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

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 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
16th
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
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
187
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (1st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (2nd), Log Management (3rd), Container Monitoring (2nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (2nd), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 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 3.3%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Upul Abhayasena - PeerSpot reviewer
Robust management tool with an easy setup and room for more features
DCNM is used by one of the airline customers in Qatar to manage many data centers and rack switches running on normal Nexus or NX-OS mode. They required a controller platform to manage these Nexus switches, and thus, they utilized DCNM as a Fabric controller. Given that ACI deployment is very low…
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

"It uses push technology, which pushes the changes to all relevant devices to ensure they are updated accordingly."
"The monitoring capability is the best in Cisco Data Center Network Manager. It helps me improve network management tasks and optimize processes."
"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."
"After installation, you almost forget that it is working."
"The interface of this solution is easy to use overall."
"The most valuable feature is the connectivity monitoring."
"It has a very nice dashboard so you can see what's currently happening in the network and the performance of the back story."
"We use the product to manage access points."
"The most useful feature is the APM."
"The integration and configuration are incredibly simple. The SaaS offering is remarkably easy to set up, especially if you're coming from a Graphite environment or anything that uses a StatsD."
"The initial setup was straightforward from my own experience, helping integrate within the application and service levels."
"Datadog helps us detect issues early on and helps in troubleshooting."
"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 web app has a real-time support chat window in which a support engineer is chatting with you within a minute."
"The solution's SaaS model is easy to manage and works well in single- or multi-cloud environments."
"Log management is a great way for me to identify changes in behavior across services and environments as we make changes or as user behavior evolves."
 

Cons

"The initial setup is challenging."
"The reporting is not very intuitive and has room for improvement."
"If the customer thinks about using additional solutions, Cisco should make sure they are not left out."
"More integration features would be beneficial."
"API lacks robustness."
"In the next release, I would like to see it merged with Prime and I think that it should be more unified."
"It is not very easy to monitor or to browse."
"The automation feature could be improved."
"When it comes to storing the logs with Datadog, I'm not sure why it costs so much to store gigabytes or terabytes of information when it's a fraction of the cost to do so myself."
"One thing we have run into is that it is so easy to add monitoring that we turn on things without really understanding the costs."
"Another issue that I have is with the search syntax, it could be simpler and it feels like there are too many ways to do the same things."
"Once agents are connected to the Datadog portal, we should be able to upgrade them quickly."
"The FinOps needs improvement."
"All solutions have some area to improve, and in Datadog they can improve their overall technology moving forward."
"Datadog could have a better business analysis module."
"Logging is not a great experience."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 Cisco Data Center Network Manager is expensive compared to other vendors on the market."
"I would say that the pricing offers great value for the money."
"The solution is very expensive."
"The product is licensed with contracts that work on a yearly basis rather than a monthly model."
"When we purchase a Nexus box, the MDS CM license comes with it."
"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."
"On average, Data Center Network Manager's pricing isn't too costly unless you choose a premier license."
"The solution is fairly priced but history and log storage can get costly depending on your needs."
"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 tool is open-source."
"The cost is high and this can be justified if the scale of the environment is big."
"It costs the same amount it would if we were hosting it ourselves, so we are incredibly happy with the cost."
"Sometimes it's very hard to project how much it will cost for the monthly subscription for the next month when you add certain features. Having better visibility of the cost would give a better experience."
"The solution's pricing depends on project volume."
"It has a module-based pricing model."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Real Estate/Law Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Educational Organization
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

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: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.