Cisco Secure Workload vs. VMware NSX

The biggest challenge with this product is it crosses lines. You need somebody who can support servers as well as somebody who supports the infrastructure. And that's usually two different jobs, two different job titles, two different departments. So if you have a lot of silos within your organization and you have groups that don't work particularly well together between the server team and the network team, you will have problems developing and working on this product. If your server team and your network team work well together, then you'll have a lot fewer problems, it'll work pretty well. But if your server team and your network team are like oil and water don't bother.

Incentivized

Our high-security environments require end to end encryption, but also tend to have larger budgets. Since beginning utilization of VMware NSX, we've been able to meet the unique requirements for our high-security clients, but it does have a large price tag that goes along with it. This isn't a particularly well-suited solution for environments with tighter budgets, but it definitely provides security where we need it and are willing to pay for this solution

Incentivized

• Broadcast Suppression: By suppressing broadcast traffic, we have been able to deploy a single VDI network in a /18 network space, allowing for rapid growth and proper DHCP lease timing for a VDI instant clone environment.
• Networking HA: Leveraging internal mechanisms for high availability, it provides disaster resiliency to a virtual networking environment.
• Cost Savings: All available features of NSX are licensed simultaneously. Load balancers, firewalls, and routers are all licensed as features, not per object, allowing for the deployment of as many of these objects as are needed.

Incentivized

• Our biggest challenge is gaining acceptance from network engineers who are used to working with other technologies.

Incentivized

We use both Cisco ACI and VMware NSX, and while they have different strengths and capabilities, I would recommend VMware NSX, as it can be used in all VMware environments, without costly physical infrastructure changes. Cisco ACI provides some of the same capabilities, but not all. It's focus relies on physical networking changes.

Incentivized

• Easy to manage networking and security
• Better visibility into the environments

Incentivized