CSMP

We have a platform called Unity that is a private cloud infrastructure for which we are using CloudBolt as a vendor.

On CloudBolt side, we have a tool called Unity, which is the cloud platform. In our day-to-day operations, if a user or a team needs infrastructure, such as a Windows server or Postgres database, they will use CloudBolt platform to provision the infrastructure that will actually run the workflow that we have defined in Unity. In the background, CloudBolt is running, but at the front of it, we name it as Unity. Unity and CloudBolt are basically the same thing; it is just that the name of the platform internally is named as Unity.

The main use case is the provisioning and the lifecycle management of the infrastructure that we provision through CloudBolt. Starting from provisioning and following with day-two actions that include increasing RAM, CPU, and power, and getting these details, among other things, the entire lifecycle management of the infrastructure that we have is managed through CloudBolt.

We are able to do a lot of customization in CloudBolt specific to our use case. That is one of the main things that we considered when we were deciding what vendor to go with. The customization is easy, workflow management is really nice, and the support team is also really helpful in case we need a new feature or anything.

All of the workflows that we have are automated. When we are using CloudBolt, the user just goes and requests, and the entire workflow automation happens in CloudBolt. Some of those come out of the box, and some of them are defined specific to our use case.

Making the lifecycle management automated has made life easier. If it is automated, we do not need to manually go and provision every server request that comes from the user. We have defined everything in the workflow, and the end-to-end provisioning is using the automated workflow, which saves time.

The MCP is still at a very early stage in CloudBolt. If that can be integrated and all the workflows can be managed and customized using the MCP agent, that would be a really good feature to add. They have added it, but it is still in very early stages, so it is not perfect.

It is still in very early stages, so it is not super accurate, but they have started taking steps in that direction. In the future, it would improve, but as of now, it is still in the early stages, so we have not really tested it.

We have been using CloudBolt since I joined this company two years ago.

Nine out of ten times, it is quite stable.

It is quite scalable. We have not seen any performance issues till now.

It is really nice. We have a weekly sync-up call to get a new feature request or if we have any questions regarding it.

We were using VMware Aria Suite, but because of the change in the subscription cost, we decided to switch over to CloudBolt.

Customization, cost, and feature request were all main reasons why we chose CloudBolt. It is easy to use and understandable. Before committing to CloudBolt, see what it offers, how you can customize it to your needs, and the cost aspect of it. It is not a big company as of now, so you will be able to get more value out of your money and more personalization than mature products that are already in the market. I would rate this product a nine out of ten.

My main use case for CloudBolt is provisioning servers. We have a VM environment, so we would use a CloudBolt template and then map it to CloudBolt environment and provision the server for our production.

The best features CloudBolt offers are its speed, which is very fast in terms of provisioning compared to traditional ISO-based methods. This speed has helped my team and organization; we completed a new site setup in under a few days, which would take about a few weeks using traditional methods.

CloudBolt has positively impacted my organization. We have a fairly big catalog on top, so overall my organization really benefits from CloudBolt.

The types of benefits I have seen from CloudBolt include saving time, reducing costs, and improving efficiency in many specific ways.

We are doing a lot of customization. For example, if I want to do a custom scheme or if I want to do a static IP, these kinds of flows I still need to do very manually or through a script, so it would be nice if CloudBolt had additional features.

CloudBolt can be improved. It needs way more customizations when it comes to provisioning itself. When we are provisioning servers, it should also be able to do application installations as part of my post-steps. When we do server provisioning, it should also have an option to install features.

I would like to add more about the needed improvements, specifically regarding hardware and server provisioning.

I have been working in my current field for six years.

CloudBolt is stable.

I did not previously use a different solution.

We have seen a return on investment with CloudBolt.

My advice for others looking into using CloudBolt is that if you are a server admin, it is very useful. I would advise you that CloudBolt will be very useful for your needs.

My main use case for CloudBolt includes having a centralized self-service provisioning and orchestration, allowing me to manage hybrid and multi-cloud provisioning across AWS, Azure, GCP, VMware, and other cloud providers. I also leverage the platform for policy-driven cloud governance to enforce cost and compliance guardrails to our end customers, cost and usage visibility through chargebacks and showbacks reports, and infrastructure automation where CloudBolt integrates with various infrastructure as a code platforms, ITSM platforms, and workflows.

