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

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 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

"The interface of this solution is easy to use overall."
"Data Center Network Manager is absolutely stable."
"You can integrate all the networks into the software."
"Automation of the ILS."
"Stability is not an issue."
"The monitoring capability is the best in Cisco Data Center Network Manager. It helps me improve network management tasks and optimize processes."
"We use the product to manage access points."
"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 solution has helped out organization gain improved visibility."
"The selection of monitors is a big feature I have been working with."
"The dashboards provide a comprehensive and visually intuitive way to monitor all our key data points in real-time, making it easier to spot trends and potential issues."
"I like the amount of tooling and the number of solutions they sold with their monitoring. Datadog was highly intuitive to use."
"Datadog has flexibility."
"Overall, the Data UI and the usability of customer features continue to improve."
"We also use APM and metrics to view the status of our Pub/Sub topics and queues, especially when dealing with undelivered messages."
"We integrate our application logs. It is great to be able to tie our metrics and our traces together."
 

Cons

"Data Center Network Manager is a little complex because it includes a lot of hardware to be installed."
"The tool's pricing strategy could be improved to compete more effectively in the market, especially against competitors like Huawei, Aruba, and Juniper."
"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."
"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."
"We need better performance and reliability."
"The tool should be more user-friendly and improve AI integration."
"The reporting is not very intuitive and has room for improvement."
"It can have an artificial intelligence component. Even though I can seamlessly look at end-to-end security, it would be better to have alerts and notifications powered by an AI engine. I am not sure if they have an AI component. We have not reached out to them or looked at it, but this is something that I keep on talking about within our company in terms of features. Such a feature would be good to have, and it would further optimize my Security Ops team's abilities."
"The query performance could be improved, particularly when handling large datasets, as slower response times can hinder efficiency."
"I often have issues with the UI in my browser."
"One area where I was really looking for improvement was the CSPM product line. I had really wanted to have team-level visibility for findings, since the team managing the resources has much more context and ability to resolve the issue, as the service owner. However, this has been added to the announcement in a recent keynote."
"The pricing model can be quite complex and might benefit from more flexible options tailored to different organizational needs."
"Interactive tutorials could be a game changer."
"Datadog does not have the feature where you can monitor external websites or check the SSL secure for websites."
"They could have better log reporting."
 

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 solution is very expensive."
"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."
"On average, Data Center Network Manager's pricing isn't too costly unless you choose a premier license."
"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."
"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."
"This solution is budget friendly."
"Our licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis."
"They prefer monthly subscriptions."
"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."
"The cost is high and this can be justified if the scale of the environment is big."
"While it is an expensive product, I would rate the pricing level at four out of five."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Government
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
32%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

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: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.