Broadcom Unified Infrastructure Manager, formerly from CA Technologies, is a unified tool for systems monitoring and analytics. It offers multiple deployment options for IT teams and MSPs .
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Cisco UCS Manager
Score 8.7 out of 10
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Cisco UCS Manager supports the entire Cisco UCS server and Cisco HyperFlex Series hyperconverged infrastructure portfolios. It enables server, fabric, and storage provisioning as well as, device discovery, inventory, configuration, diagnostics, monitoring, fault detection, auditing, and statistics collection.
Well Suited: - Multiple units (you may split Nimsoft per Groups, companies, etc.) - When your Business Teams NEED Dashboards (they'll love it after they learn how to use, for example, if they discover that the may even run SQL queries together with monitor the webpage of the application, and display business data) Less appropriate: - If you are beginning to monitor your environment (because you need to know your environment at least a little bit to check if the entire set of monitoring Nimsoft plugins will really help you or you will only use it to ping your application) - If you don't have at least one (i do recommend 2 or 3 after some short time) people dedicated to deploy and fine-tune the monitoring. The tool is really good, but if you don't have anyone working on it, you will notice that you're spending money in an elephant to kill an ant or worst, that you passed the entire year, and still have the same problems of the last year, cause no one put the hands enough time in the tool. I saw this happening during the first year when I was the only one working with the tool and still supporting the entire team.
It [Cisco UCS Manager] is extremely well suited to large virtual infrastructure environments with resource dense blades. This solution is also great if you want to consolidate a large number of servers (if they are servers that need to stay physical, but can fit in the profile of a blade) - this would reduce data center space utilization as well as power and cooling. Cisco UCS Manager is also great if you're looking for centralized management of a larger number of servers. This would not be a great solution if you have a very small shop - it's not cheap and probably wouldn't give you a ROI if you only have a couple dozen servers total. I'd say it would be overkill for small shops, but if you have the money and don't care, you'll still like it.
I'd like to see improvements in inventory management. Currently node management isn't as efficient as I'd like.
I also see a big opportunity to offer greater customization in the Detail Tab. I'd like the ability to pick and chose which metrics are displayed by default in the Detail Tab snapshot.
Cisco UCSM Support has been very quick to reply and address our concerns, issues, and questions. We have found that Cisco's documentation is clear and concise and fairly easy to find. With Cisco support's help, we are able to quickly and safely meet the demands of our end-users, consistently.
All tools have their own gaps , some seem to do more than others, some just work better. With UIM we have found a sweet spot with features, price point, pros, cons, etc
I think UCS Manager would be able very comparable to other vendors offerings when it comes to server configuration. I think Cisco did a good job in giving you full access to many options that you might not see with Dell or HPE. Every manufacturer would need a similar tool to control their server environment, but I think what Cisco has built into their Manager is a little better than others I've used. You can just see and change so many settings. I would say that is also a bit of a negative by a little bit because sometimes it is hard to dig in and find what you need to change and often might need to reach out to TAC or take a training course to understand all of the interface.
Business Units love It - Good for them, but worse for the IT Team until we share the responsibility of the dashboards.
If no one put their hands on it, it will take some time to give results. I'm talking about environments with 400 devices, for example, in something about 6 months to one year, if no one is dedicated, and depending on the consulting company. Some, even certified by CA, was not good. If possible, try to use CA services directly.
IT Teams, after they start to notice that the tool really work, will want to monitor everything. Depending on the company, this will be more or less easy to measure, as ROI. And I'm telling this because usually IT teams don't know how to sell them to C-Levels, and the tool, because of the price, is always a motivation to questions like: "What is this tool? Do you really need it? Is there another way to monitor this?"
