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

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025

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
18th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
25
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
188
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (1st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (2nd), Log Management (3rd), Container Monitoring (1st), Cloud Monitoring Software (1st), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Datadog is 3.5%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

OusaidAbaz - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides spine-leaf architecture and support integration with programming languages
Configuring Cisco Nexus switches is relatively straightforward, especially if you're familiar with configuring Catalyst switches. The primary differences between Catalyst and Nexus switches lie in their system architecture and CLI commands. Nexus configurations can differ by about 20-30% from Catalyst configurations. For instance, while certain features may be enabled by default on Catalyst switches, they need to be explicitly enabled on Nexus switches. Maintaining a solution like this involves several support options, such as Cisco Smart Net. Smart Net is a support program that provides SLAs if the Nexus switches go down. With Smart Net, you can choose different levels of support, such as 2-hour, 4-hour, or 2-business-day response times. This ensures that Cisco will provide a replacement switch as quickly as possible if a Nexus switch fails or is out of service. The Nexus switches are known for their stability and high performance, so they have a higher price tag. Due to their cost, they are typically suited for large enterprises rather than small or medium-sized businesses. Major corporations, such as banks, multinational companies, and large industrial firms, have the budget for these high-end switches. The investment is justified by their advanced features and reliability, making them ideal for large-scale environments. Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
Kevin Palmer - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Monitoring system provides a clear indication of what's going on in the network."
"After installation, you almost forget that it is working."
"The interface of this solution is easy to use overall."
"The product has excellent stability."
"I like that is easy to work on and straightforward."
"VCNM provides a unique capability of managing the admin VDCs of Nexus boxes."
"Data Center Network Manager is absolutely stable."
"It uses push technology, which pushes the changes to all relevant devices to ensure they are updated accordingly."
"The infrastructure monitoring capabilities, especially for our Kubernetes clusters, have helped us optimize resource allocation and reduce costs."
"It is a good one stop location where we keep all our data for our infrastructure, and it's also easier to navigate between different things."
"The monitoring functionality, in general, and tagging infrastructure are great."
"The dashboards are super convenient to us for a more zoomed out view of what is going on with each integration that we utilize."
"The integration into AWS is key as well as our software is currently bound to AWS."
"Datadog's ability to group and visualize the servers and the data makes it relatively easy for the root cause analysis."
"The biggest thing I liked was the combination of all the things - monitoring, log aggregation, and profiling."
"We have hundreds of microservices, and knowing how top-level requests weave throughout all of them is invaluable."
 

Cons

"The solution needs to improve reports."
"The visibility of applications is not great."
"The tool's pricing strategy could be improved to compete more effectively in the market, especially against competitors like Huawei, Aruba, and Juniper."
"It's very costly."
"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."
"In the next release, I would like to see it merged with Prime and I think that it should be more unified."
"The reporting is not very intuitive and has room for improvement."
"Sometimes the product gives us problems that require support."
"The FinOps needs improvement."
"Graph filters for logs need to be set manually which works well for JSON but not for unstructured logs."
"It is far too easy to run up huge unexpected costs."
"When the logs are too big, and Datadog splits them, the JSON format breaks and it is not so useful for us."
"This service could be less costly."
"Since the Datadog platform has so many separate features, solving so many use cases, there are often inconsistencies in feature availability and interoperability between products."
"Presently, the billing CSV reports provide insights into billing-related information yet are somewhat limited in functionality, typically offering reports with only three columns."
"We would really like to see more from the Service Catalog."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"When we purchase a Nexus box, the MDS CM license comes with it."
"The solution is very expensive."
"On average, Data Center Network Manager's pricing isn't too costly unless you choose a premier license."
"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 price of Cisco Data Center Network Manager is expensive compared to other vendors on the market."
"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."
"I would say that the pricing offers great value for the money."
"The product is licensed with contracts that work on a yearly basis rather than a monthly model."
"Pricing is somewhat affordable compared to other solutions but in order to really lower the costs of other products you need to plan very carefully your resources usage, otherwise, it can get expensive real quick."
"It didn't scale well from the cost perspective. We had a custom package deal."
"It is easy to run up a large bill, so become familiar with the cost of each piece of your bill and use the metrics they supply to estimate and monitor your bill."
"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."
"The price of Datadog is reasonable. Other solutions are more expensive, such as AppDynamics."
"While it is an expensive product, I would rate the pricing level at four out of five."
"Pricing and licensing are reasonable for what they give you. You get the first five hosts free, which is fun to play around with. Then it's about four dollars a month per host, which is very affordable for what you get out of it. We have a lot of hosts that we put a lot of custom metrics into, and every host gives you an allowance for the number of custom metrics."
"This solution is budget friendly."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
37%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

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 ...
 

Also Known As

Cisco Data Center Network Manager
No data available
 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) vs. Datadog and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.