One specific example of how my team uses CloudBolt for self-service provisioning is that we have customers with footprints spread across public and private cloud environments, and we provide a centralized self-service platform where predefined blueprints or templates are available for them to provision resources. They can select the target cloud environment and provision resources using these templates. Another real-world example includes chargeback or showback, where we create different groups in the organization and use the platform to provide reports based on their resource consumption.

My main use cases for CloudBolt are self-service provisioning, governance and cloud guardrails, cost and usage visibility, and infrastructure automation.

The best features CloudBolt offers include governance and policy control, allowing security teams to set up their specific guardrails with governance at scale. Multi or hybrid cloud abstraction provides a single pane of glass for different types of environments, and self-service catalogs enable technical or business users to request services without multiple tickets. CloudBolt also offers strong integration capabilities that work well with existing tools without disrupting the current environment.

From an integration standpoint, CloudBolt works well with various public and private cloud providers, including AWS, Azure, GCP, VMware, and Nutanix, as well as different virtualization software, infrastructure as code templates such as Ansible and Terraform, ITSM tools such as ServiceNow, and CMDB platforms.

CloudBolt has positively impacted my organization by managing multiple cloud environments for thousands of users with a complex enterprise workflow that has helped reduce man-hours required for provisioning resources. We have achieved faster delivery through standardized operating procedures and reduced reworks due to automation. The chargeback and showback mechanisms allow us to charge different business units according to their consumption, providing better governance, lower risk, and lower cost, resulting in a good return on investment.

Since using CloudBolt, I have seen a 25 to 30 percent reduction in service delivery time and an improvement in efficiency of almost 20 to 25 percent within a timeframe of approximately 8 to 10 months.

To improve CloudBolt, I believe the user experience needs enhancement as some users find it somewhat dated compared to newer cloud management platforms. From a telemetry and analytics perspective, while cost insights are good, they are not as advanced as those in a pure cost optimization or FinOps platform. Additionally, marketplace integrations are not as extensive as standalone automation or cost platforms.

I have been using CloudBolt since approximately 2018 or 2019, so I would say, give or take six years.

For others looking into using CloudBolt, I advise defining governance policies early, focusing on building modular automation, and planning integrations in advance, such as IAM, CMDB, or security aspects. It is critical to not overlook the cost models associated with deploying workloads in public cloud and to ensure governance and guardrails are in place when leveraging the platform. Establishing strong policies around resource provisioning and implementing tags when different teams are deploying resources is essential to track costs effectively.

CloudBolt is a truly good platform with strong capabilities, especially considering recent acquisitions such as StormForge for Kubernetes optimization and Kumulus and SovLabs in the past, positioning it well for the future as a single pane of glass for managing different public and private cloud providers. I would rate this platform an 8 out of 10.

We use the solution to provide self-service to end users in our virtual environment.

I find the self-service features valuable. In a virtual environment, you don't get that cloud experience. When creating something close to a cloud experience, you need a cloud platform like CloudBolt. Another benefit of using CloudBolt is how it helps with resource control. It helps with resource control, such as with network storage in any infrastructure. Another valuable feature is in the application deployment and customization.

The area of integrating on-prem and cloud needs improvement. Another area that the solution needs to improve on is the UI. The UI can be much better.

I've worked on CloudBolt for about four years. I'm using the most recent version.

The solution is very stable. You will have no issues if you deploy it according to the minimum requirements and best practices recommended by CloudBolt's documentation.

Cloudbox is just an abstraction software. There is no need for scalability. It's quite a simple solution. You might only need to increase the resources you apply to the CloudBold deployment. If, for example, the number of users increases, you might have to check the recommendations from CloudBolt and act accordingly.

We have over 100 internal users. Regarding the infrastructure it sits on, the solution sits on the private of the on-prem, a VMware infrastructure that stands across two sites, the DR and the main production. We have over 60 ESXi of Asterisk and about 500 or 1,000 virtual machines.

We used CloudStack for some reason, and though it's not a directly competitive solution, we received a recommendation to switch to CloudBolt.

The deployment process is straightforward, and we have proper documentation online. After deploying the solution, we tailor it to our taste. After deployment, if we want to integrate it with virtualized on-premises infrastructure and our multi-cloud infrastructures, we create sections or different groups of users and give them access to the resources we want them to be limited to.

