Cisco DNA Software for Switching: Picking a tier

Cisco DNA Software for Switching is available in two tiers:

Let’s dive into the use cases that can be solved within each tier so you can determine what’s right for you.

Cisco DNA Software for Switching: Picking a tier

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Cisco DNA Software for Switching is available
in two tiers:

Let’s dive into the use cases that can be solved within each
tier so you can determine what’s right for you.

Cisco DNA Essentials

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Cisco DNA Essentials enables the essential capabilities to manage your network, including networking automation. For instance, Network Plug and Play automates the process of installing or upgrading software images and installing configuration files on Cisco devices that are deployed in a network for the first time. It reduces manual tasks required to scale the network’s capacity. Software Image Management (SWIM) automates software upgrades and controls the consistency of image versions. The Cisco Local Area Bonjour protocol is a zero-configuration solution that simplifies network configuration and enables communication between connected devices, services, and applications. Using Bonjour, you can discover and use shared services with minimal intervention and configuration. Cisco IOS Embedded Event Manager (EEM) is a powerful and flexible subsystem that provides real-time network event detection and onboard automation. It gives you the ability to adapt the behavior of your network devices to align with your business needs.

Network Site Design and Device Provisioning allows you to design your wired network for proper coverage and maximize throughput. You can provision wired network appliances with the proper setting to maximize performance.

Another great feature in Essentials is Full Flexible NetFlow, which allows you to get the pulse of your network by collecting statistics for each network transaction. Your devices can generate anonymized information about packet movements in the network (source and destination, size, etc.) Full Flexible NetFlow adds a few more pieces of data to it, allowing different monitoring and troubleshooting tools to be even more precise. Full Flexible NetFlow is a data source that, when analyzed, can prevent network downtime and security breaches.

An important aspect of effective network management is visibility—it’s impossible to manage what you can’t see. With Cisco DNA Essentials, you get access to a health dashboard that gives a high-level overview of the health of every network device and client on the network, wired or wireless, Cisco or Meraki®.

Cisco DNA Essentials

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It’s important to note that some of these features are enhanced through Cisco DNA Center, our powerful network controller and management dashboard. What if you do not have a Cisco DNA Center Appliance? You can still take advantage of the features that do not require the appliance:

Cisco DNA Advantage

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Cisco DNA Advantage is our premium tier that gives you the advantage of the latest innovative features. All the features mentioned in the Cisco DNA Essentials section are included in Advantage. In addition, Cisco DNA Advantage includes LAN automation, which helps simplify network operations, free IT staff from
time-consuming and repetitive network configuration tasks, and create a standard error-free underlay network.

The Advantage tier also includes several AI-driven features, such as AI Network Analytics and AI Endpoint Analytics. Find anomalies instantly with complex event processing using cloud-based AI/ML and machine reasoning for root cause analysis. Guided remediation allows for single-click resolution, allowing machine reasoning automation to close the loop. AI Endpoint Analytics identifies and checks the compliance of endpoints by analyzing traffic flow behavior in real time. It adjusts the endpoint trust score and automatically assigns new policies corresponding to the trust level to mitigate any threat at the source. Cisco Secure Network Analytics with Encrypted Traffic Analytics (ETA) identifies endpoint security threats, like malware and data breaches, that are encrypted. Note that ETA requires Secure Network Analytics (formerly Stealthwatch) licenses, which can be purchased a la carte or with the Cisco DNA Expansion Pack.

You can enable Cisco SD-Access with the Advantage tier. It provides visibility-based, automated, end-to-end segmentation to separate user, device, and application traffic without the need to redesign the underlying physical network. Cisco SD-Access automates user-access policy so organizations can make sure the right policies are established for any user or device with any application across the network. Cisco Identity Services Engine (ISE) licenses are required for
SD-Access; these can be purchased a la carte or with the Cisco DNA Expansion Pack.

Cisco DNA Advantage

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One of our latest additions is Cisco DNA Spaces for Smart Buildings. The integration of IoT gateways on the Cisco Catalyst 9000 switches with Cisco DNA Spaces creates a foundation for managing smart buildings by democratizing the IoT ecosystem. Smart building application providers can now interface with hundreds of different types of device vendors and app partners by using Cisco APIs to extract telemetry from the devices through Cisco DNA Spaces. The IoT gateways running on the Catalyst 9000 family—the most widely deployed network access in the world—interpret and normalize telemetry from all the various endpoints in a smart building ecosystem, feeding the information to Cisco DNA Spaces. This democratized IoT platform relieves smart building application providers from the responsibility of building integrations to thousands of different devices. Cisco DNA Spaces Extend is a powerful end-to-end, indoor location services cloud platform that extends platform capabilities via integrations and partner applications. It includes Cisco DNA Spaces See, which provides business insights such as behavior metrics, location analytics, and more.

IPsec is the latest addition to Cisco DNA Advantage. Hardware IPsec support has been added for a few of the Catalyst 9000 switches (the Catalyst 9300X and Catalyst 9400X SUP-2/2XL supervisors). It supports Internet Key Exchange (IKE) v2 standard-based Layer 3 hardware encryption for secure edge connect (>100G). It enables high-bandwidth, secure transport between sites or from site to cloud.

Cisco DNA Advantage

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For the Catalyst 9300 and 9400 Series switches, Cisco ThousandEyes Network and Application Synthetics and Cisco DNA Spaces are available. Note that ThousandEyes integrations can be added to other Catalyst platforms, such as the 9500 and 9600 Series, that support application hosting. These integrations are not available on the Catalyst 9200 Series. ThousandEyes visibility provides you with immediate insight into the digital experience of campus users connecting to any application, spread across multicloud deployments. ThousandEyes also require additional licenses. The ThousandEyes product ID with a default value of 1 is included in Cisco DNA Advantage at no additional cost.

Application hosting infrastructure provides the flexibility to host Cisco signed or third-party applications on Catalyst 9000 switches as Docker containers to meet business-relevant use cases such as running administrative or security tools without an additional physical or cloud-based virtual server. Collecting and analyzing data at the edge empowers you to make local decisions, reducing the latency and bandwidth of the network.

As in Cisco DNA Essentials, it’s important to note that some of these features are enhanced through Cisco DNA Center, our powerful network controller and management dashboard. Cisco DNA Advantage is the ideal choice for those who want to experience Cisco’s full breadth of innovation and latest features.

Cisco DNA Advantage

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What if you do not have a Cisco DNA Center Appliance? You can still take advantage of the features
that do not require the appliance:

For a full list of features, please see the Switching Feature Matrix.

Software support for switching

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With your Cisco DNA software subscription, you will receive embedded Cisco Software Support Service (SWSS), which covers 24x7x365 Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) support, software release updates, advanced support analytics, and designated service management. This support is valid only for the Cisco DNA software subscription stacks (Cisco DNA Essentials and Advantage).

For full hardware support, including the network stack (Network Essentials and Advantage), customers will require Cisco Smart Net Total Care® for 24x7x365 Cisco TAC support, proactive security and product alerts, and product lifecycle management. An additional option for hardware support is Solution Support for your multivendor Cisco solution environment.

Please see the Catalyst Switching Product Bulletin for full support details.