Cisco UCS Manager vs OP5 Monitor comparison

Cisco and ITRS are both solutions in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category. Cisco is ranked #18 with an average rating of 8.8, while ITRS is ranked #36 with an average rating of 9.0. Cisco holds a 1.3% mindshare in IM, compared to ITRS’s 0.9% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of ITRS users who would recommend it.

Cisco UCS Manager

Read 27 Cisco UCS Manager reviews

2,065 Views
1,859 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

OP5 Monitor

Read 7 OP5 Monitor reviews

1,534 Views
1,058 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Cisco UCS Manager

OP5 Monitor

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Cisco UCS Manager and OP5 Monitor are competing products in IT infrastructure management. Cisco UCS Manager has the upper hand in network and server management due to its robust features for consolidating data centers and improving operational efficiency.

Features: Cisco UCS Manager offers centralized management of servers, networks, and storage, streamlining operations and improving scalability. It includes configuration and deployment tools designed for efficient data center management. OP5 Monitor specializes in network and server monitoring, providing flexibility and visibility into IT environments. It integrates well with various platforms for extensive data collection and analysis.

Room for Improvement: Cisco UCS Manager could enhance integration with third-party tools, improve user interface intuitiveness, and provide more flexible deployment options. OP5 Monitor could benefit from improved support for larger scale environments, better integration for cloud-based services, and enhanced alerting features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cisco UCS Manager has a straightforward deployment process with strong technical support, making it easier to integrate into existing infrastructures. OP5 Monitor's deployment is flexible, catering to diverse IT environments, though it may require more initial setup effort. Both offer reliable customer service, with Cisco slightly better due to its broader support resources.

Pricing and ROI: Cisco UCS Manager's setup cost can be significant, but its management tools often lead to beneficial ROI through efficiency and reduced operational overhead. OP5 Monitor often presents a more affordable initial investment, with effective monitoring capabilities delivering good ROI for businesses focusing on network visibility. Cisco has a higher upfront cost, but the return through consolidated management may justify it, while OP5 Monitor offers better cost efficiency for network-centric organizations.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco UCS Manager vs. OP5 Monitor Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS Manager vs. OP5 Monitor

January 2026

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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

OP5 Monitor

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

36th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

4.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (38th)

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 OP5 Monitor is 0.9%, up from 0.8% 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%
OP5 Monitor	0.9%
Other	97.8%

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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Sumanth Arshanapally

Senior Analyst at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Monitoring ease and cost-saving benefits enhance operational efficiency

The monitoring in OP5 Monitor is very easy because we can directly use custom plugins. We can write custom scripts and use those scripts directly. It's very low cost, open, and the dashboards are easy to see. We can extract the reports easily, and this is very easy to compare. Real-time monitoring in OP5 Monitor provides data every one minute or every five minutes, enabling us to get live data from the last one minute or last five minutes. OP5 Monitor gave us proper server availability, so we can always check whether a server goes down or the server CPU and memory decreases. Before reaching a particular bottleneck situation, we identified and fixed the issue, which helped us from a cost-saving business perspective. It helped us avoid application downtime.

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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

"For the blade architecture and ease of use, I consider Cisco UCS Manager the best option on the market at the moment."

"The management is one of the most valuable features of this solution."

"A main feature of Cisco UCS Manager is its reliability, as all of the computing blades are in cluster mode."

"The most valuable features are flexibility and management."

"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 Manager is overall a good package because it gives a GUI interface and a CLI."

"From a usability and functionality perspective, Cisco UCS Manager is very good."

"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."

More Cisco UCS Manager pros

"The best feature is that it is very relatable, stable, and scalable. The logger is a part of the software, but it's not the most important point of it."

"The API makes it pretty easy to integrate with any system."

"The monitoring in OP5 Monitor is very easy because we can directly use custom plugins; we can write custom scripts and use those scripts directly, it's very low cost, open, and the dashboards are easy to see."

"We can also observe whatever we want, and there are no limitations."

"With limited hardware or a virtual machine, you can address a huge network, hundreds of thousands of elements that need to be monitored. Other commercial software is not on that level."

"It monitors and continuously tests everything that is of importance to you and your users. It could be everything from monitoring disk space to CPU usage to memory. It could include determining if the response time in your e-commerce platform is quick enough, or whether you have too many bounces from some of the pages on your website. You want to monitor anything that could cost you money or time or resources. You can do that with this system. It's very flexible."

"OP5 Monitor is a great choice due to its being built on an open-source monitoring tool and provides ample opportunity for customization based on specific support requirements. It is also user-friendly and easy to manage with a wide range of plugins available for use. In comparison to other enterprise tools, such as Micro Focus, OP5 Monitor stands out for its features and cost-effectiveness, making it the best tool in the market. Customization is one of the key strengths of the tool and provides a lot of capabilities. Additionally, it is easy to find support and plugins for the tool through online resources."