We took a week to deploy the solution, but the greenlight took a month or two. After deployment, we went to the test phases. Then, after the test phases, the solution went for generic users and the organization.

I just needed two people during deployment. CloudBolt requires no maintenance. Since we've deployed the solution as a virtual machine, we do regular backups and have never had any issues with it.

We have seen a return on investment after using CloudBolt. We wanted it as an alternate solution and picked it up with pressure from the admin team and the engineers. We wanted something useful for self-service, and it was a good option. The solution serves as the primary object in going for it.

I rate the pricing an eight out of ten because the solution is expensive. The license is expensive to acquire.

I found that there is an alternative solution in the market called OpenNebula.

Any user considering CloudBolt should consider what they need in the long run, not just the structure. It's a good solution, but they must ensure it's what they want. We're looking at doing OpenStack after so many years with CloudBolt. Users must check if CloudBolt is what they want in the long run, but the short term might be good. For users who have a multi-cloud and want to manage the entire infrastructure from one pane of glass, CloudBolt is a go-to solution. I rate CloudBolt a seven out of ten.

We used the solution to manage a pretty substantial financial institution’s IaaS infrastructure. We were also using it to manage the infrastructure as a service of a government area. It was pretty good.

The ability to manage most clouds is helpful, especially with extremely large organizations where we have multiple cloud providers, and we cannot centralize management. It was one of the areas that really helped us, especially with managing and mapping resources. We also used CloudBolt to find a shadow IT resource. Nobody knew what they were doing or who was responsible for them.

Management and finance features are valuable.

The management of SaaS must be improved. It would be great if CloudBolt could also manage SaaS resources.

I have been using the solution for one year.

I rate the product’s stability a ten out of ten. We haven’t had a crunch.

I rate the tool’s scalability a nine out of ten. We had only a little bit of an issue with it, but it was mostly on our part.

Every time I needed technical support, the team was super easy to reach. The team gave me simple answers.

The initial deployment was super easy.

I see a return on investment in the solution.

The product costs us approximately $200 per month on AWS. The on-premises version cost us $100 per month. The solution is reasonably priced.

The platform works as it's supposed to. It’s really fast. I would recommend the solution to others. I used three other cloud management tools. Overall, I can confidently rate the product a ten out of ten.

One use case for CloudBold is creating blueprint templates for multiple clouds. Another is cost management or optimization. There is a piece that comes along with CloudBolt called Kumolus, and there is a lot of interest in that side of cost management.

Cost management is a valuable feature, but the solution's biggest advantage is flexibility. There is a standard framework that CloudBolt provides, but if I'm good with Python, I can tweak it and make it better. I can customize it easily.

The solution is not easy to use. It's not intuitive enough to click anywhere in the solution and make it work. Likewise, Cloudbolt takes a long time to configure and set up properly. If I install an app, I should be able to quickly get it to work without taking a long time to configure and set it up.

I've used the solution for more than two years.

I rate CloudBolt's stability a seven or eight out of ten.

I rate CloudBolt's scalability a seven or eight out of ten. The solution is deployed as a demo, so there aren't many users.

The initial setup is not difficult in the sense that you need a very highly skilled person to do it. The initial setup is a long process with many steps to do it. It's time-consuming to set up and build the solution. By contrast, deploying the solution doesn't take much time, and it's simple.

I have not completed anything big or successful with the solution, but I see its advantages. There will be an ROI depending on how people work today. If people have the tool, they also have automation built in. They get a request, then click a button and do it. For them, it's not a big ROI. But there is a lot of ROI for people who do a lot of manual stuff.

The pricing depends on where the customers are. The system is cheaper if a customer has fewer servers since you pay by the node. Let's say I'm an enterprise with 50,000 servers. I would be paying a lot every year.

I've contacted customer support many times, but I have access to their tech team since we are partners. I've not gone through their support channel. I have a direct hook to them. We have regular meetings where we talk about problems and get answers to them.

If somebody's using the solution for the first time, it's good if the system gives a demo. When you come up, the solution could go "click here, set this up, click here, set this up," and walk you through the steps until you are an expert that needs to be there. There is a setting in the configuration, and sometimes I enable it. That way, when people log in, the solution walks you through that. "First configure the cloud, and then configure this…" It'll walk you through the steps to do it. If CloudBolt has some videos or something I've not seen recently, people can watch the video to go through the steps instead of messing up.

I rate CloudBolt a five out of ten.