Cisco Nexus Dashboard Reviews

I acknowledge that some of our customers are using Cisco Enterprise routers. I have been dealing with this product for more than a decade. I generally recommend Cisco Enterprise routers for types of companies that almost only require enterprise routers, which is about 2% to 3%, not more than that. These are very rare cases we are providing. I am not that much familiar with routers in general, and I am only talking about Cisco routers.

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. It provides multi-site visibility because of the visibility across multiple data center sites. There are plenty of parameters, and the automation is more advanced than it was earlier, which has reduced manual work in automation. Real-time monitoring, health performance, and network status visibility, as well as analytics, both historical and real-time telemetry, help identify performance issues.

End-to-end visibility refers to the reliability from the application to the end user. This is a major benefit, as it includes application to networking visibility, traffic flow visibility, fabric-wide health monitoring, interface error and packet drops, latency and performance monitoring. Cisco Nexus Dashboard also provides multi-site visibility and proactive identification of network issues.

In terms of improvement with Cisco Nexus Dashboard, I see integration limitations, as it has some limitations when it comes to integrating the fabrics. They can expand that enablement to add multiple products inside.

In the future, I would like to see full-fledged AI integration and self-healing technology included. If any failure occurs, integrating AI could help minimize downtime without requiring manual intervention.

I have been dealing with this product for more than a decade.

I would rate the stability of Cisco Nexus Dashboard as high. I can give it a rating of 10 out of 10 for reliability and stability.

In terms of scalability, Cisco has lots of limitations, and unnecessary licensing will be involved. This can be quite difficult, especially when other brands provide these features at no cost. For instance, enabling an additional SFP port in Cisco generally requires the customer to take an additional license for that particular port.

I give recognition to Cisco for their technical support; they provide very good support. They address issues based on the CON-SNT support that is opted by customers. It is good support if you ask me. I can rate their technical support five out of five.

That being said, you can take it as 4.5 out of 10, because sometimes there may be delays.

I describe my experience with deploying Cisco Nexus Dashboard as slightly complicated when compared to other products. Cisco has different algorithms and terminologies. With 100 brands available in the market, 99 of them have the same templates to deploy, but Cisco has different algorithms. Only certified Cisco engineers can do it easily; otherwise, it can be quite difficult for an average user.

In terms of pricing, Cisco products, including Cisco Nexus Dashboard and others, are very high compared to competitors. I am supplying materials across the globe for most of my projects in metro areas. Whenever we are bidding, Cisco prices are very high. For example, one transceiver for 10 Gig or 25 Gig connectivity costs around two lakhs in INR. If I go with some other reputed brand like Aruba, that cost will come around only 60,000 INR. In dollars, one transceiver costs around 20,000, while in Aruba it is almost 6,000.

We are selling HP along with Cisco for servers, as Cisco servers are already obsolete. They have been discontinued, and there are no Cisco servers available in the market any longer. The highest market share is held by HP and Dell. Dell is also part of what we sell.

As of now, I do not have an idea about whether Cisco optimizes the experience in a hybrid or distributed enterprise setup. Integrating AI would take care of all aspects. A single prompt would be sufficient to enable it, whereas competitors such as Juniper and Aruba have already incorporated AI integration and self-healing networks. I have given Cisco Nexus Dashboard an overall review rating of 7 out of 10.

Other

I have been working with Cisco Nexus Dashboard for 15 years in different roles. Sometimes I was directly at Cisco, some years I was in Cisco TAC in the support team, and I have been working with multiple partners for professional services, managed service providers, and resellers. So I have been in many companies.

Optimization is key, and Cisco Nexus Dashboard is more of a data center orchestrator. They bring this whole leaf and spine architecture across the sites. The biggest complex part of a data center is having a layer 2 and layer 3 part of your network extended beyond its own site. That is done very cleanly and easily using Cisco Nexus Dashboard through something called Nexus Dashboard Orchestrator or Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller. Both do the same thing.

It is definitely value for money because now, with big data centers and your data center spanning across multiple places, you do not have to go at every point and start setting up one device at a time. With Cisco Nexus Dashboard, it is a plug-and-play technology. You can set up your network and bring it up to production in nearly no time. You get your return on value as soon as you can.

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.

