Centreon vs Cisco UCS Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Centreon
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
11th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (11th), Cloud Monitoring Software (12th)
Cisco UCS Manager
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
29th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2024, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Centreon is 3.2%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco UCS Manager is 1.7%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
Unique Categories:
Network Monitoring Software
3.5%
Cloud Monitoring Software
6.4%
No other categories found
 

Featured Reviews

Leandro Pereira Rodrigues - PeerSpot reviewer
May 8, 2023
The dashboards help to improve our visibility and ability to proactively ensure the right data is available at the right time
Centreon's dashboard is good. Centreon's dashboard provides a single view of all our customers. When there is a problem, Centreon notifies us and works with us to resolve it quickly. Centreo's dashboards help to improve our visibility and ability to proactively ensure the right data is available at the right time which is important. We use Centreon's plugin packs to communicate with our telecom locations in Brazil when the host does not have Centreon integrated. Centreon's ready-to-use connectors and integrations are essential because they provide a comprehensive overview of our organization, which allows us to quickly resolve client issues. Centreon helps me organize our hosts by stage and monitor our clients. Centreon is the best for helping monitor our IT infrastructure from cloud to edge and providing holistic visibility. Centreon helps us align our IT operations with business objectives by identifying problems and resolving them quickly and permanently. Centreon helps us measure service performance by modeling IT service maps for business-critical IT workflows and metrics. This allows us to see the hierarchy and discover problems. Centreon is a valuable and important tool for addressing these issues. Centreon helps to consolidate all alerts, KPIs, and business maps as well as manage metrics across domains. We can seamlessly integrate with the client's network.
NE
Dec 20, 2022
The solution is agile, stable, scalable, and has good support
There are quite a few components when it comes to operating servers, and the process has to be done in a sequence. If UCS provided a functionality to set up all of my sequences in one go, for example, I want to apply this piece of software now, and once this is done, I want to apply this piece of software, it would be great. I want to be able to schedule multiple sequential updates in one go. Also, I've been trying the solution on a mobile device, and it doesn't work that great. They could probably do with redesigning the interface so it works for different device sizes and resolutions.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is decentralized, which is better, because you can reduce the load from a single system. Also, you get a better view because it's more independent. Then, for the management, it's nice because they have one central system. With that, they can manage all the other systems, as well. This means they don't have to configure each system by system. They can configure it from one single interface."
"We have all our tickets inside Centreon in real-time and can monitor a lot of ELP and CLN in real-time for application purposes."
"For servers and for applications, it was very, very efficient."
"E-mail alert notifications are valuable."
"The single-pane view provides us a view of all of our network infrastructure, and it is one of the most important tools that we use to see the status of our customers' networks."
"I can't point to one valuable feature. All of Centreon is good."
"The most important feature is that it permits us to receive alarms if there is an incident within the infrastructure. The feature I love the most is the reporting feature, the MBI (Monitoring Business Intelligence) which permits us to send advanced reports to our customers in PDF format or in Doc format. We also deploy Centreon Map which gives our customers intuitive views of their information system."
"The downtimes feature is helpful. If the ISP is doing some maintenance on its network, we have the option to put downtime on the devices or the services, so we won't get any false alarms."
"Technical support has been good so far. We haven't had any issues with them. We're satisfied with the level of service they provide our company."
"When one server fails, we can attach the service profile to a new server, which saves a lot of time."
"Ease of management is certainly the most valuable feature in this product."
"The most valuable features are flexibility and management."
"Cisco UCS Manager is overall a good package because it gives a GUI interface and a CLI."
"The hardware is very powerful and it is a stable solution."
"From a usability and functionality perspective, Cisco UCS Manager is very good."
"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."
 

