Cisco UCS Manager supports the entire Cisco UCS server and Cisco HyperFlex Series hyperconverged infrastructure portfolios. It enables server, fabric, and storage provisioning as well as, device discovery, inventory, configuration, diagnostics, monitoring, fault detection, auditing, and statistics collection.
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Hitachi Command Suite
Score 9.0 out of 10
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The Hitachi Command Suite is an open source storage management option, from Hitachi Vantara.
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.
Even as a non-IT employee, this software helps me to see how I am using the organization's digital resources. At a larger scale, where Hitachi Command Suite excels, this software allows an organization to monitor and analyze their resources and how employees and customers are utilizing them. I find this is best used when dealing with sensitive information (such as medical records), or with consumer-facing content.
Cisco UCS Manager allows for integrated management of all UCS components, streamlining processes like server provisioning, networking, and storage configuration
The automation capabilities of Cisco UCS Manager help streamline tasks such as provisioning, configuration, and monitoring, leading to increased efficiency
The interfaces are well designed and not overly populated with extraneous detail. Disparate but related feature sets are supported via separate interfaces that share a UX look and feel so that it doesn't feel like completely different panes of glass. Copy data management activity is still a bit clunky as it is accomplished via a re-purposed backup tool that was written to handle replicas, images and snapshots) but over all it is useable and has an interesting interface where elements are dragged onto the workflows.
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.
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.
Command Suite / Ops Center are the native tools to the Hitachi Vantara storage systems. Operating Hitachi Vantara products including VSP (370,1000,1500,5500), Hitachi Content Platform (HCP) they are paramount in leveraging the full use of the product families. The interfaces may be a bit less friendly than some of the newer green-field storage systems that have 'point and click' / 'click-click-done' management interfaces but the power and the engine-room access for deep configuration that Hitachi Vantara gives make it worth the extra effort to run some of the absolute most rock-solid and fastest/faster storage systems available.
