Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Cisco UCS Director vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

Cisco and VMware are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. Cisco is ranked #22 with an average rating of 8.0, while VMware is ranked #2 with an average rating of 7.8. Cisco holds a 1.3% mindshare in CM, compared to VMware’s 11.1% mindshare. Additionally, 71% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of VMware users who would recommend it.
Cisco UCS Director
Read 14 Cisco UCS Director reviews
  • 559 Views
  • 302 Comparison Views
71% willing to recommend
VMware Aria Automation
Read 170 VMware Aria Automation reviews
  • 4,692 Views
  • 2,059 Comparison Views
94% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report
Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

VMware Aria Automation and Cisco UCS Director compete in the automation and orchestration software category. VMware Aria Automation appears to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive features and flexibility in diverse environments.

Features: VMware Aria Automation offers multi-machine blueprints, automated VM lifecycles, and integration with third-party systems, making it ideal for virtual infrastructures. Cisco UCS Director excels in Cisco hardware management, offering excellent orchestration for Cisco-centric systems.

Room for Improvement: VMware Aria Automation users suggest improvements in documentation, ease of use, and cloud provider integration. Cisco UCS Director could enhance its user interface and integration with non-Cisco products, while broadening its feature set for diverse environments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Aria Automation supports on-premises and hybrid deployments with generally favorable tech support, though response times can vary. Cisco UCS Director focuses on on-premises deployment, with good tech support, but customization challenges indicate a need for simplified support processes.

Pricing and ROI: VMware Aria Automation is perceived as expensive but offers significant ROI with enhanced infrastructure agility. Cisco UCS Director's high cost and pricing concerns may limit ROI, especially with significant customization required for non-Cisco systems.

DOWNLOAD THE COMPLETE REPORT
To learn more, read our detailed Cisco UCS Director vs. VMware Aria Automation Report (Updated: June 2025).
Buyer's Guide
Cisco UCS Director vs. VMware Aria Automation
June 2025
Download the complete report
Helped 860,168 peers since 2012

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 Automation
Ranking in Cloud Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
170
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (7th), Network Automation (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (17th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 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 Automation is 11.1%, down from 11.4% 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.
Read full review
Le Quang Long - PeerSpot reviewer
Significantly streamlined operations with good automation that helps with simplifying workflows
It helps me build a big catalog and provide it to my end users. It helps us automate the workflow of creating many VMs and the TensorFlow key method. I do not meet many people to operate it live beforehand. It operates for both of my products, but as a product, it is complicated to integrate and automate with other products.
Read full review

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."
"Cisco UCS Director is straightforward to use, which we greatly appreciate."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The main feature of this solution is the integration with all the Cisco solutions and other vendors."
"This is a user-friendly solution that is very good and easy to use."
"Cisco's knowledge base is extensive."
"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."
More Cisco UCS Director pros
"The self service portal: People don't have to come to us to request something. They can just go fill out a form. Within 30 minutes, they have what they requested."
"Among the valuable features are the ease and speed of creating the VMs. Originally, we provisioned them manually and it would take us two days to do the provisioning... but with the automation, we are able to provision a VM with the click of a button, within seconds. It cut down on the time as well as cut down on the expense and employee cost in provisioning."
"If you do a deployment for a proof of concept, it is simple."
"Our time to deliver a fully unified three-tier app, at the right version, is one-twentieth what it was before. There is no manual intervention. No IP management. It just dramatically simplifies all of our processes."
"The automation function itself and how to group and publish those groupings is quite easy for customers to learn with Aria."
"It has saved us a lot of time and work. It helped us to reorganize some of our service lines, so we could be more efficient. For example, on our open system server team, we had 15 people building servers, now we have two."
"vRA helps automate deployment for developers. We do a lot of orchestration or customization within our environment so it will suit each of our customers. So, we have different business units who have their own templates."
"Being able to give provisioning of environments over to our developers and the different teams has enabled them to put up environments faster and also freed up time for the IT team. This is really one of our bread and butter solutions for our developers."
More VMware Aria Automation pros
 

