Cisco Catalyst Center vs Nornir
Cisco Catalyst Center
cisco.comNornir
nornir.readthedocs.ioSide by side
| Figure | Cisco Catalyst Center | Nornir |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 2 | 1 |
| Spec score · Data Center Networking Solutions | 7.8 (#4) | 7.5 (#8) |
| Spec score · Network Automation Software | 7.8 (#10) | 7.3 (#17) |
| Integrations | Cisco documents integrations with ISE, ThousandEyes, Webex, Microsoft Teams, ServiceNow, Infoblox, and BlueCat, plus generic APIs for other ITSM and IPAM systems. | Community plugins support NAPALM, Netmiko, NetBox, Ansible inventories, Scrapli, Nautobot, and other systems and libraries. |
| Support | Cisco says Catalyst and Cisco DNA software subscriptions include embedded software support and downloads; opening a support case requires a Cisco Service Contract. | Official support channels include GitHub issues and discussions, the OpsMill Discord #nornir channel, and a monitored Network to Code Slack channel. |
Plans
Cisco Catalyst Center
- Cisco DNA AdvantagePriced on request
- Cisco DNA EssentialsPriced on request
In their own words
Cisco Catalyst Center
Cisco Catalyst Center has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
Nornir
Nornir is a free, open-source Python automation framework for managing inventory and dispatching tasks to network nodes and devices. It is used directly from Python: inventories contain hosts, groups, and defaults, while reusable tasks accept a Task and return a Result. The included ThreadedRunner runs tasks across hosts with threads and defaults to 20 workers. Plugins cover inventories, transforms, connections, runners, and processors, with community integrations for NAPALM, Netmiko, NetBox, Ansible inventories, Scrapli, Nautobot, and other systems. Nornir supports configuration management, workflow orchestration, and network testing across platforms including Cisco IOS, Cisco NX-OS, Arista EOS, Junos, and Palo Alto PAN-OS. OpsMill describes parallel writes, idempotence, and dry-run safety. The package is published on PyPI and installs with pip; the current package requires Python 3.10 or later. It is self-hosted under Apache-2.0.