Cisco is definitely smarter than me, so I cannot think of any improvement because they are already bringing in some smart Hypershield switches. Although that is not a new concept, Cisco is just getting motivation from other vendors who have already done it. The biggest selling point for Cisco is Cisco's brand name and the power of Cisco Nexus Dashboard switches. In terms of innovation, they have already brought in switches like Hypershield and the Hyper-smart switches which have built-in firewalls in them. I think they are already way ahead of time.

I have been working with Cisco Nexus Dashboard for 15 years in different roles. Sometimes I was directly at Cisco, some years I was in Cisco TAC in the support team, and I have been working with multiple partners for professional services, managed service providers, and resellers. So I have been in many companies.

There was a time when Cisco had buggy software because when Cisco ACI, actually Cisco Nexus Dashboard, used to be called the DCNM back then, these were all new software. Every new software has a bug, which is fine. But over the years, in the last 10 years at least, and now where we stand, I have never seen a random crash or a random bug happening in their software. Ninety percent of the time, it is human error which is causing a problem. Cisco is automating so many things out-of-the-box that they are not leaving things to human error. They are resolving and doing most of the things fully automated. There is less margin of error by humans. In terms of bugs and stability, once Cisco Nexus Dashboard works, I can guarantee it will always work. If it is not working, you have done something wrong.

Some regions in Cisco TAC, like the Sydney region, is really good. The US region is really good, the San Jose one and the other ones. The Indian region, also the Bangalore one, is pretty good, but a few regions in India and some other Asian zones need some better training so they can troubleshoot the issues faster. They take way too long.

VMware, which is now Broadcom, stopped supporting VMM integration with Cisco ACI and Cisco Nexus Dashboard just for the reason that Cisco was able to manage VMware's world to a large extent and people were really loving it. They stopped supporting it with no good reasons just to make customers' lives harder and Cisco's life harder.

In terms of zero-touch provisioning or plug-and-play feature, let us say you have 100 switches and you want to set them all up. To bootstrap those switches, you would need at least 40 minutes per device. That is very aggressive, and it is always more than that. Imagine 40 minutes times 100. You can see how many days you are counting. With Cisco Nexus Dashboard, you simply plug in the cables. The bootstrap, if you really want to count the bootstrap time, is reduced to 15-20 minutes. If you count the time that you are spending, that is nearly one minute. Imagine 40 minutes down to one minute. What was 4,000 minutes is now down to 100 minutes. Not even 100 minutes, because now all the switches are getting bootstrapped in parallel. So it is 4,000 minutes down to one minute. That is amazing.

I have been working with Cisco Nexus Dashboard for 15 years in different roles. Sometimes I was directly at Cisco, some years I was in Cisco TAC in the support team, and I have been working with multiple partners for professional services, managed service providers, and resellers. So I have been in many companies.

The professional services and license is expensive everywhere.

Cisco Nexus Dashboard has its learning curve, but once you do it at least once or twice, it is very straightforward. End-to-end visibility across the devices and across the sites is really good. I would rate this product a 10 out of 10.

Hybrid Cloud

Microsoft Azure

The major use case for Cisco Nexus Dashboard is for developing the solution. Since I am part of FlexPod, I use Cisco Nexus Dashboard to configure Nexus switches. This could be a standard workload or it could be an AIML workload.

The best features that I encounter in Cisco Nexus Dashboard include managing everything with Cisco Intersight if I have invested in Cisco equipment, such as Catalyst or IOS for WAN connectivity, and using Nexus for my data center. That is the first main benefit. The second benefit is the configuration since things are moving from a specialist to a generalist approach, so I don't need to put a lot of effort during my operations. There is now a transition into a graphical user interface where I have templates and options defined. I simply select the right template and configure things properly without worrying about how the configuration will apply. These advantages are applicable to all Cisco devices in my data center.

Regarding end-to-end visibility that Cisco offers with Cisco Nexus Dashboard, my impression is that visibility is very good and top-notch because of the extended packet visibility we have now. With Cisco Nexus Dashboard, I can go beyond having visibility. There is a feature called Cisco Live Protect, which utilizes a Tetragon agent, but I need to be on the correct NX-OS firmware. Once I integrate with Cisco Nexus Dashboard and configure the proper telemetry, I can identify any threats happening to my Nexus switch and immediately prevent those threats due to the deep visibility provided by Cisco Nexus Dashboard.

