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Cisco UCS Manager vs Icinga comparison

 

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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco UCS Manager
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
30th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Icinga
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
48th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (41st), Server Monitoring (17th), Cloud Monitoring Software (32nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS Manager is 1.3%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Icinga is 1.4%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco UCS Manager1.3%
Icinga1.4%
Other97.3%
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

RC
Consultant at rcnss
A market leader with an enhanced user interface for seamless experience
There is room for improvement in terms of cost and complexity to set up. 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. Some settings are still fairly well hidden, even the basic ones. Companies don't really understand how long it takes to set up. Also, when changes are pushed, it can take their phone line off the system for twenty minutes to half an hour. Out-of-the-box functionality is an issue, too. I know that my company is different, however, the basics are always the same. You do your tap lines, zip lines, and stuff like that, then you get your internal phone line system. That can all be automated and scripted, and it's probably part of the automation process. However, I haven't really seen it.
reviewer2292201 - PeerSpot reviewer
Innovation Service Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Easy to use, and it's possible to customize the product as per the needs we may have but average multi-tenancy aspect
It's supported by the community. We use Icinga, which is not part of the Open-Source platform but is wrapped into a commercial solution from another provider, a local provider in Italy. Icinga is an open-source platform, so it is supported by the community. It's quite easy to use, and it's possible to customize the product as per the needs we may have. So it's not expensive, and it's quite a general purpose. We can easily monitor any kind of infrastructure we encounter. The ability to customize scripts and build your own queries to request information from the infrastructure elements you want to monitor. This level of personalization and customization is highly appreciated. The alerting is the same as any other monitoring platform. It's not a "wow" feature that has changed our lives, but it's perfectly adequate.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cisco UCS Manager is overall a good package because it offers a GUI interface and a CLI."
"The most valuable features of Cisco UCS Manager include the visibility it provides and the ease of identifying issues within the Cisco environment."
"What I like most about Cisco UCS Manager is the ease of administration. It also allows the central management of maintenance, installation, and configuration activities."
"Cisco UCS has different layers of security, and you can do multiple installations of your LIAMs on top of the server and Blade. You can install VMware, Windows Server, Hyper-V, etc."
"For the blade architecture and ease of use, I consider Cisco UCS Manager the best option on the market at the moment."
"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."
"One of the valuable features is the user interface base."
"The solution offers quite good stability; we haven't had a problem at all with it."
"If you have a small infrastructure or a small number of devices that you want to monitor, then I think it's a good solution."
"Icinga2 was designed to delegate, distribute and balance tasks between several nodes."
"I like the ability to amend and adjust things really easily, which is useful in a case where you could make it auto-discover and then set a template to say all of these applications or servers under this template have an automatic threshold set that you’d set up manually."
"People should know that it is simple and advanced."
"An affordable solution for small organizations to do basic network monitoring."
"The ability to customize scripts and build your own queries to request information from the infrastructure elements you want to monitor. This level of personalization and customization is highly appreciated."
"The best thing about the solution is how it highlights errors, the issues, and what needs my attention. The solution directs me to areas that I should look for first."
"This solution has a self-healing handler where if the service is down, it is automatically restarted."
 

Cons

"I found it a bit of a challenge to get training on UCSM. I've been trying to get that for some time now. I feel like I have to figure it out a lot of things myself. For years I've to log calls with support whenever I've got challenges that I cannot resolve. If I had some training or more manuals, I'd be better able to handle more things on my own."
"We have three data centers and if we could manage all three data centers using one interface, it would be great."
"Cisco UCS is expensive compared to others. The Cisco UCS Chassis is more expensive than a standalone server, but some companies require standalone servers because of their production load and affordability. You need to pay more if you require more features on the Blade or if you need more ports on the switch."
"I found it a bit of a challenge to get training on UCSM. I've been trying to get that for some time now."
"Cisco depends on other vendors like IBM and HP for the hardware. Cisco should improve its hardware manufacturing in regards to the UCS and the use of other vendor's hardware."
"Its user interface can be improved. It can be more user-friendly."
"For improvements, while the current graphical user interface is satisfactory, it could be further simplified for different tasks."
"The pricing aspect should be addressed."
"The solution lacks many features important to higher-level IT management and network support."
"The tool currently fails to provide notifications to users."
"One of the areas that are frustrating is remote monitoring for more than one machine."
"Network Discovery capabilities would be extremely helpful."
"Icinga is a complex solution that's hard to learn. It's a powerful product for monitoring, but new users will have a hard time figuring out what to do."
"I think the software is quite good, but we have had problems with getting it to recognize certain areas and amend certain checks, where we needed so we would have to create backend scripts for those checks. Though, being open source, it has the support to create backend scripts, it would be better to have these scripts in-built."
"It needs Trap SNMP. I saw the documentation for Zabbix, that it has its own built-in product which handles SNMP traps, and there's nothing similar in Icinga or Nagios. I think this feature is most important for me."
"Icinga’s automation could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"With product discounts which can be negotiated, the product is a great value."
"You buy the hardware and then you get Cisco UCS Manager for free."
"Cisco UCS Manager’s annual licensing fee is expensive."
"The pricing for Cisco UCS Manager is okay for its market, so it's a four out of five for me."
"Cisco UCS is more expensive than Dell and HP, but it is more reliable. I see less issues and it's quite stable."
"We need to take a license for each port, which amounts to a big sum."
"This is an open-source solution with paid support."
"We're using the free version of Icinga."
"It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low."
"The solution is cheap."
"The solution is free to use."
"The product is inexpensive compared to other DBM products."
"Even though Icinga's financial cost is low, it is an expensive product regarding the resources required to maintain and operate it."
"It's an open-source solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Educational Organization
14%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

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. Recently, we acquired an excellent bundle with significant discounts, with offe...
What needs improvement with Cisco UCS Manager?
For improvements, while the current graphical user interface is satisfactory, it could be further simplified for different tasks. While it has been improved from using Java to HTML, simplifying the...
What is your primary use case for Cisco UCS Manager?
Our primary use case involves working with Cisco UCS B-Series ( /products/cisco-ucs-b-series-reviews ), specifically the UCS X modular deployment. We are setting up a new deployment shortly.
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Also Known As

No data available
Icinga Cloud Monitoring
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Management Science Associates, Peak 10, Virtual Consulting Professionals
Puppet Labs, Audi, Spacex, Debian, Snapdeal, McGill, RIPE Network Coordination Centre
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS Manager vs. Icinga and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,948 professionals have used our research since 2012.