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

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 19, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
1.0
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller delivers consistent connections and high ROI, benefiting diverse sectors over a decade.
Sentiment score
6.4
Datadog boosts ROI by reducing downtime, enhancing reliability, optimizing resources, improving cost efficiency, and expediting issue resolution.
Previously we had thirteen contractors doing the monitoring for us, which is now reduced to only five.
IT Manager at Liberty Mutual Insurance
Datadog has delivered more than its value through reduced downtime, faster recovery, and infrastructure optimization.
Sr. Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
I believe features that would provide a lot of time savings, just enabling you to really narrow down and filter the type of frustration or user interaction that you're looking for.
QA Engineer at Townsquare Interactive
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.4
Customer service is praised for responsiveness and expertise, though some operational cases take longer to resolve.
Sentiment score
6.7
Datadog offers knowledgeable support but has variable ticket resolution and communication challenges, with limited direct engineer access.
Cisco's support I would rate as a 10 compared to all other vendors.
Network Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
When I have additional questions, the ticket is updated with actual recommendations or suggestions pointing me in the correct direction.
Applications Web Services Technical Engineer at Ace Hardware
Overall, the entire Datadog comprehensive experience of support, onboarding, getting everything in there, and having a good line of feedback has been exceptional.
Systems Administrator at Townsquare Interactive
I've had a couple instances where I reached out to Datadog's support team, and they have been really super helpful and very kind, even reaching back out after resolving my issues to check if everything's going well.
Security Engineer at Invitation Homes
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller is scalable, supporting integration and expansion, with varied user experiences on upgrading and compatibility.
Sentiment score
7.6
Datadog scales efficiently across diverse environments, handling increased workloads seamlessly, though costs may rise with extensive usage.
Datadog's scalability has been great as it has been able to grow with our needs.
IT Manager at Liberty Mutual Insurance
We did, as a trial, engage the AWS integration, and immediately it found all of our AWS resources and presented them to us.
Systems Administrator at Townsquare Interactive
Datadog's scalability is strong; we've continued to significantly grow our software, and there are processes in place to ensure that as new servers, realms, and environments are introduced, we're able to include them all in Datadog without noticing any performance issues.
Senior Custom Software Development Consultant at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
The Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller is praised for its stable performance and reliability, especially in managing data centers.
Sentiment score
8.0
Datadog is praised for its reliable performance with minimal downtime and quick resolution of occasional data import issues.
Datadog is very stable, as there hasn't been any downtime or issues since I've been here, and it's always on time.
Security Engineer at Invitation Homes
Datadog seems stable in my experience without any downtime or reliability issues.
Full Stack Developer at Townsquare Interactive
Datadog seems to be more stable, and I really want to have a complete demo before making a call to decide on this.
Enterprise solution architect at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
 

Room For Improvement

Cisco Nexus Dashboard needs easier configuration, better integration, improved performance, intuitive reporting, and competitive pricing to enhance user experience.
Datadog struggles with complex pricing, customization needs, usability, and requires improved integration, training, and cost management for large organizations.
I do not believe it integrated well with different infrastructures for hybrid environments.
Network Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
It would be great to see stronger AI-driven anomaly detection and predictive analytics to help identify potential issues before they impact performance.
Operations Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
We want to be able to customize the cost part, and we would appreciate more granular access control.
Service Manager at PwC
The documentation is adequate, but team members coming into a project could benefit from more guided, interactive tutorials, ideally leveraging real-world data.
Senior Software Engineer at Los Angeles Times Communications, LLC
 

Setup Cost

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller is costly but offers high value, transparent pricing, and excellent support and service.
Datadog offers flexible pricing but can become costly with larger infrastructures; users appreciate low setup costs and initial free hosts.
The setup cost for Datadog is more than $100.
Senior Performance and Architecture Analyst at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Everybody wants the agent installed, but we only have so many dollars to spread across, so it's been difficult for me to prioritize who will benefit from Datadog at this time.
Applications Web Services Technical Engineer at Ace Hardware
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it is really expensive.
Senior Site Reliability Engineer at a wholesaler/distributor with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

The Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller offers stability, ease of use, integration, and real-time insights for optimized network management.
Datadog excels with real-time monitoring, integrations, intuitive dashboards, and analytics, enhancing observability and operational efficiency in complex environments.
People typically understand north-south traffic flows but usually miss the east-west traffic flows in data centers.
Network Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Our architecture is written in several languages, and one area where Datadog particularly shines is in providing first-class support for a multitude of programming languages.
Senior Software Engineer at Los Angeles Times Communications, LLC
Having all that associated analytics helps me in troubleshooting by not having to bounce around to other tools, which saves me a lot of time.
Senior Site Reliability Engineer at a wholesaler/distributor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Datadog was able to find the alerts and trigger to notify our team in a very prompt manner before it got worse, allowing us to promptly adjust and remediate the situation in time.
Security Engineer at Invitation Homes
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabri...
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Datadog
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
210
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) (5th), AI Observability (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) is 0.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Datadog is 2.4%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Datadog2.4%
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM)0.7%
Other96.9%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Jagdev Dhaliwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Flow monitoring has improved planning for east-west traffic and real-time capacity decisions
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) helps to understand the flows and data plane capacities, which are the primary use cases. Usually, people struggle with east-west traffic flow when they need to decide on firewalls or products. People typically understand north-south traffic flows but usually miss the east-west traffic flows in data centers. I was focusing more on this so that people can accordingly plan, such as after F5, the number of servers, the number of sessions needed, and whether we need to plan the interface for groups from the line capacity perspective. This kind of information was valuable to us. The real-time telemetry feature was beneficial. When experiencing performance issues, I could determine if there were any issues related to flows or areas where bottlenecks were occurring.
Dhroov Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Site Reliability Engineer at Grainger
Has improved incident response with better root cause visibility and supports flexible on-call scheduling
Datadog needs to introduce more hard limits to cost. If we see a huge log spike, administrators should have more control over what happens to save costs. If a service starts logging extensively, I want the ability to automatically direct that log into the cheapest log bucket. This should be the case with many offerings. If we're seeing too much APM, we need to be aware of it and able to stop it rather than having administrators reach out to specific teams. Datadog has become significantly slower over the last year. They could improve performance at the risk of slowing down feature work. More resources need to go into Fleet Automation because we face many problems with things such as the Ansible role to install Datadog in non-containerized hosts. We mainly want to see performance improvements, less time spent looking at costs, the ability to trust that costs will stay reasonable, and an easier way to manage our agents. It is such a powerful tool with much potential on the horizon, but cost control, performance, and agent management need improvement. The main issues are with the administrative side rather than the actual application.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Performing Arts
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise16
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business80
Midsize Enterprise46
Large Enterprise98
 

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?
I do not believe it integrated well with different infrastructures for hybrid environments. I am uncertain because we have never attempted that in our environment, so they could perform better in t...
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: December 2025.
879,768 professionals have used our research since 2012.