The advantages of Cisco Nexus Dashboard in data center networking need us to consider two things: classical Ethernet and three-tier topology versus spine-leaf topology. The moment we look into spine-leaf topology, it becomes very complex because of the VXLAN configuration, and I need to have a network which supports zero packet loss for the environment. From a configuration point of view, it is very complex as I need to build a Layer 3 overlay and then do the VLAN segmentation. With Cisco Nexus Dashboard, I have prepopulated templates for that configuration. For example, if I need to build an AI training infrastructure, I need to ensure my back-end network, responsible for carrying GPU to GPU traffic or GPU to GPU communication, has an RDMA-backed lossless fabric. Cisco Nexus Dashboard provides template definitions that I can use, and I just need to map it to the right interface or port channel. If Cisco Nexus Dashboard did not exist, configuring it would be highly complex with a high chance of misconfiguration affecting bandwidth.

Apart from that, Cisco Nexus Dashboard gives me visibility since it has deep integration with Nexus telemetry and Cisco's acquisition of Isovalent, a company providing a container network interface called Cilium. With the EBPF extended Berkeley Packet Filtering capability, I can now look into Nexus switch traffic, and this feature is integrated with Cisco Nexus Dashboard. If I am running the Advantage license, I can look into the packet ingress and egress of the switch and determine if the configuration is done appropriately or if I need to fine-tune my fabric. These are the core benefits I get from Cisco Nexus Dashboard.

The licensing for Cisco Nexus Dashboard could definitely be better.

Based on my use cases with Cisco Nexus Dashboard, I see that most features already exist. While large-level deployments using multi-site functionality might require more features, I am not aware of those aspects because I am not using it for multi-site configuration.

I consider these two points because there is still room for improvement. Given how the product is used and how it helps, I believe an eight is a very good rating for Cisco Nexus Dashboard.

Since I have been using Cisco Nexus Dashboard for just the last year, I cannot think of any disadvantages as I have mostly used it for LAN deployments and have not built multi-site functionality, so I am not in a position to discuss that.

For stability and reliability with Cisco Nexus Dashboard, I found it reliable, as we did not need to reboot for anything.

For scalability, I never faced any problems with Cisco Nexus Dashboard. I worked on different solutions, including AIML training infrastructure, and everything was good.

I would give Cisco Nexus Dashboard support a rating of 7.5 out of 10 as I did for technical support.

The reason I give such a rating is that it relates to where the case is getting landed, which is region-specific. However, since I need to rate it globally, this is why I am giving 7.5.

I do not think I have worked with a similar product to Cisco Nexus Dashboard on the market.

The deployment of Cisco Nexus Dashboard is usually straightforward; I have options to deploy directly on servers as bare metal or also on a VMware-based environment. It is straightforward, but I need to understand what features I want to use from Cisco Nexus Dashboard. Based on that, I select my appliance. Customers may first want to see the capabilities, so they can deploy a single instance to have telemetry or visibility of their Nexus environment. If all advanced features are desired, there is a recommended guide indicating how many servers to deploy. I think it is straightforward as I just need to follow the guide.

Regarding the return on investment for Cisco Nexus Dashboard, I believe it is 100 percent effective because of the capabilities it offers. Configuring a VXLAN-based fabric is not easy and requires a lot of expertise due to its complexity. With Cisco Nexus Dashboard, I can simply go and configure what I need. This is one of the biggest unique selling points or ROI as it saves me time on operational aspects, and deployment can be seamless.

Cisco Nexus Dashboard definitely optimizes my experience in a hybrid or distributed enterprise setup. Even until now, I was talking about LAN; in a SAN environment, I can also do MDS configuration and Fiber Channel configuration using Cisco Nexus Dashboard, as it has SAN module support. There is a product called Cisco Nexus One that enables me to integrate my existing environment and manage everything, including Cisco ASA, Nexus, and Catalyst environments, with a single pane of glass. I gave Cisco Nexus Dashboard an overall review rating of 9 out of 10.

On-premises

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Our main use case for Cisco Nexus Dashboard is to ensure that all devices have the correct code and to identify any configuration changes between the leaves. If they are not in sync, we try to have that notify us so that we can go and rectify it.

