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Cisco Intersight vs OpenNebula comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Intersight
Ranking in Cloud Management
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (12th)
OpenNebula
Ranking in Cloud Management
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Cisco Intersight is 2.2%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenNebula is 5.7%, down from 7.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
OpenNebula5.7%
Cisco Intersight2.2%
Other92.1%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

ItzikLiberman - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides data center management and full infrastructure visibility
Cisco Intersight is a very effective tool for data center infrastructure management. 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. We have visibility to other products and storages, some networking. It is also valuable for its integration capabilities with other products.
FOURES Jean-Philippe - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable, simple to manage, and offers great technical support
The support of VXLAN fits with our network management. Thanks to this we can propose mixed solutions using virtual resources on OpenNebula and bare metal servers hosted in our facilities linked to each other on the sale network. This use case is very useful when some applications need bare metal power (Kubernetes workers, huge databases, AI models computations, et cetera). The cluster management is very useful for splitting our different clusters (mutual vs dedicated). We can manage deployments and capacity planning without pain. The API is also really simple and it helped us to develop the Terraform provider to manage OpenNebula like any other cloud infrastructure.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Provides an overall view using a single portal."
"Cisco Intersight allows us to manage our data center remotely, which is crucial as our data center is located in a different physical environment."
"What I like most about Cisco Intersight is its manageability."
"Overall, I rate Cisco Intersight a ten out of ten."
"Cisco Intersight has valuable features for workflow automation and inventory administration."
"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 product has good integration."
"Our organization uses Cisco Intersight since it helps manage our physical infrastructure."
"OpenNebula is easy to deploy and manage compared to other solutions like OpenStack."
"What's best about OpenNebula that people like is that it's easy to deploy. It's also easy to manage. It's interesting because people choose OpenNebula over other solutions because of the ease of management."
"The most valuable feature of OpenNebula is that it scales very well."
"The ability to use it almost like a public cloud for an organization is a big asset, as it will create a value proposition and can control costs in a great way."
"With a single click, we could set things up and initiate them."
"It is quite easy to deploy."
"The live migration feature has been great and is something we use very often."
"The service feature appeals most to us, thus it is the most valuable."
 

Cons

"The product's setup should be easier."
"It's a very complex solution."
"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."
"In the future, the solution needs to plan on an extension to cover a broader range of objects since, at present, there are some Cisco devices within the range of Intersight UCS that it can't manage."
"Technical support from Cisco has been mixed. For complex issues, it's challenging to get the right engineer quickly unless you have a specific contract like CX."
"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."
"Cisco Intersight's license cost is very high compared to AWS and Azure solutions, which have lower initiation costs. The high initial cost is a significant concern."
"I do not have notes for improvement."
"They have been saying for the past two and a half years that they would develop a feature to hot-add RAM and CPU, but it does not work."
"The protocol for clusterization is rough and doesn't work well."
"They should add more features like object storage."
"It should have a simple REST API like most other tools. It's the industry standard format. An XML-RPC API gives you an XML document that you have to convert and then do something with that. REST API endpoint provides outputs in a JSON document. I would also like to see support for user data or heat templates, which OpenStack offers, but OpenNebula doesn't have this yet."
"The front-facing API can be improved to support lots of requests when the platform is huge with lots of virtual resources."
"An area for improvement in OpenNebula is the number of features it has. The solution doesn't have that many cloud features compared to other solutions. You'd say, "Okay, simplicity over a rich feature list?" Some say, "No, I need a big machine or a cloud interface for my customers to manage resources. I don't have to go and do it for them." Some people do it that way, and it works, but I'd like to improve the limited features in OpenNebula."
"There are no payment gateways in OpenNebula."
"The storage feature that they have is a bit confusing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is cost-effective."
"You can get a free license for monitoring but need to purchase a license if you need extra control."
"It's just the standard licensing cost. There are no additional fees."
"Cisco Intersight has competitive pricing. On a scale of one to five, my rating for its pricing is four."
"Cisco Intersight is not cheap, but it's not the most expensive product either."
"The licensing for OpenNebula used to be free, but now it's no longer free. A customer contacted me asking to move to another provider because of the changes in the licensing terms for OpenNebula. I have no information on how much the OpenNebula license is because the customer pays for it, and I only do the integration."
"OpenNebula gives good value for money."
"OpenNebuoa has recently come up with a new subscription model that is economical and a lot of new customers are choosing this as it is an easy subscription model."
"The solution is open source so is free."
"VRA is very expensive but OpenNebula is free."
"We use the Community Edition, rather than the Enterprise Edition."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
26%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
18%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco Intersight?
Intersight can validate our environment.
What needs improvement with Cisco Intersight?
I would like AI to be more integrated into Cisco Intersight. 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...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Intersight?
We use Cisco Intersight ( /products/cisco-intersight-reviews ) for operational tasks. We run patches and import firmware updates from the Cisco site. In the event of a component failure, such as a ...
What do you like most about OpenNebula?
The live migration feature has been great and is something we use very often.
What needs improvement with OpenNebula?
The web interface could be better. It's not very difficult to use, but there's room for enhancement. Another area for improvement is the integration with hardware to manage the lower layer of the n...
 

Also Known As

Intersight
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

EXMAR, RapidScale
Akamai, BBC, Fermilab, Terradue, Surf Sara, Produban, Netways, ESA, China Mobile, BlackBerry, Deloitte, Fuze, Telefonica, Trivago, Nokia, Encore Tech, Beeks.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Intersight vs. OpenNebula and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.