Cons

"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."

"Its user interface can be improved. It can be more user-friendly."

"I would like to see improved visibility into the operating system, enabling us to identify issues directly from the operating system itself."

"Some settings are still fairly well hidden, even the basic ones."

"The primary challenge we face is identifying the correct version to deploy during firmware upgrades or compute updates."

"Improving functionalities similar to InterSite within UCS Manager would be beneficial."

"Cisco UCS Manager should have a simplified deployment in the sense of not having multiple machines, demilitarized zones, and on-premise options."

"Getting a CLI report on routers, switches, or any other CLI configuration device is difficult."

More Cisco UCS Manager cons

"OP5 lacks some visualization, a feature that makes some other products nice. Op5 is built for purpose, which is fine, but if you compare it with some new products, the visualization is not so appealing, especially for management... If you don't need fancy visualizations, OP5 is fine."

"IT environments today are in constant flux. This is driven by the newer cloud technologies such as Kubernetes and Docker, etc. The whole Nagios-based monitoring system that OP5 is created on top of, is based on a host-service model. There is a need for a strategy on what to do with more dynamic environments. There is some cool stuff going on in that direction."

"The solution is useful for tweaking. However, there have been some negative experiences, such as limited report capabilities. The only report available is in PDF format, making it difficult for teams managing multiple servers to extract data in Excel format. The speaker recommends that the team improve the report capabilities to better serve users."

"The user interface is not what we are used to these days, and should be improved."

"We do not get performance reports properly."

"OP5 Monitor could include application monitoring in addition to infrastructure monitoring. If application business transactions were monitored, it would be helpful."

"They need to improve the dashboard interface."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

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

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

"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."

"OP5 has a very low price as a solution, compared to many other solutions out there."

"The cost of the license and support are separate. If you want platinum call support, it will cost more than a regular call. I did not opt for it, as it is an additional cost."

"It was not expensive. And because it's less demanding in terms of hardware, you don't have to pay for another SQL or other database license, and you can have a huge installation on one machine..."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

15%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

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	2
Large Enterprise	5

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.

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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...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OP5 Monitor?

The price for OP5 Monitor is fine, but we don't know the exact price because it was managed by us; the customer themselves bought it and gave it to us to monitor.

See all answers

What needs improvement with OP5 Monitor?

OP5 Monitor could include application monitoring in addition to infrastructure monitoring. If application business transactions were monitored, it would be helpful. For application-related issues, ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for OP5 Monitor?

Our previous use case for OP5 Monitor was server monitoring.

See all answers

Comparisons

Cisco Intersight vs Cisco UCS Manager

Compared 64% of the time

Nutanix Prism vs Cisco UCS Manager

Compared 5% of the time

HPE OneView vs Cisco UCS Manager

Compared 4% of the time

Splunk Observability Cloud vs Cisco UCS Manager

Compared 4% of the time

Datadog vs Cisco UCS Manager

Compared 3% of the time

More Cisco UCS Manager Competitors

Zabbix vs OP5 Monitor

Compared 14% of the time

Nagios Core vs OP5 Monitor

Compared 13% of the time

Opsview vs OP5 Monitor

Compared 10% of the time

PRTG Network Monitor vs OP5 Monitor

Compared 9% of the time

Splunk Observability Cloud vs OP5 Monitor

Compared 7% of the time

More OP5 Monitor Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS Manager

January 2026

Download Cisco UCS Manager product report

Buyer's Guide

OP5 Monitor

January 2026

Download OP5 Monitor 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

OP5 Monitor - The Complete Monitoring Solution

OP5 Monitor is a flexible and highly scalable monitoring solution for all sizes of environments. Use just one product to monitor your IT environment regardless of location, whether on-premise, in dynamic environments, public cloud or a hybrid of these.

Digital transformation adds extra layers and complexity to the IT estate by creating a hybrid IT environment of both static and dynamic environments, that can be difficult to monitor efficiently. ITRS OP5 Monitor gives enterprises full visibility over their entire IT estate through a single pane of glass, allowing them to consolidate monitoring tools and cut down costs.

ITRS

Sample Customers

Management Science Associates, Peak 10, Virtual Consulting Professionals

Svenska Spel, Carus, VGL, Tele2, Viking Line, Clas Ohlson, Vanderlande, Försäkringskassan

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS Manager vs. OP5 Monitor

January 2026

Free Report: Cisco UCS Manager vs. OP5 Monitor

Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS Manager vs. OP5 Monitor and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.

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