Data center software subscriptions can…
Streamline operations with Cisco Nexus Dashboard licensing
Unlock seamless management capabilities with your on-premises operational model for Cisco Nexus One. Gain flexibility, center operations. real-time insights, and access to advanced features tailored to your business needs
Streamline segmentation with Cisco ACI licensing solutions
Ensure advanced segmentation, policy control, and scalability. Simplify management while experiencing secure, efficient data-center operations.
Enhance flexibility with Cisco NX-OS licensing options
Enjoy seamless scalability, real-time telemetry, and innovative operational efficiency for modern data-center networks.
Optimize storage networks with Cisco MDS licensing
Transform storage infrastructure. Achieve high performance, scalability, and simplified management for SAN environments.
Nexus Dashboard Licensing
| FEATURE | DESCRIPTION | ESSENTIALS | ADVANTAGE | PREMIER |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fabric Inventory and Provisioning | Create or onboard data-center fabrics using Cisco best-practice templates. View fabric, switch, interface, and endpoint visibility and basic inter-fabric topologies. Compare historical statistics for interfaces, policies, endpoints, device resources and environmental stats. Manage and provision fabric policies supporting multiple architectures including classical LAN, VXLAN EVPN, and VXLAN multi-site connectivity between data-center fabrics. | X | X | X |
| Fabric and Switch upgrades | Stage, validate, and upgrade individual switches or groups, with pre and post validation checks. | X | X | X |
| Security and Segmentation | Fabric-level visibility of endpoint security groups (Cisco ACI) and management of security croups (GPO for Cisco NX-OS) Cisco Live Protect provides real-time security for Cisco Nexus switches using eBPF-based protections to detect and mitigate vulnerabilities and day-0 threats without requiring software upgrades or downtime. | X | X | X |
| Basic Alerts & Correlation | Sev1 Bugs, PSIRTs and End-of-Support Advisories for HW and SW. Detection and correlation of basic anomalies. Provides proactive monitoring, analysis, and remediation recommendations | X | X | X |
| Conformance (SW & HW) | Visibility into software and hardware lifecycles of fabrics. Forecast software and hardware milestones with 18-month outlook. | X | X | X |
| Search & Explore (Basic) | Search for specific objects, switches, and endpoints | X | X | X |
| Platform Integrations | Provide enhanced endpoint visibility through the Cisco ACI Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) Integrations such as VMware vCenter (Cisco ACI / Cisco NX-OS), Red Hat OpenShift (Cisco NX-OS), and integrations to provide additional endpoint metadata including host health and location information. Query Nexus Dashboard with Slack workspace integration. | X | X | X |
| Rules Configuration | Create global and custom anomaly rules to customize handling and alerting | X | X | X |
| Data Export | Email support with Intersight or Local SMTP Servers. Export anomalies to external Splunk and syslog destinations. Leverage Log Collector to gather and upload support logs for devices in the network to Cisco Intersight Cloud for faster support case resolution | X | X | X |
| One Manage | Stretch connectivity and security policies across multiple Cisco NX-OS fabrics managed by different Nexus Dashboard clusters | X | X | X |
| Advanced Alerts & Correlation | Extended set of advanced anomaly detection and correlation includes Best-Practice advisories and Alert-Suspend mode to reduce unnecessary alerts during maintenance activities. Support for Bug Scan to identify software bugs that may be applicable to devices. | X | X | |
| Fabric Capacity and Conformance | Understand scale conformance for multiple fabrics based on the Cisco Verified Scalability Guide, including individual switch-utilization levels of various capacity aspects | X | X | |
| Energy Management | Energy Management, switch and fabric-level power consumption, cost (kWh), and CO2 emissions (management of CO2 emissions requires Cisco Intersight connectivity). | X | X | |
| AI/ML and microburst | Microburst detection and PFC/ECN congestion detection | X | X | |
| DNS Integration | Resolve endpoint hostnames to DNS server using active server query or zone transfer/import | X | X | |
| External traffic trending | Understand how different fabrics send and receive external traffic, and identify peaks when they happen | X | X | |
| Streaming Export | Configure a Kafka message bus receiver for streaming of system or fabric-level anomalies | X | X | |
| Multicast Traffic Stats & Visibility | Groups, Sources, Receivers, where they are connected, statistics including IGMP, PIM, Multicast Routing tables and Forwarding Tables | X | X | |
| Multi-site Orchestration | Ability to stretch connectivity and security policies across multiple ACI fabrics | X | X | |
| Hypershield Switch DPU | Hypershield-integrated Nexus DPU-enabled smart-switch support including analytics | X | ||
| Premier Anomaly & Correlation | Complete set of anomaly detection correlation signatures | X | ||
| Pre-change analysis | Model desired configuration changes using XML/JSON file import or manual configuration definition to understand the potential impact before applying them (CIsco ACI only) | X | ||
| Network Telemetry & Analytics | Flow Telemetry enables flows path visibility and granular details on where latency and packet drops for a given set of sources and destinations. Traffic Analytics can operate in Full mode, providing insights regarding latency, congestion, and drops in the networks, while Compatibility mode provides visibility into congestion pervasively for TCP and UDP traffic. Compatibility mode is ideal for platforms that do not support Full mode due to platform or software version dependencies. Both modes of Traffic Analytics provide the ability to auto-categorize traffic based on well-known and user-defined protocols and ports. Both Flow Telemetry and Traffic Analytics include support for L4-L7 flow patch stitching and visualizations. | X | ||
