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 #17 with an average rating of 8.3, while VMware is ranked #44 with an average rating of 7.5. Cisco holds a 1.7% mindshare in IM, compared to VMware’s 1.2% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Cisco UCS Manager

Read 25 Cisco UCS Manager reviews

1,784 Views
1,531 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Read 10 VMware Aria Operations for Applications reviews

1,317 Views
1,194 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: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS Manager vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

January 2025

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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 Manager

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

17th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

44th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (39th), Container Monitoring (9th), Cloud Monitoring Software (29th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS Manager is 1.7%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 1.2%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Featured Reviews

Edwin Mwosa

IT Infrastructure Manager at KTDA

Enhanced network oversight with rapid issue identification and good efficiency

We mainly use Cisco UCS Manager to integrate and manage our Cisco switches across the building. We also utilize it for network integration. It provides an integrated solution for our Cisco environment, streamlining our operations and managing multiple Cisco devices like switches and routers Cisco…

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Yves Sandfort

CEO & Majority Shareholder at Comdivision Consulting GmbH

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

"I can deploy something in my 50-odd servers all in one go, in parallel, whereas if I was to do that individually, it could be a nightmare."

"Cisco Infrastructure is one of the top vendors and no one can beat them in terms of switching and routing."

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

"From a usability and functionality perspective, Cisco UCS Manager is very good."

"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 flexibility and the ease in which the features can be expanded are the solution's most valuable aspects."

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

"The management is one of the most valuable features of this solution."

More Cisco UCS Manager pros

"The features I find most valuable is the querying and alerting capabilities."

"It has a familiar interface, which makes it easy to get started."

"People are very pleased with the implementation."

"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."

"No issues with stability."

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

"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."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications pros

Cons

"The solution's pricing is high and could be reduced."

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

"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."

"Upgrading the firmware is a difficult procedure."

"The integration with other solutions could be better. I think Cisco can only integrate using Intersight. There is a second interface available as a SaaS platform, in the cloud, or on-premise. It's based on the Redfish protocol, which is standard for all the B-series servers in the market. We can integrate other solutions using API."

"Improving functionalities similar to InterSite within UCS Manager would be beneficial."

"Some settings are still fairly well hidden, even the basic ones."

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

More Cisco UCS Manager cons

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

"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."

"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 solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor."

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

"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."

"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."

"I would like to see integration with Kubernetes cluster and APIs so that you can manage the entire stack."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

"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

30%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

14%

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.

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

The licensing cost for Cisco UCS Manager is around four out of ten. It is not cost-effective due to its high price, especially regarding memory expansion.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco UCS Manager?

An area for improvement is the memory expansion of these blades, which is very expensive. The pricing aspect should be addressed.

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 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

What is your primary use case for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

I primarily use the solution for consulting. I help company DevOps teams.

See all answers

Comparisons

Cisco Intersight vs Cisco UCS Manager

Compared 82% of the time

Nutanix Prism vs Cisco UCS Manager

Compared 11% of the time

HPE OneView vs Cisco UCS Manager

Compared 4% of the time

Zabbix vs Cisco UCS Manager

Compared 3% of the time

More Cisco UCS Manager Competitors

Grafana vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 14% of the time

Dynatrace vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 10% of the time

Zabbix vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 7% of the time

Prometheus vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 7% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 6% of the time

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS Manager

February 2025

Download Cisco UCS Manager product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations for Applications

January 2025

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

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.

Cisco

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.

VMware

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

January 2025

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