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Cisco Intersight simplifies IT operations for the AI era, providing unified, intelligent management of all Cisco UCS® compute infrastructure from core to edge.
Cisco Intersight shifts IT operations from reactive to proactive, addressing the significant challenges faced by IT operations teams and server administrators who struggle with increasing complexity, distributed environments, and the demands of both traditional and emerging AI workloads. Intersight works by leveraging a cloud-native, API-first architecture to deliver policy-based lifecycle management, automation, and unparalleled visibility across data centers, colocation facilities, and distributed edge locations.
Customers, particularly enterprises and organizations with extensive and geographically dispersed IT infrastructure, use Intersight to simplify management at scale. It consolidates disparate tools; automates complex tasks like provisioning, OS installation, firmware updates, and VLAN changes; and integrates seamlessly with Cisco® networking and security solutions for a holistic view. The primary business benefits include accelerating AI initiatives, strengthening security and compliance, and significantly improving operational efficiency and agility, thereby freeing up valuable IT resources to drive strategic business value.
Cisco Intersight offers a comprehensive suite of features and benefits, built upon three core pillars. It provides unparalleled management at scale for unified compute control, leverages assisted operations for intelligent insights and proactive issue resolution, and ensures seamless ecosystem integration to maximize existing technology investments and automate workflows.
Table 1. Features and benefits of management at scale
| Feature |
Benefit |
| Unified compute management: provision, deploy, and monitor all Cisco UCS servers and compute solutions (traditional and AI, data center to edge) from a single interface |
Streamlines operations and ensures consistent management across diverse environments |
| Policy-based configuration and automation: rapidly apply "golden configurations" using policies, profiles, and templates; automate day-0/day-1 operations and firmware updates and VLAN changes, including power policies and dynamic power rebalancing |
Accelerates deployments, reduces manual effort, and ensures configuration consistency, compliance, and energy efficiency |
| Real-time visibility and monitoring: gain instant health status and performance insights across all data-center and edge infrastructure using customizable dashboards, including geolocation maps, with deep visibility into server power consumption and environmental metrics |
Enables proactive issue identification and optimizes operational performance and energy usage |
| Secure, centralized control: implement granular user privileges, role-based access control (RBAC), multifactor authentication (MFA), and audit capabilities for secure, governed access and continuous compliance |
Enhances security posture and ensures regulatory adherence across distributed infrastructure |
| Claim targets using the Intersight mobile app: obtain NFC-based claim of targets by authorized nontechnical staff |
Reduces truck rolls by eliminating the need to onboard systems centrally |
| Flexible deployment options: available as SaaS, a connected virtual appliance, or a private (air-gapped) virtual appliance |
Provides choice for ease of deployment and control over data sovereignty |
Table 2. Features and benefits of assisted operations
| Feature |
Benefit |
| Intelligent insights and predictive analytics: leverage resource utilization trends, GPU performance visibility, and power consumption forecasting to predict degradation and performance risks |
Accelerates decision-making, optimizes capacity planning for AI/GPU workloads, improves energy efficiency, and prevents issues |
| Proactive threat detection and remediation: continuously identify hardware compatibility issues (HCL), receive contextual security advisories, and perform automated bulk remediation |
Strengthens security posture, reduces operational risk, and ensures continuous compliance with industry certifications |
| Proactive, assisted support: integrate with Cisco Technical Assistance Center (Cisco TAC), automate log collection and field notice advisories, and initiate proactive RMAs |
Resolves issues faster, minimizes downtime, and improves operational efficiency |
| Advanced monitoring and performance optimization: utilize topology views and Intersight Metrics Explorer for deep visibility into connectivity, network traffic, device health, and power metrics, including AI accelerators |
Quickly pinpoints cabling issues and performance bottlenecks, identifies opportunities for energy savings, and optimizes overall environment performance |
| Automated workflows: design and execute complex workflows using a drag-and-drop designer or generate Python/PowerShell code from UI actions |
Automates issue resolution and management across compute, networking, storage, and virtualization |
| Automated operating system (OS) installation: streamline new server deployments with automated, policy-driven OS installation |
Reduces manual effort and human error, accelerating server provisioning and ensuring consistent, compliant operating system deployments across your fleet |
Table 3. Features and benefits of ecosystem integration
| Feature |
Benefit |
| Broad platform support: support for leading operating systems, storage providers (such as NetApp, Pure Storage, Hitachi), hypervisors (including VMware, Nutanix, Red Hat), and IT service management (ITSM) / security information and event management (SIEM) tools (ServiceNow, Splunk®) |
Maximizes existing technology investments and provides a unified view across diverse IT environments |
| Open API and SDKs, including Certified Content Collection for Ansible: full access to the Intersight API with pre-packaged clients and SDKs (Ansible, Terraform, PowerShell, Python). Our Certified Content Collection for Ansible provides over 100 modules. |
