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Cisco ACI vs Cisco DNA Virtualization [EOL] comparison

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Executive Summary

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 ACI
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
106
Ranking in other categories
Network Virtualization (1st), Software Defined Networking (SDN) (2nd), Cloud and Data Center Security (7th)
Cisco DNA Virtualization [EOL]
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Sulaiman Olubiyi - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Network Automation Engineer at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Network automation has simplified secure multi-site connectivity and reduced daily operational effort
I believe Cisco ACI could improve by incorporating something related to agentic AI, where it can execute tasks based on particular evaluations or loop engineering, enhancing fault identification or suggestions based on each tenant's configuration. Additionally, I think they should ensure that the documentation is comprehensive. I appreciate that Cisco provides documentation, and their support engineers are helpful in case of any issues. In terms of governance and security regarding Cisco ACI's AI capabilities, I think what we call evals or evaluations is important, whereby the engineer can evaluate the functionalities of the AI in Cisco ACI, preventing it from making deletions or modifications on its own. Therefore, there should be evaluations or guardrails incorporated into the development capabilities. Regarding accuracy and reliability of output for Cisco ACI's AI capabilities, it hasn't met my expectations. What we need is something called RAG, or retrieval-augmented generation. If Cisco can implement that to utilize customer-specific data instead of general knowledge, while ensuring data privacy under GDPR laws, I think that will result in very good, reliable output.
reviewer902526 - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice Chairman at a construction company with 11-50 employees
Good support, feature-rich, and works well from a technical perspective
We are a system integrator and we are currently working on a project with a client who is using this solution. It is used for private cloud or data center virtualization We make use of all of the features that are available. It would be helpful to have better information on how to implement this…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The centralized management of the entire network data center, in this case with ACI, is the most valuable feature. By having access to some powerful APIs you can build your own tool to speak to the ACI controller, then with that, you can deploy things really fast. Having the option to build your own tools and then using the centralized management of the ACI to push the configuration to the network devices is very valuable."
"For clients, a visible GUI dashboard provides a unified view of the network."
"Micro-segmentation is the solution’s most valuable feature."
"We will improve our organization using the automation."
"The ability to integrate with other systems is the most valuable feature."
"One area where it has an advantage... is that you're able to reuse a specific integration. If you add another server, you can use a specific integration and assign it to another port."
"The security component is its most valuable feature."
"The most valuable features are the ease of setup for redundancy, as well as centralized control."
"Overall, from a technical perspective, this product is good, but it could be improved with respect to pricing."
"Cisco has a good technical support team."
"The management aspect of the solution is its most valuable feature; software-defined issues have been good for us, and it makes the management process easy."
 

Cons

"The initial setup was very complex."
"It is challenging for people who don't understand the programming language, making it difficult to migrate. With technology, there are two verticals. One is hardware driven and the other is software driven. Most people in our domain understand networking, but they don't understand programming. When we migrate, some programming is required."
"Figuring out how to implement the product for clients is the area we struggle with the most every day. Perhaps an enhancement would be artificially intelligent solutions, but that would be further down the road."
"The initial setup was fairly complex and it looks terrifying when you first log in."
"Regarding accuracy and reliability of output for Cisco ACI's AI capabilities, it hasn't met my expectations."
"Cisco should provide more examples of code in their website. Something that other people can use. There is a great place in the development area."
"Where there is room for improvement from ACI is for Layer 2 and Layer 7 packages."
"It would be good if Cisco ACI had some cross-domain orchestrator that could rule all the pillars in the customer network or interconnect more easily with the compass environment."
"The stability of the solution isn't ideal. It could be vastly improved."
"The initial setup is not easy."
"It would be helpful to have better information on how to implement this product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have saved time on the provisioning and configuration."
"We have seen time improvement using the product."
"The pricing, including both hardware and licenses, is reasonable."
"The product is not cheap."
"There are no additional costs. We only have to pay for a support contract apart from the license."
"A big company can automate it themselves or spend a lot of money and buy it."
"I don't believe there is any licensing required."
"The thing that I like the most from Cisco is the support and all the documentation that they have. We do have to pay for it though."
"Cisco products are not cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise89
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What are the biggest differences between Cisco ACI and VMware NSX?
There are some very major differences between both the Products and to name a few. -Cisco ACI have physical network gear (9K Switches) where the Code runs in ACI Policy Mode & the UCS server wh...
What are the biggest differences between Cisco ACI and VMware NSX?
Once you know your way around the Cisco ecosystem, using Cisco ACI is not so difficult. It is a global product, so when you change one interface, changes are automatically reflected on every switch...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco ACI?
Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Cisco ACI, I observe that it is on the more expensive side, although discounts sometimes make it more affordable. Overall, it is recognized as a pr...
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Also Known As

No data available
Cisco Digital Network Architecture (DNA) Virtualization
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bowling Green State University, du, Qatar University
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco, Broadcom, ZeroTier, Inc. and others in Network Virtualization. Updated: October 2026.
921,523 professionals have used our research since 2012.