Cisco UCS Manager Reviews

I am an executive consultant. I design solutions, sell solutions, install solutions, and provide support. I don't directly work with companies in that respect, and I don't really support them.

One of the valuable features is the user interface base, specifically the C user interface.

There is room for improvement in terms of cost and complexity to set up. It doesn't work straight out of the UCS, so someone who knows what they're doing is needed immediately, and it can be quite confusing. 

Some settings are still fairly well hidden, even the basic ones. Companies don't really understand how long it takes to set up. Also, when changes are pushed, it can take their phone line off the system for twenty minutes to half an hour. Out-of-the-box functionality is an issue, too. 

I know that my company is different, however, the basics are always the same. You do your tap lines, zip lines, and stuff like that, then you get your internal phone line system. That can all be automated and scripted, and it's probably part of the automation process. However, I haven't really seen it.

I have used the solution since the year 2012.

Depending on the complexity of the problem, I rate it about seven out of ten. If there's a really complex problem, I would probably give it a ten since it gets escalated quickly. 

I would rate the scalability at nine out of ten, probably. We have been discussing systems with a total of about 20,000. It's robust.

The customer service isn't ideal. Regarding Cisco tech, they are pretty good.

Neutral

As long as they can afford it, there is a setup cost involved.

Cisco is notoriously expensive, especially compared to its competitors. Avaya is probably one-third to maybe 40% cheaper. However, Cisco is globally renowned, which is why it sells so well. It has been the market leader for a long time, and people are UCS scared of change.

Other information: I am an executive consultant. I design solutions, sell solutions, install solutions, and provide support. I don't directly work with companies in that respect. I don't really support them. The user interface base is the C user interface. There are challenges with cost and complexity to set up. 

Overall, I rate the product eight out of ten.

Positive

Positive

As I am working in a financial institute, we primarily use Cisco UCS Manager for non-core applications, which can be described as tier two applications.

A main feature of Cisco UCS Manager is its reliability, as all of the computing blades are in cluster mode. We experience high availability and can easily add compute resources and beef up the computing solution.

An area for improvement is the memory expansion of these blades, which is very expensive. The pricing aspect should be addressed.

I have been working with Cisco UCS Manager since 2014 through over a decade now.

I rate the stability of UCS Manager as nine out of ten. It is very stable, and no issues have been faced so far.

I rate the scalability of Cisco UCS Manager as seven out of ten. Although it is scalable, the memory modules are expensive.

The technical support of Cisco is very professional and reliable. Whenever we need to log a case, they efficiently diagnose the issue.

Positive

I have compared it with Dell EMC solutions. Cisco UCS is more expensive yet reliable.

The initial setup of UCS Manager is complex due to its integration among integrated components, but it is reliable once deployed.

There were three people involved in the deployment: myself, a subordinate, and a senior engineer from the vendor side.

The licensing cost for Cisco UCS Manager is around four out of ten. 

It is not cost-effective due to its high price, especially regarding memory expansion.

I have evaluated Dell & h3c for comparison with Cisco UCS.

Although Cisco UCS Manager is expensive and has tricky one time configuration, it is reliable. I rate the overall solution eight out of ten.

We mainly use Cisco UCS Manager to integrate and manage our Cisco switches across the building. We also utilize it for network integration. It provides an integrated solution for our Cisco environment, streamlining our operations and managing multiple Cisco devices like switches and routers.

Cisco UCS Manager has made provisioning of new equipment very fast and efficient. It reduces the required workforce, especially for network integration, simplifying management and enhancing the efficiency of our Cisco environment.

The most valuable features of Cisco UCS Manager include the visibility it provides and the ease of identifying issues within the Cisco environment. The general oversight and ease of provisioning for multiple Cisco devices, including switches and access points, are significant advantages.

I would like to see improved visibility into the operating system, enabling us to identify issues directly from the operating system itself. This integration could prevent the need to switch between different software solutions.

