Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Cisco UCS Director vs VMware Cloud Director 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
22nd
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Cloud Director
Ranking in Cloud Management
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
68
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS Director is 1.3%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Cloud Director is 6.3%, down from 7.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Sunny Nair - PeerSpot reviewer
Good multi-cloud management capability, but third-party and legacy integration needs improvement
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. I feel that more development or a more integrated road map should be set up so that it becomes a common platform for any infrastructure. In the next release of this solution, I would like to see changes in the navigation controls of UCS Director. That would be helpful. Modifying the icons that are available for use, as well as virtualization aspects.
NiteshKumar1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides crystal clear dashboarding and allows you to manage and monitor your infrastructure
The overall dashboarding is very crystal clear. The ability to switch from one infrastructure to another infrastructure and get into detailed information, whether it is compute, storage network, or whatever. That helps you get a holistic view of the overall infrastructure running in your landscape. This also helps the leadership and management be aware of the right potential investment strategy by looking at the potential utilization. vCloud Director also provides ways and means through which you can make a prediction or a forecast of the infrastructure that would be needed in the future, depending on what you are currently running. That does not take away the fact that we have to be completely aware of our pipeline projects in our schedule so that you can plan your infrastructure requirements accordingly. vCloud Director provides multifold features that have been beneficial to the end users.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This is a user-friendly solution that is very good and easy to use."
"The reason we went with Cisco is that it comes at a very negligible cost as part of the BOQ. Compared to the competition's products, which are incredibly expensive, UCS Director is low-cost."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the fabric sharing."
"The solution is helpful for centralized management."
"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."
"An easy and strong configuration, along with its low cost, are some of the features of the solution."
"The product is flexible and compact. It has a lot of features."
"A product that really aids in systems management without complexity."
"Their technical support is great. We had some difficult cases and they were able to solve them in a timely manner."
"If a customer is looking for disaster recovery at a cheaper price, this is the best solution."
"The orchestration and automation are very valuable."
"It optimizes the process for cloud structure."
"The deployment is easy."
"The most valuable feature of vCloud Director is its ability to host customers on their own cloud."
"vCloud Director has improved our organization in so far as it is an easy solution to sell. I believe this is the case due to the fact that it is an easy tool to manage and to configure."
"The tool is very stable."
 

Cons

"I would like to see more integration with other solutions."
"Currently, Cisco UCS Director is unable to integrate with another product or with a server from another brand."
"The tool should be a lot more intuitive and make it easy for us to understand and migrate."
"There could be an improvement with the integration with the newest solutions from other vendors' technologies."
"The product's pricing needs to improve."
"There aren’t any areas of improvement that immediately come to mind."
"Simplifying the user interface would go a long way to making it more usable."
"The areas where this product can be improved are the integrations and the UI. These features are not as friendly compared to VMware products."
"It would be beneficial if some features were built into the platform rather than requiring integration with multiple products, reducing complexity and licensing concerns."
"Cloud Director has room for improvement in many areas. One critical thing that comes to mind is the hyperscalers. They could be more seamlessly integrated into the hybrid cloud."
"The solution should integrate with other cloud systems such as Azure ARC and OpenStack."
"There are new updates every quarter, so we need to purchase new support deployment services and some new products."
"Technical support is something that we've had problems with in the past. Across all the VMware solutions we have not always had the best response from support. To be fair a lot of the issues that came up for us have been quite niche but it seems that in terms of release cycles they introduced a lot of bugs and it's a lot of stuff that support generally has to work quite hard on. There have been cases when we've logged critical priority issues and not had responses in time. I think support is something that can be worked on."
"Lacks integration with the hyperscalers."
"We use vCloud Director along with Terraform, and it's difficult to make them work together. It takes a long time to deploy virtual machines with Terraform in vCloud Director. For example, it can take about one or two hours to create 10 machines. It takes up a lot of our DevOps' and engineers' time in comparison to that with other solutions. This is an area that they should work on and improve."
"vCloud Director's pricing is high. Its integration with open-source technologies is limited."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Cisco UCS Director is expensive...I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten."
"I would rate the product's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The cost of this solution is significant."
"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."
"The licensing costs are pretty high, but it might depend on the size of the company."
"My company has no problems with the pricing of the product as we got good discounts from VMware."
"If ten is very expensive, I rate the tool's price as a four out of ten."
"vCloud Director is an expensive solution."
"In certain cases, the price of Cloud Director is quite high, especially with the load balancing and other features they've introduced. That seems quite costly. Overall, for VSPP programming, I think it's okay. However, features like enterprise load balancing and all these other things are very costly."
"If one means a very bad price, and ten means a very good price, I rate the price as a five on a scale of one to ten."
"The solution's price is the market standard and depends on usage."
"The licensing cost is high for vCloud Director. It is mostly a perpetual license."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Management solutions are best for your needs.
860,825 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
26%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco UCS Director?
Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
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?
There aren’t any areas of improvement that immediately come to mind.
Would you change anything about VMware vCloud Director if you could?
VMware vCloud Director works very well and there are not many things that I would like to see changed. However, a single thing comes to mind when I think of improvements and that is integration. In...
What is the biggest improvement you saw at your company after you started using VMware vCloud Director?
For my company, VMware vCloud Director noticeably increased operational efficiency. When I started working here a few years ago, my organization was using another cloud management tool. We switched...
Is vCloud Director convenient for building applications?
When it comes to building applications, vCloud Director offers you various methods to create cloud-ready ones. For example: Your DevOps team is supported through Infrastructure as Code services w...
 

Also Known As

No data available
vCloud Director
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Entel, Data#3, Cegal, NESIC, LightEdge
MicroStrategy, National Democratic Institute, and NYSE Euronext.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS Director vs. VMware Cloud Director and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
860,825 professionals have used our research since 2012.