Cisco UCS Manager vs Icinga comparison

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Cisco UCS Manager

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Icinga and Cisco UCS Manager are competing products in IT infrastructure management. Icinga often has the upper hand in integration and cost due to its flexible pricing, while Cisco UCS excels in functionality and resource management.

Features: Icinga provides flexible pricing and extensive monitoring capabilities with seamless integration into various IT ecosystems. It features a modular design for enhanced adaptability and supports a wide range of plugins for increased monitoring scope. Cisco UCS Manager includes comprehensive server management with advanced hardware automation features and strong resource management capabilities within data center infrastructures. It also offers detailed monitoring of server components for optimized performance.

Room for Improvement: Icinga could enhance its user interface to be more intuitive for new users and improve its scalability for large enterprises. Documentation for advanced use cases could be expanded to better support complex environments. Cisco UCS Manager would benefit from a more simplified setup process and reducing complexity in its interface for non-expert users. Enhancing cross-compatibility with third-party systems would improve its integration capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Icinga is appreciated for straightforward deployment and integration into diverse IT environments, supported by a strong community. Cisco UCS Manager requires more involved setup but benefits from comprehensive customer service and documentation, offering strong support post-deployment.

Pricing and ROI: Icinga's cost-effective open-source model presents a lower initial setup cost, appealing to budget-conscious organizations aiming for high ROI. Cisco UCS Manager, while having higher initial costs, justifies it with significant ROI through improved efficiency and advanced capabilities in managing complex data center environments.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco UCS Manager vs. Icinga Report (Updated: January 2026).

Cisco UCS Manager vs. Icinga

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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

18th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Icinga

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

30th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (25th), Server Monitoring (13th), Cloud Monitoring Software (23rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS Manager is 1.3%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Icinga is 2.4%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

IT Infrastructure Monitoring Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Cisco UCS Manager	1.3%
Icinga	2.4%
Other	96.3%

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Featured Reviews

Rob-Croxford

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.

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Harrison Bulley

Senior Infrastructure Engineer at Net Consulting

A stable, scalable and cost-effective solution that helps with inbuilt scripts for easy modification

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features are flexibility and management."

"Technical support has been good so far. We haven't had any issues with them. We're satisfied with the level of service they provide our company."

"I can quickly manage the provisioned servers."

"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."

"Creating UCS service profiles for quickly deploying servers and replicating that configuration to another server makes it easier for deployment."

"Cisco Infrastructure is one of the top vendors and no one can beat them in terms of switching and routing."

"We can configure the Cisco UCS Manager, the profiles and interactions with the resource we manage."

"It is more robust than other solutions. So, the stability is good."

More Cisco UCS Manager pros

"Macros and the ability to connect it to Google Maps are valuable features."

"This solution has a self-healing handler where if the service is down, it is automatically restarted."

"There's a module called Icinga Director, which helps us configure the product using an intuitive interface through clicks instead of creating a text configuration. It's very helpful for us."

"It is really easy in Icinga to create your own plugin and integrate it without any fuss. And it works just perfectly fine."

"Icinga has multiple automation and integration features. There is an API for everything and a web UI for configurations. The APIs enable you to automate tasks in Icinga. We can also use plugins to talk to the API. The Icinga Director talks to a database in the background, and you can import settings from the CMDB to all systems in Icinga."

"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."

"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."

"The value of Icinga is that it has hundreds of plugins, so it's really easy to monitor pretty much anything."

More Icinga pros

Cons

"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."

"The installation and upgrade sytems need to be improved."

"The interface and the way it is constructed is very complex. They should work to simplify it. It's quite difficult for somebody who doesn't know the product very well. Users should be able to get proficient with it faster. There's definitely room for improvement there."

"There is room for improvement in the software part of Cisco UCS Manager. It should be more user-friendly, especially when creating policies."

"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."

"I would like to see Cisco UCS optionally work as a hyper-converged system because right now, it only operates as a converged system."

"We have three data centers and if we could manage all three data centers using one interface, it would be great."

"Cisco UCS Manager is not a scalable solution because once you have 160 blades, it cannot be expanded more."

