Centreon vs Cisco UCS Manager comparison

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Centreon Logo
7,222 views|4,615 comparisons
96% willing to recommend
Cisco Logo
2,074 views|1,765 comparisons
95% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Centreon and Cisco UCS Manager based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two IT Infrastructure Monitoring solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Centreon vs. Cisco UCS Manager Report (Updated: May 2024).
770,428 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"Centreon helps me detect where the problem is quickly. When we resolve a problem quickly, this lowers our overall costs.""The dashboards are valuable because they ease troubleshooting and viewing. It becomes easier to locate the source of a problem... The dashboards make it easier to communicate with our clients. They don't want to see the alert console, they want to see a beautiful dashboard representing their network and their business and to watch it in case something is wrong in their environment.""What we like about it is that, whereas with Nagios, by design, if you have five or six data centers, you have to open five or six web pages to see what's going on, In Centreon, this is all included in one page, a single site, one dashboard. You don't have to jump from one specific dashboard to the other.""The most valuable feature is that we can manually configure everything we need. After it comes inside the interface of Centreon, you can display it. Because the interface is quite user-friendly, you can manually configure the configuration very deeply, which is very pleasant and useful because you can monitor and see everything on your service list, dashboard, or MAP. The most useful feature for me is that you can create your own plugin and monitoring query.""E-mail alert notifications are valuable.""We have all our tickets inside Centreon in real-time and can monitor a lot of ELP and CLN in real-time for application purposes.""I really like the filtering capabilities of it. You can easily tell what's critical next to what's okay, the state of the services. It's very easy to get the whole picture quickly.""It supports active monitoring so we don't have to use traps. From time to time traps are not very useful because we never know if they are actually working or not. The reporting part is also valuable as are the event logs. Using them we can check right away if something has had a hiccup."

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"I can quickly manage the provisioned servers.""Ease of management is certainly the most valuable feature in this product.""The management is one of the most valuable features of this solution.""The hardware is very powerful and it is a stable solution.""From a usability and functionality perspective, Cisco UCS Manager is very good.""When one server fails, we can attach the service profile to a new server, which saves a lot of time.""The flexibility and the ease in which the features can be expanded are the solution's most valuable aspects.""Cisco UCS has different layers of security, and you can do multiple installations of your LIAMs on top of the server and Blade. You can install VMware, Windows Server, Hyper-V, etc."

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Cons
"I would like to see a better UI, one which is more responsive.""I would like to see more plugins. That is something it needs. There is also room for improvement through dynamic thresholds, or self-discover thresholds. I would also like to see a discovery feature that could map the whole network environment and automatically suggest things.""To get it started is a lot of work, since it comes empty. We had to push information into it to make it work.""Centreon technical support is only available during Central European business hours. When it comes to critical business solutions, there should be a 24/7 hotline that customers can rely on.""The most important issue is the capability to interconnect with other systems. It already exists for some of them. For example, the Stream Connector is something we use to populate data in another system. This kind of facility for connecting should exist for all products that it makes sense to have connected to a monitoring solution.""During the initial setup we faced some issues. Part of it was because we had to become more knowledgeable in the solution. There are some gray areas and if you don't know the product well you may have issues. Another part of it was some bugs that we came across, although that's part of every software solution in IT nowadays. But the initial setup could be easier.""Release management and quality of testing need improvement, because with each major upgrade we have many issues coming in. Then, it takes several minor upgrades to get rid of them.""I think Centreon's security could be improved by leveraging AI. That's where things are heading in the industry."

