Azure Arc is a set of technologies that brings Azure security and cloud-native services to hybrid and multicloud environments. It enables the user to secure and govern infrastructure and apps anywhere, build cloud-native apps faster with familiar tools and services to run them on any Kubernetes platform, and modernize the data estate with Azure data and machine-learning services.
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Cisco Intersight
Score 9.2 out of 10
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Cisco Intersight is an operations platform that helps IT operations teams control and automate Cisco UCS, converged, and hyperconverged infrastructure. Intersight consolidates and automates infrastructure lifecycle management from data centers to the edge in one solution delivered as-a-service.
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Pricing
Azure Arc
Cisco Intersight
Editions & Modules
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Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Azure Arc
Cisco Intersight
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Azure Arc
Cisco Intersight
Features
Azure Arc
Cisco Intersight
Cloud Management
Comparison of Cloud Management features of Product A and Product B
I have been amazed by the extra options which Azure Arc offers for SQL server deployment in both Azure infrastructure and on-premise (hybrid) infrastructure. The deployment options range from Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) to Platform as a service (PaaS). Arc-enabled IaaS and PaaS services bring the integration of Azure monitoring and security tools into any customer's local infrastructure and this is amazing
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.
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).
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.
Been using Cisco Software as a service (SaaS) platform in a production environment for a large medical and health professionals that has critical healthcare and patients care dependency.
Support team is very helpful getting system updated as needed, and vendor support is fantastic. Also get a dedicated Cisco networking engine to review and advise system health and recommendations.
Azure Arc monitoring is based on a unified procedure which includes the installation and configuration of the Arc agent on any computer/server which is to be onboaded to Arc. The solution is very usable especially when combined with the usage of Windows Admin Center, the HTML5-based unified management console for all our hybrid infrastructure. Many of the best of breed Azure tools and services are available via Azure Arc, when deployed to on-premise 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.)
If you have bigger problems with the on-prem version, the support team is sometimes a bit slow in their reactions and you have to keep going, to get your help. But finally, all problems, that we have addressed, have been resolved to my full appreciation!
Azure Arc uses the underlying power of Microsoft Azure, which allows assets across multicloud to be onboarded to Arc platform. It provides monitoring, security, updates in one click in one single platform. It also provides licensing benefits for Windows Server licenses, which offers premium features like Windows server admin center to manage your windows servers more effectively.
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.
The negative thing is that we prefer to use the UCS Manager in our company because this bare metal is integrated into the FI and no extra appliance is required. SaaS is generally not viewed favorably in Germany.
Telling the user that they have to buy Intersight licenses even if they use UCS Manager annoys our customers.
