Cisco Intersight Infrastructure Service vs. VMware Cloud Foundation

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

It is best suited for an on-premise cloud solution where customer can shift their entire production environment. Also, the customer has a preference for a Homogenous Infrastructure Environment where budget is not a challenge. It is not at all suited for a Heterogenous Environment, e.g., a Public cloud where integration becomes a huge issue, also in SMB sections where budget is challenging.

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

• Cloud enabled Solution.
• Support Container based Apps.
• Cost efficient.
• Supports both Public and Private Environments.

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

• The Deployment is complex.
• Recommended Number of Physical Nodes is three or more; with less than 3 Nodes, it becomes difficult to install V-SAN.
• Need for better integration. If we go on the public cloud, it is a huge challenge while integrate with an open source platform.
• Cost can be marginally reduced. SMB segments still prefer a separate license instead of VCF, or they postpone their purchase plans.

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

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

Although the public Cloud Model follows Opex Costing Model, it actually leads to very high costs also, the infra model in my organization is not suited for a Public Cloud Model. Hence We decided on an On-Premise Model, and the best suited was VMware Cloud Foundation, which is a complete Software-Defined Scale-Out Architecture. I also prefer a Homogenous environment; i.e, support and services from a Single OEM, so that I Can get faster resolutions to my tickets raised.

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.

• My organization has a size of 1300+ employees, using multiple applications and an exchange mail server that is hosted on On-Premise Cloud, hence scalability has not been a challenge.
• Having hosted my Production environment and Mail exchange Server on VCF, there has been optimum resource utilization with very little scope downtime. Hence have been able to save a lot of funds on Hardware resources.
• Due to the size of my organization and due the data load, I have been able to save on Resource Utilization and Organization Funds

Incentivized