Cisco UCS Manager vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

Cisco and VMware are both solutions in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category. Cisco is ranked #24 with an average rating of 7.7, while VMware is ranked #42 with an average rating of 7.5. Cisco holds a 1.7% mindshare in IM, compared to VMware’s 1.3% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Cisco UCS Manager

Read 23 Cisco UCS Manager reviews

1,952 Views
1,691 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Read 9 VMware Aria Operations for Applications reviews

1,626 Views
1,483 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Cisco UCS Manager

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Cisco UCS Manager and VMware Aria Operations for Applications compete in IT infrastructure management. Cisco has an advantage in networking and compute integration, whereas VMware stands out for its monitoring capabilities.

Features: Cisco UCS Manager includes comprehensive network, storage, and compute unification, ease of server deployment and management, and robust support for enterprise environments. VMware Aria Operations for Applications provides strong application monitoring, extensive metrics for cloud environments, and container platform support.

Room for Improvement: Cisco UCS Manager needs improvements in firmware upgrade processes, user interface complexity reduction, and streamlined update procedures. VMware Aria Operations for Applications could offer enhanced integration with Kubernetes, improve predictive abilities, and simplify licensing complexities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cisco UCS Manager typically involves on-premises deployment with highly rated technical support. VMware Aria Operations for Applications supports both on-premises and hybrid cloud deployments and is praised for its proactive support model.

Pricing and ROI: Cisco UCS Manager is regarded as expensive but offers good ROI with fewer hardware failures. VMware Aria Operations for Applications involves high licensing costs yet is valued for its comprehensive capabilities, offering efficient management that can save development time. Both products ensure good ROI when suited to the organizational needs, though Cisco may have higher initial costs.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco UCS Manager vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications Report (Updated: October 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS Manager vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

October 2024

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Categories and Ranking

Cisco UCS Manager

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

24th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

42nd

Average Rating

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (40th), Container Monitoring (9th), Cloud Monitoring Software (32nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS Manager is 1.7%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 1.3%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Featured Reviews

Joshua Kurian

Sr. Technical Architect at StarOne IT Solutions

Apr 8, 2024

Used to manage servers, monitor or manage firmware upgrades, and push policies

The solution's SDK and API can be integrated with ServiceNow for ticketing for any purpose. The solution's unified management interface is a central point of management that allows us to manage switches, blades, and storage connectors. One person is enough to maintain the solution. The speed of the network interface has been 100 G since day one. The network is scalable, and GPU nodes can be added seamlessly. Cisco is claiming to support water cooling in the near future. The solution can be easily integrated with other tools and platforms. Compared to Dell, Cisco UCS Manager provides straightforward configuration, reusable policies, and flexibility. Dell lacks a proper GUI for configuring everything. Cisco has only one GUI, which allows us to configure everything, including the network server and server profile. Before releasing each model, Cisco should conduct proper testing or engineering validation to ensure that the customer doesn't face any issues initially. Overall, I rate Cisco UCS Manager a nine out of ten.

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Yves Sandfort

CEO & Majority Shareholder at Comdivision Consulting GmbH

Aug 1, 2022

Easy to deploy, worth the money, and helpful for uptime monitoring and performance insights

Its billing model is consumption-based. I understand the consumption-based model, but it is not necessarily easy to estimate and guess how many points or how much we are going to consume on a specific application up until we get to that point. So, for us, it would be helpful to have more insights or predictability into what we can expect from a cost perspective if we are starting to use specific features. This can potentially also drive our consumption a bit more. The other thing for us is that while it is great that we have all these standard metrics, it would be good if we can also more easily define standard metrics to be consumed for our own application. At the moment, for a lot of applications, we have to reinvent the wheel every time. If there was something so that we can build our own packaging of metrics, it would be helpful. In the future, we might be deploying our software to other customers as well. So, they should make it easier to redeploy that. There should be more customizable dashboards. The Wavefront dashboards are very technical and a more business-oriented dashboard design would definitely help.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Technical support has been good so far. We haven't had any issues with them. We're satisfied with the level of service they provide our company."

"The most valuable features of Cisco UCS Manager include the visibility it provides and the ease of identifying issues within the Cisco environment."

"Creating UCS service profiles for quickly deploying servers and replicating that configuration to another server makes it easier for deployment."

"The most valuable features are flexibility and management."

"Cisco UCS Manager is overall a good package because it gives a GUI interface and a CLI."

"I can quickly manage the provisioned servers."

"The interface is ergonomic and native. We can use UCS Manager to do all the configurations for the servers, including storage, networking, and all the other components we need inside the fabric. It's simple and flexible."

"The hardware is very powerful and it is a stable solution."

More Cisco UCS Manager pros

"The solution is great for virtualization and preparing the infrastructure in Tanzu to test products. It's very fast and has good visibility."

"The most valuable aspects of the solution are its ease of use and its ease of implementation."

"This solution allows me to have true visibility for any metrics when it comes to my cloud, and private."

"No issues with stability."

"People are very pleased with the implementation."

"Tanzu itself, integrated with multiple solutions, bestows support and security upon a container platform, especially when it comes to managing open-source container platforms such as Kubernetes."

"For us, the ease of deployment in combination with TMZ was the most important part because we don't have to manually deploy a complex monitoring solution. We can more or less do that with the click of a button, and we are not dependent on the developers to provide us with all the necessary features and functions to make that work. We can just deploy it on a workload cluster and monitor at least a good part of the workload. If we want to go into detail, we clearly need to make changes, but for a good part of application monitoring, it gives us good insights."

