Cisco DNA Center vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform comparison

Cisco and Red Hat are both solutions in the Network Automation category. Cisco is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.0, while Red Hat is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.8. Cisco holds a 13.9% mindshare in NA, compared to Red Hat’s 19.2% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

Cisco DNA Center

Read 41 Cisco DNA Center reviews

2,431 Views
1,503 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Red Hat Ansible Automation ...

Read 69 Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform reviews

2,705 Views
1,929 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Cisco DNA Center

Red Hat Ansible Automation ...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 6, 2025

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and Cisco DNA Center both compete in the automation and network management sector. Cisco DNA Center is favored for its robust network management capabilities, especially in integrated Cisco environments, whereas Ansible stands out with its simplicity and ease of use.

Features: Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is known for its agentless architecture, utilizing simple YAML syntax for configuration management. It provides flexible, role-based access control and a comprehensive documentation suite. Cisco DNA Center excels in providing centralized control and advanced AI-driven network insights, with seamless integration with other Cisco devices ensuring enhanced network security.

Room for Improvement: Ansible's main challenges revolve around scalability issues due to SSH, along with its GUI and documentation needing improvement. Cisco DNA Center could be more competitively priced and offer better integration with non-Cisco products, with room for improvement in configuration management complexities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Ansible is deployable in hybrid, on-premises, and multi-cloud environments, with strong community support, though some find the official support lacking. Cisco DNA Center's primary on-premises deployment can be complex, but integration within the Cisco ecosystem is beneficial, and while customer support is generally good, ease-of-use could enhance the setup experience.

Pricing and ROI: Ansible’s open-source basis offers cost benefits, but enterprise features necessitate additional expenditure, providing significant ROI through operational efficiency. Meanwhile, Cisco DNA Center, though more expensive with substantial licensing fees, justifies its cost through comprehensive network management capabilities, potentially limiting adoption in smaller networks due to its pricing structure.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco DNA Center vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco DNA Center vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

April 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 851,491 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 DNA Center

Ranking in Network Automation

2nd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Management Applications (1st), Network Monitoring Software (13th)

Red Hat Ansible Automation ...

Ranking in Network Automation

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Release Automation (3rd), Configuration Management (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Network Automation category, the mindshare of Cisco DNA Center is 13.9%, down from 18.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 19.2%, down from 22.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Automation

Featured Reviews

AvrahamSonenthal

Senior Network Engineer at Inside Global

Efficiently manages our wireless network and provides valuable monitoring features

The platform's biggest benefit has been in managing our wireless network. Having a single pane of glass to control all wireless controllers and access points and to monitor activity has been a significant advantage. We're a small federal agency with around 300 network devices, so automation is a minor focus. It's more relevant for larger networks. The main benefits we've seen are in inventory management and the potential for configuration automation. However, I recommend using the DNA Centre only for larger networks with over a thousand devices; otherwise, it may not be cost-effective. Before proceeding, ensure that your devices are compatible with DNA Center, as not all Cisco devices are supported. Also, investing in proper training is different from plug-and-play. I rate it an eight.

Read full review

Surya Chapagain

Senior System Administrator at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Easy to manage and simple to learn

We use Red Hat a lot. I open tickets for the Red Hat cases, however, with Ansible, I haven't opened any cases. My manager worked with them a bit. If we have a problem with some file and we need to get Red Hat to analyze the issue and the file is 100GBs, we'll have an issue since we need to provide a log file for them to analyze. If it is around 12GB or 13GB, we can easily upload it to the Red Hat portal. With more than 100GBs, it will fail. I heard it should cover up to 250GB for an upload, however, I find it fails. Therefore, Red Hat needs to provide a way to handle this.

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 most valuable features were the monitoring, maintenance, and configuration."

"Cisco is a leading network company."

"It is simple to manage and it is all done from a single dashboard."

"It is a stable solution."

"The product's most valuable feature is the visual representation of the switch's front panel."

"The best feature of Cisco DNA Center is the visibility page, where you can see everything on the dashboard, and you don't have to be a technical person to view the issues."

"Cisco DNA Center provides operational support, compliance support, security vulnerability detection, and automatic scheduling."

"The automation features are significant, reducing configuration time. This means outstanding functionality. By deploying the controller automatically, the rest becomes automated"

More Cisco DNA Center pros

"The solution is capable of integrating with many applications and devices in comparison to BigFix."

"The initial setup is straightforward."

"When you have an enterprise-level number of network devices, the ability to quickly push out security updates to thousands of devices is the biggest thing"

"Ansible provides great reliability when coupled with a versioning system (git). It helps providing predictability to the network by knowing exactly what's being pushed after validating it in production."

