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Cisco UCS Manager vs NetApp Cloud Insights comparison

Cisco and NetApp are both solutions in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category. Cisco is ranked #19 with an average rating of 8.7, while NetApp is ranked #34 with an average rating of 8.8. Cisco holds a 1.3% mindshare in IM, compared to NetApp’s 0.3% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of NetApp users who would recommend it.
Cisco UCS Manager
Read 27 Cisco UCS Manager reviews
  • 1,810 Views
  • 1,575 Comparison Views
96% willing to recommend
NetApp Cloud Insights
Read 13 NetApp Cloud Insights reviews
  • 1,160 Views
  • 754 Comparison Views
100% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Cisco UCS Manager and NetApp Cloud Insights compete in the cloud and network management category. Cisco UCS Manager has the upper hand in environments needing advanced security and virtualization integration, whereas NetApp Cloud Insights leads in analytics and visualization, offering deep multi-platform visibility.

Features: Cisco UCS Manager offers flexibility, strong integration for virtualization environments, and is favored for its hardware customization capabilities. NetApp Cloud Insights provides advanced analytics, multi-environment visualization, and the ability to resolve complex issues in multi-tiered systems efficiently.

Room for Improvement: Cisco UCS Manager should enhance user-friendliness, cross-platform management, and simplify firmware upgrades, which may require extensive training. NetApp Cloud Insights could improve its reporting functions, simplifying the licensing model, and easing navigation for complex system aspects.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cisco UCS Manager is best suited for on-premises deployment, supported by reliable technical support but demands expertise to manage. NetApp Cloud Insights offers deployment flexibility across private, public, and hybrid clouds with generally good support, though inconsistencies are noted in Europe vs. the US.

Pricing and ROI: Cisco UCS Manager is expensive but valuable for enterprise solutions with Cisco bundles, offering cost-effectiveness due to stability. NetApp Cloud Insights has competitive pricing with scalable options, but the licensing is complex. ROI is favorable for both, though Cisco may be costly for smaller companies while NetApp provides a scalable model appealing for those avoiding upfront costs.

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To learn more, read our detailed Cisco UCS Manager vs. NetApp Cloud Insights Report (Updated: July 2025).
Buyer's Guide
Cisco UCS Manager vs. NetApp Cloud Insights
July 2025
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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
19th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
NetApp Cloud Insights
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
34th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (11th), Cloud Monitoring Software (24th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS Manager is 1.3%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp Cloud Insights is 0.3%, down from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

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…
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Punit Waghela - PeerSpot reviewer
Reduces troubleshooting time and improves operational efficiency through a single console
NetApp technology, specifically NetApp Cloud Insights, has significantly impacted the way my customers do business. One customer had multiple components, such as a VMware environment, Cisco switches, NetApp storage, and backup tools. Previously, the customer had to monitor all these tools individually each morning by logging into every console to check for errors or performance issues. It used to take them about 1 or 2 hours, but after we installed NetApp Cloud Insights, the time spent was reduced to just 5 minutes with a single console where they could monitor everything. The customer can integrate their VMware servers, Cisco switches, and storage with NetApp Cloud Insights to quickly identify any problems and resolve issues efficiently, demonstrating a reduction in complexity and monitoring time. The values that NetApp Cloud Insights delivers to my customers are evident in real examples, such as an application team running their application on a single VM connected through a switch and storage. When they experience a performance issue, the VMware team needs to identify the source of the slowness, whether it's from the server, switch, or storage, which requires a time-consuming investigation of each component. Without NetApp Cloud Insights, this process is slow and stressful for both the application team and the VMware team, but with the tool, a single click allows the customer to pinpoint the issue directly, improving response times to performance problems immensely. The evolving cybersecurity landscape and the proliferation of AI highly influence my customers' technology decisions, as having NetApp storage in their environment allows them to detect ransomware attacks effectively. NetApp guarantees data recovery in case of such attacks, and here, NetApp Cloud Insights plays a crucial role; it can identify where a ransomware attack originates, allowing the IT team to respond rapidly, such as disconnecting affected devices to mitigate the damage, especially crucial when multiple users are involved.
Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"I can quickly manage the provisioned servers."
"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."
"One of the valuable features is the user interface base."
"The reporting functionality will give you any report you want."
"The interface is ergonomic and native. We can use UCS Manager to do all the configurations for the servers, including storage, networking, and all the other components we need inside the fabric. It's simple and flexible."
More Cisco UCS Manager pros
"Cloud Insights' best features are visibility and the connector to move the workloads."
"Cloud Secure is definitely the most valuable feature and being able to see file level activity. It gives real-time alerting on possible ransomware attacks and provides file security review. It helps us to see if something abnormal is happening on the system before it's too late."
"All our production clusters are in Cloud Insight. It provides a single pane of glass, giving us visibility into the environment, which allows us to understand if any issues are going on across any of our clusters."
"NetApp Cloud Insights helps reduce the time spent on problem resolution by up to 50% for my customers, making their operations significantly more efficient and productive, which is a perfect outcome."
"Its ability to quickly inventory our resources, figure out interdependencies across them, and assemble a topology of your environment is brilliant. There is a price associated with it. Whenever you target a NetApp environment, it is included in the price but whenever you want to add different vendors, like VMware and Cisco, the price greatly spikes. Inventorization helps us a lot to visualize the environment."
"The solution is easy to deploy."
"NetApp Cloud Insights helps reduce the time spent on problem resolution by up to 50% for my customers, making their operations significantly more efficient and productive, which is a perfect outcome."
"One feature we appreciate the most is its ability to take snapshots, which adds an extra layer of security and allows us to protect our data effectively."
More NetApp Cloud Insights pros
 

