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Cisco UCS Manager vs ControlUp 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
17th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
ControlUp
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
37th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS Manager is 1.5%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ControlUp is 1.0%, up from 0.9% 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…
Richasvi Tripathi - PeerSpot reviewer
Used to monitor several devices, but most reports do not give information of all the devices
We have approximately 10 to 20 feature requests pending on the vendor side. Most reports give information about the top 100 devices, but not all of the devices. In our case, we are monitoring 200000 devices. So, we need details for all those devices, but that is limited to 100, which they have improved to an extent in some reports. I'm thinking of one feature request for ISPs because the dashboard does not provide a detailed list of ISPs, and it provides the wrong list. I feel some firewall issues are blocking that, and the team cannot send that detail. That may be the case. One feature request pending on the vendor side is the data format change. Once you see a detail in the report, it is mentioned in some other format, which is hard to analyze sometimes.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The management is one of the most valuable features of this solution."
"Ease of management is certainly the most valuable feature in this product."
"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."
"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."
"A main feature of Cisco UCS Manager is its reliability, as all of the computing blades are in cluster mode."
"Creating UCS service profiles for quickly deploying servers and replicating that configuration to another server makes it easier for deployment."
"The reporting functionality will give you any report you want."
"We can configure the Cisco UCS Manager, the profiles and interactions with the resource we manage."
"ControlUp has an easy installation process."
"ControlUp is beneficial as it provides a web interface through which you can access all your infrastructure—servers, devices, and VDI infrastructure—all on the same platform. It supports gathering all infrastructure components in a single, unified dashboard. This helps you identify performance issues or high resource utilization, allowing quick troubleshooting. I appreciate the solid interface that ControlUp offers."
"It has a great career time monitoring tool."
"Security, uptime, and reduced capital expenditures are the main reasons we use ControlUp. So basically, the money that we consume is based on the amount of time we are using a service."
"The most valuable feature is the granularity of visibility into the resources that are in use by our applications."
"The script-based actions have allowed us to extend the core reporting capabilities."
"Integration with Netscaler and Scoutbees can provide a proper end-to-end analysis of the user's experience and give us a real ROI."
"The most valuable features in ControlUp are endpoint monitoring and the many features that are available."
 

Cons

"What's lacking in Cisco UCS Manager is the performance dashboard. If a blade has any performance issues, you should be able to create a dashboard on Cisco UCS Manager. Currently, this feature isn't present."
"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 want to be able to schedule multiple sequential updates in one go."
"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 pricing aspect should be addressed."
"Upgrading the firmware is a difficult procedure."
"The automation within the solution needs to be simplified."
"The most common complaint that I have heard, at least within our organization, is about reporting. They have their own reporting. It's just that it doesn't yet include everything that you can look at within the application. You can only report on specific metrics or collections."
"ControlUp could improve the integration. Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop monitoring has better integration."
"Integration is always a problem, and we feel that we are doing our best and the service provider thinks they are doing their best. I guess if ControlUp's system could be more capable or if people could understand the integration part, that would be better."
"We'd like to see the mobile app working again so that we can get alerts 24/7. This is especially useful for the person on call."
"Most reports give information about the top 100 devices, but not all of the devices."
"This solution be improved by including load throttling tools. For example, I can identify a service where we spend a lot of CPU but I cannot restrict the service from ControlUp. I have to use another tool like AppSense."
"Solve is a quick and intuitive tool for quickly mapping data together, however, once you have the view of the data that you like, it is difficult to share this with colleagues."
"Something I would love to see from a partner perspective would be maybe a way to do this in a surface hosting provider."
 

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."
"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."
"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."
"We are satisfied with the price compared to other solutions."
"Personally, I would say that the only thing I could compare it to is another monitoring tool that we use, Nagios."
"Based on my experience, ControlUp is not that expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
26%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Healthcare Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

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.
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 ControlUp Real-time?
Based on my experience, ControlUp is not that expensive. It is a cheap tool because it is deployed to many devices where I work.
What needs improvement with ControlUp Real-time?
We have approximately 10 to 20 feature requests pending on the vendor side. Most reports give information about the top 100 devices, but not all of the devices. In our case, we are monitoring 20000...
What is your primary use case for ControlUp Real-time?
We use the tool to monitor approximately 2,00,000 devices for a client. We check how the devices are doing in terms of hardware and software. We also check their health and alerts every day. If som...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Management Science Associates, Peak 10, Virtual Consulting Professionals
B/E Aerospace, North Carolina SECU, Vancouver Island Health Authority, University of Florida
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS Manager vs. ControlUp and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,396 professionals have used our research since 2012.