Cisco UCS Manager vs NetApp ONTAP System Manager

Likelihood to Recommend

If you have a data center and use the Cisco UCS Blade platform with SAN storage, then UCS manager is the right tool for you. Managing one or a few host servers with UCS manager is pretty easy. You can see pretty quick what is going on with your servers. If you need to configure the fabric interconnects, you pretty much need to use UCS manager to do it. I find that it meets the needs for almost everything we do with the UCS C and B servers. If you have hyper flex servers from Cisco, then you would not want to use UCS manger. If you are not using Cisco servers you may not be able to use UCS manager.

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Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Mining & Metals Company, 501-1000 employees

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ONTAP System Manager is feature rich and all inclusive. It can work with multiple storage protocols and for various functionalities. It will replace your File Servers and your SAN and put them into one storage appliance. NFS, iSCSI, Fibre Channel, NVMe are all options. Snapshots and Offsite replication (Snapmirror) are all great. I can't think of a scenario where a NetApp wouldn't be a good fit.

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Steve Davis

Solutions Architect

Virgin OrbitInformation Technology and Services, 501-1000 employees

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Pros

Management of every part our our Cisco blade center
Centralized management of a complicated system
Hardware control
Central storage
Smaller power requirements compared to legacy equipment

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Verified User

Engineer in Customer Service

Telecommunications Company, 5001-10,000 employees

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System Manager is extremely good at resizing volumes, changing snapshot policies and making day-to-day changes.
The Dashboard and the Hardware and Diagnostics tabs are a great window into the health of your filer and Cluster. You can immediately see any issues like volumes that are nearly full or errors in the event logs.

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Brandon Burch

Coordinator of Network and Technical Services

Hudson Falls Central School DistrictEducation Management, 201-500 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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Not necessarily a dislike of OnCommand per se but I do dislike that you have to still use different flavors of this tool to get a holistic view of every aspect of your NetApp - System Manager, Performance Manager, Unified Manager etc
The initial process to connect to a filer probably could do with a little more friendly documentation as the format for filer name (or IP) and whether and SNMP string is required etc is not clear.
The ability for more complete search capability within the logs (so therefore not having to extract them to work with them) would be an advantage for the timely resolution of faults.

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Joe Cairns

Lead Database Administrator

FraedomInformation Technology and Services, 201-500 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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NetApp ONTAP System Manager 10.0

Based on 3 answers

Support is great. Our account managers and system engineers regularly contact us and check in on us. Provide free training on various topics. Our team is readily available to answer any questions. Support tickets are generated automatically if anything goes wrong such as a disk going bad and a new one is sent out immediately. Very happy with support.

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Steve Davis

Solutions Architect

Virgin OrbitInformation Technology and Services, 501-1000 employees

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Alternatives Considered

The only other similar tool I've used briefly is vRealize, and it seemed more intuitive. I selected UCS Manager because it was already embedded when I started my current job.

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Tom Erdman

Network Systems Administrator

Johnson County LibraryLibraries, 201-500 employees

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I've used NetApp systems for the last 12 years. The only alternative I have used is the old OnCommand system. This is a drastic improvement over what was available in the past. The ability to use this software from anywhere inside your network is huge. If you were to combine this with VPN access you could easily monitor and configure your NetApp from anywhere in the world

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Brandon Burch

Coordinator of Network and Technical Services

Hudson Falls Central School DistrictEducation Management, 201-500 employees

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Return on Investment

It has been a good investment for us. We saw a ROI quickly as we moved most of our VMware infrastructure to it.
The support offered by 3rd party partners is readily available when they are needed.
It has been quite reliable for us thus far.

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Verified User

Project Manager in Information Technology

Higher Education Company, 201-500 employees

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Previously were were running with just locally attached storage across all of our estate. With this tool we are not able to simplify the management of storage saving on resource usage across our Ops teams allowing us to focus on "more important" tasks.

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Joe Cairns

Lead Database Administrator

FraedomInformation Technology and Services, 201-500 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

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No