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Cisco UCS Director vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco UCS Director
Ranking in Cloud Management
22nd
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Aria Automation
Ranking in Cloud Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
172
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (8th), Network Automation (6th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (19th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS Director is 1.9%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 5.6%, down from 11.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Aria Automation5.6%
Cisco UCS Director1.9%
Other92.5%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

OR
Senior Telecommunications Engineer at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
Managing extensive VoIP services becomes efficient and seamless
We use Cisco UCS Director primarily for managing our VoIP service to maintain seamless service delivery. We operate in an enterprise government environment Cisco UCS Director is straightforward to use, which we greatly appreciate. It helps save time by making it quicker to roll out new call…
VasilisGiannitsiotis - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT at ITSolutions
Automation has streamlined complex financial workflows but still needs more intuitive orchestration
Something to improve in VMware Aria Automation would be related to VCF 9, as I do not know what it is trying to bring because they exposed it as the solution of everything. So VCF 9 will bring VCF Automation and VCF Operations, the new product line of VMware. I have not seen what this brings or what else it includes. Maybe in the area of vRealize Orchestrator, this would be beneficial because VRO can do everything. Perhaps a more user-friendly way to use that tool would be helpful because the possibilities there are endless. I am looking for more user-friendly navigation in VMware Aria Automation.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The improvement for our organization has really been ease of use; we'd be a mess without the solution."
"As usual, the technical support from Cisco is amazing."
"UCS director enables us to be more productive and more agile, and also more self-sufficient because we don't have to depend on anybody else."
"The product is flexible and compact. It has a lot of features."
"An easy and strong configuration, along with its low cost, are some of the features of the solution."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the fabric sharing."
"The main feature of this solution is the integration with all the Cisco solutions and other vendors."
"The reason we went with Cisco is that it comes at a very negligible cost as part of the BOQ. Compared to the competition's products, which are incredibly expensive, UCS Director is low-cost."
"It's cut our server deployment times down from weeks to an hour."
"The most valued feature is the streamlining of the DevOps process, automation and orchestration. It provides the ability for the entire Dev lifecycle to actually be incorporated into a single stream."
"All the feedback that I have received so far from our administrators is very positive; the solution is user-friendly and intuitive."
"Among the valuable features are the ease and speed of creating the VMs. Originally, we provisioned them manually and it would take us two days to do the provisioning... but with the automation, we are able to provision a VM with the click of a button, within seconds. It cut down on the time as well as cut down on the expense and employee cost in provisioning."
"The ability to programmatically describe the desired state of a single, or an entire fleet of servers, on-premises, and in a cloud environment."
"We automated many tool deployments with the help of the product, cutting short manual deployments and eliminating the need for human interaction. Its most valuable features include integrating various tools and working with different products using plugins."
"Agentless application deployment is the main reason for faster setup and easy deployments."
"We provided the ability to request virtual machines to our end users. Before, this was a very manual process, which took engineers to do. Now, it's an automated process."
 

Cons

"Simplifying the user interface would go a long way to making it more usable."
"The areas where this product can be improved are the integrations and the UI. These features are not as friendly compared to VMware products."
"There could be an improvement with the integration with the newest solutions from other vendors' technologies."
"The user interface could use improvement."
"There aren’t any areas of improvement that immediately come to mind."
"The tool should be a lot more intuitive and make it easy for us to understand and migrate."
"The product's pricing needs to improve."
"I would like to see more integration with other solutions."
"I'm not wanting any particular feature; but there should be cost reductions. VMware comes at a high cost, and that's why we are in the process of transitioning to a more affordable alternative."
"Deploying and configuring the solution takes a lot of time."
"They should make it a little bit more dynamic, a little bit easier to deal with large-scale AD deployments. They need to make it a little more enterprise-ready. That is the one thing that kills us."
"The most important thing that we missed in vRanger was the possibility to mount several images instantaneously and present it so we can run it immediately."
"Sometimes, salt-minions do start consuming very high memory, but I've generally seen this to last just a few moments or at most a minute."
"The upgrade experience is horrible. It's not straightforward, there are a lot of failures, a lot of support interactions. It's not something that we are able to pull off ourselves. I've been with vRA since it was termed vCSA. We've gone through multiple rounds, and it has never been easy."
"The initial setup was complex from beginning to delivery."
"This solution could be integrated with more hardware for an improved offering."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cisco UCS Director is expensive...I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten."
"I would rate the product's pricing an eight out of ten."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price and ten is a high price, I rate the pricing around five to six out of ten."
"The cost of this solution is significant."
"The budget doesn’t work for the state and local governments."
"I rate Cisco UCS Director's price a three out of ten. Cisco UCS Director is not an affordable product. With Cisco UCS Director, there is a need to pay an overall price, which consists of the product, software, and support."
"SaltStack is an open-source product."
"From a budget point of view, the pricing is a bit on the higher side."
"The tool is expensive since it is an enterprise product."
"The solution is pretty expensive but provides good workload management."
"I would rate the pricing a ten out of ten, with ten being very expensive."
"Better pricing is always handy, but I feel it's at the right price point."
"VMware Aria Automation is expensive."
"They should provide one license for all the sub-products."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
19%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Marketing Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise130
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco UCS Director?
While the pricing might be seen as expensive, it provides value for money due to reliable service and excellent technical support.
What needs improvement with Cisco UCS Director?
It should be more of a cloud-based architecture for Cisco UCS Director, and it should be affordable to small customers as well because the pricing is a major challenge when we talk about Cisco UCS ...
What is your primary use case for Cisco UCS Director?
Mainly in my region and country, large data center customers are using Cisco UCS Director, not the SMB or mid-market customers. More of the on-premise customers are utilizing Cisco UCS Director. Th...
What's the difference between VMware vRA (automation) and vROps (operations)?
vROP is a virtualization management solution from VMWare. It is efficient and easy to manage. You can find anything you need from the software interface. It provides complete visibility over applic...
Is there any way to try VMware Aria Automation for free?
When it comes to VMware Aria Automation, you have three choices for free runs: Hands-on Lab (HOL) Advanced lab A free trial I cannot describe in detail the second and third options as my company ...
Which sectors can benefit the most from VMware Aria Automation?
I was looking at VMware Aria Automation case studies recently and I got the impression that three main kinds of companies were using it most often: Social organizations Financial institutions and ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Entel, Data#3, Cegal, NESIC, LightEdge
Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS Director vs. VMware Aria Automation and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
890,124 professionals have used our research since 2012.