Cisco Catalyst Center vs ZStack
Cisco Catalyst Center
cisco.comZStack
zstack.ioSide by side
| Figure | Cisco Catalyst Center | ZStack |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 2 | 2 |
| Spec score · Virtualization Management Software | 7.9 (#10) | 8.1 (#7) |
| API | The platform exposes northbound REST APIs for discovery, inventory, topology, provisioning, assurance, and other network operations. | The product provides a native RESTful API and documentation for development with HTTP-supported languages. |
| Deployment | Cisco describes hardware and virtual appliance deployments, including current guides for VMware ESXi and Ubuntu KVM. | The download page offers ZStack Cloud installation files, a high-availability suite, historical versions, images, and SDKs. |
| Founded | 1984 | 2015 |
| Headquarters | San Jose, California, United States | Shanghai, China |
| Integrations | Cisco documents integrations with ISE, ThousandEyes, Webex, Microsoft Teams, ServiceNow, Infoblox, and BlueCat, plus generic APIs for other ITSM and IPAM systems. | ZCF can manage public-cloud resources and work with platforms such as Alibaba Cloud; its network virtualization is based on OVN/OVS. |
| Security | Catalyst Center supports FIPS 140-2-compliant cryptography modules, and Cisco recommends deploying it behind a firewall on a private internal network. | ZStack's security solution lists virus protection, access control, intrusion detection and prevention, virtual patching, integrity monitoring, and log auditing. |
| Support | Cisco says Catalyst and Cisco DNA software subscriptions include embedded software support and downloads; opening a support case requires a Cisco Service Contract. | The company says it provides product and service support and lists sales and contact email addresses on its site. |
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.
ZStack
ZStack Cloud is self-hosted infrastructure software for managing compute, networking, and storage in data centers. The product range spans private cloud, virtualization, AI infrastructure, hyperconverged infrastructure, storage, networking, container cloud, and multi-cloud management. ZCF combines compute, storage, networking, containers, and security in a software-defined private-cloud platform with a unified portal, operations, and identity management. It manages hosts, disks, images, and snapshots, and supports scheduling and elastic scaling. ZStone provides block, file, and object storage; Zaku manages Kubernetes clusters and containers alongside virtual machines. ZStack Cloud Enterprise integrates with Alibaba Cloud and offers a RESTful API, backup and recovery options, high-availability policies, and a UI migration service for mainstream Windows and Linux cloud hosts. Listed free plans provide full features for three months for ZStack ZSphere or one year for ZStack Cloud. ZStack describes its products as enterprise infrastructure, including for private clouds in organizations' own data centers. ZLR enterprise disaster recovery is marked as coming soon.