Cisco Catalyst Center

Formerly Cisco DNA Center

I really like the assurance. I like that I can go through and find problems on the network that could be a mismatch VLAN between two interfaces, port errors, like physical errors that we otherwise probably would need to wait for a customer to complain or we have that we can see that ahead of time and be proactive and say, Hey, I'm noticing that this port is having some errors on it. We might want to check that out ahead of time before it becomes an issue. So that's really useful. And then also being able to configure the network. I think that the programmability part of it, I think I have, I've been having some struggle with that initially, just having to apply. So I have my script, my template that I want to deploy, but in order to deploy it, I have to apply it to a template or a profile and then I have to assign that profile to a group of switches that I want to program. I think it gets a little bit messy and a little bit convoluted, but other than that, I mean it's really helpful. It does automate right now, I think it seems a little convoluted with the process.

Kind of just like what I just covered where pushing out the configuration, it can be a little bit tedious to go through those steps to apply the template to a network profile and then apply that network profile to a group of switches at a specific site where I want to make a change, and I'm looking at this as more of a, it's a small change where I feel like the switch profiles in the network profiles are more of a grand template for the entire switch. Where I'm going testing, I'm just trying to make a minor adjustment to one little configuration, it becomes a little bit tedious.

I want to hammer home this swim process. It is amazing how you can upgrade something. It does all the readiness checks for you, does all the compliance checks for you, and it eliminates a lot of potential human error. Maybe you won't copy a file correctly, maybe you didn't check your MD five hash properly. There's a lot of things that if you're doing 50, 60, 70 upgrades over the course of a week or two weeks, you might try to cut corners, or not intentionally, but just human error. You do something repetitive, maybe you skip a step with swim, there is no skipping a step. It checks compliance, it checks your iOS, you download your iOS straight from Cisco from Catalyst Center. It eliminates any fatigue that you might have whenever it comes to doing repetitive things for weeks on end.

The one thing that we had to get used to was really breaking down our wireless. We integrated our 9800 controllers into it, and the breakdown of our tags being floor specific and not just being campus specific was a challenge for us. And so we had to create all new tags and it wasn't necessarily a problem, it just required a little bit redesign on our wireless. And so it would've been nice for us to be able to assign a tag to an entire campus versus a floor, but that's a small complaint.

Snmp monitoring for device health

Pushing out code to devices

Maintaining config compliance

Manage more Cisco devices (nx os)

Real-time alerting on device health

Ease of use, the menu is pretty well organized

Simplifies some network configuration automation

Even easier process to automate network operation

Make the platform more stable, we had a couple of crashes

Assurance

Firmware management

Configuration standardization

Integration of other Cisco productions

Software upgrades

Inventory management

System heath monitoring

Vulnerability management

Vulnerability reporting accuracy

Software upgrade automation

Support of nexus switches

Inventory

PnP

Wifi

Wifi

Visibility

The troubleshooting in the past with the client time line

The issue events

And the health score

It could be nice to have a view or a report for all the AP LAN speeds

Automation

Not sure

Seems like it needs to be show cased a bit more.

Observability

Scalability

Automation

Visual Guidance

More affordable for smaller customers

Don't change the name of the product

GUI Changes (old -> new) are often not great

Onboard new devices using Day 0 templates

Push new configuration to multiple devices through Day N templates

RMA devices

Training. There is a significant learning curve for using Cisco Catalyst Center efficiently

Navigation not intuitive

Remote CLI has too many limitations

Should have SAML integration

Insights

end of life products

Locating SSO settings

Software Upgrades

Assurance

Wireless

Troubleshooting

Alerting in real time like solarwinds

Building template

Define policies

Implement configurations

Multivendor support

Setup and configure

Documentation

Switch and router templates

Image management

Wireless assurance

Initial configuration

ISE integration difficulty

Menu navigation

Monitoring

error reporting

solutions options

wireless integration

training

Love the IOS maintenance

Inventory control

Initial setup took forever

No education on how to use product. Spent a ton f money, but doesn't include how to really use it. Almost worthless. Almost..... definitely not used to its potential.

Patch network devices

Wireless Assurance

Network Inventory

More Assurance Videos and Webinars

Prime to DNA to Cisco Catalyst Center Migration

Deployment

Assurance

Trending

Backups

SWIM - It's made easy and now when it's possible to choose which devices to upgrade in which order on a site, the upgrade does not fail as often.

Network inventory - It's easy to get a good overview of all network devices, and especially the EoS feature is nice.

ZTP - This takes a lot of time and effort to implement. Sometimes the templates are too long to run and you have to do several iterations.

WLC integration - It's a little flaky when you add the WLC to Cisco Catalyst Center. Sometimes after WLC failover or upgrade you have to remove and add it again.

SWIM

Inventory

Analysis and insights

XFSU IOS upgrade

Software Management

Inventory Overview

Integration with Cisco Security

Software upgrades

Config management

Audit

We are using it for short time so I am not aware of any

Assurance to support troubleshooting

Device details

Version control

Timelining

Complicated menu options which makes finding things difficult

License management which has option to open sync’ed smart account

Device details require a lot of clicking through new windows to see everything

Onboard switches and AP’s and apply standard policies

Visualize the network

Push out software updates

Provide monitoring on multiple aspects of the network function

Price

More integration with spaces

Easier to rename claimed devices

Easier to move devices between maps

Easier to move maps within the hierarchy as the hierarchy may not solely be defined by location