Cisco Catalyst Center

My main use case for Cisco Catalyst Center in the sandbox is to test APIs and integrate network data into the FloodGaurd project, where I tested device inventory, device health, network health, site health, and activities issues, then displayed the data in our dashboard.

One use case I can mention about Cisco Catalyst Center is in network monitoring during a disaster response operation, where it can give us health and availability of network devices at a site. Along with our FloodGaurd risk information, we can understand whether the supporting network infrastructure is healthy or offline.

One specific challenge I faced with hybrid and distributed enterprise networks that Cisco Catalyst Center addresses is connectivity in a distributed or hybrid setup. Since it was running in a Cisco sandbox and our FloodGaurd back end was hosted separately, we had to ensure the back end could reach the controller reliably while handling cases like timeouts, controller being unreachable, and the sandbox going offline. We added retries, timeout, caching, and clear offline states in the dashboard.

Cisco Catalyst Center has had a positive impact on my organization because it gave real-time network visibility alongside our FloodGaurd risk information. Instead of only showing the flood prediction, FloodGaurd can also show whether the supporting network infrastructure is healthy or offline, making the dashboard more useful for monitoring and disaster response situations.

A specific outcome I noticed after integrating Cisco Catalyst Center with my dashboard is that I was successfully able to display live sandbox data in the dashboard, pulling four devices' device health, network health, and all through the APIs while keeping the Cisco credentials completely on the back end.

In my IT environment or during work integrations, the main improvement Cisco Catalyst Center provides is automation and centralized operation, where we connected it to our FloodGaurd back end so network health and device information could be collected automatically instead of having to check devices manually, making overall operations more reliable and easier to monitor.

Cisco Catalyst Center optimizes the experience in a hybrid or distributed enterprise setup. In our setup, we optimized the experience by keeping the Cisco integrations on the back end instead of connecting the front end directly to it. We added a 45-second cache, a timeout, retries, and clear offline handlings, which reduced repeated API calls and made the dashboard more stable, especially when the controller or network connection was unavailable.

The biggest benefit of end-to-end visibility from Cisco Catalyst Center is that it makes troubleshooting much faster. I can see the device health, overall network health, and everything else all in one place, so instead of checking different statuses manually, I can quickly identify where the problem might be and then take action.

The best feature Cisco Catalyst Center offers is the centralized network health and device visibility, which I could use to get device inventory, device health, network health, site health, and issues through the consistent APIs and bring all of that into our own FloodGaurd dashboard.

When I talk about centralized network health and device visibility with Cisco Catalyst Center, what I mean is that instead of checking each network device separately, it gives me a centralized view of the whole network. I can see how many devices are connected, their health status, the overall network health, site health, and any issues from one place, allowing us to use that data in our FloodGaurd dashboard to give a quick view of whether the network infrastructure was healthy or offline.

For an API experience with Cisco Catalyst Center, I found it pretty straightforward once the authentication was set up, as the endpoint structure was consistent and I could easily get device inventory health, network health, and issues.

My overall impression is that Cisco Catalyst Center gives very good visibility in the network from one place, making it easy to bring device and network health into our dashboard for our project. I think the experience is strong, especially for centralizing monitoring, though the main area I would improve is making the initial sandbox setup and documentation simpler.

I think Cisco Catalyst Center can be improved overall by making the sandbox setups and documentation more straightforward, as it was a little confusing because the DevNet page documentation, controller URL, and sandbox credentials were separate. I would also like to see more realistic sandboxes with more devices and actual issues on alerts since the small environment made it difficult to test a real-world monitoring scenario.

I have used Cisco Catalyst Center on a sandbox for around five days, mainly for testing API integrations and building it into our FloodGaurd project.

Cisco Catalyst Center was stable for what we tested, where the API consistently returned device and network health data, and we were able to integrate it into our dashboard without major issues. Since we only tested the DevNet sandbox with four devices, I haven't validated it on a large-scale production.

In my opinion, Cisco Catalyst Center's integration is scalable since we kept it behind our back end and used caching so the front end doesn't directly hit Cisco for every request. I only tested the DevNet sandbox with the four devices, so I haven't personally validated how it performs on a large enterprise scale, but for our use case, the architecture is ready to scale. I would want to test it in a much larger environment before making a production-scale claim.

In our case, we mainly relied on DevNet documentation and sandbox resources rather than using Cisco's paid customer support, so I cannot really judge the enterprise support experience from personal experience. The documentation was enough for us to get the API integration work, although I found initial setup information could have been clearer.

We did not have a previous commercial network management solution that we replaced with Cisco Catalyst Center; for this project, we chose it because we wanted a proper centralized source for Cisco device and network health data, and its API made it straightforward to integrate the information into our existing FloodGaurd dashboard.

