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Cisco UCS Director vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

Cisco and Broadcom are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. Cisco is ranked #21 with an average rating of 8.0, while Broadcom is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.0. Cisco holds a 1.8% mindshare in CM, compared to Broadcom’s 8.3% mindshare. Additionally, 73% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.
Cisco UCS Director
Read 15 Cisco UCS Director reviews
  • 753 Views
  • 723 Comparison Views
73% willing to recommend
VMware Aria Automation
Read 171 VMware Aria Automation reviews
  • 7,719 Views
  • 4,245 Comparison Views
94% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

VMware Aria Automation and Cisco UCS Director compete in the automation and orchestration software category. VMware Aria Automation appears to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive features and flexibility in diverse environments.

Features: VMware Aria Automation offers multi-machine blueprints, automated VM lifecycles, and integration with third-party systems, making it ideal for virtual infrastructures. Cisco UCS Director excels in Cisco hardware management, offering excellent orchestration for Cisco-centric systems.

Room for Improvement: VMware Aria Automation users suggest improvements in documentation, ease of use, and cloud provider integration. Cisco UCS Director could enhance its user interface and integration with non-Cisco products, while broadening its feature set for diverse environments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Aria Automation supports on-premises and hybrid deployments with generally favorable tech support, though response times can vary. Cisco UCS Director focuses on on-premises deployment, with good tech support, but customization challenges indicate a need for simplified support processes.

Pricing and ROI: VMware Aria Automation is perceived as expensive but offers significant ROI with enhanced infrastructure agility. Cisco UCS Director's high cost and pricing concerns may limit ROI, especially with significant customization required for non-Cisco systems.

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To learn more, read our detailed Cisco UCS Director vs. VMware Aria Automation Report (Updated: December 2025).
Buyer's Guide
Cisco UCS Director vs. VMware Aria Automation
December 2025
Download the complete report
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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 Director
Ranking in Cloud Management
21st
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
171
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (7th), Network Automation (6th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (19th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS Director is 1.8%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 8.3%, down from 10.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
VMware Aria Automation8.3%
Cisco UCS Director1.8%
Other89.9%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

OR
ErnieRumfield
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…
Read full review
Le Quang Long - PeerSpot reviewer
Le Quang Long
Cloud Engineer at BIDV - Ngân hàng TMCP Đầu tư & Phát triển Việt Nam
Significantly streamlined operations with good automation that helps with simplifying workflows
It helps me build a big catalog and provide it to my end users. It helps us automate the workflow of creating many VMs and the TensorFlow key method. I do not meet many people to operate it live beforehand. It operates for both of my products, but as a product, it is complicated to integrate and automate with other products.
Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"A product that really aids in systems management without complexity."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"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."
"This is a user-friendly solution that is very good and easy to use."
"Better visibility and better control are the main benefits people receive from Cisco UCS Director; the automation and the orchestration part, these three to four points are the key factors to decide on Cisco UCS Director."
"Feature-wise, the solution helps one to add multiple environments in one place...It is a scalable product."
"An easy and strong configuration, along with its low cost, are some of the features of the solution."
"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."
More Cisco UCS Director pros
"I find the system to be intuitive and user-friendly. In general, I'm quite happy with the entire setup. Once you configure the system, navigating the portal is pretty simple. They use a lot of the vSphere UI interface structure so it's intuitive, especially if you have used anything vSphere-related before."
"It helps us automate the workflow of creating many VMs and the TensorFlow key method."
"It is mostly for our tech support to test new versions, find bugs, and troubleshoot what is happening at customer sites."
"The product is very user-friendly."
"Today, if I want to provision one VM, it takes me five minutes. Earlier, it would take a minimum of 30 minutes to go and choose everything. Now, I can just do one click and it can provision my whole VM. We also integrated with our Alexa, so even through voice functionality, I can create a VM. One of the guys at VMware, along with our partner, deployed that in our environment. If I say, "Hey, Alexa, I need a VM with four gigs of RAM," it will go and start creating it."
"The initial setup was straightforward. It's easy to deploy."
"The product saves a lot of time and cost for us. It has valuable features for creating a playbook."
"Using the VMware vRealize self-service portal, we can better manage the lifecycle."
More VMware Aria Automation pros
 

