Cisco Catalyst Center vs. Progress WhatsUp Gold

Security with identity-based access control and segmentation via integration with Cisco ISE, supporting zero-trust architectures. Centralized Management for a large campus environment with centralized management of wired and wireless equipment. Automation of tasks like: provisioning, configuration, and software upgrade, reducing manual effort of those tasks. It could be improved to Multi-Vendor Support.

Incentivized

[Progress WhatsUp Gold (formerly Ipswitch WhatsUp Gold)] is good for what it is. An inexpensive but accurate monitor for alerting on systems and services. However, it is time consuming to configure, The GUI leaves a lot to be desired and the formatting for txt alerts stinks (I just use it now as an alert to check my email to view the actual alert.)

Incentivized

• I really like the assurance. I like that I can go through and find problems on the network that could be a mismatch VLAN between two interfaces, port errors, like physical errors that we otherwise probably would need to wait for a customer to complain or we have that we can see that ahead of time and be proactive and say, Hey, I'm noticing that this port is having some errors on it. We might want to check that out ahead of time before it becomes an issue. So that's really useful. And then also being able to configure the network. I think that the programmability part of it, I think I have, I've been having some struggle with that initially, just having to apply. So I have my script, my template that I want to deploy, but in order to deploy it, I have to apply it to a template or a profile and then I have to assign that profile to a group of switches that I want to program. I think it gets a little bit messy and a little bit convoluted, but other than that, I mean it's really helpful. It does automate right now, I think it seems a little convoluted with the process.

Incentivized

• Easy to install and manage.
• While it does require a whole server with IIS and a SQL db it is low impact on resources but still quick to respond.
• Great for quick notifications about a server going above a configured resource threshold. We don't have to look at every server's resource utilization individually anymore.
• Quick and easy to setup a service up or down notification.

Incentivized

• The one thing that we had to get used to was really breaking down our wireless. We integrated our 9800 controllers into it, and the breakdown of our tags being floor specific and not just being campus specific was a challenge for us. And so we had to create all new tags and it wasn't necessarily a problem, it just required a little bit redesign on our wireless. And so it would've been nice for us to be able to assign a tag to an entire campus versus a floor, but that's a small complaint.

Incentivized

• While it is easy to get up and running, I know I could utilize the software better if I had some formal training on it. There are a wealth of features available, but I don't have time to learn them all in depth.
• The training classes offered are very expensive. I'd love it if IPSwitch offered some kind of reasonably priced training options.

Incentivized

I think new products are often "half-baked" or over hyped when they release, as was the case with DNAC. We were well ahead of the curve in acquiring it. But as it has matured it is now a fantastic addition to our infrastructure. I think we are easing into a stage where it is hard to envision a large organization NOT having Catalyst Center in place. If for nothing outside of the mapping and troubleshooting aspects; using it as a "source of truth".

Incentivized

Cisco DNA Center is going to help us in security, simplicity and ease of administration. Cisco DNA Center is complete management and control platform that simplifies and streamlines network operations. Cisco DNA Center offers a single dashboard for every core function in your network. With this platform, IT can become more nimble and respond to changes and challenges faster and more intelligently.

El soporte de CISCO DNA Center es muy bueno, responden a mis dudas pero no he tenido oportunidad de reportar un incidente o determinar un tiempo de respuesta critico. The support of CISCO DNA Center is very good, they answer my questions, but I have not had the opportunity to report an incident or determine a critical response time.

Incentivized

Not too much to support as it doesn't do that much.

Incentivized

It was informative, but the labs were not available long enough for us to get intimately familiar with CCNA before it was closed. The course instructor was well informed and got us as close to ready as she could.

Incentivized

We went with Cisco Catalyst Center, we evaluated, I think it was called Rainbow from Altel, Lucent Enterprise because we were an Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise customer. But since we seeded with Cisco DNA Center and SD Access back in 2019, we haven't been out to evaluate anything which is a direct competitor. There are tools which we are looking to purchase and implement to provide functionality which Cisco Catalyst Center can't, but they're more value add tools, not to necessarily directly drive the capability of our infrastructure.

Incentivized

WhatsUp Gold gives you a much better in-depth analysis and understanding of both your network and endpoint devices but the emphasis should be laid more on report generation. WhatsUp Gold has the ability to generate a report (e.g device uptime, bandwidth utilization, device health etc) and track events that took place even as low as 5 minutes ago.

Incentivized

• I have used it for upgrading devices, and it's does a great job at that, however out operations team for whatever reason has not adopted the feature.
• Overall it feels like Cisco Catalyst Center has been huge waste of time. I feel like my time would be better spent on other projects and looking at other products and tools

Incentivized

• As I mentioned earlier, the monitoring of the external environment and uptime is a necessity. An hour down is a 1% loss of revenue per day which may not sound like much but in a million dollar company, that 1% is a huge chunk.
• The backup configuration has been very handy in turn around time for failed equipment. I did have a homegrown way of backing up configurations but had to check daily and verify every backup. This becomes very time consuming and a waste of company time.
• Only negative is the mapping. In the Cisco world CDP is a great way to map connections and they don't seem to do it that way.

Incentivized