive Summary

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
Ranking in Data Center Networking
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Data Center Infrastructure Management (2nd)
Cisco Optical Networking
Ranking in Data Center Networking
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

AadishBahati - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Solution Architect at EchoStor
Orchestration has transformed multi‑site data centers and now delivers faster zero‑touch deployments
The biggest benefits are the scalability, the granularity, and the modularity. The design it prefers and the out-of-the-box capabilities and features that it provides are all really good advantages of Cisco Nexus Dashboard. In terms of features, the orchestration is valuable. The one feature that I really appreciate the most is the day-to-day operations, which is a very smart fault analysis and fault troubleshooting feature called Nexus Insights. That is a very good feature which only VMware has something of that quality. Nexus Insights, which sits along with Cisco Nexus Dashboard, is really good. End-to-end visibility across the devices and across the sites is really good. The deployment model is mostly hybrid, but I would say more on-premise and less hybrid. Cisco Nexus Dashboard is very scalable. Even if you have to scale in or scale out one device or one site or 100 devices and 100 sites, it is just a matter of plug-and-play. When we were turning on 100 devices, they were all happening in parallel. That is exactly how it happens with the sites. If you want to add a site, just make sure they are physically connected to a cable which can pass on the message to Cisco Nexus Dashboard. Cisco Nexus Dashboard can take care of everything from there. Cisco Nexus Dashboard is very advanced and very smart, and it has a Cisco brand name to it. I have seen HPE's, Arista, and Juniper orchestrators, and all these vendors have their own. I would not say that they are not smart enough, but they are not as smart as Cisco because Cisco has solved the biggest challenge of the multi-site data center better than anyone else. Over the past 10 years, Cisco has been a pioneer in leading all these advanced design solutions. Everyone is doing it now, but Cisco started it. Everyone copies it at this point and does the same thing, but Cisco is still doing it better because Cisco has been doing this for at least a decade, maybe more than that. Cisco is definitely way ahead. Sometimes people say Cisco ACI or Cisco Nexus Dashboard is hard and complex, but I feel Cisco is way more advanced and way ahead of its market. It has given a NASA-level of technology to normal enterprise corporate networks. It is way advanced.
Abdul Samad Irfan Shaik - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Lead at Numeric Technologies
High-speed fiber links have protected critical data and keep our multi-city cloud services running
In terms of improvements, one thing is about how data is transferred. Predictive monitoring would help by using artificial intelligence to identify optical signal degradation, performance issues, downtimes, glitches, increasing error rates, or potential fiber issues such as cuts. Predictive monitoring will definitely assist in this area. Faster troubleshooting could be enhanced by providing a knowledge base related to regular activities. A simpler dashboard is preferred rather than a complex one, as clubbing everything into a single user interface is not helpful for grasping everything easily. Supporting integration with third-party optical equipment and existing network monitoring platforms will play a major role, and the connectivity should be easier with improvements in third-party integration being essential. Regarding support documentation, I would prefer to speak about support rather than documentation. One enhancement needed is better automation capabilities. We aim to reduce manual intervention during network failures by enabling faster automated alarm triggers that should automatically fix issues and control recovery workflows. We have covered all of the necessary improvements.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The health monitoring and visibility features allowed me to monitor switch health, fabric connectivity, interface statuses, and overall topology from a centralized dashboard, enabling me to troubleshoot and resolve connectivity issues faster during service migrations, particularly when an interface problem arose."
"Cisco Nexus Dashboard is very advanced and very smart, and it has a Cisco brand name to it."
"Customers who have adopted Cisco Nexus Dashboard experience benefits due to their existing Nexus infrastructure, which typically includes twenty to thirty switches arranged in a leaf and spine architecture."
"The feature I appreciate most about Cisco Nexus Dashboard is the ability to control everything in one centralized place."
"I can tell several advantages of Cisco Nexus Dashboard like centralized management that allows managing and monitoring multiple Nexus switches and data center fabrics from one platform."
"The GUI and click to deploy automation have reduced half of the resource time of the network, allowing my team to accomplish more work."
"Because those planes are different, there is a data transfer rate, and whenever a huge number of data are transferred through this switch, you can get a CPU utilization of 1%, maximum 2%, and it can support a huge data transfer."
"Customers save significant time when rolling out a change across multiple data centers; for example, a six-hour change requiring configuration of approximately twenty Nexus 9K devices can be completed in less than an hour by deploying the config."
"After implementing Cisco Optical Networking, I could transport terabits of traffic over long distances, which has amazed us while also reducing the effort and thought involved in network management."
"Cisco View allows me to see when circuits are up or down very quickly, and I can connect circuits very quickly by a virtual picture."
"Cisco Optical Networking provides high-capacity bandwidth and fiber connectivity between the data centers, supporting data replication, backups, disaster recovery, and managing how data is transferred across great workloads."
"Cisco Optical Networking has positively impacted my organization by helping add resilience and redundancy."
"Cisco Optical Networking has positively impacted my organization by providing cost reduction, better network performance, high reliability, and most importantly, business growth."
 