Cons

"There aren’t any areas of improvement that immediately come to mind."
"Currently, Cisco UCS Director is unable to integrate with another product or with a server from another brand."
"The product's pricing needs to improve."
"There are a lot of bugs in the solution. This is an area in the solution that can be improved."
"The areas where this product can be improved are the integrations and the UI. These features are not as friendly compared to VMware products."
"I would like to see more integration with other solutions."
"We cannot depend on this solution to manage all of the data center's infrastructure."
"There could be an improvement with the integration with the newest solutions from other vendors' technologies."
More Cisco UCS Director cons
"Multitenancy management is a little bit difficult to do, so it is an area that can be improved."
"It was a complex setup. We had to use the consultant from VMware to make the solution work well."
"The high price of the tool is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"vCenter and vRA, I believe they share two different databases so sometimes you have to somehow sync them up. I wish there was only one database between the two or, somehow, one database would rule over the other one, so if you have both products, the vCenter might use the vRA database. Otherwise, when you do stuff in vCenter, you have to write a command on vRA to update the databases."
"There is a little bit of pain when it comes to libraries and what is needed to run the product."
"We have seen some issues with upgrades or installations. This means we have to raise a call every time with VMware."
"When it comes to the orchestration workflow, you're on your own. The documentation and resources are very limited, and you have to learn everything on your own."
"In terms of additional features, I would like it to be able to poll my vCenter infrastructure more rapidly and adapt to changes quickly. It should alert me and let me know when there are broken components, as a result of underlying infrastructure changes. It needs to be more stringent."
More VMware Aria Automation cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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 cost of this solution is significant."
"The budget doesn’t work for the state and local governments."
"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 solution has helped to increase infrastructure, agility, speed, and provisioning in the time to market."
"They should provide one license for all the sub-products."
"We have seen significant ROI. We used to have physical servers, it took 90 days to get a server, order it, buy it, and get it in. We have it down to 10 minutes, building a server with virtualization, and now that's too slow. So, we let the customer do it at their speed. Therefore, it is pretty much up in a couple of minutes and they have a server."
"We do plan to see ROI with any new implementation of new technologies being implemented within our environment."
"The pricing is very high."
"It is an expensive product. After VMware's acquisition by Broadcom, there was a rise in the price of VMware Aria Automation."
"It is an open-source product."
"As far as value is concerned, it has been essential to our environment. We have been able to deploy VMs quickly and the developers have their own sandbox, so they can spin up and destroy VMs at their own will."
More VMware Aria Automation pricing and cost advice
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
18%
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
11%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
 

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 Business32
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise130
 

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.
See all answers
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 ...
See all answers
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...
See all answers
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...
See all answers
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 ...
See all answers
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 ...
See all answers
 

Comparisons

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Compared 12% of the time
OpenNebula vs Cisco UCS Director Logo
OpenNebula vs Cisco UCS Director
Compared 10% of the time
Morpheus vs Cisco UCS Director Logo
Morpheus vs Cisco UCS Director
Compared 9% of the time
Abiquo vs Cisco UCS Director Logo
Abiquo vs Cisco UCS Director
Compared 8% of the time
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Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs VMware Aria Automation Logo
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs VMware Aria Automation
Compared 14% of the time
VMware Aria Operations vs VMware Aria Automation Logo
VMware Aria Operations vs VMware Aria Automation
Compared 11% of the time
Morpheus vs VMware Aria Automation Logo
Morpheus vs VMware Aria Automation
Compared 9% of the time
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs VMware Aria Automation Logo
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs VMware Aria Automation
Compared 5% of the time
CloudStack vs VMware Aria Automation Logo
CloudStack vs VMware Aria Automation
Compared 2% of the time
More VMware Aria Automation Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Cisco UCS Director
December 2025
Cisco UCS Director reportDownload Cisco UCS Director product report
Buyer's Guide
VMware Aria Automation
December 2025
VMware Aria Automation reportDownload VMware Aria Automation product report
 

Also Known As

No data available
VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
 

Overview

Cisco UCS Director enables automated delivery of physical and virtual data center resources, empowering data centers to move at the speed of business.