There were a few challenges I faced integrating those APIs and displaying the data in my dashboard, where the main one was the self-signed certificate in the sandbox, so I had to disable SSL verification from that environment, and I also had challenges understanding the authentication flow and keeping the Cisco credentials secure.

For our project, we did not measure a formal ROI in terms of money or hours saved with Cisco Catalyst Center, so I would not give a made-up percentage. The practical benefits were clear, as instead of manually checking individual devices, we could get the device and network health information through the API and see it centrally in our dashboard, which reduces the manual effort involved in monitoring and troubleshooting.

We did not purchase Cisco Catalyst Center through the AWS Marketplace as we used the Cisco DevNet always-on sandbox which gave us temporary access to a hosted Catalyst Center environment for testing and integration.

From our experience with Cisco Catalyst Center, we did not directly purchase it, so I cannot give an accurate opinion on actual licensing or total setup costs since we used the DevNet sandbox for free; however, for a real production deployment, I would want the pricing and licensing to be clearer upfront, including appliance, infrastructure cost, software license, and ongoing support.

Before choosing Cisco Catalyst Center, we mainly evaluated it based on how well it fit our use case and how easily we could integrate its API, without doing a formal comparison or procurement evaluation against other commercial network management platforms, though I would not claim that we have tested multiple alternatives in depth.

I would give Cisco Catalyst Center a rating of eight out of ten.

I chose an eight out of ten because the APIs were consistent and easy to work with once I understood the authentication flow, and I deducted a couple of points because the sandbox setups and documentation were a little confusing, especially around the different URLs and credentials.

Regarding Cisco Catalyst Center's approach to security and governance, I would say it has a good approach to security and governance, as in our integration, we kept Catalyst Center credentials and authentication tokens only on the back end and never extended and exposed them to the front end, while also controlling which data was publicly accessible and requiring authentication for sensitive device information.

Regarding Cisco Catalyst Center's accuracy and reliability, the output were good based on what I tested, where the API consistently returned the device inventory and health information, and our integration handled timeouts and controller unavailable cases properly, though I have not tested it on a large production network.

In my organization, Cisco Catalyst Center is deployed using the Cisco DevNet always-on sandbox, where it is provided as a hosted controller that I accessed remotely through the sandbox URL, while for production, it can be deployed as a Cisco-managed appliance, virtual appliance in an organization's own environment, rather than being the same type of public sandbox.

My advice to others looking into using Cisco Catalyst Center would be to start with the DevNet sandbox and get familiar with the authentication flow and basic APIs before doing the full integration, while also keeping the Catalyst Center credentials on the back end and building proper timeout and offline handling from the beginning. I would recommend reading the sandbox instructions carefully because understanding the correct controller URL and sandbox credentials can save quite a bit of setup time.

The major use case for my client with Cisco Catalyst Center is that most of my work depends on it. For configuring the device and every organization architecture, I am creating means site-wise, such as country, state, city, building, and floor. We can map and put the DWG or PNG file image as your floor plan. Accordingly, we can put the switch and access points on the floor so we can check the health status of the user. For any user, we can work as per license. If we have the client with the analytical license, then we can do many things from Cisco Catalyst Center. We can upgrade the image, configure devices, and perform many other functions.

Cisco optimizes the experience in an enterprise setup by primarily optimizing most of the Cisco devices. It supports a few other vendors, but client-side, they are normally managing only Cisco devices from Cisco Catalyst Center. For multiple segments, it configures standard configurations or the same configuration to every device. It helps with OS upgradation, health-related issues, and optimizing any current issues with devices. If any access point or WLC has issues, it provides ideas on those. It can give you the location of any AP that has an issue and recommends steps. If connected with ServiceNow, it can trigger a ticket for you as well.

The visibility does affect my troubleshooting capability. Troubleshooting is much easier nowadays with Cisco Catalyst Center. It is easier because it gives you the exact issue of what happened. For example, suppose if any switch in a network with more than four thousand or five thousand Cisco switches has high memory utilization, there is a common bug for Cisco's switches or access points may have high memory utilization. Cisco Catalyst Center gives you the pop-up or notification about devices with high memory utilization so you need to check, and it provides recommendations. It can indicate other issues such as STP issues or MAC flooding occurring from a port, and you can receive those notifications.

The benefits and advantages I see in Cisco Catalyst Center that really stand out to me is its ability to access all devices from here. I can say it is everything for me. It is a monitoring device, and we can do configuration from it and monitor any issue. It has the features to help solve those problems including suggestions and records. It can indicate how critical an issue is, whether it is a P1 case or P2, and it can provide data for any reports, traffic data, or client-wise information.

If a Wi-Fi user tells me that their signal is low, the data from Cisco Catalyst Center allows me to provide information when its signal is low, what the speed is, and everything else I can give them.