| AI Job Monitoring | Nexus Dashboard integrates with SLURM to ingest AI job telemetry and provide end-to-end visibility into job completion metrics (JCT), correlating network health and performance issues with their direct impact on AI jobs through topology-aware mapping across the network, servers, and GPUs. | X | ||
| Enhanced Integrations | Configure NAS storage for export and archiving Flow Telemetry records. For granular energy management statistics, integrate with Panduit PDUs for discrete power consumption details. Create powerful integrations with AppDynamics and extend your Splunk Enteprise data lake with native Splunk integration into Nexus Dashboard. | X | ||
| Assurance & Compliance | Real-time and continuous monitoring, analysis, and verification of fabric operations to ensure they function according to business intent and policy compliance. Define communication and configuration compliance rules to be alerted if any rules become violated (Cisco ACI only). | X | ||
| Operations & Troubleshooting | Leverage Delta Analysis to compare the state of a fabric from two different points in time to understand before vs. after changes. Connectivity Analysis enables the ability to validate routing, switching, and security policies and confirm live traffic flows between source and destination endpoints automatically using Embedded Logic Analyzer Module (ELAM) and VXLAN OAM toolsets. Enhanced Search and Explore adds the ability for "Can" queries to validate if two objects (endpoints, security groups, VRFs, etc) can communicate with each other. Any relevant anomalies for the involved objects are includes along with all policy, forwarding, and endpoint details. Policy CAM analyzer gives switch-level views into the consumption of switch resources for security policies (contracts, ACLs/filters) to help operators understand the most- and least-used security policies. | X |
ACI Licensing
| FEATURE | DESCRIPTION | ESSENTIALS | ADVANTAGE | PREMIER |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fabric Management and automation | Inventory management and config, zero-touch provisioning, integrated overlay over IP fabric, API-driven automation, and more | X | X | X |
| Security | Zero-trust policy model, role-based access control, Cisco TrustSec® integration, advanced microsegmentation, and more | X | X | X |
| ACI Multi-Pod | Distributed ACI fabrics | X | X | X |
| Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) Integration | Integrate ACI with VMware, Kubernetes, OpenShift, Red Hat KVM, and Nutanix virtualization platforms | X | X | X |
| Streaming Telemetry | Cisco NetFlow, sflow, SNMP, PTP | X | X | X |
| Ecosystem | Third-party integration through open APIs, Layer 4-7 service integration, and ACI application center | X | X | X |
| Programmability | API - JSON, gRPC, REST | X | X | X |
| ACI Multi-site | Stretch policies across separate ACI fabrics (requires Nexus Dashboard) | X | X | |
| Physical Remote Leaf | Remote deploy leaf switches in branch/smaller sites managed by a primary ACI fabric | X | X |
NX-OS Licensing
| FEATURE | DESCRIPTION | ESSENTIALS | ADVANTAGE | PREMIER |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LAN Enterprise | LAN Enterprise Services license | X | X | X |
| Network Services | Network Services package | X | X | X |
| Security | VXLAN GPO | X | X | X |
| Streaming Telemetry | Hardware Streaming Telemetry Package (Netflow, sFlow, Analytics) | X | X | X |
| Fabric Management & Automation | Management, automation, control, monitoring, and integration for deployments spanning LAN, SAN, and IP Fabric for Media (IPFM) fabrics. (Requires Nexus Dashboard) | X | X | X |
| Programmability | API - JSON, gRPC, REST | X | X | X |
| Routing and switching | BGP, EIGRP, GRE, IS-IS, MSDP, OSPF, EPBR [includes ITD and PBR], PIM, SSM, VRF (non-default), VXLAN BGP EVPN, Microsegmentation, IP Fabric for Media Non-Blocking Multicast, PTP, iCAM, RIP, OFM, NGOAM, and VRRP | X | X | X |
| DCI Overlay / VPN Fabric | SR-MPLS, Layer 3 EVPN over segment routing (SRv6), MPLS Layer 3 VPN | X | X | |
| Tenant Routed Multicast | Multi-tenancy aware multicast forwarding for VXLAN EVPN fabrics | X | X | |
| Intelligent Packet Flow | Dynamic Load Balancing (DLB), Per-packet Load Balancing (PLB), Path-based (WCMP+DLB), Policy based, Static Pinning | X | X | |
| Fabric services features | iCAM, ITD, Smart Channel | X | X | |
| RTP Flow Monitoring | Flow Monitoring for RTP Flows to pinpoint any packet loss | X | X | |
| PTP Flow Monitoring | Flow Monitoring and key statistics for PTP Flows in IP Fabric for Media Deployments | X | X | |
| Multicast NAT | Network Address Translation for Multicast Flows in IP Fabric for Media Deployments | X | X |
MDS Licensing
| FEATURE | DESCRIPTION | ESSENTIALS | ADVANTAGE | PREMIER |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inter-VSAN Routing | MDS Enterprise entitlement | N/A | X | X |
| Quality of service | MDS Enterprise entitlement | N/A | X | X |
| Extended B2B credits | MDS Enterprise entitlement | N/A | X | X |
| Switch-switch and host-switch authentication | MDS Enterprise entitlement | N/A | X | X |
| Diffie-Hellman Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol | MDS Enterprise entitlement | N/A | X | X |
| Port security | MDS Enterprise entitlement | N/A | X | X |
| VSAN-based access control | MDS Enterprise entitlement | N/A | X | X |
| IP Security | MDS Enterprise entitlement | N/A | X | X |
| Fabric binding for open systems | MDS Enterprise entitlement | N/A | X | X |
| Digital certificates | MDS Enterprise entitlement | N/A | X | X |
| Cisco TrustSec® Fibre Channel Link Encryption | MDS Enterprise entitlement | N/A | X | X |
| Nexus Dashboard SAN Management (all features) | MDS Nexus Dashboard Entitlement | N/A | X | X |
| Nexus Dashboard SAN Analytics (all ND features + SAN Insights) | MDS SAN Insights entitlement | N/A | X |
