Cisco Nexus Dashboard vs. OpenText Network Node Manager i (NNMi)

Nexus Dashboard is a vital tool for Cisco data center Nexus deployments, in my opinion. By utilizing multiple applications in the suite, a business can utilize orchestration, monitor services and traffic, test deployment scenarios, verify upgrade processes and readiness, etc. The capabilities of the system can allow for SAN MDS controls, traditional Nexus NXOS integration, and/or essential ACI tools

[Micro Focus Network Node Manager i (formerly HP Network Node Manager)] is like you implement it, setup monitoring and alerting and forget it forever until any major activity is there and that is possible because of the product's stability. Another reason for product stability is less features as compared to other vendor tools and its own inbuilt database.

Incentivized

• It provides monitoring for our overall ACI Fabric which includes the Controller, Spine, and Leaf Switches.
• It gives you a single pane of visibility of all of your ACI fabric using Nexus Dashboard, no need to login to each of the multiple ACI fabric controllers.
• Provides an assurance analysis to to your ACI fabric before implementing any change in configuration, they have the Pre-change analysis prior to the firmware upgrade.
• Gives you the overall health of your Fabric and provides anomaly severity.

• Network infrastructure monitoring.
• Interface monitoring.

Incentivized

• Flow Telemetry - Need to overcome the restrictions of 20000 flow/sec. No DataCenter is small enough to pump only 20K flows per second. And we want to use this product for proactive monitoring so we cannot decide on a small segment to monitor flow for beforehand.
• Creating tags and label for clubbing certain entities so that we can create customized dashboards to monitor and provide access to Operations team
• Scheduled Reports and Reporting capability is lacking

Incentivized

• Most customers would like to see NNM get away from using some Java applets.
• In environments where we see more than 10 different network device vendors in production, we see issues with L2 mapping. Different vendors use different L2 protocols. This can cause an issue with L2 discovery and mapping.

Incentivized

For the end user, it is relatively easy to use. However, some training and practice is a must because the NSO is not as straightforward as the traditional router CLI. For the administrator, Cisco Network Service Orchestrator (NSO) is just like another program running on the Linux system--there is no big difference.

Incentivized

NNMi's user interface is described as well-designed and intuitive, making it easy for users to navigate and perform tasks quickly, thereby enhancing the overall user experience. The system offers a powerful network discovery mechanism that maps out your network's physical and virtual topology, enabling you to visualize connections between devices and identify potential issues. Fault monitoring is at its best. NNMi provides a unified environment for viewing faults, availability, and performance data, consolidating essential information into a single platform.

Incentivized

Great and effective automation functionalities and the tools on network security management are the best and easy data reports building. Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller feature for the network monitoring and easy management of various services and even offers the best analytics and also powerful integration tools for easy data migration.

Support is long and arduous and often are unable to help resolve the issue. We often have to do escalations or duty manager to get things moved. Even with a technical account manager, we do not see much improvement from a support point of view. This is an area where Micro Focus has a lot of improvement to do.

Incentivized

The Cisco Nexus Series switches perform admirably in our blended distributed system. We have been dealing with any of these sorts of switches for over 5 years and have been exceptionally happy with their functionality. Several of our other computer networks in our data rooms have proved effective with Cisco equipment. Because of the simplicity of maintenance and the high quality of technical support provided by Cisco representatives, there is a high level of trust in these switches.

Incentivized

NNMi is best suited for enterprise-grade, large to very large infrastructure. You have fewer servers to install the product and manage all your devices through a single server, which also enhances ease of use.

Incentivized

The platform is very well done, and to date, I have had no complaints about the implementation of the platform and no security issues or vulnerabilities. Cisco in all its product releases new versions to resolve security issues or bugs that appear on the platform, this is a big plus.

• Because it guarantees us expandable network services and without any interruption, providing a better service to each of our clients has been possible.
• It has allowed us to keep the services innovated, doing this process in a reduced time, since it does not require a long programming, so implementing new services is done at a rapid pace.
• Its automation has allowed us to reduce the burden of manual configurations, so having errors has also decreased.
• Because it is based on an automation and orchestration model, providing faster and larger-scale services is possible.

Incentivized

• Improved Network Monitoring Experience
• Business stability has increased by using this product due to proactive monitoring capabilities
• Capacity Planning has improved due to out of the box reports availability

Incentivized