"Being a game-changer in configuration management software is what has made Ansible so popular and widespread. Much of IT is based on SSH direct connectivity with a need for running infrastructure in an agentless way, and that has been a big plus. SSH has become a great security standard for managing servers. The whole thing has really become an out-of-the-box solution for managing a Unix estate."

"It increases our company's efficiency, automating all the simple tasks which used to take hours of somebody's time."

"On the network side, I already have a lot of our firewall related processes automated. If it's not automated all the way from the ticket system, our network team members, our tier-one guys in India, can just go into the Tower web interface and fill in a couple of survey questions."

"The development tools are decent and being able to consistently manage those servers is really the key, which is why we went with Ansible in the first place."

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform pros

Cons

"The solution can be quite pricey."

"Cisco could improve the security side of their solutions."

"In terms of the clustering part, there are some concerns."

"One area that needs improvement is the upgrade process."

"The product has many features that do not work properly."

"As a user, it would be good if I could plug in controllers, suites, and devices from other vendors to Cisco DNA Center."

"An area that needs improvement is the integration with other vendors."

"The solution’s security side could be improved."

More Cisco DNA Center cons

"What I'm trying to figure out, personally, is, when doing mass updates, how I can parallelize that a little bit better. It seems right now - and maybe, it's a shortcoming on my end - that I run through one set of servers, and then another set of servers, ad then another set of servers, but it seems like I could throw a lot of these checks out. Different types of servers, like web servers and DB servers, if I could parallelize that a little bit to make everything run a little bit more efficiently, that would help."

"The solution is slightly expensive, and its pricing could be improved."

"The area which I feel can be improved is the custom modules. For example, there are something like 106 official modules available in the Ansible library. A year ago, that number was somewhere around 58. While Ansible is improving day by day, this can be improved more. For instance, when you need to configure in the cloud, you need to write up a module for that."

"We would like support for the post-integration of this product before cloud frameworks because right now their approach is to avoid using on-premises activities and move everything to the cloud."

"The support could be better."

"The job workflow needs to be worked on. It's not really clear to how you actually link things together. What they probably could do is provide an example workflow on how to stitch things together. I think that would be very helpful."

"I would like to see improvements in the dashboards. More detailed dashboards would be beneficial because there is a lack of dashboards on Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform."

"Performance has been an issue on larger environments, but it has gotten a lot better over the past two years."

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing for Cisco DNA Center is a little bit expensive, just like any Cisco solution. Its cost could still be improved."

"Our licensing agreement is for three years."

"The solution is a little bit expensive but depends a lot on the customer's usage. If you use it in the right place, you can easily pay for it."

"It is an expensive solution."

"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with ten being expensive."

"The licensing cost for Cisco DNA Center is not more than that of other solutions."

"Affordability is a problem because it's created for large enterprises only. So, some customers, even if their engineers want the solution, might have problems with budget limitations."

"I rate the product's pricing an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is very cheap, and ten is very expensive."

More Cisco DNA Center pricing and cost advice

"We have to be mindful of how we use Ansible because of the licensing model. I am not saying that it is unfair or we do not find value in it. Because we are trying to automate so many different things, we have to be mindful of what we are doing and how we are doing it because we are trying to stay in compliance with it."

"It’s an open-source tool."

"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is an affordable solution."

"If you only need to use Ansible, it's free for any end-user, but when you require Ansible Tower, you need to pay per Ansible Tower server."

"I don't see the pricing or licensing features, but from what I understand, it is fairly reasonable."

"We're charged between $8 to $13 a month per license."

"Ansible Tower is pretty expensive."

"Everything is generally fair. No one ever likes to pay a lot of money, but we are getting the value. We also get support with it. It has been fair and worthwhile."

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Automation solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

851,491 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Educational Organization

27%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco DNA Center?

The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it gives some kind of ease in operations, especially since our company is moving from CLI to GUI-based configuration.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco DNA Center?

The cost is very high.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco DNA Center?

The system is working fine for me currently.

See all answers

What is the difference between Red Hat Satellite and Ansible?

Red Hat Satellite has proven to be a worthwhile investment for me. Both its patch management and license management have been outstanding. If you have a large environment, patching systems is much ...

See all answers

How does Ansible compare to Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (SCCM)?

Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager takes knowledge and research to properly configure. The length of time that the set up will take depends on the kind of technical architecture that your org...

See all answers

What do you like most about Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?

The most valuable features of the solution are automation and patching.