The end-to-end visibility that Cisco provides is good for me. As per licensing, the price is a bit higher, but it is good.

There is a disadvantage in Cisco Catalyst Center that I see, which is the same as Cisco's disadvantage, being a bug issue. That is the only thing, and this disadvantage is that every feature requires different licensing.

The types of bugs I see here include one I forgot to mention last time when a bug happened. We upgraded Cisco Catalyst Center for generating reports, and it gave false monitoring alarms a few times.

I have been working with Cisco Catalyst Center for seven to eight years.

Cisco Catalyst Center is stable enough.

Scaling Cisco Catalyst Center is a tough question for me. I have never tried to scale those. For me, it is good, but there are a few parts that are complicated for Cisco Catalyst Center. The upgradation part is much easier than others, but a few things are much complicated. Overall, I can say it is good scalable.

I rated technical support for Cisco switches as eight points out of ten, and I would give the same rating for Cisco Catalyst Center, but I can say it is the same, yet Cisco Catalyst Center is much better.

The support is much better for Cisco Catalyst Center overall.

Support is better because they associate with much more senior people in the Cisco Catalyst Center case. The people handling those tickets, maybe that is why they are more knowledgeable about everything.

Regarding the experience with deployment, Cisco Catalyst Center is not straightforward. It is quite complicated. There are many challenges because the control plane is different. There are many aspects, and if you have complicated cases, if you install your Cisco Catalyst Center without proper configuration and saving, then after restart, such as during a power issue, everything will be gone, and you need to manually re-enter your commands.

I usually deploy Cisco Catalyst Center both on-prem and in a hybrid environment. I work with both physical devices and virtual devices such as Hyper-V and ESXi.

Even though I say the solution is quite pricey, it is a value for money because I actually love this product much.

Value for money means clients do not need many resources to manage their network. They have much visibility on their network, understanding what is going on, including stability, reports on any side, which side consumes much bandwidth, and which side consumes much data. Everything can be checked easily with just a click.

In comparison to similar tools on the market, I have never worked with Cisco Catalyst Center compared to others. I have worked with Cisco Prime, which is the earlier version of Cisco Catalyst Center. It has some features that are free and are not available on Cisco Catalyst Center, but we need a subscription and license for those.

My final rating for Cisco Catalyst Center is eight points, with two points deducted for licensing being complicated. I gave this solution an overall review rating of eight points.

Cisco Catalyst Center use cases include LAN connectivity, and it is sometimes used as a core switch, distribution switch, and access switch.

Cisco Catalyst Center has the feature where you can configure different ports as a VLAN. You can configure a secondary IP address, which other OEMs generally do not provide.

DNA is a good feature, and advanced networking and routing features are available there. You can configure MST, and while not much more is a feature you can add, it is good as you can configure different VLANs and different types of MST, which reduces your Spanning Tree timing.

Its smoothness is very good, and I can add static routing so that if any internal network or internal configuration is required for one VLAN to another VLAN, I can create the route and configure it as required. Port-channel and channel group are also good features.

Visibility is good. Whenever any problem occurs, I can understand what the problem is. When a problem occurs, I have to identify what the issue is, and if I am able to identify it, then I can solve it.

I have not seen any feature that needs to be added right now. Cisco Catalyst Center is good for LAN networks with no problems.

I have not seen any hypothetical improvements at this time.

I started using Catalyst a long time ago when it came out. I have used it for maybe 10 to 15 years.

Cisco Catalyst Center is a good, stable product.

I can expand Cisco Catalyst Center.

Cisco's customer service is very helpful.

Whenever support is concerned, Cisco is one of the best. Except for Palo Alto, you can get the best features in Cisco.

I can give support a rating of 9 to 10.

I have worked for a long time, about 20 to 25 years, and in the meantime, different products have changed and all features have changed.

I have worked a little with Palo Alto and Fortinet but not with other products.

Whenever I procure a device, after that, I can work smoothly and there is no problem working with Cisco. If any feature is required, I can generally get it.

You can get full advantage as far as price is concerned.

Cisco is always expensive.

Cisco Catalyst Center's price rating is eight.

Aruba has a good product, but not like Cisco.

Aruba is also a good product with good features, but I don't think it can be compared with Cisco as Cisco is better than Aruba.

For Aruba, you cannot provide a secondary IP. This is the main feature that Cisco has. Whenever you require both primary and secondary IP for one interface, Cisco can provide this. Secondly, Cisco can route everything whereas Aruba can only accept a default route.

I have not worked on Arista products, but for other OEMs, Cisco is quite good.

I am actually not working with Meraki products. I have worked with Cisco Firewall.

I have not used Cisco Intersight for cloud management.

I have also not used ThousandEyes.

Price is the only point I would distract on.

Check Point is not in use here.

My overall review rating for Cisco Catalyst Center is 9.

