Cisco UCS Manager vs Datadog

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Higher Education Company, 5001-10,000 employees

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Datadog is a no-brainer for any environment that relies on multiple servers. Even for one server, it's so much better to use for monitoring and alert capability than anything else I remember looking at before we started using Datadog. Teams can even use it to track their progress of investigating an alert so multiple people aren't unknowingly looking into the same exact issue unnecessarily.

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Verified User

Director in Research & Development

Financial Services Company, 1-10 employees

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Pros

It is very all inclusive for management of every part our our Cisco blade center.
It allows us to directly connect to a hardware-based server in the blade center as though we were physically at the console.
It allows us to monitor the entire system for faults.
It lets us manage connectivity.
It is set to alert us via email if a fault occurs.

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Verified User

Project Manager in Information Technology

Higher Education Company, 201-500 employees

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APIs, the ability to interact with the data we pull into data dog is key. We port the information over to Servicenow, so the ability to pull everything into DataDog, then Servicenow, is a key component of our success here at Wayfair.
Simple Interface - clean, useful, effective. Allows users to use DataDog for one reason, get work done.
Lightweight agent on hosts

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Anthony Zappala

ServiceNow Lead Engineer/Architect

WayfairInformation Technology and Services, 10,001+ employees

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Cons

Automation: There is a simple power-shell CMD lets, but it leaves more to be desired.
Navigation: Navigating the interface can be confusing.
Integration: Integration with ESXi hosts while doing FW upgrades would be hugely beneficial without the need for additional tools.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Banking Company, 201-500 employees

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User interface could be improved in some areas, looking for host information and the agent install link takes a bit of time.
Configuration of the agent is generally done via a config file which is a pro and a con. It would be nice to have some UI to configure various agent options.
Billing isn't entirely straightforward, they could use more reports to figure out the source of your monthly costs.

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Kevin Van Heusen

Software Architect

SpringAheadInternet, 51-200 employees

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Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

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Free/Freemium Version

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Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Entry-level set up fee?

No

Starting Price

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Cisco UCS Manager Editions & Modules

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Additional Pricing Details

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General

Free Trial

Yes

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

Optional

Starting Price

$0 Up to 5 hosts

Datadog Editions & Modules

On-premise Edition

Infrastructure	$15.00¹
Log Management	$1.27²
APM	$31.00³

Per Host Per Month
Per Million Log Events
Per Host Per Month

SaaS Edition

Free	$0¹
Standard	$15/host²
Enterprise	Custom³

Up to 5 hosts
Up to 500 hosts
500+ hosts

Additional Pricing Details

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Usability

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Datadog 10.0

Based on 1 answer

The user interface is quite intuitive with the exception of the network map. As a deployer of software, it is trivial to setup.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Information Technology & Services Company, 501-1000 employees

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Support Rating

Cisco UCS Manager 9.0

Based on 4 answers

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.

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Verified User

Administrator in Information Technology

Education Management Company, 51-200 employees

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Datadog 8.8

Based on 10 answers

The support team usually gets it right. We did have a rather complicate issue setting up monitoring on a domain controller. However, they are usually responsive and helpful over chat. The downside would be I don’t think they have any phone support. If that is important to you this might not be a good fit.

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Verified User

Director in Information Technology

Consumer Goods Company, 51-200 employees

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Alternatives Considered

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.

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Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Mining & Metals Company, 501-1000 employees

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We are still trying other products, but people still like Datadog. After setting up a dashboard, it's great for monitoring instances on Datadog. Also, the DevOps team had a good time setting up Datadog. It means Datadog was way easier to set up compared to those others.

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Verified User

Engineer in Information Technology

Information Technology and Services Company, 201-500 employees

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Return on Investment

The positive is I was able to consolidate my small server infrastructure from 3 racks to one rack giving me space back and much power savings
The negative would be it could feel a little daunting to manage as there are many tabs and pieces to the interface.

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Verified User

Administrator in Information Technology

Information Technology & Services Company, 501-1000 employees

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One of our critical production databases went down a couple of weeks back. Just because we had the Datadog monitoring enabled for that database, Datadog sent the alerts to PagerDuty and we were instantly notified via pager and email alert. We could act right away and bring up the database within a few mins.
Ability to create custom screenboards have allowed us to track the critical and warning alerts in front of our eyes all the time

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Rajeshh Raghavan

Systems Analyst, Engineering

Dreamworks AnimationEntertainment, 1001-5000 employees

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Cisco UCS Manager vs Datadog