More Cisco UCS Manager cons

"One thing that Icinga lacks is the capability to create advanced and customized dashboards within the tool itself."

"In general, the product does not look good. However, it does what it is supposed to do. So, the improvements should focus on usability and UI."

"We have found some problems with Nagios, and support isn't very responsive."

"At this time, the layout of the website is a bit difficult. It should be more user-friendly for changing the background and logos."

"The installation and configuration are very complex."

"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."

"The solution lacks many features important to higher-level IT management and network support."

"There is room for improvement in multi-tenancy. It's not perfect, not even really good. It's average, but it should be improved."

More Icinga cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You buy the hardware and then you get Cisco UCS Manager for free."

"Cisco UCS Manager’s annual licensing fee is expensive."

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

"The pricing for Cisco UCS Manager is okay for its market, so it's a four out of five for me."

"With product discounts which can be negotiated, the product is a great value."

"Cisco UCS is more expensive than Dell and HP, but it is more reliable. I see less issues and it's quite stable."

"This is an open-source solution with paid support."

"It's an open-source solution."

"The product is inexpensive compared to other DBM products."

"It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low."

"The solution is free to use."

"We're using the free version of Icinga."

"The solution is cheap."

"Even though Icinga's financial cost is low, it is an expensive product regarding the resources required to maintain and operate it."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Educational Organization

14%

Comms Service Provider

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	18

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	7

Questions from the Community

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. 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 experience regarding pricing and costs for Icinga?

It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low. If you want to include this product in the services you offer to your customers, the return on i...

What needs improvement with Icinga?

There is room for improvement in multi-tenancy. It's not perfect, not even really good. It's average, but it should be improved. For instance, multi-tenancy for monitoring the virtual infrastructur...

What is your primary use case for Icinga?

We use Icinga as a monitoring solution to monitor customers' infrastructures. We work as a managed service provider, so we offer monitoring and many other services to our customers. So we use it in...

Cisco Intersight vs Cisco UCS Manager

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Product Reports

Cisco UCS Manager

Download Cisco UCS Manager product report

Download Icinga product report

Also Known As

No data available

Icinga Cloud Monitoring

Overview

Cisco UCS Manager helps significantly reduce management and administration expenses by automating routine tasks to increase operational agility. Customers can extend the benefits of Cisco UCS Manager globally across an enterprise to thousands of servers in multiple domains with Cisco UCS Central Software.

Cisco

Icinga is a robust tool for monitoring IT infrastructure, known for its distributed monitoring capabilities and seamless integration with multiple platforms. It efficiently observes servers, network devices, and environments like Linux and Windows, enabling proactive issue identification and resource management.

With a focus on task delegation and clustering, Icinga offers an intuitive interface through its GUI and Icinga Director, simplifying configuration. The extensive plugin library supports diverse technologies, while the API allows automation with tools like Terraform and Ansible. Despite its strengths, users report challenges with data display in the GUI, a need for improved dashboards, and complex configuration processes. Users benefit from its SNMP alerts, email notifications, and automated incident handling, making it essential for managed service environments and enterprises.

What are the key features of Icinga?

Task Delegation: Streamlines monitoring tasks across distributed systems.
Event Handler: Enables automatic service recovery with minimal intervention.
Plugin Library: Offers extensive support for integrating diverse technologies.
API Accessibility: Facilitates automation with popular tools like Terraform.
Custom Plugins: Allows easy creation and personalization for monitoring needs.

What benefits should you consider in Icinga reviews?

Flexibility: Tailors monitoring to specific requirements with community support.
Scalability: Successfully manages growing infrastructure demands.
Proactivity: Enhances issue identification and resource allocation.
Integration: Seamlessly works with existing IT operations platforms.

Icinga is widely adopted in IT environments for monitoring servers, networks, and applications across industries such as finance, healthcare, and technology. Its ability to integrate with various operating systems and automation platforms makes it a versatile choice for industries prioritizing comprehensive surveillance and proactive management of their infrastructure.

Sample Customers

Management Science Associates, Peak 10, Virtual Consulting Professionals

Puppet Labs, Audi, Spacex, Debian, Snapdeal, McGill, RIPE Network Coordination Centre

Cisco UCS Manager vs. Icinga