Cisco Intersight Solution OverviewSimplify IT operations for the AI era
Available Languages
Bias-Free Language
The documentation set for this product strives to use bias-free language. For the purposes of this documentation set, bias-free is defined as language that does not imply discrimination based on age, disability, gender, racial identity, ethnic identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and intersectionality. Exceptions may be present in the documentation due to language that is hardcoded in the user interfaces of the product software, language used based on RFP documentation, or language that is used by a referenced third-party product. Learn more about how Cisco is using Inclusive Language.
What if you could transform your IT infrastructure from reactive to proactive? Cisco Intersight provides a unified, intelligent platform to manage all your compute environments, accelerating innovation, strengthening security, and freeing up IT resources for strategic business value.
The AI era is fundamentally reshaping data-center architectures, demanding unprecedented throughput, low latency, and power efficiency for both traditional and emerging AI workloads. For IT operations teams, this translates into a daily struggle with rigid infrastructure, escalating operational complexity, distributed environments, and a critical IT skills shortage. This fragmented landscape often leads to manual, error-prone tasks, operational silos, and a reactive "firefighting" mode, preventing IT from driving strategic business value.
Cisco Intersight answers this call by transforming IT operations from reactive to proactive. As a cornerstone of the Cisco software portfolio, Intersight provides a unified, cloud-native foundation for managing complex IT compute environments. It delivers policy-based lifecycle management, automation, and operations for traditional and AI-ready compute infrastructure, simplifying management at scale across Cisco UCS servers, hyperconverged infrastructure, storage, and Kubernetes-based environments, wherever they are located.
Cisco Intersight enables management at scale, assisted operations through capabilities such as proactive security advisories and custom field notices, and robust ecosystem integration.
● Achieve operational efficiency and agility: leverage policy-driven automation, zero-touch provisioning, and automated end-to-end lifecycle management to support all workloads consistently
● Minimize downtime and accelerate resolution: use intelligent predictive analytics, proactive support, and automated log collection for faster issue identification and resolution
● Strengthen your security posture and compliance: benefit from automated threat detection and built-in security certifications to reduce risk across your distributed estate
● Maximize existing investments and accelerate innovation: seamlessly integrate with Cisco® networking and security, as well as third-party tools, to break down silos and drive strategic AI initiatives
● Gain unified visibility and control: centralize provisioning, deployment, and monitoring of infrastructure across data centers, colocation facilities, and distributed edge environments from a single dashboard
The AI imperative and evolving infrastructure demands
The rapid rise of AI is fundamentally altering infrastructure requirements, demanding specialized compute, storage, and networking capabilities for data preparation, model training, and inferencing. This shift, coupled with the projection that 75 percent of data processing will occur at the edge by 2027 [source: AI Readiness Index 2025], creates immense pressure on IT. Many organizations find their existing infrastructure rigid and unable to scale for AI, leading to stalled initiatives and compromised resilience.
Escalating operational complexity and skills shortages
IT teams are grappling with increasing operational complexity driven by distributed environments, tool sprawl, and operational silos. Manual, error-prone tasks, disparate vendor tools, and a shortage of IT skills force administrators into a reactive "firefighting" mode. This prevents them from focusing on innovation and strategic projects, leading to increased costs and reduced agility.
Heightened security risks and compliance burdens
The expansion of distributed IT environments, especially at the edge, significantly broadens the attack surface. Sophisticated, AI-driven attacks are a constant worry, making it difficult to secure and maintain compliance across geographically dispersed server estates. Organizations need consistent policy enforcement and centralized visibility to address vulnerabilities quickly and effectively.
Cisco Intersight provides a unified, cloud-native management platform that simplifies IT operations across your entire compute environment. It leverages a policy-driven approach and an API-first architecture to deliver operational excellence through three core pillars, described below.
Intersight enables server administrators to provision, deploy, monitor, and support infrastructure securely and consistently across data centers, colocation, and edge environments for traditional and AI workloads from one dashboard.
● Centralized provisioning and policy enforcement: use policies, pools, profiles, and templates to rapidly provision and apply "golden configurations" across entire fleets, ensuring consistent configuration and compliance
● Automated lifecycle management: streamline day-0/day-1 operations with automated OS installation, firmware upgrades, and end-to-end lifecycle automation. Centralized firmware management allows for policy-based, automated scheduling and deployment globally or selectively.
● Comprehensive visibility and control: gain instant visibility into the real-time health status of all data- center and edge infrastructure through customizable dashboards, including geolocation maps. Automated, Zero-Touch Provisioning (ZTP) simplifies deployments at distributed edge locations.
● Secure, governed access: granular user privileges, Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), Multifactor Authentication (MFA), and audit capabilities ensure secure and compliant operations.
Intersight reduces the burden on server administrators by automating monitoring, analysis, and issue resolution, shifting IT from reactive to proactive operations.