"VMware comes with a support team, and if you have trouble, you can easily create a ticket, and VMware will help you. Therefore, the best aspect is the support."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications pros

Cons

"Its user interface can be improved. It can be more user-friendly."

"There is room for improvement in the software part of Cisco UCS Manager. It should be more user-friendly, especially when creating policies."

"We have three data centers and if we could manage all three data centers using one interface, it would be great."

"I would like to see Cisco UCS optionally work as a hyper-converged system because right now, it only operates as a converged system."

"Cisco UCS Manager is not a scalable solution because once you have 160 blades, it cannot be expanded more."

"The pricing can be better."

"The interface and the way it is constructed is very complex. They should work to simplify it. It's quite difficult for somebody who doesn't know the product very well. Users should be able to get proficient with it faster. There's definitely room for improvement there."

"I would like to see improved visibility into the operating system, enabling us to identify issues directly from the operating system itself."

More Cisco UCS Manager cons

"In the new version, I would love to see more prediction capabilities. It would be great if one could see the alerts get a little more enriched with information and become more human-friendly instead of the technical stuff that they put in there. I think those would be really awesome outcomes to get."

"It could use a URL document server. Everything in the market is moving towards automation and everybody's looking for the single click operations as well relational data locality."

"The implementation is a long process that should be improved."

"The main problem I have is that the license cost is very high."

"They could make it more easy to plug-in data so that a nontechnical person will be able to use it, like accountants or finance people. That way they don't have to ask us."

"The documentation and integration with Kubernetes could be improved."

"The initial setup should be easier and more seamless."

"Its billing model is consumption-based. I understand the consumption-based model, but it is not necessarily easy to estimate and guess how many points or how much we are going to consume on a specific application up until we get to that point. So, for us, it would be helpful to have more insights or predictability into what we can expect from a cost perspective if we are starting to use specific features. This can potentially also drive our consumption a bit more."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"With product discounts which can be negotiated, the product is a great value."

"Cisco UCS is more expensive than Dell and HP, but it is more reliable. I see less issues and it's quite stable."

"We need to take a license for each port, which amounts to a big sum."

"Cisco UCS Manager’s annual licensing fee is expensive."

"You buy the hardware and then you get Cisco UCS Manager for free."

"The pricing for Cisco UCS Manager is okay for its market, so it's a four out of five for me."

"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."

"I don't have the details. In our case, there is a mixture in place. We have production usage, and we are also doing training for VMware. So, we also have a training instance. It is worth the money you would spend on it. That's because if you were to build all of this yourself by using some of the open source tools, then you would need a lot of time."

"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."

"The licensing costs are very high, particularly when you consider that we have to purchase a level 1 license for every integration, such as the load balancer, HAProxy, and the MSSP. And if you want to use vSAN, that's another license. Then, of course, Tanzu Observability has its own separate license."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

32%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco UCS Manager?

When one server fails, we can attach the service profile to a new server, which saves a lot of time.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco UCS Manager?

Cisco is the most expensive compared to other vendors like Dell and HP when it comes to data center solutions.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco UCS Manager?

There are options that could make configuration and administration easier. Improving functionalities similar to InterSite within UCS Manager would be beneficial.

See all answers

What do you like most about VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

VMware comes with a support team, and if you have trouble, you can easily create a ticket, and VMware will help you. Therefore, the best aspect is the support.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

I would rate the pricing as three out of five.

See all answers

What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

It's hard to set up Tanzu clusters. It's hard to do a POC. Once you set up a customer's environment, you easily see the problems. The initial setup should be easier and more seamless.

See all answers

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Compared 3% of the time

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Compared 2% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

Prometheus vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS Manager

November 2024

Download Cisco UCS Manager product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations for Applications

October 2024

VMware Aria Operations for Applications report

Download VMware Aria Operations for Applications product report

Also Known As

No data available

Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability

Learn More

Cisco

VMware

Overview

Cisco UCS Manager helps significantly reduce management and administration expenses by automating routine tasks to increase operational agility. Customers can extend the benefits of Cisco UCS Manager globally across an enterprise to thousands of servers in multiple domains with Cisco UCS Central Software.

VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront is a powerful tool for monitoring and analyzing the performance and availability of applications and infrastructure in real-time.

With its comprehensive monitoring capabilities, visualizing and analyzing data becomes effortless. The real-time alerting system ensures timely issue resolution, while scalability and a user-friendly interface provide a seamless experience for smooth operations.

Sample Customers

Management Science Associates, Peak 10, Virtual Consulting Professionals

1. Atlassian 2. Cisco 3. Databricks 4. DigitalOcean 5. Equinix 6. Fidelity Investments 7. Google 8. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 9. Honeywell 10. IBM 11. Intel 12. JetBlue Airways 13. LinkedIn 14. Lyft 15. Mastercard 16. Microsoft 17. MongoDB 18. Netflix 19. Nvidia 20. Oracle 21. PayPal 22. Pinterest 23. Qualcomm 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. SAP 27. Spotify 28. Square 29. TMobile 30. Twitter 31. Uber 32. VMware

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS Manager vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

October 2024

Free Report: Cisco UCS Manager vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS Manager vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.

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