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VMware Cloud Director vs vCenter Orchestrator comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

vCenter Orchestrator
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
Process Automation (6th)
VMware Cloud Director
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
68
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

vCenter Orchestrator and VMware Cloud Director aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. vCenter Orchestrator is designed for Process Automation and holds a mindshare of 0.3%, down 0.4% compared to last year.
VMware Cloud Director, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud Management, holds 6.3% mindshare, down 7.3% since last year.
Process Automation
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Gerhard Gmelch - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhance automation efficiency with cost-effective graphical workflow design
I use vCenter Orchestrator for automation purposes, specifically to run automation workbooks The most valuable features are the graphical UI for designing the workflows and the interfaces that come out of the box. Additionally, it is included in the VMware Vitalization Stack, which means there…
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

"It is very stable. I have been using vCenter Orchestrator from version three now to six plus."
"We can scale the solution."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"The open, flexible architecture has brought in the agile computing environment along with better Dr capabilities. Automation management and operational tasks across VMware and third-party applications, like our HMIS and other business productivity applications, have delivered peace of mind."
"Communication with technical support is very good. It has a repository of knowledge base articles which we can access which are very helpful."
"The solution is stable."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the workflow creation."
"Snapshots and similar features were managed well."
"The compatibility with vSAN and NSX is the greatest feature of vCloud. It also has integration with vROps, which is quite nice."
"The most valuable feature of vCloud Director is virtualization."
"We use the infrastructure as a service cloud, that is, we use the features as infrastructure for this. We are not using any platform services."
"The most valuable feature of vCloud Director is its ability to host customers on their own cloud."
"Key enhancements include better synchronization with vCenter and increased reliability, ensuring stability during extensive usage and various actions."
"The most valuable features of the vCloud Director are global management, added services, and automation."
"VMware Cloud Director is quite scalable; I would rate it nine out of ten."
"The initial installation and setup are very quick."
 

Cons

"Storage has room for improvement. It's a big problem for our solution. The interface also needs improvement, it should be simplified."
"There can be compatibility issues."
"The licensing is expensive and should be improved."
"I would like to see a greater ability to do mobile administration."
"The only point for improvement is the price, which has increased by 135%, making it very expensive."
"I would like to see more automation added in the future."
"I liked the previous client better than the current web client of vCenter Orchestrator, though my colleagues like the client now. The technical support for vCenter Orchestrator needs improvement."
"The custom workflows are very difficult and confusing."
"The tool needs to add more features to improve the console."
"In version 6.7, compatibility to migrate VMs from a vCenter to vCloud Director had a problem. However, this has been solved in the newest version."
"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."
"Sometimes, there is a disconnection that happens between vCloud Director and its underlying VMware vCenter, where the actions are supposed to be taking place, making it an area where improvements are required."
"Lacks integration with the hyperscalers."
"I had issues with the support, but I also learned from the support. There is room for improvement in the response time."
"It would be beneficial to have enhanced integration capabilities with third-party solutions within vCloud Director, especially in networking and data security."
"vRealize Orchestrator is an expensive tool."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."
"We provide the VMware solution to our clients, for which they pay a perpetual license."
"The solution is a bit expensive."
"We renew the solution's license every one or two years."
"The licensing module is somewhat complex. Calculating the cost is complicated. Many of our clients are unclear about the billing system and the traffic metering."
"vCenter Orchestrator is an expensive solution."
"The concept of hyper-convergence is smart. I don't know if it can be applied with less cost to be more affordable for small or medium-sized companies. The cost is a very important factor for it. We are currently depending on SAN storage. However, the hyper-converged solutions are depending on the storage within the hosts, such as vSAN in the VMware. It is a smart solution."
"The licensing cost is manageable because they have different versions available, standard, essential, and advanced."
"It enables us to provision new clients more quickly."
"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 licensing costs are pretty high, but it might depend on the size of the company."
"We are able to provision new clients faster. Every month, we take on more customers."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing eight and a half to nine out of ten."
"It runs our company in the millions of rand every month."
"I believe the pricing is reasonable."
"We pay monthly for all of the licenses."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about vCenter Orchestrator?
The stability of the product is very good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for vCenter Orchestrator?
We're running a low-profile budget. This is not our main focus on investment technology, so we're trying to reduce costs due to the change from perpetual to subscription licenses.
What needs improvement with vCenter Orchestrator?
After the change from perpetual licensing to subscriptions, the cost model changed. We are considering alternatives since we lost the perpetual aspect, and support is changing.
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

Beiersdorf Shared Services
MicroStrategy, National Democratic Institute, and NYSE Euronext.
Find out what your peers are saying about Camunda, BMC, Temporal Technologies and others in Process Automation. Updated: June 2025.
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