No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Cisco ACI vs Micro Focus Network Virtualization [EOL] comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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 (2nd), Software Defined Networking (SDN) (2nd), Cloud and Data Center Security (8th)
Micro Focus Network Virtual...
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
4
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.
it_user567705 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT And Digital Platform Manager at Exemplas
It is flexible and scalable, giving us room to grow.
They'll be restricted by their legal requirements in terms of what they can actually do in order to source, but I would strongly recommend they talk to a variety of partners to find a decent partner that they trust and will get good customer service from. Get advice, and kind of go from there. Which I think is one of the reasons why the HPE partner program is so important because it gets that message across and gets the quality of the product across.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has reduced our day-to-day operations by at least half."
"I recommend Cisco ACI due to its reliable tech support, timely updates for security, traffic management, and ease of management."
"The most important aspect of Cisco ACI in my opinion is the ease of management."
"The main features of Cisco ACI that I really appreciate are the application-centric and network-centric designs, allowing you to create your network according to your application."
"The stability is perfect, and we have had no problems with Cisco ACI."
"I use Cisco for security and collaborating, and I use this solution with WebEx, WebEx Teams, and WebEx Board as a hybrid solution."
"The initial setup was trivially simple and easy. It builds itself because it is automation. You don't have to do too much."
"Our customers are very much satisfied with the stability."
"Network Virtualization allows us to test virtually instead of placing load generators somewhere else in the world."
"In terms of consistency of delivery, this solution gives us room to grow as well."
"It goes through about 1.3 billion libraries on any scenario, any bandwidth, and any network condition you could think of."
"This solution allows us to offer a solution for the application, including all the things they need."
 

Cons

"It is still not mature and has room to grow. As with any product out there, it requires time to develop."
"Cisco ACI would benefit by providing the option to integrate easily with DNAC in their next release."
"Deployment could be made a bit simpler and the licensing part could be a bit easier as well, along with improvements on the costing."
"Security and isolation based on the type of traffic"
"The tool's initial deployment is complex and takes five hours to complete."
"The initial setup was very complex."
"We deployed a lot of Fabrics to multiple sites, which was a bit complex."
"In terms of improvement, I would like to see some sort of way to baseline the system in a network-centric fashion."
"The reporting could be a little bit better."
"One of the really good options of the SDN on DCN is the micro-segmentation. I would like to see it act more like a real firewall."
"We haven’t had experience with scale yet."
"They need to go beyond what they are doing right now and look at streaming capabilities because a lot of news organizations, a lot of media and entertainment companies, need a lot of streaming support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't believe there is any licensing required."
"If you compare the licensing and total cost of ACI, it's cheaper than NSX because of the licensing fees. If you are going for full NSX features it will be too expensive, especially the next-generation firewalling feature."
"The price could be improved. It is expensive, but then again, it is Cisco. The price is worth what you pay for."
"This is an expensive solution."
"We have seen time improvement using the product."
"It saves time and resources."
"We have saved time on the provisioning and configuration."
"Cisco's pricing is very expensive."
Information not available
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Virtualization solutions are best for your needs.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
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?
Cost is one thing that could be improved, as it is heavy for an emerging market like ours.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

No data available
Shunra, HPE Network Virtualization
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bowling Green State University, du, Qatar University
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Broadcom, Cisco, ZeroTier, Inc. and others in Network Virtualization. Updated: October 2026.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.