I have been using Cisco UCS Manager for approximately two years.

I would rate the stability of Cisco UCS Manager a nine out of ten. We have not encountered significant stability problems.

I would rate the scalability of Cisco UCS Manager a nine out of ten, as there have been no challenges with scalability so far, and we plan to increase the number of users and devices in the future.

I would rate customer service a seven out of ten. While they are generally good, there have been instances where urgent support was not available, particularly for issues outside of Cisco UCS Manager.

Neutral

We have also worked with other vendors, such as Fortinet and Huawei, for security and network space.

The initial setup was complex due to the extensive integration required for our infrastructure. It was straightforward but took about a week due to the integration of multiple devices.

Implementation was conducted internally, using our team to confirm the Cisco switches and other equipment being managed.

Cisco UCS Manager pricing is on the expensive side. I would rate its affordability at three out of ten. It is not very affordable.

Before Cisco UCS Manager, we worked with other products, although Cisco has remained our main vendor for these solutions.

I would recommend Cisco UCS Manager due to its importance in managing Cisco environments, especially for organizations heavily reliant on Cisco products. It serves as a critical addition to the Cisco range.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

I use UCS Manager to create profiles associated with blades, like WLAN numbers and MAC addresses. I also create policies, such as scrubbing policies  and maintenance policies for server removal and maintenance policies. It helps us manage everything.

The best feature is its ability to associate with hardware profiles based on customer requirements.

There is room for improvement in the software part of Cisco UCS Manager. It should be more user-friendly, especially when creating policies.

For example, if I am putting a maintenance policy, the software should be more descriptive and user-friendly, especially when dealing with policies in UCS Manager.

I have been using this solution since 2013. So, I have extensive experience with this solution. So, for the past ten years, I have been using this solution.

It is more robust than other solutions. So, the stability is good. 

Scalability depends on the business needs. It is a scalable product. If I have a banking sector business, I look forward to getting this solution, which is integrated with storage. 

But, if I have a new business, which is in a web environment where we don't have much data, then it is much better because I would require computing power, and not much storage. To compute power, inside the blade, it is much more powerful than other hardware.

Now in business, the users are moving out of Cisco UCS. The upper version of Cisco HyperFlex is now absolute. If I am currently using Cisco UCS, my next target is to go to Cisco HyperFlex hyper-converged infrastructure. But Hyper-converged infrastructure is out of the market. It is the end of life. It is obsolete.

Prior to Cisco, it was like a legacy environment. It was Dell HP server, which is associated with the ESX IV center, typically, Legacy.

In comparison to HP and Dell, the initial setup is very difficult. Because they have moved away from manual deployment, but Cisco UCS Manager is more complex.

In comparison to other solutions, it is expensive. In HP servers, for example, we have HP SIM, and in Dell DXL, there's Dell Open Manager. Cisco UCS Manager is not as familiar with upgrades, maintenance, deployment and manageability.

My recommendation will depend on the nature of the business, the requirements, the full size or midsize of the setup, and the budget. If you have the physical space and data center for hardware deployment, then it involves managing physical hardware and a person for the physical environment. It also includes a layer of virtualization hypervisor, requiring personnel for that, and then network, firewall, and other resources. So, it depends on cost-effectiveness.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. It provides a robust solution for on-premises setups.

My company uses Cisco UCS Manager for managing Cisco UCS Blade and rack server, the physical server, for the virtual environment, Vmware. Suppose you have five hundred blades or more in the organization. It'll be complex to manage individual blades for maintenance purposes. This is where Cisco UCS Manager comes in, as it helps maintain all physical blades in a centralized manner.

What I like most about Cisco UCS Manager is the ease of administration. It also allows the central management of maintenance, installation, and configuration activities. It's easier to set up, maintain, and configure the environment when you're using Cisco UCS Manager.

What's lacking in Cisco UCS Manager is the performance dashboard. If a blade has any performance issues, you should be able to create a dashboard on Cisco UCS Manager. Currently, this feature isn't present, so it's an area for improvement in Cisco UCS Manager.

