AWS CloudFormation vs. Cisco Intersight Infrastructure Service

AWS CloudFormation is well suited for scenarios where all of your resources need to be provisioned on AWS but it is not suited for hybrid cloud deployments. It's very easy for someone new to learn. The level of customization offered as part of the template specifically for AWS services is great. There is also a UI tool where we can drag and drop the services we want and it generates an yaml file which is very easy to use. The visibility of stacks and its resources and one place where we can track and identify the issues in deployment is great.

Incentivized

Cisco Intersight is very well suited for doing firmware upgrades across all of your cisco hardware. So far we have had no problems pushing out new firmware. It's also well suited for hardware management. Cisco TAC has the ability to pull logs for the IMC for themselves, which saves you from having to pull the logs yourself and then uploading them to the case. It may or may not be appropriate for upgrading operating systems. I have not been able to test it.

Incentivized

• SaaS
• Paas
• Iaas
• On promises

Incentivized

• Ease of implementation of our UCS-X Platforms
• Ease of Management
• Cross visibility to our Data Center Infrastructure (Network, Storage, Compute)
• Ability to Automate our configurations
• Ability to create profiles for better consistency and standardization

Incentivized

• Error Description upon Failure Needs to be Improved.
• Slow to create, delete or update.
• Need to delete resources manually. It can ask before starting deletion whether to skip those resources or delete them.

Incentivized

• Interface is quite slow
• Interface tree (navigating between server, profile, blade, chassis, FI, etc) is counterintuitive and needs more links in the tree
• Deploying minor changes takes much longer than in UCSM or UCSC

Incentivized

We use it every single day and love the ease of it and the integration of all our servers

Usability of Cisco Intersight is highly dependent on the licensing purchased. The default (free) license level provides a lot of value for the minimal amount of effort to implement. The paid license levels provide additional features (detailed inventory, configuration management and deployment, etc.)

Incentivized

Support for this platform is unmatched. I've used only a couple of other platforms, honestly, but Cisco Intersight's support system really works, and they do a great job. Any issue I've had was solved in a timely manner with a polite representative who cared about helping me and not just plainly reading off of a script that doesn't actually help. I rate it well.

Incentivized

We didn't look into anything else as Cloudformation was "built-in" for AWS, it just kind of made sense to go with that. Terraform was something that we briefly looked into Terraform but decides to stick with Cloudformation because our task was relatively "simple". Apparently if it's a bit more complex, Terraform might be the way to go.

Incentivized

I personally think that Cisco Intersight Infrastructure Service is at the top of its class when it comes to managing data center hardware. The cloud-connected design feels very modern and easy to use. The mobile app is something I wouldn't expect to get in a server management tool. The way it can update, monitor, and manage our servers is very nice. Overall, we are very happy with it.

Incentivized

• It has a positive ROI
• Less time inverted in bugs
• More stable source code

Incentivized

• It is positive for a few people being able to manage a lot of hardware
• It does put the management in the cloud, which some could argue is a security vulnerability.
• It is difficult to move hardware from Intersign managed to standalone.