Cons

"I would like to see more integration with other solutions."
"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."
"Simplifying the user interface would go a long way to making it more usable."
"There aren’t any areas of improvement that immediately come to mind."
"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."
"There are a lot of bugs in the solution. This is an area in the solution that can be improved."
"The tool should be a lot more intuitive and make it easy for us to understand and migrate."
More Cisco UCS Director cons
"It would be nice if, at the director level, the manager level, there was a pretty graphic. They don't like to see numbers and line items, they want to see graphs and scales and real world pictures. That would support better reporting."
"The setup needs coding. It's not easy. It's not straightforward."
"Stability has gotten a lot better. However, the vRO aspect, when you have a multi vRA head, is a little bit finicky still. vRO still needs to stay on one appliance and be one application, because, when you have two, you can't see runs on the other one that are happening when you're not logged into that one."
"The solution could include more integrations and supportability around the container space."
"Multitenancy management is a little bit difficult to do, so it is an area that can be improved."
"It is too broad scale and complicated. It takes too many clicks to do things."
"The deployment mechanisms for the initial deployment of the product line lacks the appropriate documentation to give someone who's never used it before... There might be cases where someone wants to go to the website, go to the doc section, and do a step-by-step on how to deploy it. That's really not as brushed-up as other documents I've seen that they have. That would definitely be an improvement on their end."
"The stability needs a lot of work. The troubleshooting component of vRealize is a pain. The administration and the upgrades are not up to the mark. If they were able to improve on that, that would be the best thing and would make it much easier to run it in the enterprise."
More VMware Aria Automation cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cisco UCS Director is expensive...I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten."
"The budget doesn’t work for the state and local governments."
"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."
"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."
"The cost of the solution is reasonable for us. Although it is relatively high, we prioritize stability and integration over cost."
"It is an open-source product."
"From a budget point of view, the pricing is a bit on the higher side."
"The solution is free of cost."
"The solution has helped to increase infrastructure, agility, speed, and provisioning in the time to market."
"The tool is expensive since it is an enterprise product."
"I would rate it high because, compared to other solutions, VMware’s pricing is quite expensive. VMware products have become significantly more costly in recent years, leading to higher costs."
"The pricing is very high."
More VMware Aria Automation pricing and cost advice
report
See which vendors are best for you
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Management solutions are best for your needs.
See recommendations
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
26%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
 

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.
See all answers
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.
See all answers
What needs improvement with Cisco UCS Director?
There aren’t any areas of improvement that immediately come to mind.
See all answers
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...
See all answers
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 ...
See all answers
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 ...
See all answers
 

Comparisons

Cisco Intersight vs Cisco UCS Director Logo
Cisco Intersight vs Cisco UCS Director
Compared 54% of the time
OpenNebula vs Cisco UCS Director Logo
OpenNebula vs Cisco UCS Director
Compared 16% of the time
More Cisco UCS Director Competitors
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs VMware Aria Automation Logo
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs VMware Aria Automation
Compared 16% of the time
VMware Aria Operations vs VMware Aria Automation Logo
VMware Aria Operations vs VMware Aria Automation
Compared 14% of the time
Morpheus vs VMware Aria Automation Logo
Morpheus vs VMware Aria Automation
Compared 11% of the time
VMware Cloud Director vs VMware Aria Automation Logo
VMware Cloud Director vs VMware Aria Automation
Compared 9% of the time
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs VMware Aria Automation Logo
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs VMware Aria Automation
Compared 7% of the time
More VMware Aria Automation Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Cisco UCS Director
June 2025
Cisco UCS Director reportDownload Cisco UCS Director product report
Buyer's Guide
VMware Aria Automation
June 2025
VMware Aria Automation reportDownload VMware Aria Automation product report
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

Cisco UCS Director enables automated delivery of physical and virtual data center resources, empowering data centers to move at the speed of business.