Secure Web Gateway is from Cisco. I met a lot of troubles, so I am in touch with TAC. I thought it was a call from some open ticket. I am working on firewalls, FTD, FMC, so these are my daily challenges with firewalls.

Cisco Catalyst Center is part of the customer's network. Sometimes I check something when I troubleshoot authentication, AAA authentication in Cisco ISE. I need some information and I was surprised how well developed Cisco Catalyst Center is because it is much easier when you can check on Cisco Catalyst Center instead of checking every switch or every router, signing there, and checking some commands and then copying it. When you are in Cisco Catalyst Center, everything is on one page. I am very quick and it is effective. I can compare and check statistics from all devices. Cisco Catalyst Center is a very nice product from Cisco.

I met Check Point, but it is not in my scope. Sometimes I set something on Cisco ISE when I tested in our customer environment when they have authentication via Cisco ISE for Check Point. From my opinion, it is quite a horrible management when you need the installation of Windows on your computer when you use Mac OS. I think that Palo Alto and Cisco are the best solutions for customers. What I can hear and see when I speak with them is that they are satisfied with these two technologies from the firewalls world. I co-work with NetScout, but it is about DDoS, which is a little bit different. NetScout or Arbor was part of Cisco several years ago, so it is one world of security and networking.

I have been working with Cisco technology such as switches and routers. Our customers are very happy with Cisco technology and they suppose it is the best solution for them. It is a very well-known technology and quite old, making it quite a responsible technology for them. Cisco Catalyst Center is something I started with in my new work. It is not in my scope, but I heard it is a very nice technology too. It cooperates with Cisco ISE. Cisco ISE is within the scope of my work too. I work with switches only a little bit.

I have experience with SecureX. When SecureX started, I managed it in our company environment. It was a very nice service, but our company, because I changed my work and changed company, was only about twenty people, so we were not able to pay for XDR in the next version. We had to leave this excellent service because we set a lot of notifications about bad behavior in our network. It was a very nice service and very useful. I had a presentation for our customer about SecureX and they were very happy. It sounds very good, but finally, there are universities and they cannot pay such a large amount of money for this service, although they were very happy. I have a little experience with SecureX. I met XDR in some workshops from Cisco company on site and online, so I know a little bit about XDR.

I am new with Cisco Catalyst Center, and I have been working with it for about the last month. From my first experience, the menu is not very user-friendly for new people because I thought it could not be so hard when I am working with Firewall Management Center and Cisco ISE. I thought it could be some modification from it, but from my first experience, it was completely different. The first time I was a little lost. Nowadays with AI, it is not so hard. I asked where I could find, for example, statistics about a switch, so I could find a way to access the right things that I need because Cisco Catalyst Center is a huge application where you can find a lot of information. From my first view, it was not so easy to find the right way. When I access Secure Web Gateway, I can find everything I need, and it can find me all possibilities how I can access it. From Cisco ISE, it is the same, and I can choose which one and from this offer, I can decide what I need. I am not sure it is the same strategy in Cisco Catalyst Center, but I appreciate it from Cisco ISE and from Secure Web Gateway. It is better from a user view. From Cisco Catalyst Center, it is a very nice statistic when I find a switch that I need, and then it is quite easy to find all information. However, the way from my overview to go to concrete needed information is a long way to access it, so it is not so user-friendly from my view.

I am new with Cisco Catalyst Center, and I have been working with it for about the last month. From my first experience, the menu is not very user-friendly for new people because I thought it could not be so hard when I am working with Firewall Management Center and Cisco ISE. I thought it could be some modification from it, but from my first experience, it was completely different. The first time I was a little lost. Nowadays with AI, it is not so hard. I asked where I could find, for example, statistics about a switch, so I could find a way to access the right things that I need because Cisco Catalyst Center is a huge application where you can find a lot of information. From my first view, it was not so easy to find the right way. When I access Secure Web Gateway, I can find everything I need, and it can find me all possibilities how I can access it. From Cisco ISE, it is the same, and I can choose which one and from this offer, I can decide what I need. I am not sure it is the same strategy in Cisco Catalyst Center, but I appreciate it from Cisco ISE and from Secure Web Gateway. It is better from a user view. From Cisco Catalyst Center, it is a very nice statistic when I find a switch that I need, and then it is quite easy to find all information. However, the way from my overview to go to concrete needed information is a long way to access it, so it is not so user-friendly from my view.

I would appreciate some webinars or something for Cisco Catalyst Center because it is new for me. I would also appreciate some unification, or unifying GUI, that would be similar for all Cisco products. I think that would be the best way that when someone new comes to this technology but knows Cisco or some other product, it will be similar and then they can start working with this product very quickly.

I have been working in this field for more than six years since COVID started, directly in Cisco security. In my past, I was working with monitoring and network monitoring, which is a little bit different, but it has been six years.