See all answers

Comparisons

Cisco Catalyst Center vs Cisco DNA Center

Compared 11% of the time

Juniper Mist Wired Assurance vs Cisco DNA Center

Compared 7% of the time

SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager vs Cisco DNA Center

Compared 6% of the time

Fortinet FortiManager vs Cisco DNA Center

Compared 6% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs Cisco DNA Center

Compared 4% of the time

More Cisco DNA Center Competitors

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 16% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 11% of the time

Red Hat Satellite vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Intune vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 6% of the time

OpenText Operations Orchestration vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Compared 2% of the time

More Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco DNA Center

May 2025

Download Cisco DNA Center product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

May 2025

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform report

Download Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform product report

Also Known As

DNA Center

Ansible

Overview

Cisco DNA Center offers a comprehensive platform for network automation and management, providing detailed analytics, enhanced security, and streamlined operations for both wired and wireless networks.

Cisco DNA Center integrates with Cisco infrastructure to deliver efficient network automation and management, helping organizations improve network visibility, security, and control. It supports AI-driven analytics and automated workflows to enhance operational efficiency and reduce errors. Challenges include compatibility with third-party systems, steep learning curve, and complex deployment. Its interface facilitates centralized control, vital for troubleshooting, policy management, and configuration management, with support for zero-touch provisioning and SD-Access.

What are the key features of Cisco DNA Center?

Robust Analytics: Provides detailed insights into network health with AI-driven analytics.
Centralized Security: Integrates with ISE for comprehensive security management.
Automated Device Management: Simplifies device provisioning and configuration transfers.
Wi-Fi Analytics: Offers deep insights into wireless network performance.
Zero-Touch Provisioning: Streamlines new device deployments with minimal human intervention.
Scalable Segmentation: Efficiently segments network traffic ensuring security and performance.

What benefits should users consider?

Operational Efficiency: Automation reduces potential errors and streamlines workflow.
Enhanced Security: Integration with Cisco ISE bolsters security capabilities.
Network Visibility: Comprehensive dashboards and analysis tools enhance monitoring.
Troubleshooting: Real-time monitoring aids in identifying and resolving issues swiftly.

In sectors such as healthcare, finance, and retail, Cisco DNA Center is utilized for its ability to enhance security and compliance, manage large-scale networks, and provide detailed analytics for better operational decision-making. Its support for location tracking and policy automation ensures efficient network management across diverse environments.

Cisco

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is a powerful network automation solution that allows organizations to handle every aspect of their application launch process within a single product. It enables users to share their automations so that teams within an organization can collaborate on various projects with ease. Ansible Automation Platform is designed to be used by all employees involved in the network automation process.

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Benefits

Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform include:

Maximum benefit for reduced overhead. Ansible Automation Platform is an all-in-one solution that can enable users to do the jobs of multiple products with one. Users do not need to purchase multiple products to handle their network automation and application development needs. It is equipped with prefabricated content from more than one hundred companies that are partnered with it.

Scalable. Ansible Automation Platform is a highly scalable solution. It can easily be scaled up so that automations can be extended across the various devices that make up an organization’s network.

Flexibility. Ansible Automation Platform is highly flexible. It enables users to tackle any and all automation-related tasks.

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Features

Automation analytics. Ansible Automation Platform comes equipped with an automation analytics feature. This feature enables organizations to measure the effects of their automations and plan how they are going to implement automations moving forward. It makes it easy for administrators to spot anomalies in their automations and resolve them before they can escalate and become major issues.

Integration suite. Ansible Automation Platform gives organizations access to a wide variety of integrations that enable them to connect to Ansible’s partners. Now users can augment their capabilities without needing to purchase additional solutions that will enable them to run features that are not normally a part of Ansible’s array of tools. The Ansible environment is built to handle the wide variety of integrations that their partners offer. In order to accomplish this it includes the APIs that users need in order to fully benefit from the integrations.

Centralized interface. Ansible Automation Platform comes with a centralized GUI interface that enables users to manage all of their network automation and application creation activities from a single location. Businesses can guarantee that their operations are going to be handled efficiently and according to a single standard. The management process is greatly simplified. All of the tools that users need are located in one place.

Reviews from Real Users

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is a highly effective solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Two major advantages it offers are its automation manager and its comprehensive centralized GUI-based management interface.

MD J., a solution architect at STBL, says, “The automation manager is very good and makes things easier for customers with multi-cloud platforms.”

Aankit G., a Consultant at Pi DATACENTERS, writes, “We like the GUI-based interface for the tower. Before, we only had a command-line interface to run all the Ansible tasks. Now, the Ansible tower provides the complete GUI functionality to run, manage, and create the templates and the Ansible jobs. This includes the code and YAML file we can create. The GUI interface is the added advantage of this solution, including some integration with the different plugins.”

Red Hat

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank

Buyer's Guide

Cisco DNA Center vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

April 2025

Free Report: Cisco DNA Center vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform

Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco DNA Center vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

851,491 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Cisco DNA Center vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform report.

See our list of best Network Automation vendors.

We monitor all Network Automation reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.