Cisco Intersight Infrastructure Service - the next big step in Cisco server management
Updated March 13, 2025
Cisco Intersight Infrastructure Service - the next big step in Cisco server management
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Modules Used
- Cisco Intersight Infrastructure Service
Overall Satisfaction with Cisco Intersight
We have been using Cisco UCS in legacy UMM (UCSM managed mode) for over 13 years. When Cisco released a newer generation of product (Cisco UCS-X), we were steered in the direction of Cisco Intersight Infrastructure Service and domains in Intersight Managed Mode. We use Cisco UCS domains in UMM to give us a single pane of glass of all our servers and domains, even though in UMM the domain is read-only. The base (free) features in Cisco Intersight Infrastructure Service give us all the features we need for our legacy domains (Connected TAC, auto Support Request generation and TAC's ability to extract log files). For the domains that we have built in UMM and then transitioned to IMM, the IMM Transition Tool has been indispensable. We found it easier to transition an existing domain with settings that have been in use for years, than configuring policies and profiles from scratch. We heavily rely on Cisco PowerTool commandlets to extract and configure settings on our UMM domains and service profiles and were concerned that we had to adopt usage of the Intersight API to get feature equivalency. This ended up not being an issue in Intersight Managed Mode, since all profiles (domain, server, chassis, etc) are associated with updating templates for each, and consume policies which can be reused. Being "nudged" to use server updating templates (this is the only option, whereas in UMM and Cisco UCS Central we always used initial templates only) allowed for a high level of standardisation in our footprint.
Pros
- Standardising the environment by enforcing use of updating templates.
- Show the difference on a profile between what has changed and what setting was last deployed.
- Perform bulk deploy operation on profiles (like server profiles).
- Policies underpin all settings (e.g. no more defining individual VLANs before being able to use them, or having to clean them up manually when they are no longer in use. You deploy a Domain VLAN policy that states which VLANs are configured on a domain (either standalone) or a domain profile template (if domains profiles are bound to an updating domain profile template).
Cons
- It is difficult to spot an added or removed VLAN in an Ethernet Network Group Policy or VLAN Policy. The comparison widget will show you that something has changed, but if you have 100s of VLANs, the difference does not stand out. Workaround: we copy the data out and compare it in a text editor.
- If you are transitioning from UMM to IMM, you lose some functionality like vNIC redundancy pairs.
- It is not easy to map the UMM version 4.x server firmware version to the equivalent IMM version 5.x firmware version.
- It is not possible to configure out-of-band management IP addresses on a per-domain basis. You have to configure these ranges via an IMC Access policy (which contains the IP address range/pool) on the server profile. This leads to "server profile template sprawl" where we have to maintain multiple server profile templates since our domains sit on different ranges, even though the servers are for the most part configured identically.
- UCS domains in IMM only support one Ethernet Network Group Policy (VLAN group) per vNIC template.
- (Disclaimer - as a systems engineer, I do not have any hard numbers) For our compute refresh, we have been able to rapidly deploy a large number of servers in a much smaller time frame than what we used to in UMM.
- Our domains running in IMM (native Intersight mode) are much more standardised than those that are still running in UCSM Mode.
- Configuration drift is easier to identify.
Our organisation has some experience with Dell OME (the centralised management plane for Dell PowerEdge server, equivalent to Cisco Intersight Infrastructure Service and UCS Manager, but not enough to contrast the two or say why one is better than the other.
Everything needed to deploy a new Cisco UCS Domain is configured in Cisco Intersight Infrastructure Service. There is no longer any requirement to have some parts configured locally on the domain. The domain configuration is effectively stateless and can be templatised, redeployed or moved to other hardware, similar to the UCS Service Profile concept on Cisco UCS Manager/Central.
We have not connected any 3rd party products. We plan on connecting ScienceLogic PowerPack for Cisco Intersight Infrastructure Service. I will update this section based on our experience.
Do you think Cisco Intersight delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Cisco Intersight's feature set?
Yes
Did Cisco Intersight live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Cisco Intersight go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Cisco Intersight again?
