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Cisco Intersight vs Nagios XI comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

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
5.9
Cisco Intersight provides ROI by lowering staffing and operational costs through network consolidation and reduced manual tasks.
Sentiment score
6.6
Nagios XI enhances efficiency and time management but concerns about increased costs affect ROI perception across organizations.
It simplifies the onboarding of new hardware, reducing time spent on manual installations and configurations.
Systems Engineer at FNB South Africa
I have seen a return on investment, as we need fewer employees, and most of it can be done from one dashboard.
Chief Technology Officer & Co-Founder at a computer software company with 1-10 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.5
Cisco Intersight customer service is highly rated, though support quality varies due to regional differences and specific contracts.
Sentiment score
6.5
Nagios XI support is mixed; praised for responsiveness but criticized for high cost, complex licensing, and delayed responses.
For complex issues, it's challenging to get the right engineer quickly unless you have a specific contract like CX.
Senior Network Architect at ocp tech
On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the customer support a ten.
Chief Technology Officer & Co-Founder at a computer software company with 1-10 employees
I would rate the technical support by Cisco as an eight or nine, because Cisco TAC is one of the best TACs I work with.
Team Lead for Network & Security at Secure Services Mauritius Ltd
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Cisco Intersight provides efficient, seamless scalability, allowing remote management of complex environments with adaptable policies and high user ratings.
Sentiment score
7.1
Nagios XI is scalable for small to medium environments but faces challenges in large infrastructures and cloud adaptability.
I rate its scalability a ten out of ten due to its capability to manage multiple domains and automate service requests.
Systems Engineer at FNB South Africa
Scalability allows for creating server profiles quickly, mapping them to multiple servers, and removing them when scaling down.
Technical Marketing Engineer Hybrid Cloud Infrastructures at NetApp
Cisco Intersight scales straightforwardly with the growing needs of the organization.
Team Lead for Network & Security at Secure Services Mauritius Ltd
If the user interface isn’t presenting data well, it becomes difficult to manage when scaling.
Network and Security Engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Cisco Intersight is mostly stable and reliable, with some challenges in upgrades and hardware-related performance issues.
Sentiment score
7.3
Nagios XI is stable, but large deployments may experience performance issues, database problems, and minor network dependencies.
After five years, if I don't have access to the Cisco Intersight portal, how do I manage my servers if I want to conduct some test environments?
Team Lead for Network & Security at Secure Services Mauritius Ltd
Some steps are not included in the official documentation, which can create challenges.
Senior Network Architect at ocp tech
It is always accessible online, secure, and allows access from any location, following strict authentication standards.
Systems Engineer at FNB South Africa
It is very stable.
Network and Security Engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Cisco Intersight needs improved migration, integration, usability, automation, and cost-effectiveness, with emphasis on stability and on-premise features.
Nagios XI's interface is outdated, lacks scalability, needs better cloud integration, APIs, automation, and improved documentation.
For how Cisco Intersight can be improved, I focus on two points: visual policies, which I believe is the most important improvement, and the possibility to work with local labs in a local infrastructure.
Consultant at SOSNET
There is a significant issue regarding migration from UCS Manager into Intersight without formatting the Fabric Interconnects (FI), which is problematic in a production environment.
System Presale at Bezeq
It would be great to have a chat session mode AI so that when I am on standby and encountering issues, I could engage with it, much like ChatGPT.
Systems Engineer at FNB South Africa
Many tools have poor user interfaces, making them hard to manage and navigate.
Network and Security Engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
The GUI could be improved. It's a bit too basic.
Site Duty Manager at Assw
 

Setup Cost

Cisco Intersight offers competitive pricing with free and paid tiers, offset by high initial costs and complex pricing structures.
Nagios XI provides cost-efficient enterprise-level monitoring with reasonable pricing, appreciated for its features and open-source options.
The pricing is fair and reasonable, particularly for enterprises.
Systems Engineer at FNB South Africa
Cisco Intersight's license cost is very high compared to AWS and Azure solutions, which have lower initiation costs.
Technology Architect at University of Helsinki
The pricing is solid for what we get.
Chief Technology Officer & Co-Founder at a computer software company with 1-10 employees
We are using the free, open-source version.
Site Duty Manager at Assw
The pricing for the Nagios XI product is good and better than other solutions.
Network and Security Engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

Cisco Intersight enhances data center management through automation, integration, predictive analysis, and AI-driven insights, reducing manual work.
Nagios XI provides customizable, flexible, and scalable IT infrastructure monitoring with real-time alerts and extensive plugin support.
This solution has provided time savings and required fewer people to operate this tool, rather than direct cost savings.
Sr. Network Engineer at Saudi Business Machines - SBM
It provides visibility into other products and storage, and is beneficial for environments where Cisco and other vendors coexist, allowing full visibility of the entire infrastructure.
System Presale at Bezeq
It also provides predictive analysis, predicting data leaks and making it easy to scale up servers remotely without requiring physical interference.
Technology Architect at University of Helsinki
Nagios XI simplifies our setup and reduces the time spent configuring monitoring tools.
Network and Security Engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
The alerting system is very effective.
Site Duty Manager at Assw
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Intersight
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (5th)
Nagios XI
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (15th), Server Monitoring (7th), Cloud Monitoring Software (19th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Cisco Intersight is 1.6%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nagios XI is 3.6%, up from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco Intersight1.6%
Nagios XI3.6%
Other94.8%
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

AS
Technical Marketing Engineer Hybrid Cloud Infrastructures at NetApp
Centralized policies have simplified hybrid operations and now support automated workflows
The challenge could be if there are any bugs. Most of the time, you may feel that the TCAM resources are getting full on the Nexus just because of some bug or the configuration is not supported. Or sometimes, if there are any vulnerabilities happening on the current running firmware, those are challenges we have. And if you talk about from the compute side, there were initial bugs such as a CPU throttle issue. Because of that, the chassis was not running in an optimum way. You may see performance issues during that time. For that, Cisco released a patch, and it got fixed. I think Cisco Intersight should allow more automation capabilities. It should be more open, and it should provide more automation capabilities. I think there is also a scope of making it a little bit simpler because a lot of policy and config sometimes becomes confusing for the user because it has a lot of config. Maybe they can do a little bit of simplification with Cisco Intersight.
Emmanuel Appiah Boateng - PeerSpot reviewer
Network and Security Engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
Simplifies setup and requires user interface enhancement
Nagios XI is easy to install, which sets it apart from other open-source solutions I've tried. Typically, setting up a monitoring system on Linux involves cloning files from GitHub, building it, and installing many dependencies, but with Nagios XI, it wasn't like that. Nagios XI simplifies our setup and reduces the time spent configuring monitoring tools.
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which IT Infrastructure Monitoring solutions are best for your needs.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
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
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
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 Business22
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise21
 

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 Nagios XI?
The pricing for the Nagios XI product is good and better than other solutions. I would give it a four or five.
What needs improvement with Nagios XI?
The user interface needs improvement. Many tools have poor user interfaces, making them hard to manage and navigate.
What is your primary use case for Nagios XI?
I normally use Nagios XI for our servers. It's not particularly used for network equipment, however, I use it for monitoring our server performance, including CPU, memory, data, and services runnin...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Intersight
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

EXMAR, RapidScale
Nagios has over one million users globally, including AOL, DHL, McAfee, MCI, MTV, Yahoo!, Universal, Toshiba, Sony, Siemens, and JPMorgan Chase.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Intersight vs. Nagios XI and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.