Cons

"Currently, we have to go through all of the different templates and take a look at how the template is configured, and how specific parameters may change across different templates with different precedents, megatons, etc. It's a lot of work and involves trial and error. I wish they could simplify the process."
"Improvements are needed in the area of cloud monitoring, as that's a newer feature."
"Centreon supports officially 10,000 services per poller. That is not much for larger customers, because this limit is reached very quickly. We use it with three times the limit without any problems, but Centreon says, "Okay, we are only supporting it with 10,000 services." We are aware that increasing the limit has different impacts because they need to support it. However, for most customers, it would be be very good if they could increase the limit of services."
"The problem with the reporting is you have to configure the report, and after that, you will have the same report every month, every week, every day. You have to sync it in order to have a great report."
"I would like them to improve their documentation. When I faced some issues, I was looking for more documentation on the Internet. There is official documentation on Centreon's website, which sometimes is useful. Sometimes it is not very useful, as you cannot find the information or enough examples of configuration. The answer for me was to contact the support, who helped me, but I was not able to find all the information by myself on Centreon's website. A Centreon community or blog would be helpful."
"I went through a few things with them to do with Centreon MAP, to do with active polygons, being able to draw an area and make that active. The functionality was in the older version of Centreon MAP and in the new version, which was a complete rewrite, they dropped it."
"Centreon introduced network discovery in the most recent update. However, it doesn't work well. Our previous monitoring tool could discover networking equipment on the network and identify the relationships between the devices."
"I think Centreon's security could be improved by leveraging AI. That's where things are heading in the industry."
"The integration with other solutions could be better. I think Cisco can only integrate using Intersight. There is a second interface available as a SaaS platform, in the cloud, or on-premise. It's based on the Redfish protocol, which is standard for all the B-series servers in the market. We can integrate other solutions using API."
"The automation within the solution needs to be simplified."
"The pricing can be better."
"The solution's pricing is high and could be reduced."
"The installation and upgrade sytems need to be improved."
"Cisco UCS Manager is not a scalable solution because once you have 160 blades, it cannot be expanded more."
"Getting a CLI report on routers, switches, or any other CLI configuration device is difficult."
"Cisco UCS Manager should have a simplified deployment in the sense of not having multiple machines, demilitarized zones, and on-premise options."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If you need basic monitoring without dashboards, just monitoring, the plugins are very useful and really cheap. If you want a more complete solution with dashboards and reporting, the EMS solution is great and it is not that much more expensive. It's a good value. Really good."
"It is perfect and very cheap if you are a little company or startup. After that, it is quite expensive for a big company."
"Centreon is an open source product. Thus, there is no need for licensing."
"It's quite expensive when you use the Enterprise version, but if you compare it to other providers, it's more like a middle-of-the-line product. It's always good to have a price that is lower, but I would say the price is okay because we get very good support and if we have any other issues we can always contact them. There has never been a time when I didn't get help from them."
"The pricing works out well for us, given our environment and where we are."
"The pricing starts at around 5000 euro. However, this depends on: Your environment, the size of your host, how many hosts you have, how many remote pollers you have, and if you want to use the Monitoring Business Intelligence or Centreon MAP functionalities."
"Their licensing model is really easy. You have one license and you have access to all the features, compared to other tools where you have to purchase add-ons."
"The solution is very effective, despite the low price."
"You buy the hardware and then you get Cisco UCS Manager for free."
"With product discounts which can be negotiated, the product is a great value."
"Cisco UCS is more expensive than Dell and HP, but it is more reliable. I see less issues and it's quite stable."
"We need to take a license for each port, which amounts to a big sum."
"Cisco UCS Manager’s annual licensing fee is expensive."
"The pricing for Cisco UCS Manager is okay for its market, so it's a four out of five for me."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Government
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
34%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Centreon?
Centreon's most valuable features are preventative maintenance and cost-efficiency. Everything is monitored, and we get a log before the system fails. We have an opportunity to fix the issue and av...
What needs improvement with Centreon?
Prometheus provides the ability to automate the backup of my infrastructure. This automatic backup capability allows me to integrate it into GitLab for versioning, among other functionalities. Thus...
What do you like most about Cisco UCS Manager?
When one server fails, we can attach the service profile to a new server, which saves a lot of time.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco UCS Manager?
We need to take a license for each port, which amounts to a big sum.
What needs improvement with Cisco UCS Manager?
The solution's pricing is high and could be reduced. Compared to other systems, memory failure in Cisco UCS Manager is much higher.
 

Comparisons

 

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Airbus, Bollore, BT, Canal Plus, Kuehne Nagel, Limagrain, LVMH, Oberthur Technologies, Orange, Darty, Addax Petroleum, Plastic Omnium, Auchan, Valeo, Saint Gobin, Clarins, Hugo Boss, JC Decaux, French Government (Defense, Justice, Environment, Agriculture), OptiComm, Thales, Zeiss.
Management Science Associates, Peak 10, Virtual Consulting Professionals
Find out what your peers are saying about Centreon vs. Cisco UCS Manager and other solutions. Updated: June 2024.
787,779 professionals have used our research since 2012.