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Cisco UCS Manager vs WhatsUp Gold comparison

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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
28th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
WhatsUp Gold
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
23rd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (44th), Network Monitoring Software (25th), Server Monitoring (18th), Configuration Management (22nd), Log Management (41st), Cloud Monitoring Software (27th), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS Manager is 1.4%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of WhatsUp Gold is 2.3%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
WhatsUp Gold2.3%
Cisco UCS Manager1.4%
Other96.3%
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.
EC
Technical Manager at Quan Hung Gourmet
Efficient monitoring with detailed customization, yet complexity remains
The best feature of WhatsUp Gold is the automatic generation of topology and its integration with virtualization and wireless. I have used the automated device discovery with this topology feature. The interactive map feature helps me manage the topology because sometimes we cannot draw the topology correctly, so we need to manually edit the connections. The alerting system is very tunable and customizable, but it's a little complicated to use. Many customers cannot manage it by themselves and need support from us, the provider. We always use the dashboards in the SOC, where we constantly display a dashboard or multiple dashboards. This allows us to know immediately if the connection or bandwidth is full or if the connection is broken.

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."
"Usually, we are called by clients specifically about product suggestions, and I often personally recommend Cisco UCS because of the high availability."
"The hardware is very powerful and it is a stable solution."
"From a usability and functionality perspective, Cisco UCS Manager is very good."
"The solution offers quite good stability; we haven't had a problem at all with it."
"Cisco UCS Manager is a very useful product for managing our entire ecosystem for Cisco products."
"We can configure the Cisco UCS Manager, the profiles and interactions with the resource we manage."
"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."
"It is stable."
"The solution effectively monitors network devices and servers."
"You have to invest a few days to become an expert in this solution, but after that, it's possible to do almost anything with it."
"I use it on premises to monitor my network database. We monitor the link up/down and use the SNMP traps as well."
"The most valuable feature is the auto-discovery function."
"It is easy to access and discover devices, as well as monitor them automatically. The topology discover is also a useful feature."
"Their tech support is very good."
"We no longer have to manually search for problems because we are alerted when something in the network goes down."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"The pricing aspect should be addressed."
"The pricing can be better."
"I want to be able to schedule multiple sequential updates in one go."
"Getting a CLI report on routers, switches, or any other CLI configuration device is difficult."
"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."
"Cisco UCS Manager is not a scalable solution because once you have 160 blades, it cannot be expanded more."
"There are some subscription charges that are quite heavy. I need to pay for support every year and these charges can be quite expensive."
"I haven't had any issue with stability, except during the upgrade to 2017 when we encountered slow responses."
"Honestly, I do not particularly like WhatsUp Gold. I think we should get rid of it."
"There is a very big gap in the support."
"The initial setup of WhatsUp Gold is a medium range of difficulty levels. However, if it is your first time it could be difficult."
"WhatsUp Gold should work on real-time monitoring and configuration management. If they succeed in doing this, the solution will cover all the network troubleshooting aspects and will be a benefit."
"Integrations with other devices. I want to have a product that has full integration with my active directory so I can track user activity. I want to track my complete user activity, so I'm looking for a product to implement in the near future, which will have full integration with my network and active directory users. It became very difficult to track user activity."
"One of the biggest things that made us start to look at another product is we're not able to have an end to end monitoring from a user perspective throughout the system and back to the user. All the monitoring is from inside out, we need something that also can give us from outside in."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"With product discounts which can be negotiated, the product is a great value."
"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."
"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."
"Cisco UCS Manager’s annual licensing fee is expensive."
"The price of WhatsUp Gold is good."
"I'm not sure, but it's expensive. We don't pay any additional fees."
"It is per device, per year. The pricing is very clear. If you have a service agreement, you get all of your major upgrades and minor upgrades. It was under $10,000 to go all-in with all of the different add-ons for it."
"The most valuable feature is the cost compared to other solutions."
"There are some subscription charges that are quite heavy. I need to pay for support every year and these charges can be quite expensive. Aside from the initial cost for the tool, you need to pay additionally for support."
"This is a well priced solution."
"The choice of version depends on the number of points, or devices, that you want to monitor, and this makes the product expensive."
"The tool's price is reasonable. WhatsUp Gold is cheaper than SolarWinds."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
 

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 Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
 

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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for WhatsUp Gold?
Clients find the licensing calculator confusing, but we simplify this for them by collecting relevant information first. The licensing is based on devices, providing better cost-effectiveness than ...
What needs improvement with WhatsUp Gold?
It would be great if WhatsUp Gold could add features that simplify management with AI, as it is currently too complicated to manage.
What is your primary use case for WhatsUp Gold?
My use case for WhatsUp Gold includes all device availability checks, bandwidth usage, CPU, and memory usage, as well as alarm notifications.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Management Science Associates, Peak 10, Virtual Consulting Professionals
Artoni Trasporti, Austin Independent School District, Banca Marche, Burke County North Carolina, Cambridge University School of Clinical Medicine, Clayco, Community Integrated Care, Desca, Deutsche Bergbau, Flexi-Van, Gropper, Hamleys, Hammonds Furniture, Knowledge IT, Idras S.P.A., Sibeg, Swann Engineering, Trivium Lindenhof
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS Manager vs. WhatsUp Gold and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,148 professionals have used our research since 2012.