Enables infrastructure as code (IaC), CI/CD integration, and seamless orchestration with other Cisco and third-party tools |
| Advanced third-party storage management: comprehensive support for inventory, alarms, and automated operations for NetApp, Pure Storage, and Hitachi |
Simplifies storage management and orchestration directly within the Intersight platform |
| Splunk and ServiceNow integration: integrate with Splunk for comprehensive infrastructure monitoring and security; connect with ServiceNow for inventory visibility and automated incident management |
Accelerates issue identification, resolution, and enhances security posture with unified data and analytics |
| Operational simplicity for hyperconverged infrastructure: rapid, automated deployment and integrated lifecycle management for Nutanix and VMware vCenter/ESXi clusters |
Simplifies global rollouts, automates upgrades, and streamlines growth for hyperconverged solutions |
Unified, holistic management across your entire IT estate
Cisco Intersight uniquely delivers a single, consistent experience for managing compute infrastructure, supporting both traditional and emerging AI workloads. The unified platform spans data centers, colocation facilities, and dispersed edge environments, providing comprehensive visibility and control from one centralized location. Unlike other vendors that often require multiple tools or offer limited functionality, Intersight manages the broadest range of Cisco UCS server form factors and generations. This holistic approach seamlessly integrates with Cisco networking and security solutions, offering a complete view and control over your entire IT estate.
Intersight stands apart with its unparalleled deployment flexibility—available as SaaS, a connected virtual appliance, or a private air-gapped option—and its API-first architecture. This design simplifies operations, accelerates automation initiatives, and ensures consistent policy enforcement and control across your entire server fleet, empowering IT teams to drive strategic business value rather than “firefighting.”
Intersight is licensed on a subscription basis with a choice of license editions. Capabilities increase with the different license tiers. Customers can purchase a subscription duration of one, three, or five years and choose the Cisco UCS server volume tier they need for the selected subscription duration.
Starting from the M7 server generation, an Intersight Essentials or above license is required. For earlier server generations, an Intersight license is highly recommended, but not required.
Customers can purchase an Essentials or above license when they purchase the server using the Cisco ordering tool. See Table 6 for ordering PIDs.
Table 4. Cisco Intersight licensing tiers
| License tier |
Description |
| Essentials |
Includes functionality for server lifecycle management, for example:
● Platform-level settings for user and SDK/API access, permissions, licensing, and audit. Support for health monitoring, tagging and search, basic data inventory, and multifactor authentication.
● Support for Cisco UCS basic inventory, firmware, and dashboard management
● Simplification of compute infrastructure management with policy-based configurations using server profiles for Cisco UCS, converged, and hyperconverged infrastructure
● Monitor and track telemetry information (data collection every 10 minutes and 90 days of historical data)
● Custom explorations with Intersight Metrics Explorer
● Cisco Intersight Add-on for Splunk: Monitor your Cisco UCS infrastructure from Splunk
● Topology views to swiftly identify, diagnose, and resolve physical cabling issues across your Cisco UCS domain
● Power policy management for servers, BIOS, and OS as well as dynamic power rebalancing
● Support for Cisco Compute Hyperconverged with Nutanix
● Receiving alerts about endpoint devices that are impacted by supported security advisories and field notices along with recommended remediation
● Acceleration of troubleshooting with hardware compatibility alerts, proactive RMAs, and automated gathering and uploading of log files for Cisco Intersight–connected devices through the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (Cisco TAC)
Note: Detailed feature list can be found here: Intersight.com Licensing Page. |
| Advantage |
Offers all the functionality of Essentials, plus features for automation, orchestration, and advanced server management, monitoring, and metrics. For example:
● Create and execute complex workflows with a drag-and-drop designer or incorporate existing automations from Ansible, Terraform, or other tools using the Cisco Intersight API and SDKs
● Simplify the cloud experience with visibility of virtualization infrastructure and normalization of operations across multiple clouds
● Monitor and track telemetry information with enriched topology views that provide error and environmental metrics and network bandwidth/utilization along with data collection every minute and two years of historical data
● Diagnose device-level issues using error metrics and view detailed information for physical connection links
● Use FlexPod converged infrastructure inventory, including servers, networking, storage, virtualization, and Cisco fabric interconnects
● Use third-party storage support: view inventory and alarms of storage arrays and automate day-to-day operations using supported storage tasks
● Resolve issues faster by ingesting data from Cisco Intersight–connected servers, storage, data-center networking, and virtual machines into the ServiceNow IT operations management platform using the ServiceNow Service Graph Connector for Cisco Intersight plugin and by raising incidents in ServiceNow for alarms and advisories from Cisco Intersight using the Cisco Intersight Incident Management Integration plugin, available on the ServiceNow store
● Manage Cisco Unified Edge as a fleet (a logical grouping of resources) for simplified, scalable administration. Workloads, leveraging blueprints curated by Cisco and user-defined parameters, apply “golden configurations” fleet-wide, enabling centralized automation and consistent configuration across all resources.
