Cisco UCS Manager Reviews

We use Cisco UCS Manager to manage the servers associated with it, monitor or manage firmware upgrades, and push policies. It's like the brain of the UCS system, in which users can log into Cisco UCS Manager and control all the infrastructure below it. All the configurations for servers and Fabric Interconnect can be done by the Cisco UCS Manager. Nowadays, users are opting for a cloud solution instead of using Cisco UCS Manager.

The solution's firmware upgrade has improved our operational efficiency. When one server fails, we can attach the service profile to a new server, which saves a lot of time. We can have a template service profile that can be applied to any number of servers. We just need to clone it and apply it. In case of a vulnerability, we just need to go to the template and change it. It's all policy-driven, which makes the admin's life much easier. Also, it will be consistent across all the infrastructure servers.

The solution's pricing is high and could be reduced. Compared to other systems, memory failure in Cisco UCS Manager is much higher.

I have been using Cisco UCS Manager for six to seven years.

Initially, we faced a lot of memory failure with the solution. After some firmware updates, it's stable overall.

We mainly work with medium and enterprise customers for Cisco UCS Manager. Cisco UCS Manager is scalable enough.

The solution’s technical support is very good.

Positive

The solution’s initial setup is straightforward.

The solution can be implemented by two people in one day.

We need to take a license for each port, which amounts to a big sum.

The solution's SDK and API can be integrated with ServiceNow for ticketing for any purpose. The solution's unified management interface is a central point of management that allows us to manage switches, blades, and storage connectors. One person is enough to maintain the solution.

The speed of the network interface has been 100 G since day one. The network is scalable, and GPU nodes can be added seamlessly. Cisco is claiming to support water cooling in the near future. The solution can be easily integrated with other tools and platforms.

Compared to Dell, Cisco UCS Manager provides straightforward configuration, reusable policies, and flexibility. Dell lacks a proper GUI for configuring everything. Cisco has only one GUI, which allows us to configure everything, including the network server and server profile. Before releasing each model, Cisco should conduct proper testing or engineering validation to ensure that the customer doesn't face any issues initially.

Overall, I rate Cisco UCS Manager a nine out of ten.

From a usability and functionality perspective, Cisco UCS Manager is very good.

Cisco UCS Manager is slightly more complicated to deploy and requires technical expertise that small organizations probably won't have. Cisco UCS Manager is expensive and it could be made cheaper.

Cisco UCS Manager should have a simplified deployment in the sense of not having multiple machines, demilitarized zones, and on-premise options. Also, the ability to configure, maintain, and support could be more intuitive and user-friendly.

The organization has been using Cisco UCS Manager for about a year. I've only joined the organization about three to four months ago.

I rate Cisco UCS Manager a seven or eight out of ten for stability.

The scalability of Cisco UCS Manager is very good. We haven't needed to scale that at any stage. Fifty users are using Cisco UCS Manager in our company and it is not extensively used.

The deployment took about six to eight months.

The deployment of Cisco UCS Manager was done by an integrator.

We haven't seen a return on investment for our company because the use case wasn't properly evaluated at the outset. So it's not that Cisco UCS is bad. I have seen Cisco UCS in other organizations where it's been extensively used, and there has been a return on investment. So this is more just a misaligned project.

Cisco UCS Manager’s annual licensing fee is expensive. The solution and the equipment required to get the functionality going for Cisco UCS Manager are costly. So we've got a host out of a hosted data center, and we have to put it into a demilitarized zone, which adds to the total cost of ownership.

Our usage of Cisco UCS Manager is minimal. We're just using it as a telephony system.

Cisco tends to over complicate all of their solutions. Cisco UCS Manager is not that flexible. Cisco technologies are always cumbersome, and you need a specialist's skills to use their products. That's why we used an integrator to deploy it and couldn't do anything in-house. So, from that perspective, it limits flexibility.

Cisco UCS Manager virtually needs no maintenance. Since it's being deployed, it's pretty robust, which is typical for Cisco. If you implement it correctly, it is stable and resilient.

