Calico Enterprise vs Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller
Calico Enterprise
tigera.ioCisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller
cisco.comSide by side
| Figure | Calico Enterprise | Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | — |
| Free plan | — | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 3 |
| Spec score · Software-Defined Networking Software | 7.6 (#6) | 7.4 (#9) |
| Purpose | Calico Enterprise is a self-managed platform for unified network security and observability in Kubernetes clusters. | Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller provides complete lifecycle management and automation for Cisco MDS and Cisco Nexus deployments across SAN, LAN, and IP fabric for media networking. |
| Support | The pricing page lists enterprise support for Calico Enterprise, and the comparison page identifies its support and maintenance as Standard/Business. | Cisco Solution Support with Software Support Service is included in Cisco Data Center Networking subscriptions and legacy NDFC Smart Licenses, providing Cisco TAC support, knowledge-base access, and software downloads. |
Plans
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller
- Cisco DCN Advantage subscriptionPrice not published
- Cisco DCN Essentials subscriptionPrice not published
- Cisco DCN Premier subscriptionPrice not published
In their own words
Calico Enterprise
Calico Enterprise is a self-managed platform for network security and observability in Kubernetes clusters. It provides pod-to-pod networking within single clusters and across multiple clusters, with data-plane options including eBPF, nftables, iptables, Windows, and VPP. Cluster mesh connects clusters for pod communication and service discovery, while supporting policy enforcement and traffic visibility. Security controls include network- and application-layer policies, DNS policies, egress controls, and workload microsegmentation. It also provides workload-level IDS/IPS, a workload-focused WAF, and DDoS detection and prevention. For observability, Calico combines flow logs with Kubernetes context and offers network topology views, dashboards, alerts, and workload packet capture. Tigera lists support for PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, SOC 2, NIST, CCPA, and custom compliance frameworks, along with continuous monitoring and audit-ready reports. Policy deployment can integrate with CI/CD tools such as ArgoCD and Jenkins. The product supports hybrid deployment and centralized control, with BGP, IP-in-IP, VXLAN, WireGuard, TCP, UDP, SCTP, ICMP, ICMPv6, and HTTP listed as supported protocols.
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller
Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.