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 8.7, while VMware is ranked #31 with an average rating of 9.0. Cisco holds a 1.4% mindshare in IM, compared to VMware’s 1.3% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Cisco UCS Manager

Read 27 Cisco UCS Manager reviews

1,893 Views
1,628 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Read 13 VMware Aria Operations for Applications reviews

2,555 Views
1,329 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Cisco UCS Manager

VMware Aria Operations for ...

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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: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS Manager vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

July 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

8.2

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

31st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (29th), Container Monitoring (6th), Cloud Monitoring Software (23rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS Manager is 1.4%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 1.3%, up from 1.2% 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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ToniLindberg

senior consultant at Virtual Consultants Sverige AB

Troubleshooting capabilities have improved application monitoring and support engagement

I can see what happens end to end, which is pretty beneficial. The solution has troubleshooting capabilities, providing a direct connection to knowledge base articles from VMware Broadcom. When I encounter an error, I can search directly within the system to see what solutions have been employed by others. It has a familiar interface, which makes it easy to get started.

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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

"Ease of management is certainly the most valuable feature in this product."

"For the blade architecture and ease of use, I consider Cisco UCS Manager the best option on the market at the moment."

"It is more robust than other solutions. So, the stability is good."

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

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

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

"One of the valuable features is the user interface base."

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

More Cisco UCS Manager pros

"The solution provides single-console management for multiple VMware environments and cloud integrations, whether hybrid, private, or public cloud."

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

"I gladly recommend VMware Aria Operations for Applications because it is cost effective and has commendable AI response capabilities."

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

"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 Aria Operations for Applications offers significant features such as real-time statistics, the ability to identify possible issues within the VM environment, and helpful heat maps."

"No issues with stability."

"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."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications pros

Cons

"The automation within the solution needs to be simplified."

"I want to be able to schedule multiple sequential updates in one go."

"In the next release, I would like to see improvements made to their security."

"Getting a CLI report on routers, switches, or any other CLI configuration device is difficult."

"What's lacking in Cisco UCS Manager is the performance dashboard. If a blade has any performance issues, you should be able to create a dashboard on Cisco UCS Manager. Currently, this feature isn't present."

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

"Cisco UCS is expensive compared to others. The Cisco UCS Chassis is more expensive than a standalone server, but some companies require standalone servers because of their production load and affordability. You need to pay more if you require more features on the Blade or if you need more ports on the switch."

"For improvements, while the current graphical user interface is satisfactory, it could be further simplified for different tasks."

More Cisco UCS Manager cons

"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."

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

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

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

"The return on investment is best suited for organizations that do not have the resources for a dedicated VM environment team. However, the cost of the product doesn't show significant benefits."

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

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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 Manager’s annual licensing fee is expensive."

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

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

"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."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

23%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

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?

My experience with the pricing of Cisco UCS Manager ( /products/cisco-ucs-manager-reviews ) is that it is reasonable. Recently, we acquired an excellent bundle with significant discounts, with offe...

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What needs improvement with Cisco UCS Manager?

For improvements, while the current graphical user interface is satisfactory, it could be further simplified for different tasks. While it has been improved from using Java to HTML, simplifying the...

See all answers

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

The cost of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is fair and reasonable compared to what we receive in support and packages from VMware.

See all answers

What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

I find that there could be improvements in the support service response time, as the urgency varies unless specified as Priority 2 or 1 cases.

See all answers

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

Our primary use case for VMware Aria Operations for Applications is to enhance application monitoring tasks, allowing us to set up alerts for different components and send them via SMTP to a team d...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 82% of the time

Nutanix Prism vs Cisco UCS Manager

Compared 9% of the time

HPE OneView vs Cisco UCS Manager

Compared 6% of the time

Zabbix vs Cisco UCS Manager

Compared 3% of the time

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Grafana vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 12% 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

Veeam Data Platform vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 6% of the time

Datadog vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS Manager

July 2025

Download Cisco UCS Manager product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations for Applications

June 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

July 2025

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

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