Cisco UCS Manager has an alert feature, so you can configure alerts when an error occurs, but what's missing is the alert for blade performance issues, such as CPU, memory, or network issues. For example, if the CPU utilization goes beyond eighty or ninety percent, the Cisco UCS Manager should be able to alert you, but that's not available now.

I want to add more chassis to help with scalability in the next release to Cisco UCS Manager. The platform also needs performance monitoring for the hardware.

I've been using Cisco UCS Manager for more than ten years.

Cisco UCS Manager is a stable platform.

You can scale Cisco UCS Manager, but there's a limitation because one Cisco UCS Manager can have twenty chassis, with twenty chassis having eight blades. Hence, there's a maximum of one hundred and sixty blades per chassis. If you want to go beyond that number, you have to get a new Cisco UCS Manager, which means purchasing another license.

Cisco UCS Manager has excellent technical support that's ready to provide support whenever my company needs it. Support is responsive and knowledgeable, so I'm rating it a five out of five.

Cisco has a new solution called Cisco Intersight. It's a cloud solution that has many improved features. It's a good solution, and my company is motivated to use it instead of Cisco UCS Manager.

The initial setup for Cisco UCS Manager wasn't too complex, but it wasn't easy either. Anybody who wants to set it up needs an excellent understanding of Cisco architecture.

On a scale of one to five, my rating for the setup is a three.

The pricing for Cisco UCS Manager is okay for its market, so it's a four out of five for me.

In my company, twenty people use Cisco UCS Manager. As it's a stable environment, whenever there's any maintenance, anyone available to take on the task will handle it. Maintenance is on an individual team basis.

My rating for Cisco UCS Manager is seven out of ten.

My company is a partner of Cisco UCS Manager.

We use Cisco UCS Manager to manage the servers associated with it, monitor or manage firmware upgrades, and push policies. It's like the brain of the UCS system, in which users can log into Cisco UCS Manager and control all the infrastructure below it. All the configurations for servers and Fabric Interconnect can be done by the Cisco UCS Manager. Nowadays, users are opting for a cloud solution instead of using Cisco UCS Manager.

The solution's firmware upgrade has improved our operational efficiency. When one server fails, we can attach the service profile to a new server, which saves a lot of time. We can have a template service profile that can be applied to any number of servers. We just need to clone it and apply it. In case of a vulnerability, we just need to go to the template and change it. It's all policy-driven, which makes the admin's life much easier. Also, it will be consistent across all the infrastructure servers.

The solution's pricing is high and could be reduced. Compared to other systems, memory failure in Cisco UCS Manager is much higher.

I have been using Cisco UCS Manager for six to seven years.

Initially, we faced a lot of memory failure with the solution. After some firmware updates, it's stable overall.

We mainly work with medium and enterprise customers for Cisco UCS Manager. Cisco UCS Manager is scalable enough.

The solution’s technical support is very good.

Positive

The solution’s initial setup is straightforward.

The solution can be implemented by two people in one day.

We need to take a license for each port, which amounts to a big sum.

The solution's SDK and API can be integrated with ServiceNow for ticketing for any purpose. The solution's unified management interface is a central point of management that allows us to manage switches, blades, and storage connectors. One person is enough to maintain the solution.

The speed of the network interface has been 100 G since day one. The network is scalable, and GPU nodes can be added seamlessly. Cisco is claiming to support water cooling in the near future. The solution can be easily integrated with other tools and platforms.

Compared to Dell, Cisco UCS Manager provides straightforward configuration, reusable policies, and flexibility. Dell lacks a proper GUI for configuring everything. Cisco has only one GUI, which allows us to configure everything, including the network server and server profile. Before releasing each model, Cisco should conduct proper testing or engineering validation to ensure that the customer doesn't face any issues initially.

Overall, I rate Cisco UCS Manager a nine out of ten.