I think Cisco Catalyst Center is quite stable. I assume that Cisco Catalyst Center is better than Cisco ISE. Sometimes Cisco ISE has more troubles than Cisco Catalyst Center.

When I need to solve some case, usually there is a very quick response. I can see the location of the engineers, so I can see that they are from Mexico or something. In the past, I had very good experience with people from Mexico or South America and then Krakow. I was very surprised that it was a very experienced engineer. I think Amsterdam or I am not sure which one, but I think it was from Europe. Usually there is a very quick solution. Sometimes I can see a compromise from their side because when I open a ticket with priority number three, it has some response time, but I can see that they are quicker than I sometimes need. In case some customer has some maintenance window and it is priority three, they are quicker than they should be. The solution is found very quickly. For example, when I had some troubles with a customer's Cisco ISE, I created a task at eight p.m. and the customer had a maintenance window at eleven p.m. A TAC engineer called me one hour after creating the ticket. We managed a WebEx and solved everything in twenty minutes. It was very nice and the customer was surprised and could see that it is very good support from Cisco and I was happy for this experience and to show him that it is really excellent support and response time. I had experience from Juniper support, and when I compare these two, Cisco is unbelievably accessible. It is very quick, and I can see that Cisco is on another level from Juniper support. I can recommend Cisco support for everybody because it is really good.

I only had my first bad experience maybe one month ago, when I opened a ticket and I could see that the problem could be seen by the engineer on a WebEx meeting and he said that it could not be and he did not have time. The customer was quite angry. But finally, when I pushed from the Cisco Czech Republic side and I escalated this ticket, then it was solved very quickly. The solution was found very quickly after this WebEx meeting. It is only one bad experience. Usually it is very quickly solved, and I can recommend Cisco TAC support for every customer. I usually solve some security problems with Cisco ISE, Firewall Management Center and these topics. From my side, I am very satisfied.

Palo Alto is the second vendor for me. It is not on as high a level as Cisco because I am working with Cisco for six years now and with Palo Alto only three years. My experience with Cisco is bigger than with Palo Alto. However, I think that every customer has different needs. I think that both technologies are experts in some area, so I cannot recommend only one of them. It depends on customer needs and what they need and how they need access to the internet and what they need from a firewall. It is two different ways how you can check and control your network. Sometimes customers are afraid about only application layer control, so they prefer the traditional L3, L4 control about their network. It depends on experience too.

I did not meet Meraki. I only saw this Meraki product on some webinars and some days with Cisco products on site in Cisco Prague branch. I cannot use it in my own hand.

I am not an expert on servers by Cisco. It is the domain of my colleagues, so I did not work with Cisco servers.

I am working with a customer on the deployment of Secure Web Gateway at the moment.

When I do not assume this last bad experience, I would rate the support a ten. Usually it is very quick, and in case an engineer does not have the right information, he asks colleagues or escalates inside of Cisco and from my view, it is solved very quickly.

Sometimes the best time for presales is when we upgrade something and we speak about some problems. For example, the concurrent vendor is a lot, FortiGate. We discuss if Cisco is able to fix this one or if it has some problems with this. I think that when they can compare in some webinars or maybe some labs, it would be helpful. I recommend to my customers labs in Cisco when they create some workshops for customers. I think that is the best way how they can try it in some environment, and then they can compare their own solution from another vendor and this one. It is very important to take care of customers and help them with installation and setting in their network. I think that this service is very important for them, which can help them take this device as their own. When they cannot set it and they cannot use it, they decide on another solution. I think that service with onboarding services is very important. I appreciate support from Cisco when we have some configuration troubles and sometimes it is something new and we do not know. I appreciate patience from Cisco TAC when they can help us with these configuration things. My overall rating for this review is nine out of ten.

As a customer, the major use case for Cisco Catalyst Center is that it is easy to configure and troubleshoot, which are definitely the advantages of the product. If there are any specific challenges I face with hybrid and distributed networks, Cisco addresses those challenges. My overall impression is that there are optimization and challenges in this enterprise setup.

Since you mentioned many products and asked which would be the best to discuss now, I think we should concentrate on Cisco Catalyst Center, as I have not been recently working with it this year, at least a couple of months back.

I am familiar with other products like Nexus 9000 series and 9K series, but not in the current organization. I have Nexus 9K products and was one of the first to install Nexus 9K products in India.

The biggest challenge is to properly plan the deployment, and I should know my problem statement. Where and how I am going to attack or where to cover, the scope has to be defined very well; otherwise, it will be very difficult.

There are areas for improvement with Cisco Catalyst Center, and I can discuss what could be improved. Additional features could be added to Cisco Catalyst Center in the future, and it is unclear whether it would be expensive or quite affordable.

