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

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabri...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller and Datadog compete in the network monitoring and observability space. Based on the analyses, Datadog holds an advantage due to its comprehensive monitoring solutions and user-friendly features.

Features: Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller offers excellent stability and connectivity monitoring, crucial for reliable client services. Its integration with Cisco tools and automation via the Fabric suite stands out. Datadog is known for detailed monitoring capabilities, real-time data insights, and handling logs, metrics, and traces across complex environments, along with a robust integration ecosystem and intuitive dashboards.

Room for Improvement: Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller could improve by offering better integration with third-party tools, simplifying its interface, and clarifying its pricing. Datadog is considered expensive, and there is a demand for more granular billing control, improved integration, and enhanced alerting features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller is largely on-premises and private cloud-focused, with mixed reviews on technical support. Datadog caters to public, private, and hybrid environments with its modern deployment model and generally positive customer service, though pricing concerns persist.

Pricing and ROI: Cisco's solution is seen as costly but provides long-term performance with potential for good ROI. Datadog's pay-as-you-use model may result in unexpected costs, yet delivers justified expenses through real-time insights and features with careful management and cost monitoring.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) vs. Datadog Report (Updated: January 2025).

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) vs. Datadog

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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

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabri...

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

19th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Datadog

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

3rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

186

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (1st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (2nd), Log Management (3rd), Container Monitoring (2nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (1st), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (9th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) is 0.5%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Datadog is 4.2%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Olajide Olusegun

Network Team Lead at Atlas Security

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.

Read full review

Kevin Palmer

DevOps/Security Principal at Raken

Useful log aggregation and management with helpful metrics aggregation

Datadog provides us value in three major ways: First, Datadog provides best-in-class functionality in many, if not all, of the products to which we subscribe (infrastructure, APM, log management, serverless, synthetics, real user monitoring, DB monitoring). In my experience with other tools that provide similar functionality, Datadog provides the largest feature set with the most flexibility and the best performance. Second, Datadog allows us to access all of those services in one place. Having to learn and manage only one tool for all of those purposes is a major benefit. Third, Datadog provides significant connectivity between those services so that we can view, summarize, organize, translate and correlate our data with maximum effect. Not needing to manually integrate them to draw lines between those pieces of information is a huge time savings for us.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product makes the management of our environment simpler."

"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."

"It uses push technology, which pushes the changes to all relevant devices to ensure they are updated accordingly."

"The most valuable feature is the connectivity monitoring."

"The interface of this solution is easy to use overall."

"Monitoring system provides a clear indication of what's going on in the network."

"I like running the scripts. With the help of a Python script, we deployed within the configuration and built up the code."

"We use the product to manage access points."

More Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) pros

"If we have a large load for users using our basic Datadog, it will immediately fire off an alert notifying us either something's wrong or not."

"The real-time data helps us make informed decisions and optimize our operations, ultimately enhancing our overall efficiency and performance."

"Datadog's log aggregation is really helpful since it lets me and every other engineer on my team login, view, and share logs when we need to debug our application."

"Session recordings have been the most valuable to me as it helps me gain insights into user behaviour at scale."

"The ease of dashboard creation and alarm monitoring has helped us not only stay competitive but be industry leaders in performance."

"Most of the features in the way Datadog does monitoring are commendable and that is the reason we choose it. We did some comparisons before picking Datadog. Datadog was recommended based on the features provided."

"The infrastructure monitoring capabilities are really valuable. You can just log on and see everything that is happening within an IT environment."

"Profiling has been made easier."

More Datadog pros

Cons

"Automation for the RMA process can be added."

"If the customer thinks about using additional solutions, Cisco should make sure they are not left out."

"Could integrate better with VMware products."

"It would be nice to have the ability to more easily collect information from other software when doing some types of analysis."

"The automation feature could be improved."

"The tool should be more user-friendly and improve AI integration."

"It's a relatively expensive product for some clients."

"More integration features would be beneficial."

More Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) cons

"Datadog could improve the flexibility with AI and ML concepts. This will allow customers to be more leveraged towards publishing."

"I've found that the documentation is lacking in certain regards."

"Datadog does not have the feature where you can monitor external websites or check the SSL secure for websites."

"A big problem with Datadog is the billing. They need to make the billing more user-friendly."

"We would like to see some versioning system for the Synthetic Tests so that we could have a backup of our tests since they are time-consuming to make and very easy to damage in a moment of error."

"I would like the tooling to have better integration in Slack, specifically sending out reminders to the relevant people to take breaks, do a retrospective, and specify with emojis which messages to log."

"The installation is easy for me. However, if you are new to this solution it might not be so easy."

"There are things about it that we would like to be fixed, such as it is taking averages of average. This results in data that we don't expect."

