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Cisco UCS Director vs CloudStack 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
24th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
CloudStack
Ranking in Cloud Management
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS Director is 1.7%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CloudStack is 2.2%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CloudStack2.2%
Cisco UCS Director1.7%
Other96.1%
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…
Tharun Kumar Reddy Thamatam - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Infrastructure Consultant at Infosys
Achieving seamless infrastructure management with optimized network and user access controls
I believe enhancements could be made in CloudStack, particularly in the management servers. I had the opportunity to collaborate with one of the Apache CloudStack developers, leading to the installation of additional agents for better information retrieval from hypervisors. We implemented configurations, ensuring consistency across hosts and VMs. We also utilized Ansible or YAML files to automate password upgrades during patching activities and database management, showcasing our customization efforts for improvement. For future releases, it would be beneficial if Apache enhanced CloudStack by integrating alerting systems directly. We've had instances where hypervisors experienced overloads without prior alerts, so proactive alerts within the tool would better prepare us for addressing issues swiftly, preventing disruption in business operations. A portal summarizing system metrics alongside alert capabilities would greatly enhance our operational efficiency.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"The technical support for this solution is very good, at least in our region."
"I would recommend this solution to others because it simplifies a lot of tasks via orchestration."
"The product is flexible and compact. It has a lot of features."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the fabric sharing."
"I can manage multiple workloads whether it's on AWS, Azure, or on-premises. They can be managed by using the UCS Director."
"All our development is done on this environment because we deploy around 3,000 instances every day."
"It allowed us to build and manage a virtual environment much larger than we originally thought would be possible for our organization."
"It is very easy to install and manage. It has the all modules in one node, unlike other software (OpenStack). The product allows a customized look and feel, and the ability to add custom workflows."
"CloudStack is a very feature-rich product; it gives you a lot of control over your VM networks and has extensive integration with storage plugins where you can use many open source tools to bring storage into your CloudStack environment for backups or even to run VMs."
"Everything in CloudStack works effectively."
"I can recommend CloudStack because there are a lot of large companies using it in production for critical mission systems, and everything else."
"CloudStack provides an environment that is very simple to use, with built-in APIs and a web interface that supports almost all features of AWS and Azure."
"It has become easy to deploy new devices with no or minimal hardware changes. Now, a user can be ready to use a firewall within a few minutes, as compared to the traditional physical model which involved purchase, shipping, hardware configuration, cabling, power, etc."
 

Cons

"It is not easy to add or expand the product."
"There could be an improvement with the integration with the newest solutions from other vendors' technologies."
"Simplifying the user interface would go a long way to making it more usable."
"The solution could be improved is including a feature where I could do things programmatically versus having to create workarounds to get what I want to get done."
"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."
"I would like to see more flexibility when it comes to managing other stacks, like VMware virtualization."
"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 user interface could use improvement."
"The Windows hosts do not get their hostnames from cloud-init."
"​The user can't upload SSH keys from the UI. We have to use the API for this, and it is not always convenient."
"Lack of support for third-party software vendors such as Veeam and Zerto creates limitations on comprehensive offerings which would include backup and disaster recovery."
"The stability is problematic, in part, because there is no support."
"The product could improve by embracing newer technologies like GPU virtualization."
"It's really hard to delete zones, clusters, datacenters. You need to follow strict rules, which were not properly documented at the time."
"Factors that need improvement are: Visualization in terms of the resources usage. The user interface. Providing best error feedback to the users."
"The product does not have an easily implementable payment gateway."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of this solution is significant."
"The budget doesn’t work for the state and local governments."
"Cisco UCS Director is expensive...I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten."
"I would rate the product's pricing an eight 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."
"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."
"CloudStack is an open-source product."
"The Apache CloudStack is open source, so you do not have licenses to purchase."
"As far as I know, CS is still free of charge. If you want to pay some money, Citrix Cloud Platform is based on CS, I think. As for hypervisors – everything as usual, you need to pay for VMware and vCenter. As for XenServer, recently they changed the free feature list, so you may need to pay some money to get useful features like XenMotion."
"CloudStack is an open source solution, so you don't need to pay anything for it. When our company develops something specially for CloudStack, it is donated to the Apache Software Foundation and provided to anyone that wants to use it."
"​Give an effort to planning. If possible, contract a specialized consultant company for the initial setup and knowledge transfer.​​"
"The solution is open-source and free."
"It is a 100% open-source solution needing just an Apache license. Also, there are no hidden fees to be paid."
"There is no license, so the product is free unless you are buying professional technical support services."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Marketing Services Firm
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
9%
Construction Company
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 Business13
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise12
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CloudStack?
CloudStack is open-source, so there is no cost apart from learning. Billing solutions, if outsourced, come at a moderate cost.
What needs improvement with CloudStack?
Enhancements for CloudStack can focus on integrating more hypervisors, as mentioned regarding current features. We're working on a new feature that will allow for certain limited functions, but ove...
What is your primary use case for CloudStack?
My usual use cases for CloudStack involve an AWS style private cloud or public cloud. I can deploy an AWS style cloud using the open source tool that is CloudStack. The use case depends on the cust...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Vmops, Cloud.com
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Entel, Data#3, Cegal, NESIC, LightEdge
GreenQloud, Exoscale, TomTom, ASG, PC Extreme, ISWest, Grid'5000
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS Director vs. CloudStack and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.