Cisco

VMware Aria Automation is a cloud management tool that allows companies to simplify their cloud experience through a modern automation platform. The solution is designed to deliver self-service clouds, multi-cloud automation with governance, and DevOps-based security and infrastructure management. It helps organizations improve IT agility, efficiency, and productivity through its various features. 

VMware Aria Automation has multiple use cases that include the following:

  • Self-service multi-cloud: VMware Aria Automation can be used to deliver consistent self-service consumption. Another use case in this area is for delivering infrastructure across VMware Clouds as well as public clouds.

  • Multi-cloud governance: The solution can be used to manage cost, performance, networking, configuration, and security at scale for multi-cloud environments. VMware Aria Automation offers all this with an everything-as-code approach.

  • DevOps for infrastructure: Through VMware Aria Automation, companies can enable a powerful infrastructure as code platform with support for iterative development and infrastructure pipelining.

  • Kubernetes automation: Users can utilize VMware Aria Automation to automate the management of Kubernetes clusters and namespaces with support for vSphere with Tanzu.

  • Security operations: VMware Aria Automation facilitates event-driven automation to deliver full-service IT system compliance enforcement and vulnerability remediation.

VMware Aria Automation Features

VMware Aria Automation has various features that allow users to easily perform operations. Some of the solution's capacities include:

  • VMware Cloud agnostic template: This feature allows organizations to use a single cloud template to deploy with Infrastructure as a Code. Deployment options include VMware Cloud as well as major public cloud platforms such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and more.

  • Extensibility and customization: This VMware Aria Automation feature allows users to get full extensibility and customization. This can be achieved through Aria Automation Orchestrator, Action-Based Extensibility (ABX), and built-in integrations with common third-party tools.

  • Self-service multi-cloud: This feature enables users to request and provision infrastructure resources. It can be done across clouds using a unified and consistent Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) consumption layer, idempotent REST API, and self-service catalog.

  • Centralized policies and governance: VMware Aria Automation offers a feature for users to manage multiple clouds with templatized cloud and policy definition, automated remediation, and cloud environment visibility.

  • Configuration management: Through this feature of the product, day 1 and 2 control can be achieved for virtualized and cloud environments. This can be done with intuitive configuration automation, compliance enforcement, and vulnerability remediation.

  • Infrastructure pipelining: Through this feature, organizations can access user-friendly release automation pipelines. They can be specifically tailored for CI/CD in infrastructure use cases.

VMware Aria Automation Benefits

VMware Aria Automation offers its users various benefits. Some of the biggest advantages that the solution brings to companies that utilize it include:

  • VMware Aria Automation provides faster time to market for companies through offloading manual tasks with advanced workflows and agile templating.

  • The solution offers high levels of security and control.

  • This product is suitable for beginners, as it offers a self-service consumption experience for users.

  • VMware Aria Automation accelerates innovation through Infrastructure as Code and DevOps principles.

  • The product provides users with flexibility, as it is compatible with the most popular public cloud solutions.

  • The solution offers fast deployment because of all natively integrated functions.

Reviews from Real Users

Awais J., CTO/CEO at a tech services company, likes VMware Aria Automation because it saves a lot of time, provides more visibility, and has extensive automation capabilities.

An IT consultant at a government rates VMware Aria Automation highly because the product gives you flexibility to analyze and consume resources.

Broadcom
 

Sample Customers

Entel, Data#3, Cegal, NESIC, LightEdge
Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Buyer's Guide
Cisco UCS Director vs. VMware Aria Automation
December 2025
Free Report: Cisco UCS Director vs. VMware Aria Automation
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS Director vs. VMware Aria Automation and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
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