More Datadog cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"On average, Data Center Network Manager's pricing isn't too costly unless you choose a premier license."

"The product is licensed with contracts that work on a yearly basis rather than a monthly model."

"The price of Cisco Data Center Network Manager is expensive compared to other vendors on the market."

"When we purchase a Nexus box, the MDS CM license comes with it."

"The solution is very expensive."

"I would say that the pricing offers great value for the money."

"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."

"The price of Datadog is reasonable. Other solutions are more expensive, such as AppDynamics."

"My advice is to really keep an eye on your overage costs, as they can spiral really fast."

"Datadog does not provide any free plans to use the solution. When I start with a proof of concept it would be sensible to have a free plan to test the tool and check whether it fits the requirements of the project. Before the production stage, it is always good to have a free plan with some limited features, number of requests, or logs."

"The price is better than some competing products."

"At my last company, we did see ROI, specifically around response time. We could get to mission critical things that were down and losing revenue on immediately. So, the product paid itself back."

"It has always scaled for us. Cost scales up too, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. It's reasonable for what they're providing."

"Licensing is based on the retention period of logs and metrics."

"While it is an expensive product, I would rate the pricing level at four out of five."

More Datadog pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

24%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Government

12%

Real Estate/Law Firm

Educational Organization

39%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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...

Any advice about APM solutions?

There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...

Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?

With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several times lately using the dashboards we have created with Datadog; they are very good c...

Which would you choose - Datadog or Dynatrace?

Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Datadog or Dynatrace network monitoring software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Dynatrace. Dynatrace offers network ...

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Product Reports

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM)

Download Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) product report

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) report

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Also Known As

Cisco Data Center Network Manager

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Cisco

Overview

The Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (NDFC) offers a comprehensive solution for managing Cisco NX-OS switches in hybrid-cloud environments, providing automation, visibility, and consistent operations. Designed to simplify and enhance data center management, NDFC integrates with Cisco Nexus Dashboard to streamline network connectivity, reduce deployment times, and ensure seamless transitions with minimal disruptions. Its modular architecture, new user interface, and support for non-Nexus OS platforms make it a robust tool for LAN, SAN, and IP Fabric for Media management. Additionally, NDFC enhances fabric reliability, automates workflows, and supports cloud connectivity with AWS and Microsoft Azure, making it ideal for businesses adapting to increasingly complex digital environments.

Datadog is a comprehensive cloud monitoring platform designed to track performance, availability, and log aggregation for cloud resources like AWS, ECS, and Kubernetes. It offers robust tools for creating dashboards, observing user behavior, alerting, telemetry, security monitoring, and synthetic testing.

Datadog supports full observability across cloud providers and environments, enabling troubleshooting, error detection, and performance analysis to maintain system reliability. It offers detailed visualization of servers, integrates seamlessly with cloud providers like AWS, and provides powerful out-of-the-box dashboards and log analytics. Despite its strengths, users often note the need for better integration with other solutions and improved application-level insights. Common challenges include a complex pricing model, setup difficulties, and navigation issues. Users frequently mention the need for clearer documentation, faster loading times, enhanced error traceability, and better log management.

What are the key features of Datadog?

Graphs and Dashboards: Visualizes servers and infrastructure with customizable views.
Metrics: Offers deep insights into system performance and user behavior.
Log Management: Provides powerful analytics for logs and seamless log aggregation.
Unified Tagging: Facilitates organization and retrieval of metrics and logs.
APM and RUM: Enables application performance monitoring and real user monitoring for comprehensive insights.
Synthetic Testing: Allows the simulation of user interactions to test application performance.

What benefits and ROI should users look for in reviews?

System Reliability: Helps ensure uptime and performance across cloud environments.
Proactive Issue Resolution: Assists in identifying and resolving issues before they impact users.
Operational Efficiency: Streamlines monitoring and log management tasks.
Flexible Integrations: Adapts to various cloud services and infrastructure setups.
Real-Time Alerts: Provides timely notifications to address problems swiftly.

Datadog is implemented across different industries, from tech companies monitoring cloud applications to finance sectors ensuring transactional systems' performance. E-commerce platforms use Datadog to track and visualize user behavior and system health, while healthcare organizations utilize it for maintaining secure, compliant environments. Every implementation assists teams in customizing monitoring solutions specific to their industry's requirements.

Sample Customers

Banco de Guayaquil, Cox Communications, Kuwait Petroleum Italia, Roper St. Francis, University of British Columbia

Adobe, Samsung, facebook, HP Cloud Services, Electronic Arts, salesforce, Stanford University, CiTRIX, Chef, zendesk, Hearst Magazines, Spotify, mercardo libre, Slashdot, Ziff Davis, PBS, MLS, The Motley Fool, Politico, Barneby's

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) vs. Datadog