We performed a comparison between Cisco ACI and Juniper Contrail Networking based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Software Defined Networking (SDN) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."It scales very well. When you increasingly scale with it, it makes the product easier to work with."
"The biggest benefit has been that it has improved communication between my endpoints in the data center."
"It has saved me a couple of times, as just a backup feature. It can easily do a snapshot before you do any change, and if something goes wrong, you can just rollback."
"What's most valuable in Cisco ACI is that it isn't like the legacy infrastructure where you have a lot of complexity in a TTR architecture. What I like most about Cisco ACI is that you can control those devices from a single console, even if you have three hundred devices. You can manage the entire infrastructure from a single point of contact, so Cisco ACI is a time saver. Another exclusive feature of Cisco ACI is its API interface that lets you enhance automation within the environment. You can manage your entire data center from a single interface through Cisco ACI. If you want to upgrade three hundred devices in one click, you can do that, and within one hour, all three hundred devices will be upgraded. I also like that Cisco keeps enhancing the product by adding different features, so there have been five major releases of Cisco ACI. Another valuable feature of the solution is that it's more user-friendly than Aruba and Juniper."
"The best part of Cisco ACI is the server deployment and integration."
"Cisco ACI can separate networks with a buoy interface. That is the most valuable feature."
"You can integrate Cisco ACI well with VMware."
"ACI's most valuable feature is its SDN capabilities. Everything is on your software design controller. Everything is blocked by default until you allow it."
"After we finished setting Contrail up, it seemed stable enough. Still, we never tested it in a real environment, so we don't have enough information to say whether it's stable with a given number of users and appliances. We have tested it in a lab environment, but we haven't tested enough to say that the platform is stable."
"Juniper Contrail Networking is a stable solution."
"It provides proactive alerting in a single dashboard solution."
"Contrail automates the excellent communication between virtual appliances."
"The product needs to be more visible on the Internet and have the ability to be integrated into more software developments."
"I can recommend that Cisco improve its execution."
"I would like them to simplify the way you configure the Fabric. The process is quite complex. This can be a barrier to entry. For anything, where it should take two or three steps, you have ten steps"
"The interface is sometimes slow. I receive a lot of weird errors when I try to install apps, such as contract apps, which should give me a nice visualization of all the contracts. However, it just doesn't load, etc."
"The ability for us to figure out the traffic flows, to enable some of the more segmentation parts of it, is really tough with what is built into ACI."
"My complaint about this is: We purchased the ACI gear, but to do monitoring, to do stats, to do telemetry statistics, etc. we have to purchase another product from Cisco."
"One of the things that makes it a lot more complicated is the way contracts are handled in ACI. Contracts are like their own access lists. They can improve the setting up of contracts between devices a lot. It can be simplified."
"From my point of view, troubleshooting issues relating to ACI can be a little bit complicated to perform."
"Visibility, especially for the top of the platform, is a nightmare. The top was documented incorrectly and really complex to complete. In the end, it worked but only after several weeks of work with the support of a Juniper solution engineer in Holland."
"Juniper needs to address the market's specific requirements, such as the SME sector, and offer more lower-priced products like a lower-end segment switch."
"Juniper Contrail Networking is difficult if you do not have a certificate for Juniper. Juniper is a different type of configuration or operation than Cisco."
"Concerns were raised about the complexity of involving networking components like MX routers, which often required expertise beyond the scope of software engineers. As a result, users encountered challenges in achieving comprehensive understanding and troubleshooting of networking issues within the Contrail environment."
Cisco ACI is ranked 2nd in Software Defined Networking (SDN) with 97 reviews while Juniper Contrail Networking is ranked 5th in Software Defined Networking (SDN) with 4 reviews. Cisco ACI is rated 8.0, while Juniper Contrail Networking is rated 7.4. The top reviewer of Cisco ACI writes "Stable, easy to extend, scalable, and has a host-based routing feature". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Juniper Contrail Networking writes "Smart configuration management eliminates the need to worry about managing the network's configurations". Cisco ACI is most compared with VMware NSX, Cisco Secure Workload, Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, Nuage Networks and HPE SDN, whereas Juniper Contrail Networking is most compared with Tungsten Fabric, VMware NSX, Cisco SD-WAN, VMware SD-WAN and HPE SDN. See our Cisco ACI vs. Juniper Contrail Networking report.
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