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Cisco UCS Director vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

Cisco and VMware are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. Cisco is ranked #22 with an average rating of 8.0, while VMware is ranked #1 with an average rating of 7.8. Cisco holds a 1.3% mindshare in CM, compared to VMware’s 11.8% mindshare. Additionally, 71% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of VMware users who would recommend it.
Cisco UCS Director
Read 14 Cisco UCS Director reviews
  • 575 Views
  • 314 Comparison Views
71% willing to recommend
VMware Aria Automation
Read 170 VMware Aria Automation reviews
  • 4,998 Views
  • 2,182 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: June 2025).
Buyer's Guide
Cisco UCS Director vs. VMware Aria Automation
June 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 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 Aria Automation
Ranking in Cloud Management
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
170
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (7th), Network Automation (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (17th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 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 Aria Automation is 11.8%, up from 11.5% 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.
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Le Quang Long - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"An easy and strong configuration, along with its low cost, are some of the features of the solution."
"The main feature of this solution is the integration with all the Cisco solutions and other vendors."
"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."
"I can manage multiple workloads whether it's on AWS, Azure, or on-premises. They can be managed by using the UCS Director."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the fabric sharing."
"Cisco UCS Director is straightforward to use, which we greatly appreciate."
"The product is flexible and compact. It has a lot of features."
"This is a user-friendly solution that is very good and easy to use."
More Cisco UCS Director pros
"The preset policies and templates are useful. I would say that vRA is one of the best solutions we have. The CI/CD features also look helpful even though we aren't using them at the moment. We plan to get more involved and train our customers as much as possible."
"We have it deployed in a highly-available environment and scalability is nice because we just had another ESX host and then we are able to increase the capacity."
"It has definitely increased speed of VM deployment. When a normal server-request would come in, it might take anywhere from three to four days to deploy. Now, within 15 minutes, they can click and have something up and running."
"We automated many tool deployments with the help of the product, cutting short manual deployments and eliminating the need for human interaction. Its most valuable features include integrating various tools and working with different products using plugins."
"vRA is user-friendly. It has the same layout and walk-through GUI, similar to other VMware products."
"value; It has provided my development team a pure self-service portal. We deploy thousands of machines and reclaim. So, their time to business, and their time to market has been improved exponentially."
"The ability to programmatically describe the desired state of a single, or an entire fleet of servers, on-premises, and in a cloud environment."
"I like its capacity, the self-service portal, and operational automation. The most beneficial feature is that it saves time when creating new virtual machines, deploying security measures, and writing infrastructure code, making things easier and faster. We have a standard we follow, reducing the time spent repeatedly rewriting everything."
More VMware Aria Automation pros
 

Cons

"There aren’t any areas of improvement that immediately come to mind."
"The product could allow more programmatic opportunities through better development of the API."
"Currently, Cisco UCS Director is unable to integrate with another product or with a server from another brand."
"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."
"The product's pricing needs to improve."
"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."
More Cisco UCS Director cons
"It would be better if VMware would provide API documentation for developers and customers on the Internet."
"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."
"We had a lot of issues at first. Especially with doing any kind of upgrades, it was a complete tear-down and a complete rebuild of all the Blueprints. The upgrade process was not easy or intuitive at all. But it seems to be getting better."
"We have seen some issues with upgrades or installations. This means we have to raise a call every time with VMware."
"It was a complex setup. We had to use the consultant from VMware to make the solution work well."
"The initial setup is complex. There are too many components to integrate, especially when we integrated with different storage types and backup vendors. All the integration made it more complex."
"I would also like to see them streamline the install. It's split between Windows and Linux appliances, and it would be easier if it was all appliances. I think they're going that way."
"The upgrade process 6.x to 7.3 was a significant effort. I'm hoping that 7.3 to the next version is much smoother."
More VMware Aria Automation cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cisco UCS Director is expensive...I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten."
"The cost of this solution is significant."
"The budget doesn’t work for the state and local governments."
"I would rate the product's pricing an eight 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."
"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."
"There is confusion between licensing levels. There are three different licensed versions of vRealize Automation, and there are different things which can happen in each of them."
"The tool is expensive since it is an enterprise product."
"The solution has helped to increase infrastructure, agility, speed, and provisioning in the time to market."
"The solution is pretty expensive but provides good workload management."
"This is an expensive product and the high price is starting to become an issue for us."
"The cost of the solution is reasonable for us. Although it is relatively high, we prioritize stability and integration over cost."
"I would rate it high because, compared to other solutions, VMware’s pricing is quite expensive. VMware products have become significantly more costly in recent years, leading to higher costs."
"From the customer perspective, the value was worth it."
More VMware Aria Automation pricing and cost advice
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
31%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Healthcare Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
 

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.
See all answers
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?
There aren’t any areas of improvement that immediately come to mind.
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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Cisco Intersight vs Cisco UCS Director
Compared 53% of the time
OpenNebula vs Cisco UCS Director Logo
OpenNebula vs Cisco UCS Director
Compared 16% 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 15% of the time
VMware Aria Operations vs VMware Aria Automation Logo
VMware Aria Operations vs VMware Aria Automation
Compared 15% of the time
Morpheus vs VMware Aria Automation Logo
Morpheus vs VMware Aria Automation
Compared 11% of the time
VMware Cloud Director vs VMware Aria Automation Logo
VMware Cloud Director 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 6% of the time
More VMware Aria Automation Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Cisco UCS Director
June 2025
Cisco UCS Director reportDownload Cisco UCS Director product report
Buyer's Guide
VMware Aria Automation
May 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.

VMware
 

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
June 2025
Free Report: Cisco UCS Director vs. VMware Aria Automation
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