Cisco Intersight Reviews

While it is a very complex solution. We have managed to deploy it for ten data centers across our environment.

It's doing pretty well. We're managing our EdgeX nodes and doing all the upgrades.

It has helped us in many ways. Since our team is only six members and we have ten data centers across the site, it's difficult for us to manage the patching for EdgeX plus the firmware upgrades. Both are very heavy and very critical. Using Intersight with this small team makes our job easy. That's the biggest benefit - the ease of management.

I have had a very good experience. 

It has many great features. 

We enjoy having an inside view of all the data centers and all the EdgeX nodes within a single portal rather than going into the EdgeX connections one by one.

The solution can scale. 

It's a very complex solution.

Sometimes it's lacking upgrades in the UCS, and I have to deal with the firmware from the UCS manager. 

We're now looking towards expansion and adding vCenters in Intersight. We are currently exploring the new features with our partner. Since we have the on-prem version, its features are fewer than the cloud. It would be nice to have more features for the on-prem option. 

There is room for enhancement in a feature called Robo. 

I've been using the solution for almost four years. 

The major challenge for us and for Cisco Intersight is the upgrade process. Sometimes when we ask for the upgrade, we had to have a discussion internally with the team and with our Cisco tech engineer regarding the latest version. The current version for us was 4.52B and we were exploring the idea of moving to 2C, and they recommended going first to 2E. When we asked why they told us that version was very stable and came highly recommended. 

I know there is a difference between the long-term upgrade and the feature upgrade. Sometimes you need the new batches to eliminate any vulnerabilities or fix any bugs.

It's easily scalable. 

Only the system administrators are using the solution. That's six people. 

I'm not sure if there are plans to increase usage right now. 

Regarding support, our tech engineer is always available 24/7. We had one major issue at the beginning of the new year last year. and the tech engineer was with us right away at the time. The issue started at 10:00 PM in Egyptian local time, which means GMT plus two. We were stuck on the issue for almost six or seven hours. He stuck with us and was very professional and handled the job very professionally.

Technical support is always there whenever we need them.

Positive

I have not used a different solution. 

I wasn't there attending to the implementation for Intersight. That said, I managed to deploy the EdgeX nodes and the clusters for the standard and the edge clusters for the standard edge. I have been there to witness how to deploy the extended nodes as well. It's very complex, and it requires lots of technical skills. That said, the process was very enjoyable for me, exploring new tech from Cisco.

You only need two people to deploy the solution - one member of the IT team and one administrator. Typically you want to ensure the person with the most experience is handling the implementation. 

While I'm sure there is an ROI based on the benefits I've seen, I don't have any hard statistics. 

The hyper-converged technology is one of the major technologies right now, especially in consolidating the network and the storage tiers. It relieves us from a lot of pain and a lot of workload regarding the storage tier and network tier, and also the environment for it.

I do not handle the licensing aspect of the solution. 

I have heard of Nutanix and VxRail as other options. We looked into these and after some long discussions chose to instead go with Cisco. We do use a lot of Cisco in our infrastructure. 

We're currently using the EdgeX nodes M5, and the next generation is M6. I really recommend using these servers. It's really solid and actually has very long-term stability.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.