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Cisco Intersight vs CloudStack comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Intersight
Ranking in Cloud Management
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (10th)
CloudStack
Ranking in Cloud Management
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Cisco Intersight is 1.6%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CloudStack is 2.1%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CloudStack2.1%
Cisco Intersight1.6%
Other96.3%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

HH
Systems Engineer at FNB South Africa
Automation and seamless incident handling transform operational efficiency
I would like AI to be more integrated into Cisco Intersight. It would be great to have a chat session mode AI so that when I am on standby and encountering issues, I could engage with it, much like ChatGPT. For instance, if I need to find commands for UCS Manager, it should provide that information.
Tharun Kumar Reddy Thamatam - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Infrastructure Consultant at Infosys
Achieving seamless infrastructure management with optimized network and user access controls
I believe enhancements could be made in CloudStack, particularly in the management servers. I had the opportunity to collaborate with one of the Apache CloudStack developers, leading to the installation of additional agents for better information retrieval from hypervisors. We implemented configurations, ensuring consistency across hosts and VMs. We also utilized Ansible or YAML files to automate password upgrades during patching activities and database management, showcasing our customization efforts for improvement. For future releases, it would be beneficial if Apache enhanced CloudStack by integrating alerting systems directly. We've had instances where hypervisors experienced overloads without prior alerts, so proactive alerts within the tool would better prepare us for addressing issues swiftly, preventing disruption in business operations. A portal summarizing system metrics alongside alert capabilities would greatly enhance our operational efficiency.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"What I like best about Cisco Intersight is the way it's developing and converging into everything that the cloud has to offer, e.g. it's converging into one platform which is good."
"Intersight is the best solution with the data center, and I like it because of the integration with HashiCorp, Kubernetes, and each cloud, as well as the orchestration of the data center system and integration with Pure Storage, Veeam, HashiCorp, and Umbrella."
"Cisco Intersight is a very effective tool for data center infrastructure management."
"Intersight can validate our environment."
"Scalable portfolio of services for remote device management, with good cloud integration. It's also easy to set up."
"I find the integrations to be the most valuable feature."
"This solution has provided time savings and required fewer people to operate this tool."
"Cisco Intersight has valuable features for workflow automation and inventory administration."
"Cloud computing has improved the way our organization functions."
"CloudStack has greatly helped integrate our existing infrastructure because we manage a massive cloud platform with thousands of VMs and around 1,200 to 1,500 hypervisors."
"Killer features for me were: support for many hypervisors, ability to match business logic, "everything in one box," available APIs."
"The product gives us the ability to orchestrate large virtual environments and is flexible enough to allow us to configure it for what we need. We value the flexibility of the networking feature set as well as the ability to build virtual private clouds."
"Multiple types of hypervisor support, multi-zone support, and VPC are great valuable features."
"CloudStack helped us showcase our features through process visualization and functional solutions."
"In general I would say CS is a stable solution and, in my opinion, it will solve problems with administration of VMs."
"It works, and pretty much always has, and reliability and support for enterprise features, with a multi-tenant interface, makes CloudStack a very compelling solution."
 

Cons

"Cisco Intersight's license cost is very high compared to AWS and Azure solutions, which have lower initiation costs. The high initial cost is a significant concern."
"I do not have notes for improvement."
"When new features are added, the service becomes full of bugs and does not work."
"In the future, the solution needs to plan on an extension to cover a broader range of objects since, at present, there are some Cisco devices within the range of Intersight UCS that it can't manage."
"The product's setup should be easier."
"I would like AI to be more integrated into Cisco Intersight."
"More products should be made compatible with iWORK, including more software and hardware."
"There is a significant issue regarding migration from UCS Manager into Intersight without formatting the Fabric Interconnects (FI), which is problematic in a production environment."
"It would be a good to have more specific error messages within administration processes (e.g. problem with creating new instance)."
"We did encounter issues with stability, and the main issue was secondary storage. When it is not available, XenServers and hypervisors are affected. And CS doesn’t do anything to reboot, or fix. Come to think of it, maybe it shouldn’t, considering their approach – CS just orchestrates everything else on the hypervisor and storage level."
"The number of contributors to this solution is relatively small compared to other solutions. However, if more frequent users of CloudStack contribute to the open-source community, it will significantly enhance the overall community experience and make it more useful for everyone involved."
"From time to time there is a bug in calculating limits of resources for customer domain/account. Maybe it’s a problem with 4.9.2."
"Multi-deployments."
"After Citrix divested CloudPlatform to Accelerite, commercial support was absolutely atrocious."
"It's really hard to delete zones, clusters, datacenters. You need to follow strict rules, which were not properly documented at the time."
"I would like to see support for native VLAN, and fault-tolerance."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You can get a free license for monitoring but need to purchase a license if you need extra control."
"Cisco Intersight has competitive pricing. On a scale of one to five, my rating for its pricing is four."
"Cisco Intersight is not cheap, but it's not the most expensive product either."
"The product is cost-effective."
"It's just the standard licensing cost. There are no additional fees."
"CloudStack is an open source solution, so you don't need to pay anything for it. When our company develops something specially for CloudStack, it is donated to the Apache Software Foundation and provided to anyone that wants to use it."
"CloudStack is an open-source product."
"As far as I know, CS is still free of charge. If you want to pay some money, Citrix Cloud Platform is based on CS, I think. As for hypervisors – everything as usual, you need to pay for VMware and vCenter. As for XenServer, recently they changed the free feature list, so you may need to pay some money to get useful features like XenMotion."
"It is a 100% open-source solution needing just an Apache license. Also, there are no hidden fees to be paid."
"The solution is open-source and free."
"​Give an effort to planning. If possible, contract a specialized consultant company for the initial setup and knowledge transfer.​​"
"The Apache CloudStack is open source, so you do not have licenses to purchase."
"There is no license, so the product is free unless you are buying professional technical support services."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
Construction Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise12
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cisco Intersight?
The firmware management in the S-Series is not as Cisco described when we purchased it. You should be able to manage firmware without bringing the host down, but that is not the case. Unfortunately...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Intersight?
We are a cloud provider serving customers with IaaS.
What advice do you have for others considering Cisco Intersight?
I have experience with B-Series, C-Series, and S-Series equipment. I would recommend the S-Series but not the C-Series. I would rate this solution an eight overall.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CloudStack?
CloudStack is open-source, so there is no cost apart from learning. Billing solutions, if outsourced, come at a moderate cost.
What needs improvement with CloudStack?
Enhancements for CloudStack can focus on integrating more hypervisors, as mentioned regarding current features. We're working on a new feature that will allow for certain limited functions, but ove...
What is your primary use case for CloudStack?
My usual use cases for CloudStack involve an AWS style private cloud or public cloud. I can deploy an AWS style cloud using the open source tool that is CloudStack. The use case depends on the cust...
 

Also Known As

Intersight
Vmops, Cloud.com
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

EXMAR, RapidScale
GreenQloud, Exoscale, TomTom, ASG, PC Extreme, ISWest, Grid'5000
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Intersight vs. CloudStack and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.