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"The solution's pricing is high and could be reduced.""The pricing can be better.""I found it a bit of a challenge to get training on UCSM. I've been trying to get that for some time now. I feel like I have to figure it out a lot of things myself. For years I've to log calls with support whenever I've got challenges that I cannot resolve. If I had some training or more manuals, I'd be better able to handle more things on my own.""Getting a CLI report on routers, switches, or any other CLI configuration device is difficult.""Its user interface can be improved. It can be more user-friendly.""There is room for improvement in the software part of Cisco UCS Manager. It should be more user-friendly, especially when creating policies.""We have three data centers and if we could manage all three data centers using one interface, it would be great.""The automation within the solution needs to be simplified."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "It's quite expensive when you use the Enterprise version, but if you compare it to other providers, it's more like a middle-of-the-line product. It's always good to have a price that is lower, but I would say the price is okay because we get very good support and if we have any other issues we can always contact them. There has never been a time when I didn't get help from them."
  • "In terms of licensing, you have to think through if the components that need licensing are really needed. For example, the Map module: If you don't need a map to be shown, I don't see a point in paying for those licenses, if you just use it a couple of times a month or a couple of times a week... You can use the Centreon free version and get the main features. The licensing part is, I would say, only for bigger customers who have the option to pay more and who really need those kinds of modules, fancy reports, etc."
  • "For more complex tasks, we use prepaid support days and ask Centreon to come onsite."
  • "Centreon is an open source product. Thus, there is no need for licensing."
  • "The pricing is acceptable."
  • "They only sell four hour slots for support, so if you have just one question, then you need to pay for four hours. Or, you need to wait until you have enough questions to fill those four hours. They are not flexible in this."
  • "I think Centreon's pricing is fair, especially given the criticality of our system. They were cheaper than the other solutions. The licensing terms were pretty straightforward. I believe it was based on the number of hosts."
  • "The solution is very effective, despite the low price."
  • More Centreon Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "With product discounts which can be negotiated, the product is a great value."
  • "You buy the hardware and then you get Cisco UCS Manager for free."
  • "The pricing for Cisco UCS Manager is okay for its market, so it's a four out of five for me."
  • "Cisco UCS is more expensive than Dell and HP, but it is more reliable. I see less issues and it's quite stable."
  • "Cisco UCS Manager’s annual licensing fee is expensive."
  • "We need to take a license for each port, which amounts to a big sum."
  • More Cisco UCS Manager Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Centreon's most valuable features are preventative maintenance and cost-efficiency. Everything is monitored, and we get a log before the system fails. We have an opportunity to fix the issue and avoid… more »
    Top Answer:Prometheus provides the ability to automate the backup of my infrastructure. This automatic backup capability allows me to integrate it into GitLab for versioning, among other functionalities. Thus… more »
    Top Answer:When one server fails, we can attach the service profile to a new server, which saves a lot of time.
    Top Answer:We need to take a license for each port, which amounts to a big sum.
    Top Answer:The solution's pricing is high and could be reduced. Compared to other systems, memory failure in Cisco UCS Manager is much higher.
    Ranking
    Views
    7,222
    Comparisons
    4,615
    Reviews
    6
    Average Words per Review
    907
    Rating
    8.0
    Views
    2,074
    Comparisons
    1,765
    Reviews
    8
    Average Words per Review
    553
    Rating
    7.5
    Comparisons
    Zabbix logo
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    PRTG Network Monitor logo
    Compared 16% of the time.
    Nagios Core logo
    Compared 11% of the time.
    Icinga logo
    Compared 5% of the time.
    Nagios XI logo
    Compared 3% of the time.
    Learn More
    Overview

    Centreon is an all-in-one IT monitoring solution that is a network, system, applicative supervision, and monitoring tool. It is free and open source, and one of the most flexible and powerful monitoring softwares on the market.

    Centreon Features

    Centreon has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Supervision of hybrid infrastructures, from one end to the other
    • Open and flexible architecture 
    • Open-source solution, downloadable for free
    • Filtering capability in GUI interface
    • Proactive end to end monitoring
    • Easily configurable and simple to handle
    • Dedicated dashboard widgets
    • Scalability
    • Independent application for monitoring
    • End to end reporting with actual logs

    Centreon Benefits

    There are several benefits to implementing Centreon. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Single platform, multi-user rights & access: Centreon is designed with built-in ACL, allowing enterprise users access to the monitored data on a need-to-know basis.
    • Smart data-mapping for customized macro & micro views: Centreon provides real-time custom views in multiple screens with graphic-rich data mapping, which also enables monitoring operators to act and troubleshoot from a distance.
    • Ready monitoring intelligence & reporting: With Centreon, you can easily generate reports of essential operational KPIs by using pre-configured templates, and add reports as needed by exploiting the dedicated monitoring data warehouse.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by Centreon users.

