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Centreon vs Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

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

Centreon
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
24th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (21st), Cloud Monitoring Software (20th)
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabri...
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
19th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Centreon is 3.1%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) is 0.5%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Caulson Chua - PeerSpot reviewer
With fewer staff resources, we can identify and address issues before the system goes down
Centreon's most valuable features are preventative maintenance and cost-efficiency. Everything is monitored, and we get a log before the system fails. We have an opportunity to fix the issue and avoid downtime. The dashboard is user-friendly, and the solution provides good reporting and visibility. The layout is straightforward. You can click on the drop-down list to select the server you want. The anomaly detection feature helped us reduce our average resolution time by 30 minutes to an hour.
Olajide Olusegun - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to deploy, stable, scalable and best data center manager for your infra.
The reporting is not very intuitive and has room for improvement. I opened a case with Cisco regarding the DCNM report, however, they were unable to help me. The report comes in the form of a programmable report, which requires high-level knowledge of Python and JSON script. As I was in a meeting and had to present the report, I had to settle for generating an Excel sheet to showcase the data. Unfortunately, this was not well-received as they expected a more detailed report. In order to identify any issues in the data center, we must thoroughly examine a variety of components such as links, errors, SSPs, supervisor engines, power supply, and more. Forty of each element need to be examined.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The dashboards are valuable because they ease troubleshooting and viewing. It becomes easier to locate the source of a problem... The dashboards make it easier to communicate with our clients. They don't want to see the alert console, they want to see a beautiful dashboard representing their network and their business and to watch it in case something is wrong in their environment."
"Centreon helps me detect where the problem is quickly. When we resolve a problem quickly, this lowers our overall costs."
"The downtimes feature is helpful. If the ISP is doing some maintenance on its network, we have the option to put downtime on the devices or the services, so we won't get any false alarms."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to build an abstraction of service visualization. You can add services to an entity called Business Activities and you can see the state of these activities."
"The most important feature is that it permits us to receive alarms if there is an incident within the infrastructure. The feature I love the most is the reporting feature, the MBI (Monitoring Business Intelligence) which permits us to send advanced reports to our customers in PDF format or in Doc format. We also deploy Centreon Map which gives our customers intuitive views of their information system."
"Predetermined templates allow for simple and fast service monitoring configuration."
"For servers and for applications, it was very, very efficient."
"It supports active monitoring so we don't have to use traps. From time to time traps are not very useful because we never know if they are actually working or not. The reporting part is also valuable as are the event logs. Using them we can check right away if something has had a hiccup."
"The automation capability is more than enough. It depends on how we consider and integrate the automation engine. We need to ensure the automation engine and then how to perform it. It depends on the policy making, API integration, and other integrations."
"The most valuable features of Cisco Data Center Network Manager are consistency and the core server. The teams have had a good experience."
"It uses push technology, which pushes the changes to all relevant devices to ensure they are updated accordingly."
"Automation of the ILS."
"Fabric suite automation is a great feature."
"The feature I find most valuable, is the stability of the solution."
"I don't have to rely on the on-site engineer who can do the configuration. I can have our team just plug the devices and perform remotely. I can also do the templates."
"The tool's most valuable feature is the consolidated dashboard, providing insights into parameters and overall usage of network features. It allows us to easily summarize insights through the dashboards. The solution offers automation capabilities, particularly in the context of connecting LAN sites with websites."
 