Cisco

VMware Aria Automation is a cloud management tool that allows companies to simplify their cloud experience through a modern automation platform. The solution is designed to deliver self-service clouds, multi-cloud automation with governance, and DevOps-based security and infrastructure management. It helps organizations improve IT agility, efficiency, and productivity through its various features. 

VMware Aria Automation has multiple use cases that include the following:

  • Self-service multi-cloud: VMware Aria Automation can be used to deliver consistent self-service consumption. Another use case in this area is for delivering infrastructure across VMware Clouds as well as public clouds.

  • Multi-cloud governance: The solution can be used to manage cost, performance, networking, configuration, and security at scale for multi-cloud environments. VMware Aria Automation offers all this with an everything-as-code approach.

  • DevOps for infrastructure: Through VMware Aria Automation, companies can enable a powerful infrastructure as code platform with support for iterative development and infrastructure pipelining.

  • Kubernetes automation: Users can utilize VMware Aria Automation to automate the management of Kubernetes clusters and namespaces with support for vSphere with Tanzu.

  • Security operations: VMware Aria Automation facilitates event-driven automation to deliver full-service IT system compliance enforcement and vulnerability remediation.

VMware Aria Automation Features

VMware Aria Automation has various features that allow users to easily perform operations. Some of the solution's capacities include:

  • VMware Cloud agnostic template: This feature allows organizations to use a single cloud template to deploy with Infrastructure as a Code. Deployment options include VMware Cloud as well as major public cloud platforms such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and more.

  • Extensibility and customization: This VMware Aria Automation feature allows users to get full extensibility and customization. This can be achieved through Aria Automation Orchestrator, Action-Based Extensibility (ABX), and built-in integrations with common third-party tools.

  • Self-service multi-cloud: This feature enables users to request and provision infrastructure resources. It can be done across clouds using a unified and consistent Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) consumption layer, idempotent REST API, and self-service catalog.

  • Centralized policies and governance: VMware Aria Automation offers a feature for users to manage multiple clouds with templatized cloud and policy definition, automated remediation, and cloud environment visibility.

  • Configuration management: Through this feature of the product, day 1 and 2 control can be achieved for virtualized and cloud environments. This can be done with intuitive configuration automation, compliance enforcement, and vulnerability remediation.

  • Infrastructure pipelining: Through this feature, organizations can access user-friendly release automation pipelines. They can be specifically tailored for CI/CD in infrastructure use cases.

VMware Aria Automation Benefits

VMware Aria Automation offers its users various benefits. Some of the biggest advantages that the solution brings to companies that utilize it include:

  • VMware Aria Automation provides faster time to market for companies through offloading manual tasks with advanced workflows and agile templating.

  • The solution offers high levels of security and control.

  • This product is suitable for beginners, as it offers a self-service consumption experience for users.

  • VMware Aria Automation accelerates innovation through Infrastructure as Code and DevOps principles.

  • The product provides users with flexibility, as it is compatible with the most popular public cloud solutions.

  • The solution offers fast deployment because of all natively integrated functions.

Reviews from Real Users

Awais J., CTO/CEO at a tech services company, likes VMware Aria Automation because it saves a lot of time, provides more visibility, and has extensive automation capabilities.

An IT consultant at a government rates VMware Aria Automation highly because the product gives you flexibility to analyze and consume resources.

VMware
 

Sample Customers

Entel, Data#3, Cegal, NESIC, LightEdge
Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Buyer's Guide
Cisco UCS Director vs. VMware Aria Automation
June 2025
Free Report: Cisco UCS Director vs. VMware Aria Automation
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS Director vs. VMware Aria Automation and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
DOWNLOAD NOW
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.
See our Cisco UCS Director vs. VMware Aria Automation report.
See our list of best Cloud Management vendors.

We monitor all Cloud Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.