I think there's something to both of these interpretations.
Austria came out of 1815 in a very complicated position. Of the other four Great Powers, three were direct rivals to Austria in different areas. Prussia was the traditional rival in Germany. France had interests in Italy and western Germany. Russia had clashing interests to Austria in the Balkans and to some extent in Poland, though the latter was generally settled at Vienna. Of the three Powers, France and Russia were both stronger than Austria and generally seen as so. Prussia was smaller and weaker on paper but had been punching well above its weight ever since 1740.
Austria should have tried to get out of this triangle by settling with either Russia over the Balkans or France over Italy. Instead, Metternich's grand plan was to ally with the weakest Power and hope that would balance the two stronger. I think a part of that was an expectation that he could make Prussia do the kowtowing, to him and his Emperor. Metternich knew that Prussia wasn't actually a Russian satellite and thought he could instead make it an Austrian client. Metternich was, among his other traits, a man of great ego and self confidence and being the junior partner in an alliance with Russia was not to his taste at all.
With the benefit of hindsight we can see that this didn't work out at all. Once the postwar era of good feelings had faded the traditional Austro-Prussian rivalry in German resumed. Prussia was willing to cooperate on repressive anti-liberal measures like the Carlsbad Decrees and to prevent French moves in Germany itself, but as early as 1830 was conspiring with the South German states to prevent being drawn into a war with France over Austrian interests in Italy. Prussia was also no help in Austria's diplomatic fencing with Russia over Greece and the Balkans in the 1820's. When 1848 came around it was the supposed Russian menace of 1815 that came to Austria's aid, while Prussia made the predictable move for position within Germany and had to be, just barely, contained.
Fast forward sixty years from the Congress of Vienna and we see an Austria that's been pushed out of Germany, pushed out of Italy, and now has to kowtow to Berlin just to protect its remaining Balkan interests. Fast forward another forty years and we can see that these Balkan entanglements, far from being valuable, result in the end of the House of Habsburg, with only the cold consolation of having also ended the Romanovs and Hohenzollerns.