Yes
Using Cisco Intersight
15 - Virtualisation and server infrastructure management.
3 - Background in and experience with Cisco UCS Manager or Central and Cisco server hardware. Cisco Intersight Essentials course (on Cisco U.)
- Deploy compute workloads in a fast and highly scalable fashion.
- Centralise management of compute silos (UCS domains), server configurations, including firmware updates for both.
- Easy expansion of existing compute by adding additional server chassis.
- Detecting configuration drift (flagging the difference between the last deployed configuration and the to be deployed one), significantly reduces the risk of performing configuration changes.
- Cisco Connected TAC (raising a Support Request from within Intersight with the device information pre-populated) means we don't need to go to a separate interface (Cisco Case Manager) to create a support ticket from scratch.
- Cisco support engineers being able to generate and extract support bundles saves us the time of having to generate these bundles and upload them to the support site have reduced our workload and lead to faster resolution times.
- Cisco Auto RMA detects DIMM failures, automatically generates the support ticket. We just need to supply the shipping address.
- We are investigating using the Cisco Intersight Metrics Explorer.
Evaluating Cisco Intersight and Competitors
- Ease of Use
- Other
Intersight is the preferred management and configuration plane for UCS servers going forward. New features will be added there UCS Manager and Central are not expected to receive new feature updates or anything more than basic hardware support. When we buy UCS-X blades, Intersight Essentials is a prerequisite, e.g. you cannot opt out of the line item.
We would have involved the Intersight Managed Mode Transition Tool much sooner. This tool unlocked a lot of the new (and different) features for us.
Cisco Intersight Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response | None |
The Advantage license tier is a bit expensive for us for the moment, but we are evaluating it.
Yes - Yes. The "multiple VLAN groups on a vNIC template" feature was not supported when we migrated our domains to Intersight. I submitted a query to one of the product experts and was told that the feature was on the roadmap. 2-3 weeks later the feature was made generally available to Intersight SaaS customers.
We had some issues using the Intersight Managed Mode Transition Tool, and were able to get the issues escalated to and directly interact with the product architect and one of the developers. The version that followed, included a fix for the issue we experienced.
Using Cisco Intersight
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Convenient | None |
- Preventing configuration drift by reusing the same policies and profile templates.
- Comparing configurations before deploying them.
- Managing VLAN ranges on domain VLAN Policies and vNIC Ethernet Network Group Policies.
- No functions are particularly difficult or cumbersome to use.
Yes - Yes, there is an Intersight app on the iOS app store, but I was unable to get it to work. After logging in and selecting account and role, I get a "Something went Wrong. Please try again." error message. Accessing the Intersight website with a phone works reasonably well (the interface scale and menu items can be hidden to free up valuable real estate).
Upgrading Cisco Intersight
Yes - I am answering yes, even though the question is not applicable. Cisco Intersight is a SaaS offering. There are no upgrades similar to installable and on-premise software. New features are added on a month-by-month basis and can be found by searching for Cisco Intersight what's new. More relevant for UCS admins is the Intersight Managed Mode Transition Tool which allows users to migrate configs from on-premise UCS Manager to Intersight (SaaS or Virtual Appliance) or even between Intersight accounts.
- No upgrades are required on our end. Cisco take care of upgrading the product, whether it be the SaaS based variant or Connected Virtual Appliance.
- Intersight Managed Mode Transition Tool allows us to move configurations around.
- Not applicable since new features are continuously being released.
- There are some features that we are looking forward to, but I cannot share them unfortunately (the roadmap is not public).
Yes - There are some features in the Intersight Advantage license tier which are not part of the Intersight Essentials license tier. The most relevant or interesting to us so far are error metrics and Operating System Install.
Yes - We started on the base (free) tier for all our UCS Manager Managed mode (legacy) environments, and started procuring Intersight Essentials with UCS-X compute refreshes. Even the base tier provides many useful features like Connected TAC and Auto RMA and a single dashboard to see all faults, be it UMM or IMM.
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