In terms of time, I have been using this solution for more than five years.

I believe it is very futuristic and capable of what cloud is meant for. I would agree it is actually ninety-nine percent stable and reliable, though sometimes there may be glitches, crashes, or latency.

I rated support ten out of ten for the previous product, and I would give the same rating for Cisco Catalyst Center, ten out of ten. As for the operational efficiency of Cisco, that is great. The general rating for the product in that case would be ten, as ten is the best, like the final rating.

In the previous company, I was working as a Global Head for IT Solutions, but I am now working as a CTO and CISO in the current company.

As for comparing Cisco Catalyst Center with anything else on the market, that is fair. I had to ask about the installation of Cisco Catalyst Center, whether it is straightforward or quite complex.

I can help you out with some of the certification vouchers, so I can check for my team members if some of my exciting team members who are really performing well; I can give at least one certification voucher.

As I mentioned earlier, we used to look at ROI from five to seven years. Now we have started looking at the product, the platform, and the stability, and we are already in a way of changing the overall ROI to shift it to seven to ten years.

I have not deployed Cisco Catalyst Center on AWS cloud, as I have used the cloud for firewall and network OS but not for Cisco Catalyst Center. I did not purchase it from AWS Marketplace, but I did purchase a Cisco Firewall from AWS Marketplace.

When it comes to Catalyst switches, Cisco Catalyst Center, or Catalyst SD-WAN, those are there today, but Cisco is having a very big job to phase-wise replace those switches as they are getting into end of life, and we are planning phase-wise replacements through 9200 or something like that.

My focus is mostly campus and data center. I am working with technologies like Cisco ACI, Nexus, Catalyst, SD-Access, and VMware. I also work with ACI, VXLAN, and similar technologies.

I am involved as both partner and reseller.

My work mostly deals with regular enterprise core switches. Cisco provides the ability to manage multiple switches with standard templates, so people tend to use Cisco Catalyst Center because it offers better visibility and monitoring capabilities in one place for their hundreds or thousands of switches across branches and campuses. Cisco Catalyst Center gives them one single place to check their devices rather than maintaining a whole list of SSH sessions in SecureCRT or PuTTY and SSHing into each one individually. They get full visibility of the entire network from one location.

Mostly I am dealing with clients who are in colo and hybrid environments. There is a very minimal footprint on the cloud because most of the companies I am working with are medium and large-scale companies. Cloud is very expensive for big companies, so they prefer to have their own setup in either their own data centers or co-locations such as NextDC or Equinix.

I would say that the out-of-the-box orchestration and automation benefits that Cisco Catalyst Center provides are really good, plus it is all one Cisco environment. There are multiple orchestration tools and software outside in the market, but because it is all Cisco, Cisco knows its own infrastructure, environment, technologies, and protocols better than anyone outside. The ease of operation is something that is really good with them.

The most notable benefit includes the reusability of policies and the template structure for any organization, which is a common benefit included in Cisco Catalyst Center as well as other organization software and tools.

I think over time many challenges have been addressed. In the last decade, things have changed drastically in regular networks. Everywhere now it is majorly not regular Layer 2 Spanning Tree Layer 2 dominated network architectures. It is all leaf-and-spine based, whether it is data center or enterprise. They are focusing on leaf-and-spine, Clos network architecture. Cisco has been a pioneer in those fronts and keeps bringing new technology while managing the learning curve under control and not overwhelming users. When compared with VMware's NSX and Cisco's ACI, NSX is too much software-driven and has a very steep learning curve. The learning curve is steep for Cisco products as well, but it is not as big or as steep as for other software. Cisco provides so many features while keeping the user interface and user experience simple. This is important because people like me do Cisco technologies frequently, so we are very well-versed in the technologies. Once we do the projects, it is the operations team who has to manage their networks, so it should be easy for them to learn something new.

The leaf-and-spine technology and architecture is the biggest optimization that has happened. Besides that, Cisco Catalyst Center and all the different orchestrators come with built-in security and general network day-to-day hardening and best practices from Day 1. Rather than configuring everything manually, they configure all those best practices, so you do not have to worry about that. These are the things which save time so much and do things which are supposed to be done either way, so they do not ask you to do it. The boxes do it. That is the part of the real optimization. You just have to worry about the business intent and the real architecture you want to build.

Cisco Catalyst Center and Cisco ACI bring something great regardless of whether it is one site, two sites, 10 sites, or any number of sites. They have brought the whole management plane and monitoring plane in one UI. You can monitor thousands of devices in one window.

Absolutely, and not just troubleshoot, but also identify possible areas of concern and alarms very quickly, rather than relying on other syslog and SNMP servers, which used to happen traditionally. Those types of third-party integrations with the network for monitoring and troubleshooting are becoming redundant now with Cisco's own portfolios.