Note: A detailed feature list can be found here: Intersight.com Licensing Page. |
Supported software and system requirements
Cisco Intersight supports Cisco UCS and hyperconverged infrastructure with the software versions listed in Table 5.
Table 5. Supported software
| Platform |
Versions supported |
| Cisco UCS Manager |
See Intersight product documentation for a detailed list of supported software, versions, and caveats. |
| Cisco IMC software |
|
| Cisco HyperFlex® |
|
| Cisco UCS Director |
|
| Nutanix AOS* |
|
| Pure Storage FlashArray |
|
| VMware vCenter |
Virtual appliance system requirements
See the Intersight Installation Guides and System Requirements for details.
*Cisco Intersight Virtual Appliance only supports Acropolis Operating System (AOS) versions that are currently being actively supported and maintained by Nutanix. For more information, see Nutanix End-of-Life Information.
Intersight subscriptions can be ordered for periods ranging from one to five years, with any increments in between. In addition, discounts are available for longer terms, and volume discounts are available for customers ordering more than 200 device (server) subscriptions at the same time. Separate license options are detailed in Table 4 for the SaaS version on Intersight.com and the virtual appliance.
Cisco Smart Accounts and Smart Licensing are mandatory for Intersight. In addition, a Cisco user account is mandatory to use the Intersight user interface.
Note: The Intersight SaaS license allows the customer to select SaaS or CVA (connected virtual appliance) deployment options.
Table 6. Ordering information
| Part number |
Description |
| DC-MGT-SAAS |
Product family – Cisco Intersight |
| DC-MGT-IS-SAAS-ES |
Cisco Intersight Infrastructure Services SaaS - Essentials for SaaS and Connected Virtual Appliance |
| DC-MGT-IS-SAAS-AD |
Cisco Intersight Infrastructure Services SaaS - Advantage |
| DC-MGT-IS-PVAPP-ES |
Cisco Intersight Infrastructure Services Private Virtual Appliance – Essentials |
| DC-MGT-IS-PVAPP-AD |
Cisco Intersight Infrastructure Services Private Virtual Appliance - Advantage |
Information about Cisco’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives and performance is provided in Cisco’s CSR and sustainability reporting.
Table 7. Cisco environmental sustainability information
| Sustainability topic |
Reference |
|
| General |
Information on product-material-content laws and regulations |
|
| Information on electronic waste laws and regulations, including our products, batteries, and packaging |
||
| Information on product takeback and reuse program |
||
| Sustainability inquiries |
Contact: csr_inquiries@cisco.com |
|
| Power |
Server power-management, monitoring, and forecasting |
See features and benefits above |
Cisco and our certified partners offer comprehensive services to support your Cisco Intersight journey. From strategic planning and design to expert deployment and ongoing optimization, these services ensure you maximize Intersight's value. We help accelerate your AI initiatives, strengthen security, and achieve operational efficiency across your compute infrastructure. Leverage our deep expertise to streamline adoption, ensure seamless integration, and continuously optimize your Intersight environment for sustained business value.
For more information, please visit http://www.cisco.com/go/services.
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