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Cisco Intersight vs CloudStack comparison

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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
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (9th)
CloudStack
Ranking in Cloud Management
8th
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 November 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Cisco Intersight is 1.6%, down from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CloudStack is 2.2%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Intersight1.6%
CloudStack2.2%
Other96.2%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2922069 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Developer
Centralized monitoring has improved visibility and standardizes profiles across multiple sites
One area where Cisco Intersight could be improved is making the interface and troubleshooting workflows more intuitive, especially for users who do not work with the platform every day. Sometimes finding the exact information needed or understanding certain alerts can require navigating to multiple locations. I would also appreciate more actionable recommendations alongside alerts rather than just identifying an issue and leaving the next step entirely to me. Overall, the functionality is strong, but improving usability and making troubleshooting more straightforward would enhance the everyday experience. Apart from usability, Cisco Intersight could benefit from smoother integration with third-party monitoring and IT management tools. Having alerts, performance data, and infrastructure information flow more seamlessly between platforms would reduce the need to switch between different systems. Performance-wise, keeping dashboards responsive when managing larger environments would also be important. I would also like to see more practical documentation, particularly step-by-step troubleshooting guides and real-world examples for automation workflows. These improvements would make the platform more accessible and efficient for everyday operations for new and existing users. Smoother integration with third-party monitoring and IT management tools would allow alerts, performance data, and infrastructure information to flow more seamlessly between platforms. These improvements, including usability enhancements, would make the platform more accessible and efficient for new and existing users.
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."
"Cisco Intersight has valuable features for workflow automation and inventory administration."
"Cisco Intersight makes onboarding much easier; it provides comprehensive hardware monitoring, firmware management, proactive alerts, server inventory, UCS configurations, service profiles for compliance, support integration, automation capabilities, and it offers multi-site visibility with cloud-based access that simplifies management."
"Intersight offers many features that provide great value to companies."
"Cisco Intersight has positively impacted my organization by making it a lot quicker to diagnose or foresee problems that might be coming up, and since it is a technology that is at the heart of our infrastructure, it helps us feel safe."
"The best features Cisco Intersight offers are its policies, which represent a big jump in difference compared to Cisco UCS Manager."
"Cisco Intersight is not just a monitoring dashboard, but its real value comes from bringing infrastructure visibility, management, and automation together in one platform."
"I find the integrations to be the most valuable feature."
"CloudStack is simple to stand up and get off the ground in a hurry. Its centralized design allows for easier troubleshooting when compared to OpenStack. Out of the box, it’s very well suited for white labeling and IaaS."
"CloudStack is simple to stand up and get off the ground in a hurry."
"Valuable features include that it is a user-friendly portal, VPN P2S and S2S possibilities, and it's easy to manage accounts and limits."
"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."
"We increased our IaaS sales by 30% and our deploy time of VM/instances has been reduced from one day to one minute."
"Over the years, we have valued CloudStack for its stability."
"Killer features for me were: support for many hypervisors, ability to match business logic, "everything in one box," available APIs."
"Being able to completely virtualize a customer’s physical data center and migrate any workload into the cloud, and cover the most complex use cases - while offering high performance and true volume QoS, backed by SSD-based managed storage - is what differentiates it from other IaaS solutions."
 

Cons

"The UI and interface are too complex, and I believe visual focus or visual policies must be more easily managed."
"Cisco Intersight should allow for more automation capabilities and be more open."
"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."
"Cisco Intersight needs some improvement in terms of stability. Hybrid cloud management and proper hyperscaler tie-up are other areas for improvement."
"When new features are added, the service becomes full of bugs and does not work."
"More products should be made compatible with iWORK, including more software and hardware."
"It's a very complex solution."
"The product's setup should be easier."
"There are some minor things that can be improved even more such as, perhaps, a bit more polishing on the GUI side to catch up with the API possibilities (which are really extensive) but otherwise nothing critical."
"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."
"The area of Apache CloudStack that could stand the most improvement is the functionality/features around the virtual routers. They can be somewhat cumbersome to deal with at times and are the least stable piece of the product."
"CS has very descriptive logging, and every time I faced issues and asked for help, I didn’t get any reply from the community. Reason? Its quite obvious. CS runs on specific environments, unique to each case. So, unless it is a functional issue of CS, nobody can help you. All issues were resolved by myself going through logs. This is another reason why you need smart enough people to manage it. Engineers must have knowledge of hypervisors and understand how CS interacts with them."
"I would like to see support for native VLAN, and fault-tolerance."
"The zones need to be more stable. During moving and first deployment there were a lot of issues."
"This product needs a lot improvement on the development side. Every new version introduces new bugs. It lacks many features needed for NFV like DPDK, SR-IOV support, etc."
"It would be a good to have more specific error messages within administration processes (e.g. problem with creating new instance)."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's just the standard licensing cost. There are no additional fees."
"Cisco Intersight is not cheap, but it's not the most expensive product either."
"Cisco Intersight has competitive pricing. On a scale of one to five, my rating for its pricing is four."
"The product is cost-effective."
"You can get a free license for monitoring but need to purchase a license if you need extra control."
"​Give an effort to planning. If possible, contract a specialized consultant company for the initial setup and knowledge transfer.​​"
"CloudStack is an open-source product."
"There is no license, so the product is free unless you are buying professional technical support services."
"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."
"It is a 100% open-source solution needing just an Apache license. Also, there are no hidden fees to be paid."
"The Apache CloudStack is open source, so you do not have licenses to purchase."
"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."
"The solution is open-source and free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise12
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cisco Intersight?
Regarding improvements for Cisco Intersight, I would say more third-party integration is needed. At the moment it does have a basic integration of Pure Storage, so I can add my Pure Storage if I ha...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Intersight?
My main use case for Cisco Intersight is to register our Cisco UCS servers and apply profiles to our servers with configurations, firmware deployment automatically, and install the operating system...
What advice do you have for others considering Cisco Intersight?
I would rate Cisco Intersight a nine out of ten. I give it a nine because personally, I think it is one of the best management tools ever. I have worked before with different server vendors and dif...
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: November 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.