What I like the most about Cisco Nexus Dashboard is the easier way to know exactly which device is connected to where. It paints a pretty picture, and if there is a link that is down, it color codes it to indicate that you need to pay attention there, among other things. Those are my favorites.

I think Cisco Nexus Dashboard can be improved by making it easier to onboard devices because it is a little hard to onboard devices in my opinion, at least from what I remember. At least that was the case with the previous deployment where we were not using VXLAN technology. The newer version we are about to deploy again for this spine-leaf setup, and I hope it is easier to onboard.

I have been in my current field for a little over 15 years.

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.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate technical support at a ten because if you do not know something, the TAC guys are going to walk you from end-to-end.

Prior to adopting Cisco Nexus Dashboard, we were using Cisco devices as one of our main switches that we work with.

I would describe my experience with deploying Cisco Nexus Dashboard as not that bad.

We do not use any of the providers like AWS, GCP, or Azure.

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.

On-premises

Other

My main use case for Cisco Nexus Dashboard is to manage the data center switches and the respective versions of the switches, deploy configs, and manage the data center connectivity. One of my most primary use cases was centralized management and configuration of my two data centers located in Sydney and Melbourne, where I used it to manage Cisco Nexus switches, deploy VLAN configurations, and implement VXLAN architecture while migrating legacy services to the new data center infrastructure and achieving centralized visibility and operational management across both environments.

In my environment, I used Cisco Nexus Dashboard as a centralized platform to monitor and manage the network infrastructure across both data centers, which gave me visibility of the fabric topology, switch connectivity, and overall health. I managed my VLAN and VXLAN configurations, made changes, deployed those changes consistently across switches, and diagnosed configuration or connectivity issues swiftly to maintain consistency between the two data center environments.

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 impact of Cisco Nexus Dashboard on my organization has been significant, improving operational efficiency by providing centralized visibility and management across my Sydney and Melbourne data centers, while reducing the need for manual configuration on individual switches and maintaining consistency during VLAN and VXLAN changes.

In terms of metrics, although I did not formally track exact percentage improvements, I noticed practical benefits in my day-to-day operations, where centralized configuration deployment cut down tasks that previously took several hours to just one hour. I observed a reduction in troubleshooting time by approximately thirty to forty percent.

Among the best features Cisco Nexus Dashboard offers, I particularly appreciate its centralized fabric management, topology visibility, configuration deployment and consistency, offering a single platform to manage multiple data center fabrics while simplifying operational management, reducing manual configuration effort, and ensuring health monitoring and integration with different Cisco data center applications.

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.

I would also like to highlight the centralized configuration management and operational consistency, where rather than manually configuring individual Nexus switches, I could manage and deploy configurations through Cisco Nexus Dashboard, which proved especially useful during VLAN and VXLAN changes and data center migrations.

Regarding improvements to Cisco Nexus Dashboard, I think there is room for enhancement in dashboard responsiveness, simplified workflows for configuration deployments, more detailed troubleshooting insights, better integration with third-party monitoring and automation tools, alongside improved reporting and more actionable alerts to help engineers identify potential issues faster across multiple data centers.

As for further improvements, I have noticed that during configuration deployments, the exact reason for deployment failure is not consistent across switches, leading to additional investigation issues, which could be resolved with more consistent error reporting.

I have been using Cisco Nexus Dashboard for the past six to seven years, predominantly in my role where I deployed Cisco Nexus Dashboard to manage my data centers.

Regarding stability, I can confidently say that Cisco Nexus Dashboard has been stable since its deployment in my production environment, allowing reliable centralized management and configuration across both data centers, although it does require regular software maintenance and monitoring.

Regarding scalability, Cisco Nexus Dashboard proves to be scalable as it allows for the addition of more physical hardware while increasing workloads; however, this can become costly and quite CPU intensive when considerably scaling within my specific environment.

Customer support from Cisco has been fantastic, with both Cisco and my partner, Telstra, being engaged throughout the project, ensuring everything went remarkably well. In rating the customer support, I would give an eight out of ten, as my experience with Telstra's technical team during the initial deployment and ongoing operational support has been notably positive.

