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Cisco ACI vs Micro Focus Network Virtualization [EOL] 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 ACI
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
106
Ranking in other categories
Network Virtualization (1st), Software Defined Networking (SDN) (2nd), Cloud and Data Center Security (7th)
Micro Focus Network Virtual...
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Sulaiman Olubiyi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Network Automation Engineer at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Network automation has simplified secure multi-site connectivity and reduced daily operational effort
I believe Cisco ACI could improve by incorporating something related to agentic AI, where it can execute tasks based on particular evaluations or loop engineering, enhancing fault identification or suggestions based on each tenant's configuration. Additionally, I think they should ensure that the documentation is comprehensive. I appreciate that Cisco provides documentation, and their support engineers are helpful in case of any issues. In terms of governance and security regarding Cisco ACI's AI capabilities, I think what we call evals or evaluations is important, whereby the engineer can evaluate the functionalities of the AI in Cisco ACI, preventing it from making deletions or modifications on its own. Therefore, there should be evaluations or guardrails incorporated into the development capabilities. Regarding accuracy and reliability of output for Cisco ACI's AI capabilities, it hasn't met my expectations. What we need is something called RAG, or retrieval-augmented generation. If Cisco can implement that to utilize customer-specific data instead of general knowledge, while ensuring data privacy under GDPR laws, I think that will result in very good, reliable output.
it_user567705 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT And Digital Platform Manager at Exemplas
It is flexible and scalable, giving us room to grow.
They'll be restricted by their legal requirements in terms of what they can actually do in order to source, but I would strongly recommend they talk to a variety of partners to find a decent partner that they trust and will get good customer service from. Get advice, and kind of go from there. Which I think is one of the reasons why the HPE partner program is so important because it gets that message across and gets the quality of the product across.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The initial setup was trivially simple and easy. It builds itself because it is automation. You don't have to do too much."
"In legacy networks, managing changes requires individual tickets for each device. ACI's single pane of glass management through APIC is a big advantage. So, single-tenant management is a plus."
"Cisco ACI was the first product in the market, offering stability with a significant install base."
"Micro-segmentation is the solution’s most valuable feature."
"One of the most valuable features is centralized management. The other is the ability to create policies by routing."
"We had different networks and combined them with ACI so we could have the control of one controller-based network, and automation is running so that the operational effort was reduced massively."
"It is very easy to do the configuration after you know how to work with the product, and it is global, so you change one interface and changes are reflected on every switch."
"The basic functionality that is the most useful is creating a virtual network on a physical device."
"It goes through about 1.3 billion libraries on any scenario, any bandwidth, and any network condition you could think of."
"This solution allows us to offer a solution for the application, including all the things they need."
"In terms of consistency of delivery, this solution gives us room to grow as well."
"Network Virtualization allows us to test virtually instead of placing load generators somewhere else in the world."
 

Cons

"Technical support needs to be more helpful. It's rare that you get a knowledgeable person."
"Better troubleshooting features would be helpful. In ACI, it can be a big mess, a real headache to troubleshoot a single issue... The troubleshooting part, and the information that ACI gives you, sometimes don't give you a proper, inside picture of what's going on within the fabric."
"We faced some issues while configuring the microsegment."
"It is still not mature and has room to grow. As with any product out there, it requires time to develop."
"The initial setup was a bit complex."
"I would like for them to develop integration with AWS."
"The learning curve is long. It's very difficult to learn Cisco ACI, and as a result, our customers usually have difficulty working with this solution."
"Our company had a lot of issues with the starter kit."
"We haven’t had experience with scale yet."
"One of the really good options of the SDN on DCN is the micro-segmentation. I would like to see it act more like a real firewall."
"They need to go beyond what they are doing right now and look at streaming capabilities because a lot of news organizations, a lot of media and entertainment companies, need a lot of streaming support."
"The reporting could be a little bit better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price could be improved. It is expensive, but then again, it is Cisco. The price is worth what you pay for."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"It saves time and resources."
"The licensing cost for ACI is expensive - I would rate its price 2.5 out of five."
"The pricing, including both hardware and licenses, is reasonable."
"This is an expensive solution."
"The thing that I like the most from Cisco is the support and all the documentation that they have. We do have to pay for it though."
"Price is always an issue."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise89
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What are the biggest differences between Cisco ACI and VMware NSX?
There are some very major differences between both the Products and to name a few. -Cisco ACI have physical network gear (9K Switches) where the Code runs in ACI Policy Mode & the UCS server wh...
What are the biggest differences between Cisco ACI and VMware NSX?
Once you know your way around the Cisco ecosystem, using Cisco ACI is not so difficult. It is a global product, so when you change one interface, changes are automatically reflected on every switch...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco ACI?
Cost is one thing that could be improved, as it is heavy for an emerging market like ours.
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Also Known As

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Shunra, HPE Network Virtualization
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bowling Green State University, du, Qatar University
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Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Broadcom, ZeroTier, Inc. and others in Network Virtualization. Updated: October 2026.
920,336 professionals have used our research since 2012.