Cisco Nexus Dashboard vs Device42 comparison

Read 34 Device42 reviews

5,028 Views
1,508 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Cisco Nexus Dashboard

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 1, 2026

Device42 and Cisco Nexus Dashboard are competing products in IT infrastructure management and optimization. Cisco Nexus Dashboard offers advanced capabilities, making it appear more feature-rich, while Device42 excels in pricing and support.

Features: Device42 provides robust IT asset management, automated discovery, and strong support features. Cisco Nexus Dashboard offers network visibility, integration capabilities, and performance insights, making it suitable for network-centric operations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Device42 offers streamlined deployment with a user-friendly approach and effective customer support. Cisco Nexus Dashboard, although more complex to deploy, provides extensive support for integration into existing network systems.

Pricing and ROI: Device42 offers competitive pricing and strong ROI for budget-friendly solutions with comprehensive asset management. Cisco Nexus Dashboard, despite its higher initial costs, delivers substantial ROI through its expansive feature set, catering to larger networks or companies needing extensive network management.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Nexus Dashboard vs. Device42 Report (Updated: June 2026).

Cisco Nexus Dashboard vs. Device42

Download the complete report

Helped 902,495 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

Ranking in Data Center Infrastructure Management

27th

Average Rating

9.6

Reviews Sentiment

5.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Center Networking (17th)

Device42

Ranking in Data Center Infrastructure Management

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Asset Management (5th), Configuration Management Databases (2nd), IP Address Management (IPAM) Tools (3rd)

Featured Reviews

Vijaya Mandadi

Senior Network Engineer at Wells Fargo

Monitoring has improved and now quickly identifies misaligned configurations and link issues

I have been using Cisco Nexus Dashboard for three to four years initially, and then got switched to Arista, and now it is coming back again as we just deployed the servers for those who are in the process of setting it up.I do not think Cisco optimizes the experience of a hybrid or distributed enterprise setup because we have Arista in our network too.I do not know how end-to-end visibility from Cisco affects my organization's troubleshooting capabilities.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. We needed to be scaled much larger, and that is when we pivoted from Cisco to Arista. However, I think it is coming back as they eliminated that problem.I would rate this review at a nine out of ten.

Read full review

Manmohan Rao

Associate Vice President at Hitachi Systems India Private Limited

Granular discovery has ensured confident workload migration and optimized cloud move group planning

Device42 offers the best features for workload assessment, particularly useful for cloud-to-cloud workload or on-premise data center workload, especially when planning for workload migration to the public cloud. For application and infrastructure discovery, Device42 has enabled me to know the number of machines running in the on-premise environment and has managed to capture complete utilization metrics or trends of their utilization. This has benefited me in right-sizing systems for my public cloud total cost of ownership (TCO) planning, providing me granularity to right-size these systems while planning a migration to the public cloud. Device42 has positively impacted my organization by providing granularity toward application discovery compared to other assessment tools, which is a differentiator since none of the other tools provide such granularity, leading to better decision-making for my migration to the public cloud. Device42 has improved my migration projects by providing granularity around system dependencies that gave me confidence knowing which systems communicate with each other parked in a particular move group. My move group planning became so robust that I am not leaving any system behind in the on-premise data center from my planning, which saves a lot of time and effort, leading to cost optimization—a value addition.

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

"The feature I appreciate most about Cisco Nexus Dashboard is the ability to control everything in one centralized place."

"What I like the most about Cisco Nexus Dashboard is the easier way to know exactly which device is connected to where."

"We use the automatic IT asset discovery for different things, like VMware discovery and SNMP discovery for network devices. It helps us to keep hardware information up to date in Device42, and the VMware discovery helps us to keep virtual device inventory up to date... We are sure to have 100 percent of our devices in Device42. Not more, not less."

"The solution's CMDB, ITAM, and DCIM features create a single source of IT truth in our environment."

"Device42 is a really impressive tool."

"The solution's agentless approach to asset discovery is very important for us because installing agents on physical or virtual devices is not easy in our company. We have to escalate these kinds of things to different levels of security. Not having to install agents makes it easy for us."

"The continuous asset discovery is good because it means not having to manually input all the small data, such as IP addresses, leases, etc. It helps and saves us a lot of time."

