No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Cisco UCS Director vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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
26th
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
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
172
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (11th), Network Automation (7th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (29th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS Director is 1.6%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 5.7%, down from 9.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Aria Automation5.7%
Cisco UCS Director1.6%
Other92.7%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

OR
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…
VasilisGiannitsiotis - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT at ITSolutions
Automation has streamlined complex financial workflows but still needs more intuitive orchestration
Something to improve in VMware Aria Automation would be related to VCF 9, as I do not know what it is trying to bring because they exposed it as the solution of everything. So VCF 9 will bring VCF Automation and VCF Operations, the new product line of VMware. I have not seen what this brings or what else it includes. Maybe in the area of vRealize Orchestrator, this would be beneficial because VRO can do everything. Perhaps a more user-friendly way to use that tool would be helpful because the possibilities there are endless. I am looking for more user-friendly navigation in VMware Aria Automation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"A product that really aids in systems management without complexity."
"The product is flexible and compact. It has a lot of features."
"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."
"Overall, I think that this is a very good product, although nothing is perfect."
"Without UCS Director it wouldn't be possible for us to go from receiving shipments at a data center to having systems live in production in a matter of days, or sometimes hours, instead of waiting weeks."
"Cisco UCS Director is straightforward to use, which we greatly appreciate."
"As usual, the technical support from Cisco is amazing."
"The feature of automated balancing which implemented between two data centers solely for the purpose of a recovery plan is valuable."
"Configuration management: We were using SaltStack for orchestration in liaison with OpenStack."
"VMware Aria Automation has made a lot of things easier. It has really helped the operations team to spin up the virtual machines."
"The automation function itself and how to group and publish those groupings is quite easy for customers to learn with Aria."
"A lot of its DevOps for infrastructure capabilities improve reliability. Much effort was put in by some customers, like a large automobile manufacturer, a large telecom, and two large banks, to achieve a certain level of capabilities in this space. These DevOps for infrastructure capabilities have saved time for developers. In one use case for a large marketplace, a typical release cycle took about 80 hours and was brought down to three hours by automating deployment for developers. The quicker that deployments happen, the faster that they can do their product release cycles."
"The big benefit is it will spin up VMs quickly so it would take about 13 to 15 minutes to deploy a virtual machine. Whereas, if I were doing it based on an email from users who are requesting VMs, it might take time for me to hear back from them. This could be anywhere from an hour to a day."
"The new version is user-friendly and intuitive."
"We decreased deployment CD times from hours to minutes across different cloud providers on several hundred systems."
 

Cons

"The product could allow more programmatic opportunities through better development of the API."
"The user interface could use improvement."
"There aren’t any areas of improvement that immediately come to mind."
"We cannot depend on this solution to manage all of the data center's infrastructure."
"The scalability of this solution needs to be improved because as it is now, you cannot scale the storage alone. Rather, you have to scale the storage and the compute together."
"There are a lot of bugs in the solution. This is an area in the solution that can be improved."
"There could be an improvement with the integration with the newest solutions from other vendors' technologies."
"The tool should be a lot more intuitive and make it easy for us to understand and migrate."
"Implementation should not be so complex. Certificate replacement should be easier."
"We do not utilize the orchestration capabilities."
"We have seen couple of bugs."
"I have found 7.4 to be user-friendly but 7.5 is not, in fact, it's a nightmare."
"We found some intermittent issues with the Windows minion connection."
"They can improve on the dashboard representations and the options for non-technical people."
"There are a lot of usability issues which I have. Overall, the product feels bloated and cumbersome."
"The basic support is not there for Google Cloud and Azure. They are unable to provision nor do cost controls."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The budget doesn’t work for the state and local governments."
"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."
"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."
"vRealize automation really should be a front door to the whole VMware suite of products."
"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."
"The solution is free of cost."
"It is pricey for what you get."
"The pricing for this solution is roughly 20% lower than the competitive products in the market."
"They should provide one license for all the sub-products."
"The solution has helped to increase infrastructure, agility, speed, and provisioning in the time to market."
"A simplified version for small businesses would be good."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Management solutions are best for your needs.
921,148 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

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 Business33
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise131
 

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.
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 ...
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...
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...
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 ...
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 ...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Entel, Data#3, Cegal, NESIC, LightEdge
Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS Director vs. VMware Aria Automation and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,148 professionals have used our research since 2012.