Before opting for Cisco UCS Manager, do your evaluation upfront properly, and make sure you understand your use case. Also, look at alternatives from the perspective of support and the complexity of deployment. Those were the key areas we probably didn't look at, and as the project went on, we discovered the pitfalls.

Overall, I rate Cisco UCS Manager a seven or eight out of ten.

I work for a service provider and we deploy this product for our customers. This is a tool to manage Cisco UCS devices: data servers, networking devices, or whatever Cisco produces under the UCS umbrella. 

If I wasn't using Cisco UCS Manager as a centralized console, I would be managing each and every server individually. UCS Manager gives me the ability to manage them all through a single piece of software.

I can deploy something in my 50-odd servers all in one go, in parallel, whereas if I was to do that individually, it could be a nightmare. I look at a single pane of glass to see how all of my hardware is doing.

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.

I have been using this solution for around eight years.

I rate the stability as an eight or nine out of ten. It's very stable.

I would rate the scalability as an eight out of ten. It's quite scalable. The solution is mostly used by the server administrators and network administrators. 

Cisco's tech support is a ten out of ten. They know their job well. 

Before, when we were working on Dell or HP servers, we would have to use individual remote management software for every server. HP OneView came in when Cisco UCS did. They're a competitor of Cisco UCS that also offered centralized management, but they were not as good. They could never do what Cisco UCS could do in terms of simplification and ease of use.

The setup is quite difficult. It's not a cake walk. I would rate it as a five out of ten. 

The deployment time really depends on the size. For the enterprise level, it takes a couple of days to do a complete Cisco UCS setup. However, if we were to just install the UCS Manager as a software, then it would take an hour or two.

I work for a managed service provider. For small customers, we get an expert in there and use an external person within the service provider to help. For large customers, we have employees who already have that expertise.

The staff required for deployment or maintenance depends purely on the size of the deployment. You could do it with one or two people or you could have a big team.

If you were using, for example, HP hardware, you would have more hardware faults and you'd be spending time having the parts replaced. Even though they might be under warranty, it's still a waste of time and tech efforts to have the parts replaced. Whereas with UCS, I save that time because I hardly ever see my good UCS setup having hardware failures.

Cisco UCS is more expensive than Dell and HP, but it is more reliable. I see less issues and it's quite stable. They don't do component pricing, so you get everything you need in a bundle. 

This solution is stable, agile, scalable, and Cisco provides good support.

My advice to somebody looking into this solution is to spend good time in designing the setup in terms of architecture. Have a good data center design architect to make sure they design a good solution. Take the setup slow because that's where you need to spend most of your time. When your setup is good and well-documented, it will make the admin's job easier.

I rate this solution as a seven out of ten.

The interface is ergonomic and native. We can use UCS Manager to do all the configurations for the servers, including storage, networking, and all the other components we need inside the fabric. It's simple and flexible. 

Another nice feature is the inventory view of the system. It has an excellent dashboard for all the networks and network storage, such as SAN and VLAN, and the server chassis. It gives you a topology of all your solutions, which is helpful when troubleshooting. For example, when there is an issue in your chassis, you can see it in the dashboard. 

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. 

Cisco is somewhat inflexible. It's not full HTML or XML. It uses a Java-based language, so you need a browser that supports Java. Intersight has a full web interface, and it's open to other systems with the API. It can just generate API from the side of other solutions. For example, Splunk and SIEMs can integrate with UCS via Intersight.

I have been using UCS Manager for 14 years.

UCS Manager is straightforward to set up. The configuration is simple and it's much easier to deploy than other solutions on the market. UCS Manager is on-premise, but Cisco Intersight is a cloud-based solution. The initial setup takes about an hour, but we need to set up the system and configure the connections to the LAN, SAN, etc. 

I rate Cisco UCS Manager five out of 10. It's a good solution because it's unified. It's not separate components in the architecture. For example, in other solutions, we have a fabric connecting the LAN switches, a Zion input-output module, and other subscriptions between the chassis and the LAN switch.