Prior to Cisco Nexus Dashboard, my previous solution was a legacy data center solution, characterized by a three-tier architecture which required excessive manual effort to deploy changes, configure switches, and carry out operational tasks, making server migrations and workload changes very tedious.

Within my organization, Cisco Nexus Dashboard is deployed as an on-premises solution using dedicated physical hardware in my data centers in Sydney and Melbourne, set up with support from my client vendor, Telstra, following an N+1 availability architecture for maintaining centralized management within my controlled environment.

Before selecting Cisco Nexus Dashboard, my main considerations were tied to Cisco's data center networking ecosystem, where alternative solutions like Data Center Network Manager were evaluated, but I was not deeply involved in final product evaluations. I did consider several other vendors such as Palo Alto.

In rating Cisco Nexus Dashboard, I would rate it nine out of ten because it has been very effective in my environment, simplifying operations and management across both data centers, though I would not give it a perfect score due to the need for more detailed root cause information in troubleshooting, particularly concerning failed configuration deployments. The reason I choose a nine out of ten rating is its effectiveness in simplifying operations and management across my data centers, while I believe it could move closer to a perfect score if it improved on providing detailed insights for troubleshooting scenarios and enhanced reporting and automation capabilities.

In terms of governance and security related to Cisco Nexus Dashboard, I consider these aspects critical in a production data center environment, where it offers role-based access control, centralized authentication, and controlled configuration management to ensure only authorized engineers can make network changes alongside features like audit logging, change traceability, and maintaining data privacy across both data centers.

On the topic of Cisco's AI capabilities, I find that while AI-driven insights are valuable for identifying potential network issues and supporting troubleshooting, they should not replace engineering judgment, and recommendations need to be manually verified as they can sometimes diverge from the actual situation.

To others considering Cisco Nexus Dashboard, I highly advise evaluating the current environment and conducting a Proof of Concept to ensure it fits your network demands, as every environment has unique needs.

On-premises

Cisco Nexus Dashboard functions as a network switch that allows you to separate data and control link completely, so configuration changes will not impact other tools. It is available for both on-cloud and on-premises deployment in my environment.

Cisco Nexus Dashboard optimizes the experience in a hybrid distributed enterprise setup and helps with various configurations.

I have not faced any challenges with Cisco Nexus Dashboard in hybrid or distributed enterprise networks.

When I assess the operational efficiency of Cisco Nexus Dashboard in my IT environment, I find that there are no issues present.

The best part of Cisco Nexus Dashboard as a partner is that its control and data plane are different, which is the main advantage.

Because those planes are different, there is a data transfer rate. 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.

My impression of the end-to-end visibility that Cisco offers is that it is pretty clear.

I have not faced any disadvantages or areas for improvement in Cisco Nexus Dashboard.

I started working with Cisco Nexus Dashboard five or six years ago when Nexus came out, at which time I got the order and worked there.

For stability and reliability, I would give it 10 points, as it is reliable.

Scalability is easy, and I would give it a rating of 10.

Cisco Nexus Dashboard customer support is okay, and I would rate it a 10, as it is very good.

The installation of Cisco Nexus Dashboard is somewhat different. Nexus is different than others, and you cannot compare it to HP Aruba closely.

Despite the price, I do see a return on investment or value for money because you can get better performance.

I measure the performance and effectiveness of Cisco Nexus Dashboard by considering how to measure the effectiveness and if there are any performance metrics to know it is effective.

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.

When comparing Cisco Nexus Dashboard to competitors such as Fortinet and Palo Alto or HPE and Dell, I notice that there is a performance monitoring portion present. Each and every device has a performance monitoring option to check how much percentage is being used.

I work as a partner with Cisco Nexus Dashboard, specifically as a partner. Cisco Nexus Dashboard is good. Summarizing all that we have discussed, I would give Cisco Nexus Dashboard a final rating of nine or 10.

Hybrid Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

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 mostly to my existing customers who have Nexus infrastructure and who did not want to pursue an ACI environment.

Regarding data center networking, I am working with Cisco Nexus Dashboard and Cisco switches, and Nexus completely falls under my responsibility.

Cisco Nexus Dashboard is in use today, and we are proposing it to many customers.

