Alternatives to DNA/Catalyst Center for Switch and Wireless Management

[Jim Matuska]

Does anyone have any recommendations for a more cost effective Cisco Switch and Wireless Controler Management System than DNA/Catalyst Center?  

We currently are running prime infrastructure and it works well for our needs.  However, since it is going EOL we will need to migrate to something newer to replace it.  

Cisco recommends DNA/Catalyst center but the issues I have with this are the high cost and the fact that we have to get DNA Licenses for all our switches/devices (some of which are working great but too old to have DNA Center licenses that we don't want the extra cost for that either and my understanding is if it doesn't have a DNA Center license you can't manage it.  

What other options are available (Cisco or Non Cisco).  We have a few hundred switches, AP's, and routers to manage.  Most of the features we use in Prime are Monitoring and alerting for outages and configuration management/backup for Switches/Routers as well as Wireless Controller/AP Configuration.  

What do you think?  

[balaji.bandi]

You wont be able to get exact replacement all in one umbrella for sure.

cattools good for device backup easy to deploy and cost effective.

if you are deploying SD-Access suggest to use DNAC for better orchestration tool.

i had some people contacted me DNAC replacement tool : but not explored much check - if you like check below (its your choice)

https://www.netbraintech.com/

[Leo Laohoo]

None as of yet.  

Cisco is trying to push for a complete "vendor lock-in".  

(I rarely use DNAC to do any troubleshooting (wired/wireless) and I never use DNAC for network monitoring.)

[Jim Matuska]

What do you use for your network monitoring if not DNAC?  

[Leo Laohoo]

We use AKiPS to ping-n-poll anything with an IP address.  

DISCLAIMER:  

DNAC is not a Swiss army knife.  It will work for some.  It may work for some.  It might work for some.  And there are just those cases where it does not work.  

AKiPS "has (y)our back" and has been giving us "heads up" of impending issues.  One of the things I have shown the DNAC BU is how AKiPS (which cost a fraction of the price of a DNAC renewal license) can monitor for potential memory leak weeks/months in advance.   See sample pictures below. 

6 x 9300, IOS-XE 17.6.41.  Notice how far these graph has gone "back".  DNAC can/will only have four (4) weeks visibility of above graphs while I can go back 3 years (or more) with AKiPS. 

2.  With the above graphs, AKiPS can warn me when the control-plan memory utilization have reached critical level, however, DNAC will see everything is "normal".  We have caught DNAC AI/analytics "asleep behind the wheel" so many times.  

We have used DNAC for plug-n-play stuff but it is a hit-n-miss.  Most of the times, it works.  However, when it fails we do not know how bad it has failed until we have shipped the equipment to the site and discover half of the config is missing.  

Do now ask me about SWM.  I have used it.  Saw some "strange things happen".  Stopped using it because it will be my "neck" on the line if (I used it again) those strange things went really bad.  

Personally, I use AKiPS several times a day (daily) for the following tasks: 

* Switch Port Mapper:  Tells me what switch, port, VLAN a MAC address or IP address is located.  Output takes about <5 seconds.  

* Unused Interface:  Generate a report about switchport interface(s) not used for "X" number of days.  Default is 90 days and I have generated reports that have gone back 1 year.  Output takes about <5 seconds per switch.  

* General Device Output:  Generates a list of switches, model number, serial numbers & firm version.  Output takes about <2 seconds and very handy when I want to know what device does not have the correct firmware on.  

* Syslog Filtering:  I can get AKiPS to send me an email once a specific/specified log entry arrives.  Things I want to see are Tracebacks, HW failures, software crashes, etc.  If certain words/phrases show up, AKiPS can send me (or specific people/group) an email.  AKiPS can also redirect to Webex, MS Teams, Telegram, WhatsApp, etc.  

* Interface graphs are very realistic because AKiPS ping-n-poll every 60 seconds (DNAC polls every 15 minutes).

* RegEx support:  I can use RegEx in search field.  

One of the things that "gets" me is AKiPS would routinely flag that a device has failed during bootup (after a power failure) but DNAC says everything is fine.  

We use AKiPS to ping-n-poll all of our Cisco appliances, including ones that have been deemed as end-of-support, and no longer visible to DNAC.  Because AKiPS is vendor agnostic, AKiPS is monitoring all of our kit from UPS to physical/VM server, DALI lighting, CCTV cameras, Checkpoint FW, F5 load balancers, DHCP servers, Aruba kits, Brocade switches, etc.  

Finally, AKiPS is affordable (from a license- and hardware-cost perspective).

Hope this helps.

[balaji.bandi]

AKiPS  - now Tuffin recently acquired.

[sswyatt]

Well, AkiPS just sent us our license renewal and it has doubled in price. Seems Tufin is following the Broadcom model, buy a company and double the licensing prices to existing customers. 

[balaji.bandi]

sure like any other vendor same practice.

[Leo Laohoo]

It has not been the same since the AKiPS founder passed away.  

[Ruben Cocheno]

@Jim Matuska 

It's a vendor lock-in platform as expected, and personally rarelly used for any troubleshooting  or network monitoring. It has it's benefits.

[Jim Matuska]

What then do you use for monitoring?