    PeerSpot user Thor M., CEO at a tech services company, says, "The single-pane view provides us a view of all of our network infrastructure, and it is one of the most important tools that we use to see the status of our customers' networks. It provides a nice benefit when it comes to helping align IT operations with business objectives. The top-down views, dashboards, and business context reporting are things that are nice to have because you want to be able to show the customer that everything is working, that problems have been addressed, and that you're providing value.” 

    Thomas C., Managing Director, Canada at Eva, comments, “The most valuable feature of the solution is the flexibility, the ability to integrate all kinds of equipment. As long as something has an IP you can monitor it. What we try to achieve all the time is not only saying a company's system is available, but to give additional data on the performance of the equipment. So the flexibility is what matters the most to us, where we can script everything. Centreon has a lot of Plugin Packs, meaning they support, by design, a lot of devices. And on top of that, we have the ability to add our own scripts and do whatever we want and display the data as we want in the central dashboards.”

    Marcilio L., President at ITS Solucoes, expresses, "The dashboards are valuable because they ease troubleshooting and viewing. It becomes easier to locate the source of a problem... The dashboards make it easier to communicate with our clients. They don't want to see the alert console, they want to see a beautiful dashboard representing their network and their business and to watch it in case something is wrong in their environment."

    Florent Q., Network Engineer at a computer software company, mentions, "The most valuable feature is that we can manually configure everything we need. After it comes inside the interface of Centreon, you can display it. Because the interface is quite user-friendly, you can manually configure the configuration very deeply, which is very pleasant and useful because you can monitor and see everything on your service list, dashboard, or MAP. The most useful feature for me is that you can create your own plugin and monitoring query."

    Cisco UCS Manager helps significantly reduce management and administration expenses by automating routine tasks to increase operational agility. Customers can extend the benefits of Cisco UCS Manager globally across an enterprise to thousands of servers in multiple domains with Cisco UCS Central Software.
    Sample Customers
    Airbus, Bollore, BT, Canal Plus, Kuehne Nagel, Limagrain, LVMH, Oberthur Technologies, Orange, Darty, Addax Petroleum, Plastic Omnium, Auchan, Valeo, Saint Gobin, Clarins, Hugo Boss, JC Decaux, French Government (Defense, Justice, Environment, Agriculture), OptiComm, Thales, Zeiss.
    Management Science Associates, Peak 10, Virtual Consulting Professionals
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company33%
    Logistics Company22%
    Comms Service Provider11%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Government12%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider42%
    Consumer Goods Company8%
    Energy/Utilities Company8%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company33%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Government7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business42%
    Midsize Enterprise21%
    Large Enterprise38%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business31%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise54%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business32%
    Midsize Enterprise9%
    Large Enterprise59%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business14%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise75%
    Buyer's Guide
    Centreon vs. Cisco UCS Manager
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Centreon vs. Cisco UCS Manager and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
    770,428 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Centreon is ranked 11th in IT Infrastructure Monitoring with 27 reviews while Cisco UCS Manager is ranked 29th in IT Infrastructure Monitoring with 21 reviews. Centreon is rated 8.6, while Cisco UCS Manager is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Centreon writes "Proactive reporting guides our NOC on what needs to be fixed, saving them time". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Cisco UCS Manager writes "Used to manage servers, monitor or manage firmware upgrades, and push policies". Centreon is most compared with Zabbix, PRTG Network Monitor, Nagios Core, Icinga and Nagios XI, whereas Cisco UCS Manager is most compared with Cisco Intersight, Nutanix Prism, HPE OneView, Zabbix and Datadog. See our Centreon vs. Cisco UCS Manager report.

    See our list of best IT Infrastructure Monitoring vendors.

    We monitor all IT Infrastructure Monitoring reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.