The learning curve is better with Cisco compared to other products. Everyone has a learning curve because everyone is bringing new technologies, new interfaces, and new ways of doing things. The other products have a steeper learning curve. When comparing Cisco with VMware, I am not comparing Cisco with Arista, Juniper, or HP because those are companies which are doing a very basic level of automation. Cisco is doing way more advanced things. In terms of advanced handling and the advanced orchestration and advanced management plane control that Cisco is delivering, the only competitiveness in advancement is VMware NSX. However, it is really complex. Cisco's platforms are much easier to understand and learn compared to VMware.

The only disadvantage with Cisco would be their services and licensing, which is a bit complex and a bit too expensive. Because their services are so expensive, companies end up buying Cisco, but they end up not buying Cisco services to do it. When they turn to external partners, not many people outside know the technology as well as Cisco does. People deploy it, but they do not get the right resources to deploy it.

I started working with it about one and a half years ago.

Cisco's Technical Assistance Center, the TAC, is probably the best in the market. That is probably one of the best reasons why people choose Cisco: because of the services and the post-sale support that they offer, and the quality of support that they are providing. That is one big reason why people prefer Cisco even if they feel it is too expensive or too complex. They feel that Cisco support team will handle it, so they go with that confidence.

It is definitely very easy because initially we used to have to connect to the console and build so many CLI configs and go into each of the devices and set it up. Now there is something called Zero Touch Provisioning that Cisco does. For that matter, most vendors are doing that now, but Cisco was a leading pioneer in Zero Touch Provisioning of the devices. If you have 100 devices, you just connect the physical cable and Cisco Catalyst Center will automatically detect those devices and configure them. It is easy and you do not have to do anything.

That is exactly one of our major points. It is plug-and-play. Even if you have 10 more sites adding up and you want to deploy a similar setup to an existing branch, you just use the same templates over there. Your 10 sites are up.

It definitely is value for money. The return on investment is definitely better because it is not just about the licensing being expensive. It is all about when you deploy the network, when you set up the network, how well your business operations are able to run that infrastructure, and how much less they are working on just identifying the baseline of an issue. Imagine if you are troubleshooting an issue where traditionally it would take one hour and out of that one hour, 15 to 20 minutes was just to identify the area of concern rather than the issue itself, checking the exact problem. That 20 minutes has reduced now. That 20 minutes of downtime is really significant.

Operational efficiency is definitely better because everything is managed from one single plane. The visibility and monitoring is top-notch. The smart fault handling and event handling are so nice. If one fault happens, it immediately connects all the dots. If a fault has happened, it shows what could be the reason behind it. Sometimes the fault is a repercussion of some other event. People keep checking for the fault and then end up realizing that the fault was not really the fault. The fault was something else. This was just an after-effect. All of that guessing work has finished. Day 2 operation is definitely way better.

I am still heavily working with Cisco technologies.

Cisco Catalyst Center appliances are mostly preferred to be put in the management zone within the data center because it is part of the network which has to be very secure. People do not prefer to put it on the cloud. Although Cisco does provide an option to do that, I have not seen anyone doing that.

Cisco ACI, the virtual APIC, is something I bought a long time ago, but I do not remember the details.

I cannot comment on that exact number, but that is what I have seen.

Operational efficiency is definitely better because everything is managed from one single plane. The visibility and monitoring is top-notch. The smart fault handling and event handling are so nice. If one fault happens, it immediately connects all the dots. If a fault has happened, it shows what could be the reason behind it. Sometimes the fault is a repercussion of some other event. People keep checking for the fault and then end up realizing that the fault was not really the fault. The fault was something else. This was just an after-effect. All of that guessing work has finished. Day 2 operation is definitely way better.

It is definitely very easy because initially we used to have to connect to the console and build so many CLI configs and go into each of the devices and set it up. Now there is something called Zero Touch Provisioning that Cisco does. For that matter, most vendors are doing that now, but Cisco was a leading pioneer in Zero Touch Provisioning of the devices. If you have 100 devices, you just connect the physical cable and Cisco Catalyst Center will automatically detect those devices and configure them. It is easy and you do not have to do anything.

That is exactly one of our major points. It is plug-and-play. Even if you have 10 more sites adding up and you want to deploy a similar setup to an existing branch, you just use the same templates over there. Your 10 sites are up.

I cannot think of anything else right now. They are doing pretty much so many things, and a lot of things we are not even using because customers and clients are not comfortable using them. I do not think of any feature that I can think of. My overall review rating for Cisco Catalyst Center is 9 out of 10.

The main use case for us is to centralize managing our switches in one spot. We have a lot of switches to manage, so it's very easy to find that useful.

I appreciate that Cisco Catalyst Center gives you notifications when the switches go down. When there's downtime for a switch, we get updates very fast.

