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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
24th
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) (20th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS Director is 1.8%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 5.8%, down from 11.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Aria Automation5.8%
Cisco UCS Director1.8%
Other92.4%
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

"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 improvement for our organization has really been ease of use; we'd be a mess without the solution."
"Without UCS Director it wouldn't be possible for us to go from receiving shipments at a data center to having systems live in production in a matter of days, or sometimes hours, instead of waiting weeks."
"The product is flexible and compact. It has a lot of features."
"Better visibility and better control are the main benefits people receive from Cisco UCS Director; the automation and the orchestration part, these three to four points are the key factors to decide on Cisco UCS Director."
"The technical support for this solution is very good, at least in our region."
"Overall, I think that this is a very good product, although nothing is perfect."
"Cisco's knowledge base is extensive."
"The customer can set up multiple machine blueprints. Therefore, we are able to customize the template of three machines, then the customer can deploy without knowing anything about the IT business."
"The most valuable feature is, instead of doing the VMotion manually, we have automated everything with a script, using vRealize. That means I don't need to think about things like compatibility. The system will do everything for me and just give me a report."
"States, pillars, and custom modules have all taken us a long way in achieving our goals."
"We have given internal IT developers the ability to self-provision VMs for development and testing, which has drastically increased their efficiency and increased the communication and transparency between IT development and IT operations."
"The big benefit is it will spin up VMs quickly so it would take about 13 to 15 minutes to deploy a virtual machine. Whereas, if I were doing it based on an email from users who are requesting VMs, it might take time for me to hear back from them. This could be anywhere from an hour to a day."
"Aria Automation gives you the flexibility to deploy tenants with customized blueprints for permissions and policies. Version 7.8 consisted of multiple products, so you had to deploy a lot of virtual machines on one of the servers. Starting from 8.6, VMware consolidated all the components into one Linux appliance. This allows the option to use vRA or DevOps capabilities."
"One of the most valuable features is lifecycle management. It allows my teams to create, manage, and retire all of our infrastructure objects in the data center."
"The repetitive tasks which took provisioning storage, network, and compute two to three weeks, now take five minutes."
 

Cons

"The product could allow more programmatic opportunities through better development of the API."
"The solution could be improved is including a feature where I could do things programmatically versus having to create workarounds to get what I want to get done."
"There could be an improvement with the integration with the newest solutions from other vendors' technologies."
"It is not easy to add or expand the product."
"There could be an improvement with the integration with the newest solutions from other vendors' technologies."
"Normally, UCS Director is used primarily for orchestration, but when we look at non-Cisco data infrastructure components, the UCS Director needs a bit more improvement in terms of integration with third-party systems and with existing older systems."
"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."
"As a product, it is complicated to integrate and automate with other products."
"I have found 7.4 to be user-friendly but 7.5 is not, in fact, it's a nightmare."
"Sometimes it feels like there are more moving parts than is necessary, and maybe something simpler would do."
"The setup needs coding. It's not easy. It's not straightforward."
"VMware needs to make it to where it is not as custom. Right now, you spend a lot of time making the services work. In order to get it up and running initially, that takes time."
"The basic support is not there for Google Cloud and Azure. They are unable to provision nor do cost controls."
"in general, it took us a long time to get it off the ground. We had a lot of issues upfront and we determined that we just needed to scrap it. I think we scrapped it two or three times before we actually got it built the way we wanted, and we're still not where we need to be. We have had downtime. There have been some issues, but we're also two iterations behind on version."
"In terms of usability, it has had its challenges. It requires a lot of custom code to integrate into our environment."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of this solution is significant."
"Cisco UCS Director is expensive...I rate the solution's pricing a three 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."
"I would rate the product's pricing an eight out of ten."
"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."
"The budget doesn’t work for the state and local governments."
"We do plan to see ROI with any new implementation of new technologies being implemented within our environment."
"They should provide one license for all the sub-products."
"The cost of the solution is reasonable for us. Although it is relatively high, we prioritize stability and integration over cost."
"From the customer perspective, the value was worth it."
"The solution is free of cost."
"It is an open-source product."
"As far as value is concerned, it has been essential to our environment. We have been able to deploy VMs quickly and the developers have their own sandbox, so they can spin up and destroy VMs at their own will."
"The solution has helped to increase infrastructure, agility, speed, and provisioning in the time to market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
18%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Marketing Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
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.
892,611 professionals have used our research since 2012.