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Centreon vs Cisco UCS Manager vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
8.1
Centreon enhances ROI through efficient monitoring, quick issue resolution, cost savings, and minimal impact during outages.
Sentiment score
5.1
Cisco UCS Manager enhances ROI by minimizing hardware failures, downtime, and maintenance, simplifying management, and integrating efficiently with other tools.
Sentiment score
7.2
SolarWinds NPM enhances infrastructure visibility, delivering cost reductions, faster issue resolution, and significant ROI through optimized resource management.
Centreon provides timesaving and costsaving benefits as it lets us manage multiple devices on a single platform.
It significantly saves time by automating monitoring tasks and reduces costs as it requires fewer resources.
There's no need for an extra management device or virtual machine, as everything runs within the fabric interconnect.
Cisco UCS Manager provides cost savings by reducing the time support staff spend on long deployments.
The return on investment is significant as the solution effectively reduces costs while being worth its expense.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.1
Centreon's customer service is responsive and knowledgeable, though availability limitations and support level improvements are needed.
Sentiment score
8.2
Cisco UCS Manager support is praised for expertise and responsiveness, though European support and urgent issues may vary.
Sentiment score
6.9
SolarWinds NPM support gets mixed reviews, praised for expertise yet noted for delays and aggressive sales tactics.
We do not have direct access to Centreon's technical support.
If issues arise, like services appearing as down in Centreon, technical support helps check the polar-server communication.
Technical support from Centreon responds within 24 hours and resolves issues quickly.
For a severity one case, a call ensures immediate assistance and resolution of the matter.
With Intersight, service requests are automatically generated, enhancing the user experience and providing timely resolutions.
Regarding Cisco tech, they are pretty good.
If there is no timely response, getting a resolution is more difficult.
We had contact with SolarWinds regarding the implementation, and they were helpful.
They have good technical support.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.0
Centreon is valued for flexibility and scalability, though improvements in data management and alert scaling are recommended.
Sentiment score
7.8
Cisco UCS Manager offers scalable infrastructure solutions, though constrained by chassis limits, with largely positive user feedback.
Sentiment score
6.9
SolarWinds NPM is scalable, adapts well to infrastructures, but may face performance and cost issues on virtual platforms.
Occasionally, for several hours, we do not receive any alerts, causing a business impact.
We use other tools for adding and deploying configured devices, but direct access from Centreon would be beneficial.
Adding new chassis and extra blades is streamlined.
I would rate the scalability at nine out of ten, probably.
SolarWinds NPM is scalable and effective in handling large network infrastructures.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Centreon is stable and reliable, though stability may vary; support resolves issues swiftly, especially with the latest versions.
Sentiment score
7.6
Cisco UCS Manager is praised for its stability, reliability, and prompt support, often outperforming competitors in overall robustness.
Sentiment score
7.5
SolarWinds NPM is stable with issues from server limits and bugs, resolved through updates and proper configuration.
Sometimes we do not receive alerts, causing business impact, and users ask why no alerts were received.
Centreon is a much more straightforward and stable tool compared to Icinga.
If there's a really complex problem, I would probably give it a ten since it gets escalated quickly.
The NPM product is stable, particularly when used for simple network monitoring.
 

Room For Improvement

Centreon users seek improved customization, monitoring, UI, documentation, integration, mobile features, auto-remediation, multilingual support, and notifications.
Cisco UCS Manager needs a streamlined interface, enhanced support, simpler updates, better integration, affordability, and improved monitoring.
SolarWinds NPM users report issues with network discovery, UI features, costs, automation, support, and security improvements are needed.
Enhancements are needed in identifying configuration issues, providing real-time alerts in case of issues, and improving the HTTP configuration tasks.
Reliability is sometimes an issue. Centreon has a developer mode and production mode, but sometimes alerts don't come through in production mode.
While Centreon excels at server-level monitoring, it lacks the ability to track web app availability and latency, unlike Dynatrace, which is efficient in this area.
We would benefit from advancements in AI that offer firmware recommendations automatically, reducing the need for human intervention and vendor communication.
It doesn't work straight out of the UCS, so someone who knows what they're doing is needed immediately, and it can be quite confusing.
While it has been improved from using Java to HTML, simplifying the tabs would enhance user experience.
SolarWinds needs to upscale on observability and add full-fledged observability features, including security features.
Customers have given feedback about the delayed response times from the technical team.
Features such as taking backup of the devices or configurations of the devices can be included in further versions of SolarWinds NPM.
 

