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Cisco UCS Director vs VMware Aria Operations 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 Aria Operations
Ranking in Cloud Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
374
Ranking in other categories
Virtualization Management Tools (1st)
 

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 Operations is 8.1%, down from 9.6% 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.
Amar Sorro - PeerSpot reviewer
Manage and monitor crucial banking operations with deep logging and efficient alerting
The most valuable features of VMware Aria Operations include its excellent monitoring capabilities. It allows me to perform deep monitoring and logging of the entire environment, providing a quick alarm and warning system through email. These features help me in efficiently managing virtual machines. The solution also offers easy access to VMware KB articles for problem resolution, ensuring quick access to troubleshooting information.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the fabric sharing."
"A product that really aids in systems management without complexity."
"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 product is flexible and compact. It has a lot of features."
"The main feature of this solution is the integration with all the Cisco solutions and other vendors."
"The solution is helpful for centralized management."
"Cisco UCS Director is straightforward to use, which we greatly appreciate."
"Feature-wise, the solution helps one to add multiple environments in one place...It is a scalable product."
"It has allowed us to identify problems sooner and helps us with problems and issues."
"The most valuable features for us are some of the trending and analysis on workloads. It doesn't just look to see if something is maximized at 100%. It figures out what the normal is for the application, so it's not just if something is maxed out and causing a problem, but if something is higher than normal or running outside of its normal range. This helps us to identify something that other products might not necessarily note as an issue."
"It has increased the speed of VM deployment. A normal server request would come in, it could take anywhere from three to four days to deploy and now within 15 minutes they can click and have something up and running. IT support for developers is nice as well because they are able to manage the environment themselves."
"We went from using industry standard KPIs to going to a complete on-demand model based on the algorithms from vRealize Operations. It has enabled us to drive more utilization out of our existing compute infrastructure to the point where, for a period of six months, we didn't purchase a single server or any additional compute. We were able to continue to sweat our existing assets."
"It's intuitive and user-friendly, especially with the new clients. It's really nice. It's really easy to use. The HTML 5 client is light years ahead of the old one. Everything runs faster, it loads a lot quicker, it's a lot cleaner, the UI is easier to navigate."
"The most valuable features are the health tree and the alerts that tell us what's going on from a glance at the dashboard. As far as showing us where the problems are, what's useful is that it gives us suggested solutions to fix them, so that's helpful."
"It has been helpful around capacity planning, which we traditionally did on a yearly basis. However, since last year, I started using vROps to reclaim and save more resources. It has been helpful along those lines."
"The most valuable feature is determining if more resources are needed, at the hypervisor level, based on the workload of the virtual machines that we have in our environment."
 

Cons

"Simplifying the user interface would go a long way to making it more usable."
"We cannot depend on this solution to manage all of the data center's infrastructure."
"There aren’t any areas of improvement that immediately come to mind."
"The areas where this product can be improved are the integrations and the UI. These features are not as friendly compared to VMware products."
"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."
"It is not easy to add or expand the product."
"The tool should be a lot more intuitive and make it easy for us to understand and migrate."
"The product's pricing needs to improve."
"It's complex to manage because there are a lot of options and metrics. It's complex when you want to do something very specific."
"If Aria could send alerts when a specific system or VM is using excessive resources, we could consult the storage team to address the problem proactively."
"From a personal perspective, I would like it made clearer what options are available in the suite that the customer is not using."
"If this tool can integrate with other products, for example, those that monitor the network devices or any other storage devices, it will be very beneficial."
"They should have more automation features for database management."
"It was not intuitive and user-friendly in the versions leading up to 6.5."
"We would like easier customer reporting, because to do customer reports, we have to do a lot of programming."
"I'd like to see more out-of-the-box dashboards and less customizing of the environment. The interface could be more streamlined. There are still a lot of old dashboards versus the new UI dashboards."
 

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."
"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."
"Cisco UCS Director is expensive...I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten."
"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 cost of this solution is significant."
"Pricing is good for us. We're non-profit so we get a break on that."
"Most small users don't adopt VMware Aria Operations until it's necessary. Small businesses are looking for it, too. We need more monitoring and insights, so we're analyzing solutions to help us out here. I rate the solution’s pricing a five out of ten."
"It has reduced time to troubleshoot issues. With our customized dashboards, we can target issues and attribute them to the correct team."
"If the VMs were trimmed, then we wouldn't have to buy as much software/hardware, and this means less licenses. While most of it is VMware licenses, which are relatively cheap, there are SQL licenses for Microsoft, and this is where we could start saving a lot of money."
"I would like to see a free offering. Cost is always a factor in any sort of line. Obviously, the value added is there and it's worth it."
"The solution is costly."
"This is an enterprise-level product and everything is included in the VMware Suite license."
"We have definitely seen ROI by removing unnecessary servers and VMs. By having vROps as an assistant when it comes to monitoring and managing resources, it has helped us a lot with cost savings and managing expenses."
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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
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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.
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 VMware Aria Operations a user friendly solution?
In terms of user-friendliness, VMware Aria Operations is one of the best solutions out there. It is not overly complex to set up and you can rely on the technical support to provide you with assis...
What is the most useful new feature of VMware Aria Operations?
For me, the alerts features are the most unique part of this product, no matter the current name it uses. When they introduced the new version of VMware Aria Operations, they also introduced more a...
 

Also Known As

No data available
VMware vRealize Operations (vROps), vCenter Operations Manager (VCOPS)
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Entel, Data#3, Cegal, NESIC, LightEdge
Science Applications International Corporation, Tribune Media, Heartland Payment Systems, Telkom Indonesia, Columbia Sportswear, iGATE, CSS Corp, Angel Broking, Adira Finance, Hipskind, Beiersdorf Shared Services, Innovate Mas Indonesia, Adobe, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi , Join Experience S.A, Borusan Holdings, Department of Transport - Abu Dhabi
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS Director vs. VMware Aria Operations and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.