From a usability and functionality perspective, Cisco UCS Manager is very good.

Cisco UCS Manager is slightly more complicated to deploy and requires technical expertise that small organizations probably won't have. Cisco UCS Manager is expensive and it could be made cheaper.

Cisco UCS Manager should have a simplified deployment in the sense of not having multiple machines, demilitarized zones, and on-premise options. Also, the ability to configure, maintain, and support could be more intuitive and user-friendly.

The organization has been using Cisco UCS Manager for about a year. I've only joined the organization about three to four months ago.

I rate Cisco UCS Manager a seven or eight out of ten for stability.

The scalability of Cisco UCS Manager is very good. We haven't needed to scale that at any stage. Fifty users are using Cisco UCS Manager in our company and it is not extensively used.

The deployment took about six to eight months.

The deployment of Cisco UCS Manager was done by an integrator.

We haven't seen a return on investment for our company because the use case wasn't properly evaluated at the outset. So it's not that Cisco UCS is bad. I have seen Cisco UCS in other organizations where it's been extensively used, and there has been a return on investment. So this is more just a misaligned project.

Cisco UCS Manager’s annual licensing fee is expensive. The solution and the equipment required to get the functionality going for Cisco UCS Manager are costly. So we've got a host out of a hosted data center, and we have to put it into a demilitarized zone, which adds to the total cost of ownership.

Our usage of Cisco UCS Manager is minimal. We're just using it as a telephony system.

Cisco tends to over complicate all of their solutions. Cisco UCS Manager is not that flexible. Cisco technologies are always cumbersome, and you need a specialist's skills to use their products. That's why we used an integrator to deploy it and couldn't do anything in-house. So, from that perspective, it limits flexibility.

Cisco UCS Manager virtually needs no maintenance. Since it's being deployed, it's pretty robust, which is typical for Cisco. If you implement it correctly, it is stable and resilient.

Before opting for Cisco UCS Manager, do your evaluation upfront properly, and make sure you understand your use case. Also, look at alternatives from the perspective of support and the complexity of deployment. Those were the key areas we probably didn't look at, and as the project went on, we discovered the pitfalls.

Overall, I rate Cisco UCS Manager a seven or eight out of ten.

We are managing servers and the UCS Mini Switch. The company installed a couple of servers and a Blade server for our production traffic. We have this higher production load and a backup solution on site for storing secure, critical data and applications.

It's a redundancy solution for critical banking applications and anything else running on top of the server. You can run any kind of application through redundancy, so it'll be easier to manage on the UCS side.

Five people on my team use UCS Manager, but people on other teams have a different UCS server. We don't use UCS Manager much. We still have a couple of Cisco servers, but we primarily rely on other vendors like Dell and HP. 

Cisco UCS has different layers of security, and you can do multiple installations of your LIAMs on top of the server and Blade. You can install VMware, Windows Server, Hyper-V, etc. 

When we are creating profiles for servers, it would be nice to have the ability to copy features of the profile we created for the previous server, so we don't need to create a new profile for each one. 

I have been using Cisco UCS Manager for two years.

Stability is very good. About 10 out of 10 you can say.

I rate Cisco UCS Manager seven out of 10 for scalability.

Cisco support resolves issues quickly. 

I rate Cisco UCS Manager nine out of 10 for ease of setup. Installing Cisco UCS Manager is pretty straightforward. You add the server to the registry and create a service profile configuration of all your server details like CPU, memory, etc. 

There is a mini-switch between your core switch and UCS switch. The most difficult part is configuring redundancy features on that switch. It takes no more than six hours to configure, but the installation requires more time. You need two people to install and configure the solution.

Cisco provides support for server installation.

Cisco UCS is expensive compared to others. The Cisco UCS Chassis is more expensive than a standalone server, but some companies require standalone servers because of their production load and affordability. You need to pay more if you require more features on the Blade or if you need more ports on the switch.

I rate Cisco UCS Manager seven out of 10.