Cisco UCS Manager helps us manage all the blades so we can apply quality to templates. Recently, we have installed VMware vCenter from where we manage it. Cisco UCS Manager gives us control of all the blades with a maximum of 160 blades in a single UCS Manager. From there we can manage all the hardware related issues, like upgrades.

Cisco UCS Manager is a simple solution. Their technical support is good because whenever we need to generate a technical log, we can generate it from the console itself. It gives ease of management. Cisco UCS Manager is overall a good package because it offers a GUI interface and a CLI. We use Cisco UCS PowerTool to manage through.

In terms of what can be improved, the help dashboard could. Usually, we use vCenter. If I go to an option called Performance Monitoring, it gives us metrics in real-time.

The performance dashboard should be out in front of the UCS Manager - as soon as you log in you should see the dashboard. That should be improved. Another thing is the inventory management dashboard. Inventory is like a configuration database. So we should also be able to pull all the details which can give answers so we do not wonder about the HCI data.

Also, scalability could be improved in this solution.

Lastly, it should be more user-friendly because Cisco is a bit of a complex solution. So we are running the VMware environment and it has added capabilities of management.

Mostly it is stable. Sometimes when we upgrade there's a bug or something like that. Then we involve Cisco for the technical support and they help. I've been always grateful because whenever we need them, they are always available.

Cisco UCS Manager is not a scalable solution because once you have 160 blades, it cannot be expanded more. It has a limit of a maximum of 20 chassis which can hold up to 160 blades. Then, if we need 161 blades, we have to install another Cisco UCS Manager to manage it. That is not expandable. If you have a large volume of blades to support, like 1000 blades, we'd have to divide 1000 by 160 and that will be the number of UCS Managers in our environment.

I've been in touch with them. They are very good at the technical level.

The initial setup is straightforward and not so complex.

I think it is a 20 minute job to mount UCS Manager.

I implemented it myself.

Now people have many more options. If you're talking about HCI, Cisco has it. They have their own product called Cisco HyperFlex. Though if you are looking for a single short solution then you probably will not find it here.

On a scale from one to 10, I would rate Cisco UCS Manager a seven.

Our primary use case for this solution is to help us manage our infrastructure and reduce time and effort for these tasks.

Right now it has improved only some things as we need to upgrade for additional functionality.

What would be the most valuable features for us are things we can't even work with yet. We work with an older version of the product that cannot do some things that we need. We can't install the next version because we cannot find great local support assistance for Cisco.

So, instead of using these features through Cisco, which is eventually what we want to do, we blend in with other solutions like Nutanix. The upgrade in Nutanix is very easy and doesn't require downtime. But with Cisco, we have already products and services in the server. We can't afford the downtime that it would take to make the upgrade and we can't find anyone professional to assist us with the problem at this point. 

If there were a way to make the upgrade process better, it would be great. Our most important issue right now is to resolve the installation barrier so we can use the product features fully. We needed to phase in new hardware and try again with Cisco HyperFlex M5.

Also if we had one interface, it would solve some operating issues. If we can control all devices from one interface, I think it would help a lot.

The solution itself is very stable.

I think this product is very scalable. We have maybe 50 or 60 users right now working with SAP applications like S/4 HANA and it's working well for now. For now, we do not have immediate plans to scale usage as far as staff, but we are investing in new hardware. This will allow us to make any upgrades before we put the products into production. We can do the upgrade with no downtime no problems.

The system for technical support is working well, but I've opened more than five or six technical support issues for HyperFlex. So it's very good for response time and attention, but when I asked to make this upgrade, they tell me that they can't do that. If you want to upgrade or want any service, we can open new tickets. But we open one and then another and the problem isn't solved. 

With HyperFlex, the firmware has some issues. If we can't upgrade, we can't solve some problems and enhance the threshold in this product. We need solutions to problems not to just open more tickets.

We did work with previous products to set up a traditional server solution. We switched to Cisco UCS Manager because it is more powerful. We knew about our limitations because we were not familiar with this product and lack some better access to local technical support. We planned to take the UCS Manager course and training to solve these issues.