● Intelligent insights and predictive analytics: actionable insights from resource utilization trends, forecasting, and optimization, with deep visibility into GPU performance and AI-specific demands.
● Proactive threat detection and support: continuous identification of Hardware Compatibility issues (HCL), contextual security advisories with recommended remediation, and automated bulk remediation and integration with Cisco Technical Assistance Center (Cisco TAC), automated log collection, and proactive RMA accelerate troubleshooting and part replacement
● Automated workflows: use a drag-and-drop workflow designer or automatic Python/PowerShell code generation for proactive issue resolution and management across compute, networking, storage, and virtualization. Future integration with Cisco AI Canvas and Cisco AI Assistant will provide advanced AI-driven operational insights and collaborative workspaces.
Intersight's API-first architecture enables cohesive integration with other Cisco solutions and third-party tools, providing enhanced visibility and orchestrating workflows across the entire IT stack.
● Open APIs and SDKs: full access to the Intersight API with pre-packaged clients (Ansible, Terraform, PowerShell, and Python) enables Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and CI/CD integration, facilitating network management with Nexus and MDS switches. Specifically, the Cisco Intersight Certified Content Collection for Ansible offers more than 100 modules for full automation of server provisioning, policy management, firmware updates, and Day-2 operations.
● Broad platform support: comprehensive support for leading operating systems (including Oracle, Red Hat, SUSE, Ubuntu, and Windows) and hypervisors (including Microsoft, Nutanix, Red Hat, and VMware)
● Third-party integration: advanced storage management and orchestration for NetApp, Pure Storage, and Hitachi. ServiceNow integration provides inventory visibility and automated incident management. Cisco Intersight Assist extends management capabilities to third-party, on-premises infrastructure.
Cisco Intersight is available as a SaaS offering, a connected virtual appliance, or a private (air-gapped) virtual appliance, thus offering customers choice in terms of ease of deployment and control over their data and addressing data sovereignty needs.
● AI-ready infrastructure: deploy, monitor, and maintain AI training and inferencing solutions (for example, Cisco Secure AI Factory, Cisco AI PODs, Cisco UCS 885A M8 Rack Server, and Cisco UCS 845A M8 Rack Server) with consistent policies and optimized GPU performance
● Distributed edge computing: rapidly deploy and operate consistent, repeatable AI-ready infrastructure across numerous remote edge locations using zero-touch provisioning and centralized management with Cisco Unified Edge
● Hyperconverged infrastructure management: gain unified visibility and control over your entire hyperconverged infrastructure fleet, including Cisco Compute Hyperconverged with Nutanix, spanning clusters globally
● Traditional data center operations: configure, deploy, operate, and maintain Cisco UCS C-Series and X-Series rack and blade servers for any type of workload, ensuring compliance and performance
● Converged infrastructure orchestration: inventory and incorporate converged infrastructure (for example, with Cisco UCS X-Series Modular System) into orchestrated workflows for streamlined management and automation
"The idea that we have a single pane of glass and I can manage our global fleet of hardware this easily was a huge selling point. It was a no brainer being able to see all this stuff in one web page.
— Senior infrastructure engineer, Travel And Hospitality
"We’ve grown the company so much and the size of my team is still the same. We are at the bare minimum, because Intersight allows me to run really lean.
— Manager of compute, financial services
"Intersight gives us a single pane of glass to manage configurations, firmware updates, and policies across multiple environments, which has accelerated our deployments and day-to-day operations.
—Shawn Jaacks,
CIO, Dakota State University
Forrester Total Economic Impact Study of Cisco Intersight
An independent study by Forrester Consulting, commissioned by Cisco, examined the business value of Intersight. For a composite organization with $10 billion in annual revenue and 1000 servers, the study found:
● 192 percent ROI over three years
● $3.3M net present value
● Less than 6 months payback period
Key benefits included improved uptime and resiliency, increased IT productivity, accelerated time to value, and reduced security and compliance risk, demonstrating significant financial and operational advantages.
Only Cisco Intersight offers a single, consistent experience for managing compute infrastructure to support traditional and AI workloads across data centers, colocation, and dispersed edge environments from one place. This unified approach extends to Cisco networking and security portfolios for a holistic view and control over your entire IT estate, ensuring comprehensive coverage and future-ready capabilities.
Financing to help you achieve your objectives
Cisco Capital® can help you acquire the technology you need to achieve your objectives and stay competitive. We can help you reduce CapEx. Accelerate your growth. Optimize your investment dollars and ROI. Cisco Capital financing gives you flexibility in acquiring hardware, software, services, and complementary third-party equipment. And there’s just one predictable payment. Cisco Capital is available in more than 100 countries. Learn more.
Ready to simplify your IT operations and accelerate your AI initiatives?
Discover how Cisco Intersight can transform your infrastructure management.
Get started with a free 90-day trial or request a personalized demo.