Setup Cost

Centreon provides an open-source solution for SMEs but has a complex pricing model for enterprises needing premium features.
Cisco UCS Manager is seen as expensive but offers competitive value with bundled discounts, quality, and reliability.
SolarWinds NPM pricing varies by setup size, with initial costs, tiered licensing, and maintenance fees influencing total expenses.
Centreon's pricing is not very expensive.
Recently, we acquired an excellent bundle with significant discounts, with offers like buying three servers and getting one free, along with UCSC and fabric included for free.
As long as they can afford it, there is a setup cost involved.
The solution is considered expensive.
Pricing-wise, SolarWinds NPM is more expensive than PRTG.
 

Valuable Features

Centreon offers unlimited monitoring, enhanced visualization, and customizable features for efficient oversight with extensive device compatibility and anomaly detection.
Cisco UCS Manager offers unified management, easy deployment, flexible configurations, high availability, and cross-infrastructure security compatibility.
SolarWinds NPM offers ease of deployment, real-time monitoring, customizable alerts, and user-friendly design for efficient network management.
Monitoring is a fundamental pillar of technical support, and Centreon streamlines this process, reducing the need for extensive manual checks.
Centreon's real-time monitoring, despite having some manual aspects, supports us in managing our operations effectively.
Centreon allows us to monitor all of our devices on one platform.
It supports ease of deployment, allowing for quick mass deployments in the data center, saving time and resources by doing so from a remote location.
Whenever there's a failure of any component, it's very easy to swap because you just disassociate that profile, remove the faulty blade, connect the new blade, and associate that profile, maintaining the same MAC address and worldwide port name.
One of the valuable features is the user interface base, specifically the C user interface.
The most valuable feature for us is the database performance analyzer, which we use a lot.
SolarWinds NPM has specific modules for monitoring different network capabilities, which provides rich features for carrying out specific tasks.
It provides a detailed overview of the network, which is valuable.
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Centreon is 2.8%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cisco UCS Manager is 1.4%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.8%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Simon KONAN - PeerSpot reviewer
Plug-ins are free but it has limitations in sending out information to users
The issue my company has with the tool stems from the fact that it didn't give an on-time response to us. The product collects the information, but it fails to send them via SMS, WhatsApp or Telegram. The solution can be used if you want to get email notifications, which is not good for our company because if someone is not in front of their desktop, you can't receive information about an equipment or LAN that is down.
Edwin Mwosa - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhanced network oversight with rapid issue identification and good efficiency
We mainly use Cisco UCS Manager to integrate and manage our Cisco switches across the building. We also utilize it for network integration. It provides an integrated solution for our Cisco environment, streamlining our operations and managing multiple Cisco devices like switches and routers Cisco…
Masud Alam - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers alerting service to trigger alerts and easy to manage
For end-user performance monitoring, we like features such as availability of our all devices and device/interface monitoring. We have also used NCM (Network Configuration Manager) for our network. We use the alerting service to trigger alerts based on specific thresholds, like CPU or memory utilization exceeding a certain percentage. There are AI network initiatives in SolarWinds NPM for some lengthy issues. For example, it shows availability reports. But for bandwidth monitoring, it's not very clear how much bandwidth is being consumed. SolarWinds provide real-time bandwidth monitoring. It is not difficult to manage the network with SolarWinds. We have one customer with a satellite location. If we have a large network with, let's say, 43,000 elements, and our current SolarWinds license supports only 30,000, we would need to create another polling engine to accommodate the additional 13,000 elements. It's limited to the polling engine, so we can only support 30,000 elements per engine. So it's only for 30,000, but we have at least 40,000 elements in our network.
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
16%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Centreon?
Centreon's pricing is not very expensive. Initially, I rated it seven, but corrected to five out of ten.
What needs improvement with Centreon?
I have certain concerns with Centreon, such as being unable to set downtime for multiple devices at once due to the l...
What is your primary use case for Centreon?
We are using Centreon for monitoring devices, both LAN and WAN devices. There are subsidiaries for my company, so if ...
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?
My experience with the pricing of Cisco UCS Manager ( /products/cisco-ucs-manager-reviews ) is that it is reasonable....
What needs improvement with Cisco UCS Manager?
For improvements, while the current graphical user interface is satisfactory, it could be further simplified for diff...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
It actually depends on the exact purpose or kind of devices (network devices, servers, something else). Some tools ar...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We are partners with SolarWinds and we sell a lot of Network management to large enterprises also because of scalabil...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
No data available
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

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
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Datadog, Auvik and others in IT Infrastructure Monitoring. Updated: June 2025.
862,077 professionals have used our research since 2012.