Speaking about the end-to-end visibility that Cisco offers, my impression is that any kind of visibility comes from historical telemetry data, which is a time-series database. The same principle applies whether it is Cisco DNA Center or Cisco Nexus Dashboard, which also stores historical telemetry data. For example, if a certain service running has a crash, I can review the network conditions from approximately ten to fifteen minutes prior to the crash using the time-series database historical telemetry data. Cisco Nexus Dashboard also has certain machine learning capabilities that detect unexpected patterns, such as when CPU utilization exceeds eighty percent. It can provide alerts for deviations beyond baseline patterns. Additionally, it supplies detailed flow telemetry, including source and destination IP, which aids in connective analysis.

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 features might also be needed in the Advantage tier. While there are limitations, they have introduced flexibility for deploying in a virtual machine.

When discussing stability, Cisco products are generally stable and reliable, although we may encounter some software glitches. However, hardware performance is solid even with older models still in operation without ongoing support.

In terms of significant differences between Arista and Cisco, Arista takes a multi-vendor approach while Cisco Nexus Dashboard remains mostly Cisco-centric. Arista's CloudVision connects through protocols such as gRPC, and while it offers better scalability for campuses and data centers, Cisco Nexus Dashboard has limitations regarding the number of switches supported per cluster, particularly when scaling on a global level.

Technical support from Cisco is adequate. I recently received good support while integrating Cisco Wireless with Fortinet authentication.

When comparing Cisco with other vendors in the market, I have seen CloudVision from Arista.

Regarding the installation side for Cisco Nexus Dashboard, I can say it is not overly complex, as my team has not encountered significant challenges during deployment.

Hypothetically, they could add features in the future, and they might be planning some integrations based on their product documents.

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. After moving from FEX to leaf and spine, one customer wanted greater control instead of managing on a box-to-box basis or through the command line interface, and they benefit from the improved management and visibility that Cisco Nexus Dashboard provides.

For those customers that have already adopted Cisco Nexus Dashboard, if I want to get full visibility and insights, I need to go for the Premier subscription. Each node type has limitations regarding device quantity management, which is acceptable as long as we are aware of the licensing requirements to access full insights.

I would rate this product an eight out of ten.

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

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

This centralized place feature benefits my organization because most of our devices are Cisco, so I can see if something is going on with the device, if something is going wrong with the port, and other issues. It is literally a centralized place where I can see everything.

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

I have been using Cisco Nexus Dashboard for almost two years.

My impression of the end-to-end visibility offered by Cisco Nexus Dashboard is that it is excellent because you can see from one side to the other side.

Cisco Nexus Dashboard scales with the growing needs of my organization. We are a large organization, but not enormous. I will assess scalability further as my organization continues to grow, but for now, it works well.

I evaluate customer service and tech support for Cisco Nexus Dashboard as good, but sometimes it is challenging, and I have to escalate the case.

When I write a ticket for support, they respond immediately. I have no issues with that. It is just when they need to fix the problem that some people have to escalate because they do not have the knowledge or understanding of what is going on.

Prior to adopting Cisco Nexus Dashboard, I was using a solution called Splunk to address similar needs.

I considered the change to Cisco Nexus Dashboard because at the time I got Splunk, it was more command line oriented, with people doing coding and other technical tasks. Cisco Nexus Dashboard provides GUI visibility, so you can see what is actually going on through an interface rather than through commands.

My experience with deploying Cisco Nexus Dashboard is that everything went well because once you connect with the engineers, they will help you get everything connected. It is not difficult to do.

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. It is good though. Once you have it, it is very good. Cisco Nexus Dashboard is expensive, as are most other Cisco products.

I did not consider any other solutions before selecting Cisco Nexus Dashboard because I always have Cisco equipment, so I am not going to any other provider.

I do not have any specific challenges with hybrid and distributed enterprise networks that Cisco addresses, because everything is set up so well that I do not have any problems.

The end-to-end visibility affects my organization's troubleshooting capabilities in that I do not use it as the main software. I have other software that I use to troubleshoot issues, but it is one of the tools that I can use. Most of the troubleshooting I do is through another software called Splunk, which is also owned by Cisco, and I prefer the coding part because I can track things better than just looking at Cisco Nexus Dashboard.

I rate this review as a 10.