Cons

"Cisco UCS Manager is not a scalable solution because once you have 160 blades, it cannot be expanded more."
"The solution's pricing is high and could be reduced."
"The primary challenge we face is identifying the correct version to deploy during firmware upgrades or compute updates."
"The automation within the solution needs to be simplified."
"The installation and upgrade sytems need to be improved."
"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."
"Upgrading the firmware is a difficult procedure."
"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."
More Cisco UCS Manager cons
"The first level of NetApp's technical support could be improved."
"Even though I work with NetApp, it still takes time for me to navigate and find components, so new customers might require considerable hands-on experience to efficiently use the console, indicating that it could be more user-friendly."
"The support is not very quick."
"Cloud Insights could offer more detail when we drill down into the Azure environment."
"In my opinion, one area where NetApp Cloud Insights could be improved for the next release is the console, which I find a bit complex."
"Ease of reporting is one thing that they're trying to tackle. If you have a specific set of data you want from Cloud Insights, you can ask NetApp to help you build the reports from the ground up. The dashboards are intuitive, but finding the report you want is sometimes a challenge. If you don't have the report already loaded, pulling it in and letting it build its data can be cumbersome."
"In a perfect world we would have something built, right out-of-the-box, that can identify what we call "noise," and reduce the amount of data. You're presented with so much data when you first start the data collectors. For example, it brings back a lot of change rates that happen just because of standard computing, like profile changes and that sort of thing. Being able to identify things like that and categorize them and strip it down—and it probably can do that, I just haven't gotten there yet—would be very beneficial."
"The IP-based monitoring could be added in a future release."
More NetApp Cloud Insights cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You buy the hardware and then you get Cisco UCS Manager for free."
"We need to take a license for each port, which amounts to a big sum."
"Cisco UCS is more expensive than Dell and HP, but it is more reliable. I see less issues and it's quite stable."
"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 Manager’s annual licensing fee is expensive."
"The solution's pricing is based on the device you purchase and includes support services."
"The licensing is complex. The calculation depends on what you're ingesting. A terabyte of one product is not a terabyte of another product. Virtual machines don't equate so easily. It's all about the end-use managed units and having an easy place to reference how far those units go."
"The solution is expensive."
"Be aware of the capacity licensing and understand how that works, because it is based on capacity. Getting an understanding of that is the biggest thing."
"We are billed based on management units, so we can purchase units based on six months, twelve months, twenty-four months, or thirty-six months upfront or pay as you go depending on our requirements."
"The licensing model could be improved. We love that you can use it for free for looking at NetApp products. You only need licenses to look at non-NetApp products, but as soon as you do that, you start utilizing licenses that actually would have been free in the public. So, there is a bit of an anomaly in the licensing model."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
22%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
33%
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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.
See all answers
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...
See all answers
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...
See all answers
What do you like most about NetApp Cloud Insights?
NetApp Cloud Insights helps with login monitoring and troubleshooting. Previously, if we had performance concerns or needed to interface with other groups and their products, a task that should req...
See all answers
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp Cloud Insights?
The licensing is complex. The calculation depends on what you're ingesting. A terabyte of one product is not a terabyte of another product. Virtual machines don't equate so easily. It's all about t...
See all answers
What needs improvement with NetApp Cloud Insights?
In my opinion, one area where NetApp Cloud Insights could be improved for the next release is the console, which I find a bit complex. Even though I work with NetApp, it still takes time for me to ...
See all answers
 

Comparisons

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Cisco Intersight vs Cisco UCS Manager
Compared 81% of the time
Nutanix Prism vs Cisco UCS Manager Logo
Nutanix Prism vs Cisco UCS Manager
Compared 9% of the time
HPE OneView vs Cisco UCS Manager Logo
HPE OneView vs Cisco UCS Manager
Compared 7% of the time
Zabbix vs Cisco UCS Manager Logo
Zabbix vs Cisco UCS Manager
Compared 4% of the time
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Dell CloudIQ vs NetApp Cloud Insights Logo
Dell CloudIQ vs NetApp Cloud Insights
Compared 68% of the time
Datadog vs NetApp Cloud Insights Logo
Datadog vs NetApp Cloud Insights
Compared 32% of the time
More NetApp Cloud Insights Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Cisco UCS Manager
August 2025
Cisco UCS Manager reportDownload Cisco UCS Manager product report
Buyer's Guide
NetApp Cloud Insights
August 2025
NetApp Cloud Insights reportDownload NetApp Cloud Insights product report
 

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

NetApp Cloud Insights is an infrastructure monitoring tool that gives you visibility into your complete infrastructure. With Cloud Insights, you can monitor, troubleshoot and optimize all your resources including your public clouds and your private data centers.

NetApp
 

Sample Customers

Management Science Associates, Peak 10, Virtual Consulting Professionals
Information Not Available
Buyer's Guide
Cisco UCS Manager vs. NetApp Cloud Insights
July 2025
Free Report: Cisco UCS Manager vs. NetApp Cloud Insights
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