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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

"The technical support for this solution is very good, at least in our region."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"Cisco's knowledge base is extensive."
"As usual, the technical support from Cisco is amazing."
"Overall, I think that this is a very good product, although nothing is perfect."
"A product that really aids in systems management without complexity."
"An easy and strong configuration, along with its low cost, are some of the features of the solution."
"I can manage multiple workloads whether it's on AWS, Azure, or on-premises. They can be managed by using the UCS Director."
"We have been able to reduce the process to around 30 minutes."
"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."
"The whole VMware ecosystem allows us to serve multiple customers, multiple organizations and also multiple units per customer, and we can cover all the use cases using only one product on our side which is really helpful."
"Our speed of provisioning has improved. We used to build systems manually, which would take four hours or a day. Nowadays we're able to spin something up off a template... and it takes about 20 minutes."
"The most valuable feature would be the scalability, as it's very easy to add more capacity once it's set up, and in terms of provisioning, it has definitely helped speed-wise by simplifying making the environment bigger without the downtime of waiting for more hardware."
"We are part of a Cloud service provider; it has helped our business to grow and scale."
"The automation of the redundant tasks and the implementation of ServiceNow are huge for us..."
"Interoperability between operating systems with the ability to perform mass automation with triggering Integration with many vendors These features are valuable because I need them to complete the work assigned to me."
 

Cons

"There aren’t any areas of improvement that immediately come to mind."
"We cannot depend on this solution to manage all of the data center's infrastructure."
"It is not easy to add or expand the product."
"The product's pricing needs to improve."
"Normally, UCS Director is used primarily for orchestration, but when we look at a 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."
"Simplifying the user interface would go a long way to making it more usable."
"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."
"The tool should be a lot more intuitive and make it easy for us to understand and migrate."
"I rate it a seven out of ten because it needs improvement in stability, performance, and quality."
"New versions are quite scalable, but when it comes to managing a Telco environment, it has bottleneck."
"They should concentrate on navigation and service improvements."
"From my experience, vRA requires a highly skilled team to maintain, version upgrades without downtime are not possible, and overall it doesn’t scale fast."
"The setup needs coding. It's not easy. It's not straightforward."
"We are migrating from vRA version 7 to 8, but the migration is really hectic and time-consuming."
"We do not utilize the orchestration capabilities."
"Master/minion connections are subject to hijacking, privilege escalation, and/or information leaks."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Cisco UCS Director is expensive...I rate the solution's pricing a three 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."
"vRealize automation really should be a front door to the whole VMware suite of products."
"There is confusion between licensing levels. There are three different licensed versions of vRealize Automation, and there are different things which can happen in each of them."
"A simplified version for small businesses would be good."
"The cost of the solution is reasonable for us. Although it is relatively high, we prioritize stability and integration over cost."
"I would rate the pricing a ten out of ten, with ten being very expensive."
"It made the provisioning of the virtual machines easier and faster. We can react more quickly to customers' demands."
"VMware Aria Automation is expensive."
"The solution is pretty expensive but provides good workload management."
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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 Enterprise131
 

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.
893,915 professionals have used our research since 2012.