Cons

"Cisco Nexus Dashboard could be improved in terms of the flexibility of using the CLI and the GUI because there are instances where it becomes unsynced due to CLI configurations that someone made separately."
"Some of the features, such as the user experience and graphical user interface for Cisco Nexus Dashboard, can be improved. Sometimes I find it difficult to navigate and find a specific feature."
"Regarding my main use case with Cisco Nexus Dashboard, I had an issue initially in my deployment where the Insights module was very processor and CPU intensive, which blocked my progress on migration and required me to uplift my server requirements to properly deploy it to gain those insights."
"The first time when we got Cisco deployed, for some reason, it was not as scalable as how we wanted because the leaves stopped growing after approximately 150 or something."
"One improvement I would suggest for Cisco Nexus Dashboard stems from my experience when we tried to upgrade Cisco Nexus Dashboard to the newer version. It turned out that the newer version was not being quality control tested properly before it was published on the website, and that caused significant downtime in our data center."
"The professional services and license is expensive everywhere."
"In terms of potential improvement areas for Cisco Nexus Dashboard, I think licensing could be better, which is the main thing I can think of."
"My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cisco Nexus Dashboard is that it is expensive."
"Cisco Optical Networking could be improved by having more documentation and more training."
"Customer support is good only if you pay for it; if you forget to renew a license and you need support, it is not always so great."
"There is much work that needs to be done, and providing more proactive artificial intelligence-driven monitoring will definitely help mitigate failures."
"When it comes to features or tools that stood out to me in Cisco Optical Networking, I faced issues such as wavelength allocations due to fixed grid limitations, which led to spectral inefficiencies when mixing different wavelengths."
"In terms of improvements for Cisco Optical Networking, I believe we can enhance monitoring by improving real-time optical power, signal quality, link error, and bandwidth utilization, which leads to better network monitoring."
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Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Nexus Dashboard?
Cisco Nexus Dashboard is expensive. If I had to rate the price from 0 to 10, I would give it a rating of 10, as it is expensive.
What needs improvement with Cisco Nexus Dashboard?
In terms of areas for improvement in Cisco Nexus Dashboard, I feel that the only issue is the licensing, as advanced features like insights require a Premier subscription. However, I think these fe...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Nexus Dashboard?
I have been dealing with Nexus switching for more than four to five years. I have been using Cisco Nexus Dashboard since approximately one and a half years ago, and I am currently pitching it mostl...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Optical Networking?
The pricing is a bit high, but considering the features, it is reasonable. If Cisco adds more AI assistance, I do not believe the pricing is excessive, so I am satisfied with it.
What needs improvement with Cisco Optical Networking?
In terms of improvements for Cisco Optical Networking, I believe we can enhance monitoring by improving real-time optical power, signal quality, link error, and bandwidth utilization, which leads t...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Optical Networking?
Cisco Optical Networking's main use case is to convert data center connectivity by connecting data centers over high-speed optical links for large-scale data transfer and disaster recovery. It ...
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Nexus Dashboard vs. Cisco Optical Networking and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,523 professionals have used our research since 2012.