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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 most about Cisco Intersight is its manageability."
"The best features Cisco Intersight offers are its policies, which represent a big jump in difference compared to Cisco UCS Manager."
"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 has positively impacted my organization by providing more automation and less manual work, as everything can be automatic after registration to Cisco Intersight and offering more visibility as well."
"Intersight offers many features that provide great value to companies."
"I find the integrations to be the most valuable feature."
"Our organization uses Cisco Intersight since it helps manage our physical infrastructure."
"Overall, I rate Cisco Intersight a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable feature from my point of view is access to environment via console through separate browser window."
"CloudStack manages infrastructure with 2-4 thousands of hosts easily."
"I can recommend CloudStack because there are a lot of large companies using it in production for critical mission systems, and everything else."
"The APIs for automation in CloudStack are excellent; everything is API-driven, and while the API is very rich and hard to learn, you can do everything you would want to do, including everything in the user interface and more."
"If you are looking for a stable product that is easy to install with a lot of documentation, a portal that is very easy to understand and manage and that can be modified, you should use CloudStack."
"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."
"The back-end database design is simple and straight forward. The user interface is designed with external users in mind. Billing is relatively straightforward with this product. Not being restricted to just one hypervisor was nice."
"Multiple types of hypervisor support, multi-zone support, and VPC are great valuable features."
 

Cons

"Cisco Intersight should allow for more automation capabilities and be more open."
"Technical support from Cisco has been mixed. For complex issues, it's challenging to get the right engineer quickly unless you have a specific contract like CX."
"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."
"The solution needs some enhancement in order to build the cluster in two nodes."
"The usability must be better."
"I believe Cisco Intersight's licensing is quite expensive for a public healthcare environment, and I would like to see lower prices for us."
"Regarding improvements for Cisco Intersight, I would say more third-party integration is needed."
"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."
"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."
"The numerous, multi-layered drill-down menus make it difficult to find one simple knob to turn."
"The product could improve by embracing newer technologies like GPU virtualization."
"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."
"It would be a good to have more specific error messages within administration processes (e.g. problem with creating new instance)."
"The area of improvement could be the regionalization aspect. For example, managing multiple regions or HubStack deployments together was not thought out thoroughly in the versions I used. We faced issues around managing the global infrastructure and had to develop around it."
"I would like to see support for native VLAN, and fault-tolerance."
"My teammates have complained about the upgrade. The source code had massive files that had to be merged with our own development to upgrade to the latest version of CloudStack. It was quite painful for them. CloudStack could add some cost management tools to give me some control over the costs associated with the number of users of my services."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's just the standard licensing cost. There are no additional fees."
"The product is cost-effective."
"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."
"You can get a free license for monitoring but need to purchase a license if you need extra control."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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.​​"
"CloudStack is an open-source product."
"It is a 100% open-source solution needing just an Apache license. Also, there are no hidden fees to be paid."
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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.