The installation is very complex. We work with Hypervisor VMware. We study the competitive advantage of different combinations and compatibilities. Because there are so many options this process becomes very complex. Compared to Nutanix, we don't investigate anything. We just click download and install the system. 

From day one when we were initiating HyperFlex, we worked with version 1.9 at the time. After one year, we made the upgrade to 2.0 and then 2.1. After many open tickets and trying many times, we can't upgrade the tool to 2.201. So, we are still trying to get to the point where we want to be with the implementation and it is one year and three months. 

We implemented on our own but for the upgrade with would like to work with assistance. We have not been able to find proper assistance in our area.

If someone working with SAP (System Analysis and Program Development) or some other system, I recommend HyperFlex for that infrastructure as a better hardware solution but not the application. If you work with SAP and something like S/4 HANA or anything else, Cisco is a good hardware solution.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate Cisco USC Manager a seven because the pricing and quality of the product with the discount from Cisco make HyperFlex a good value compared to other solution.

As we preferred Cisco as a solution at a great price, I think many people will consider it a better option. With some training and support, we can solve the issues we have.

Before choosing Cisco, we did not evaluate other options because we were familiar with the company through other products and their reputation.

We use it to get the Cisco UCS Manager to configure all the devices, resources, and the possibility to interact with the CPU's memory and the profiles to manage. Most of the environments that we work with are related to VMware.

We can configure the Cisco UCS Manager, the profiles and interactions with the resource we manage. For example, we had a problem with a damaged motherboard in a bank, so we had to replace that. Cisco sent the RMA, and we switched the motherboard, the CPUs and the memory. When we did that, we inserted the blade server with a new motherboard and the validation of all the new characteristics of the motherboard and the mezzanine port was recognized easily through the Cisco UCS Manager. We have been told that fixing this issue would not have been easy with other brands as it was with the Cisco UCS Manager.

Getting a CLI report on routers, switches, or any other CLI configuration device is difficult. We do a show run or show start-up, and we get the whole configuration, but we do not have that in the GUI environment in the Cisco UCS Manager. Having a command to export the show run or show start-up will be nice.

We have been using this solution for four years, and we have been using the old version. It is deployed on-premises.

It is a stable solution, and we don't have any problems. If any public interconnects fail, we have high availability. We do not consider the Fabric Interconnect with the M6 version of the servers, and we need to get to inter-site service. It could be on-premises and also on cloud.

It is a scalable solution. We need some people for deployment, configuration, maintenance and support. They deal with the Cisco UCS Manager environment, so we don't get involved in VMware, visualization, or Hypervisor support. Specifically for hardware maintenance, we have at least ten technicians.

The technical support is very good, and I rate them a nine out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup is very easy.

I am not sure if we have received a return on investment.

I rate this solution a nine out of ten. Regarding advice, It has easier deployment. You have support, a wide range of support engineers at Cisco that can help with either the Cisco UCS Manager isolated deployment, the HyperFlex or the ACI deployment.

We primarily use the solution for software computing within our organization.

The flexibility and the ease in which the features can be expanded are the solution's most valuable aspects.

The automation within the solution needs to be simplified. 

In the next release, the solution should have a central view center or offer administration capabilities for different environments.

I've been using the solution for four years.

The solution is quite stable. We've never witnessed any bug or glitches. We also haven't experienced any crashes that would lead us to believe the stability is in question. It's very good.

The scalability of the solution is okay. You do get some scalability, but it's not fully scalable per se.

We've reached out to technical support in the past. The support they've provided has been great. We're satisfied with the level of service that they've given us.

The initial setup was complex. It was not straightforward. There's just too much effort to set up a simple environment.

The environment was quite large and the implementation process required a number of people.

Currently, we have six people who handle ongoing maintenance on the solution.

We used a consultant that was able to assist us with the implementation.

In terms of advice of how other users can implement the solution, I'd caution that it depends on what they like to use. If you need to have server usage, for example, for Oracle, for Microsoft Hyper V, VMware, or different solutions, then it's not the best.

For us, the complexity was too high especially when it comes to expanding it for other purposes.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.