"Device42 positively impacts my organization because we build the as-is as soon as possible, avoiding the delays we would face with the network or security teams, and I captured more than 100 traffic entries in just two weeks, which was great."

"The time saved by using Device42, across the teams, is easily equivalent to a couple of people at least."

"Device42 stands out as a really competitive tool as compared to some of the other tools which are out there in the market, such as BMC Discovery, Freshservice, and ServiceNow, and I am really happy to see that Device42 is really doing well in capturing and including the AI aspect of it."

More Device42 pros

Cons

"My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cisco Nexus Dashboard is that it is expensive."

"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."

"The dependency mapping can be quite slow sometimes, if you've got a lot of things connecting to services. It can be very slow to build up the map."

"Since I was focused on deploying connectors and getting all the servers to be scanned, one of the biggest pains was when a job would fail, then the output (logging) was poor. For example, "Why did it fail?" In these cases, you get a generic error. It doesn't point you in the right direction and tell you why you got the error, which is really annoying. There have been times I asked, "Is there somewhere I can see a better log as to why is this failing?" That would be a really nice improvement."

"Device42 can be improved by adding more reporting features and architectural diagrams."

"When servers have two network adapters, automatically discovered will be only one network card because the other one is a backup. Device42 has some problems to find the other connection."

"It gets a bit confusing sometimes when you're trying to map things to a certain spot when you are trying to configure it."

"Currently, if you want to ping devices, you need to log into Appliance Manager. This feature should be available on the Device42 side. You should be able to use the ping utility without logging into Appliance Manager. The features that are there in Appliance Manager should also be available on the main Device42 server so that you have more control on one screen. You don't need to switch to another portal, but it is not something critical."

"While the automatic IT asset discovery is great, the first time using it can be confusing when you are configuring the SNMP. I don't remember for sure but I don't think it said "SNMP community," it said "password". The first time I used it I was thinking about communities but the tool said "password," and when you say "password" in SNMP you are thinking about SNMP version 3. This is the only thing that is confusing, although there were some devices that were not included in the discovery."

"In my experience I believe that the key concern is the pricing strategy of the solution. Instead other solutions such as lanweber are much more cost effective. Previously, Device42 operated on perpetualysis without any fees. But recently they have altered the pricing model to include a subscription fee which I see as a very costly affair. Therefore I would like to suggest that they evaluate their pricing strategy and licence scheme, conduct a market research and ensure that they provide the right product in the market at the right price."

More Device42 cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"Functionality-wise, Device42 is on par with industry standards, but price-wise, the solution is expensive. I'm rating the pricing for the solution as eight out of ten."

"The product cost is low. It is quite cheap."

"It's in the top-three most expensive solutions in terms of cost, but it has all the features that are needed."

"On a yearly basis, our licensing is $10,000. However, our license is now nearly full with devices. We need the next bigger license with 5,000 devices, which will cost us $19,000. We pay for a set of licenses, a maximum number of devices, and a maximum number of IP addresses. We have the smallest amount of features, which is enough for us at this time."

"The problem with using other vendor, like BMC, is the pricing. The price is so horrible and nobody wants to pay this money."

"Our licensing costs are on a yearly basis."

"I am not involved in its pricing, but I have seen their plans during a discussion with the customer. For 500 servers, they were asking 50,000 USD. The cost of BMC Discovery was less than half. For the same thing, they were charging only 10,000 USD. Its pricing needs to be improved. As compared to other discovery tools, such as BMC Discovery and ServiceNow Discovery, its price is a little bit higher."

"We pay $100,000 per year."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Data Center Infrastructure Management solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

902,495 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Healthcare Company

Outsourcing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	20

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Nexus Dashboard?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Cisco Nexus Dashboard is that it is expensive. They are not going to lower the price. If you want it, you are going to have to pay for it. ...

What needs improvement with Cisco Nexus Dashboard?

Cisco Nexus Dashboard is pretty solid, so I do not know what can be improved or what additional features should be included.

What is your primary use case for Cisco Nexus Dashboard?

Cisco Nexus Dashboard serves as a dashboard to ensure that all Nexus devices are properly set up.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Device42?

The pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Device42 are relatively cost-effective and affordable. I do not know if a small organization would be able to afford it, but I presume it would also be co...

What needs improvement with Device42?

I think Device42 can be improved by adding more features around the CMDB aspect and lifecycle management. I do not think many people use it for that functionality, but if they were to expand the su...

What is your primary use case for Device42?

My main use case for Device42 is that we use it as a CMDB and affinity map to check out network topology or determine when we need to decom something in a life cycle. We use it for many different p...

ServiceNow CMDB vs Device42

Comparisons

No data available

Freshservice vs Device42

Compared 7% of the time

Compared 7% of the time

NetBox.dev vs Device42

Compared 6% of the time

Faddom vs Device42

Compared 6% of the time

ServiceNow vs Device42

Compared 4% of the time

More Device42 Competitors

Product Reports

Data Center Networking

Download Cisco Nexus Dashboard product report

Download Device42 product report

Overview

Cisco Nexus Dashboard offers an integrated infrastructure management solution. Designed to streamline network operations, it provides centralized visibility and control across diverse environments, ensuring efficient management and coordination.

Cisco Nexus Dashboard addresses the complexities of modern network management. It optimizes workflows and reduces operational overhead with its centralized platform. The dashboard enhances efficiency by integrating seamlessly with existing infrastructure, enabling administrators to efficiently configure and monitor their networks. The platform's capabilities support network agility, allowing organizations to adapt to changing demands while maintaining consistent performance and security standards.

What are the key features of Cisco Nexus Dashboard?

Centralized Management: Unifies network operations in a single interface.
Multi-Cloud Support: Manages cloud and on-premises environments.
Comprehensive Visibility: Offers real-time insights into network performance.
Scalability: Adapts to growing network demands efficiently.
Automation: Reduces manual processes to enhance productivity.

What benefits can users expect from Cisco Nexus Dashboard?

Cost Reduction: Minimizes operational costs through automation and efficiency.
Improved Performance: Enhances network reliability and speed.
Enhanced Security: Strengthens security protocols with comprehensive monitoring.
Increased Agility: Supports quick adaptation to market and technology changes.

Cisco Nexus Dashboard finds application across sectors like finance, healthcare, and telecom. In finance, it ensures secure, reliable transactions. Healthcare benefits from improved data handling and security compliance, while telecom relies on it for robust network management and service delivery.

Cisco

Device42 empowers enterprises with automatic IT asset discovery, application dependency mapping, and agentless discovery, streamlining asset management, improving decision-making, and supporting migration initiatives.

Device42 automates network discovery and provides comprehensive IT data management, making it indispensable for asset and infrastructure management. The platform’s integration capabilities, such as with ServiceNow, allow seamless management of physical and virtual environments. Its application dependency mapping is a critical feature for efficient cloud migration, while advanced search and dashboards enhance operational tasks. Device42's ease of deployment coupled with integration into cloud services offers robust operational insights and simplifies onboarding.

What are Device42's key features?

Automatic IT Asset Discovery: Enables detailed information collection on hardware and software.
Application Dependency Mapping: Facilitates tracking of application dependencies for effective cloud migration.
Agentless Discovery: Assists in uncovering assets without the need for specialized agents.
Network Topology Visualization: Assists in visual representation of network connections.
Cloud Integration: Simplifies the integration with cloud services for enhanced insights.

What benefits should be evaluated in Device42?

Improved Decision-Making: Optimizes resource utilization and boosts strategic initiatives.
Seamless Integration: Enhances connectivity with platforms like ServiceNow.
Efficiency in Auditing: Eases compliance and auditing processes.
Simplified Onboarding: Streamlines initial setups and deployment.
Enhanced Operational Insights: Supports better management through comprehensive data visualization.

Device42 is widely used across sectors for IT asset and infrastructure management, where automation in inventory and documentation aids compliance and resource optimization. It excels in industries requiring integration with existing systems and comprehensive network solutions. Application dependency mapping bolsters cloud migration efficiency in enterprise environments.

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Computershare, Concur, Doosan, Fitch Ratings Inc., Fujitsu, HomeAway, Jasper Wireless, Mercedes-Benz, Square, Twitch, UCSB, Zayo Group Inc.

Cisco Nexus Dashboard vs. Device42