Arista CloudVision

Configuration rollback is incredible. It is very easy to rollback a change if you are running an out of band management scenario. Even in band management is good, provided you haven't isolated the device as part of the change. It comes with built in auditing. You can quickly and easily see all changes made for any period of time you would like, or for an individual device. Bug/feature/CVE Management is built right into the product. Rather than having to go dig through some awful spreadsheet in a mere 2-3 clicks you can be looking at everything that pertains to that specific device or level of code. With CVaaS we get the application updates automatically. I've yet to see a disadvantage with the cloud based version of this product.

Easy and intuitive GUI.

The best part of the platform is the Studios feature. It has completely changed how we manage configurations and maintain consistency. We are able to use Arista's validated designs in a consistent pattern across the environment. It also gives us the ability to make company-wide changes with very little manual effort.

A few minor tweaks are always possible and I've seen improvements in the 18 months or so I've been using it. An example would be the time bar. It was easy to get yourself locked into a specific window of time working an issue and not realize it was still in that window as you moved on to the next item. One change that was made was the ability to simply hit the live button to bring you the current window of time. There was a change made in a version where the spinning wheel indicating a change was in progress went away. As simple as that seems, it was a big deal in determining whether or not it was really running with a quick visual. Feedback was given by numerous customers and it came back. I do feel like Topology Manager is perhaps a little lacking. One of the issues we saw was with a sub interface off a 100g interface, it wasn't sure how to handle that. That 100g is provisioned for multiple services some of which are in the VXLAN fabric. It couldn't see how to handle that services differentiation. It may come in time, but that's one that I think could be a little better and help the topology be more reflective of the actual environment.

It is very expensive. The licensing section, integration of procurement orders are sometimes not imported. Not that many report templates are available out of the box.

There is a bit of a learning curve for the advanced features, such as creating your own Studio within CloudVision and knowing how to do everything the right way. So for new engineers it takes some time to get up to speed and fully grasp everything. Moving to the Studios model also requires a significant shift in mindset. For engineers who are used to jumping into the CLI to make quick changes, it takes some discipline to stop and use CloudVision for those changes. It's a good problem because it forces better habits, but it does require a cultural adjustment for the team.