Cons

"Sometimes, when the GUI and some of the search fields are being reset, and I return to the page, then I have to set them again. Therefore, some improvement on the UI and the filtering is needed."
"The problem with the reporting is you have to configure the report, and after that, you will have the same report every month, every week, every day. You have to sync it in order to have a great report."
"During the initial setup we faced some issues. Part of it was because we had to become more knowledgeable in the solution. There are some gray areas and if you don't know the product well you may have issues. Another part of it was some bugs that we came across, although that's part of every software solution in IT nowadays. But the initial setup could be easier."
"Centreon is very bad with auto-scanning. It's very monolithic software. It doesn't have microservices and it only has basic clustering. You cannot, for example, have six or seven nodes for Centreon's cloud processes."
"Centreon needs to improve the granularity of the data as well as the graphical data. It would also be better to if there was improvement to the filtering/grouping system as well as the creation of views."
"There are improvements that they need to make to their API. When we're using different systems and we want to disable monitoring for a specific server, we still can't do that through the API. That's something that's lacking."
"I think Centreon's security could be improved by leveraging AI. That's where things are heading in the industry."
"Improvements I would like to see include a discovery solution, better reports, and end-to-end monitoring."
"The reporting is not very intuitive and has room for improvement."
"It would be nice to have the ability to more easily collect information from other software when doing some types of analysis."
"If the customer thinks about using additional solutions, Cisco should make sure they are not left out."
"The delivery Cisco Data Center Network Manager could improve if it was easier. Additionally, some feature improvement is needed."
"One of the biggest challenges is that we aren't always able to push the configuration onto the target device. Whenever this happens, we have to do a factory reset, put on the script, and then reconfigure it again. In the next release, I would like to have a troubleshooting feature."
"The solution needs to improve reports."
"Sometimes the product gives us problems that require support."
"We need better performance and reliability."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"They only sell four hour slots for support, so if you have just one question, then you need to pay for four hours. Or, you need to wait until you have enough questions to fill those four hours. They are not flexible in this."
"Centreon is better than Nagios XI in regards to cost and support response times, when you have a problem. If you have a problem, it costs money to contact the Nagios XI support."
"If you need basic monitoring without dashboards, just monitoring, the plugins are very useful and really cheap. If you want a more complete solution with dashboards and reporting, the EMS solution is great and it is not that much more expensive. It's a good value. Really good."
"It is perfect and very cheap if you are a little company or startup. After that, it is quite expensive for a big company."
"The pricing is acceptable."
"Their licensing model is really easy. You have one license and you have access to all the features, compared to other tools where you have to purchase add-ons."
"Centreon is an open source product. Thus, there is no need for licensing."
"The solution has a free part and after that threshold, you will need to pay. For example, if you believe you can create an interesting map, most of the time, you will have to pay 10,000 Euros per year for having access to these components."
"On average, Data Center Network Manager's pricing isn't too costly unless you choose a premier license."
"The solution is very expensive."
"The price of Cisco Data Center Network Manager is expensive compared to other vendors on the market."
"The product is licensed with contracts that work on a yearly basis rather than a monthly model."
"We usually opt for a yearly plan, commonly for three or five years upfront. Some customers may not utilize all the features included in the product, and this can lead to them paying for functionalities they don't need."
"The tool is always expensive, but their service, product quality, and support are good. We're happy with it, but it's still an expensive solution. There are cheaper alternatives but no similar platform across all domains."
"When we purchase a Nexus box, the MDS CM license comes with it."
"I would say that the pricing offers great value for the money."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Computer Software Company
24%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Centreon?
Centreon's most valuable features are preventative maintenance and cost-efficiency. Everything is monitored, and we get a log before the system fails. We have an opportunity to fix the issue and av...
What needs improvement with Centreon?
The issue my company has with the tool stems from the fact that it didn't give an on-time response to us. The product collects the information, but it fails to send them via SMS, WhatsApp or Telegr...
What do you like most about Cisco Data Center Network Manager?
It uses push technology, which pushes the changes to all relevant devices to ensure they are updated accordingly.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Data Center Network Manager?
The tool is always expensive, but their service, product quality, and support are good. We're happy with it, but it's still an expensive solution. There are cheaper alternatives but no similar plat...
What needs improvement with Cisco Data Center Network Manager?
In a mixed architecture where Nexus switches are used as border devices and are connected to a Palo Alto firewall (e.g., version 9.1 or 10.1), you might encounter issues with BGP peering. For insta...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Cisco Data Center Network Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Airbus, Bollore, BT, Canal Plus, Kuehne Nagel, Limagrain, LVMH, Oberthur Technologies, Orange, Darty, Addax Petroleum, Plastic Omnium, Auchan, Valeo, Saint Gobin, Clarins, Hugo Boss, JC Decaux, French Government (Defense, Justice, Environment, Agriculture), OptiComm, Thales, Zeiss.
Banco de Guayaquil, Cox Communications, Kuwait Petroleum Italia, Roper St. Francis, University of British Columbia
Find out what your peers are saying about Centreon vs. Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,997 professionals have used our research since 2012.