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Cisco UCS Director vs IBM Turbonomic comparison

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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
27th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
IBM Turbonomic
Ranking in Cloud Management
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
205
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (3rd), Virtualization Management Tools (3rd), IT Financial Management (1st), IT Operations Analytics (8th), Cloud Analytics (1st), Cloud Cost Management (3rd), AIOps (17th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS Director is 1.6%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Turbonomic is 4.7%, down from 5.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
IBM Turbonomic4.7%
Cisco UCS Director1.6%
Other93.7%
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…
reviewer1446966 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Engineer at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
The solution reduced our operational expenditures and is able to identify points before we even noticed them
The management interface seems to be designed for high-resolution screens. Somebody with a smaller-resolution screen might not like the web interface. I run a 4K monitor on it, so everything fits on the screen. With a lower resolution like 1080, you need to scroll a lot. Everything is in smaller windows. It doesn't seem to be designed for smaller screens. When I change the resolution to 1080, I only see half of what I would on my big 4K monitor. It would be annoying to have to scroll to see the flow chart. They have a flow chart that goes top to bottom like a tree. On a lower resolution, it might be nice if that scrolls horizontally because it's long, narrow, and tall. It's only three icons wide, but it's 15 icons tall. I think it would be helpful to have the ability to change that for a smaller screen and customize the widget.

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."
"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."
"The technical support for this solution is very good, at least in our region."
"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."
"A product that really aids in systems management without complexity."
"The improvement for our organization has really been ease of use; we'd be a mess without the solution."
"Better visibility and better control are the main benefits people receive from Cisco UCS Director; the automation and the orchestration part, these three to four points are the key factors to decide on Cisco UCS Director."
"Turbonomic is fantastic at scalability! It has great built in tools to plan scaling."
"Policy/Automation: We set up a policy of automatically adding more vCPUs to the VMs based on Turbonomic's recommendation and continuous monitoring."
"The most valuable features to our organization is the automation of the VM’s to prevent performance issues and to balance the resources of our ESX host."
"The direct impact is that we decided to expand our platform and I needed specific numbers to see how a specific node would impact our environment, we were able to get specific reporting."
"Automation options for moving and resizing VMs as necessary have been crucial for our environment's performance."
"We have been able to use the planning feature to consolidate VMs on few hosts and have been able to show savings of several hundred thousands."
"This has saved us a great deal of expenses by better balancing workloads across ESXi hosts."
"The storage load balancing has helped us avoid LUNs going full."
 

Cons

"It is not easy to add or expand the product."
"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 Director."
"The user interface could use improvement."
"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 product could allow more programmatic opportunities through better development of the API."
"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."
"There are a lot of bugs in the solution. This is an area in the solution that can be improved."
"Had issues trying to get Windows 2012 R2 Hyper-V hosts attached to Turbonomic. This required more effort as there are some changes to be made on WMI configurations."
"vCenter integration. Would love to have the ability to manager the infrastructure within one window."
"It does take a while to figure out their way of doing things."
"The product is administered using a web based interface. This interface was written in Adobe's Flash product which requires the Adobe Flash plugin to be installed on any device accessing it."
"This is a very powerful tool that we don't use to its fullest, mostly due to the GUI."
"Certain versions have had glitches in the past but they've usually been fixed or patched within a matter of days."
"There needs to be a way to permanently ignore certain alerts, such as if you have a server where you know the HDD space is low but also know it's never going to grow any to tell it to always ignore that one."
"The automated resize of VMs requires caution. Make sure you properly configure this feature before it is enabled."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The budget doesn’t work for the state and local governments."
"The cost of this solution is significant."
"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."
"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."
"Cisco UCS Director is expensive...I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten."
"The pricing is in line with the other solutions that we have. It's not a bargain software, nor is it overly expensive."
"Everybody tells me the pricing is high. But the ROIs are great."
"I have not seen Turbonomic's new pricing since IBM purchased it. When we were looking at it in my previous company before IBM's purchase, it was compatible with other tools."
"Price is a big one. VMTurbo was very competitively priced."
"Contact the Turbonomic sales team, explain your needs and what you're looking to monitor. They will get a pre-sales SE on the phone and together work up a very accurate quote."
"What I can advise is to trial the product, taking advantage of the Turbonomic pre-sales implemention support and kickstart training."
"It was an annual buy-in. You basically purchase it based on your host type stuff. The buy-in was about 20K, and the annual maintenance is about $3,000 a year."
"I consider the pricing to be high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software 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 Business42
Midsize Enterprise57
Large Enterprise147
 

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...
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Also Known As

No data available
Turbonomic, VMTurbo Operations Manager
 

Interactive Demo

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Entel, Data#3, Cegal, NESIC, LightEdge
IBM, J.B. Hunt, BBC, The Capita Group, SulAmérica, Rabobank, PROS, ThinkON, O.C. Tanner Co.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS Director vs. IBM Turbonomic and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
916,956 professionals have used our research since 2012.