I work in the manufacturing industry, so any downtime is losing money. Whenever something goes down, it's easy for us to look into a problem. We won't know that we have to fix the problem unless we've identified it. Before even teammates reach out to us saying they're not getting to the internet or whatever, we already know there's a problem because of Cisco Catalyst Center. So it's very useful and helps us have less downtime.

I think Cisco Catalyst Center addresses the challenges we face with hybrid and distributed enterprise networks pretty well because now I can bring a switch out of the box and configure it through Catalyst instead of manually spending time doing it. So it saves me a lot of time, and I can focus on something more important.

I would say Cisco Catalyst Center's PNP functionality is not as good as it could be. When the switches come out of the box and we try to configure it, the onboarding is kind of hard where I assign it an IP address and it loses connection right away. So that could be improved. I don't think our Catalyst is absolutely up-to-date. It's pretty up-to-date, but I don't think it's the latest version, so maybe it's already fixed.

I have been using Cisco Catalyst Center for about a year to a year and a half.

My experience with deploying Cisco Catalyst Center had one challenge where we couldn't find enough documentation because one of our nodes went down. So we had to rebuild our entire Catalyst. That was hard. We figured it out, but it took us a long time. The good part about that was we called a Cisco rep, and they helped us throughout the process. We were back and forth with emails and calls with them. So that was helpful. But I found it hard to find any good documentation for building a DNA.

I would evaluate customer service and tech support as great. I would give that a nine out of ten. It's very good.

Prior to adopting Cisco Catalyst Center, we were not using anything to address similar needs.

The operational efficiency of Cisco in my IT environment is pretty good. There have been a few problems with hardware, like one of the nodes stops working, but I don't expect it to run perfectly. I would say it gives us overall good visibility, so that's how I would assess it. It's good visibility for what we have out there.

My impression of the end-to-end visibility is that it's great. I'm able to build agents and use Cisco Catalyst Center to give me a lot of information. So now I don't even have to log into Catalyst. I get better visibility if something goes down, like if an endpoint goes down, I can identify the switch, or it will identify it for me and give me troubleshooting tips and advice through Catalyst. So the visibility is very good in that regard.

I rate Cisco Catalyst Center overall as an eight out of ten.

For Cisco Catalyst Center, my main use cases involve monitoring switches, access points, and performance.

The most important features for me that I prefer are switch monitoring and configuration backup.

Storing the configs with Cisco Catalyst Center benefits my organization because if there is a failure, I can restore directly from it.

My impression of the end-to-end visibility offered by Cisco is that it is somewhat clunky; it is not in a single dashboard and is not easily visible, especially from a time-sensitive standpoint.

To improve Cisco Catalyst Center, I would prefer to see better integration with Meraki and visibility into both Meraki and traditional Catalyst product lines on the same interface, achieving end-to-end visibility from a single pane of glass and ensuring that all metrics are included, as sometimes there are blanks and information is missing.

I have been using Cisco Catalyst Center for three years.

I assess the stability and reliability of Cisco Catalyst Center as mostly reliable; I have had to restart it a couple of times when it was hanging, but other than that, it has been quite stable.

Cisco Catalyst Center scales with the growing needs of my organization, but I have really only scaled with the amount of equipment, adding more access points and more switches, while my Catalyst switch count is going down as I migrate to Meraki switches, and because there is not a tight integration between the two yet, I do not have visibility in Cisco Catalyst Center for that, so I am actually scaling down instead of scaling up.

I evaluate customer service and tech support as sometimes being questionable; if it is not labeled as a high priority, it is not treated as such, so if it does not require a very fast response, I can go weeks without hearing anything on a ticket, and I sometimes have to put things in as higher priority to get an initial response, but it always gets changed down to a lower priority.

Before adopting Cisco Catalyst Center, I was using Prime Infrastructure, but I considered a change because Cisco stopped putting development into Prime Infrastructure and moved to Cisco Catalyst Center, with all new devices coming with at least Essentials level Catalyst Center licensing required upon purchase when I buy the equipment.

My experience with deploying Cisco Catalyst Center is that the deployment was simple, as getting all of my devices to join was straightforward, but there were some features that were supposed to function, especially when it came to adding in Meraki Dashboard; devices were not populating, and although it was advertised as being able to do that, when I talked to Cisco TAC, they said that was not possible.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that licensing is always a pain, as everything involves levels of licensing, so when there are specific features I am looking for, they are usually bundled with a more expensive license that includes features I do not need, and trying to determine which license is needed can sometimes be difficult.

I did not consider any other solutions before selecting Cisco Catalyst Center.

I have not faced any specific challenges with hybrid and distributed enterprise networks that Cisco addresses.

Since I am all Cisco, I assess the operational efficiency in my IT environment as being at the same level.

I provide an overall review rating of 8 for Cisco Catalyst Center.