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Cisco UCS Director vs VMware Cloud Director 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
VMware Cloud Director
Ranking in Cloud Management
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
71
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 VMware Cloud Director is 2.5%, down from 6.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Cloud Director2.5%
Cisco UCS Director1.7%
Other95.8%
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…
KuldeepSingh4 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Solution Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Experienced users benefit from resource isolation and valuable self-service portal while seeing potential in enhanced infrastructure visibility
VMware is not going further with VMware Cloud Director. They are integrating the VMware Cloud Director feature with Aria Automation only for the upcoming versions, primarily with the VCF 9, and slowly they are integrating some of the parts they have already integrated, and they might not continue with VMware Cloud Director in the future. They can make it more granular to ensure hardware-level segregation, the underlying infrastructure level of segregation for the end user, and a separate security boundary where users can access the end-to-end layer. End-to-end layer means my software layer along with the hardware layer. If they want to do a certain level of troubleshooting primarily on the ESXi part, that is what I feel is lacking for now because for an end user accessing the SSP, the underlying infrastructure is a kind of black box for them. For VMware Cloud Director, it can be more comprehensive if we enable public cloud integration as well. In today's date, customers are adopting a multi-cloud environment where VMware Cloud Director is much feasible to leverage the underlying VMware backend architecture. If VMware Cloud Director could be made to have more integration with the public cloud and do the day one, day two jobs for public cloud interface as well, that would be beneficial. Additionally, I recommend leveraging the VMware Cloud Director layer if a customer has a multi-cloud environment and is planning some cross-cloud migration capability. Cross-cloud migration refers to if a customer has something on Azure, wanting to bring it up on VMware or maybe from VMware to AWS, vice versa. In that case, VMware Cloud Director should provide some cross-cloud migration capability as well.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would recommend this solution to others because it simplifies a lot of tasks via orchestration."
"The improvement for our organization has really been ease of use; we'd be a mess without the solution."
"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."
"An easy and strong configuration, along with its low cost, are some of the features of the solution."
"As usual, the technical support from Cisco is amazing."
"Cisco UCS Director is straightforward to use, which we greatly appreciate."
"The solution is helpful for centralized management."
"Customer Service: Excellent. Technical Support: Excellent."
"The initial installation and setup are very quick."
"This solution has helped us make money and provision our clients faster."
"VMware Cloud Director is quite scalable; I would rate it nine out of ten."
"If a customer is looking for disaster recovery at a cheaper price, this is the best solution."
"The product's initial setup phase is easy."
"The reliability and flexibility of networking are valuable."
"Technical support is great. They help us 24/7."
 

Cons

"It is not easy to add or expand the product."
"The user interface could use improvement."
"There aren’t any areas of improvement that immediately come to mind."
"We cannot depend on this solution to manage all of the data center's infrastructure."
"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."
"Currently, Cisco UCS Director is unable to integrate with another product or with a server from another brand."
"The tool should be a lot more intuitive and make it easy for us to understand and migrate."
"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."
"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."
"The tool's price is one of the challenges we faced with the solution, making it an area requiring improvement."
"There didn't seem to be any type of integrated path on how to do the initial setup. There seemed to be different bits of paperwork or instructions available from various places. We always had to go looking for what to do next."
"It would be beneficial if some features were built into the platform rather than requiring integration with multiple products, reducing complexity and licensing concerns."
"Choosing VMware in general, is best in terms of functionality, but it is not necessarily cost effective, as their licensing and setup cost are too high."
"The tool needs to add more features to improve the console."
"We are not happy with the frequent upgrades."
"The solution should add other hypervisors so things like hover wizards can be automated."
 

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."
"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."
"I would rate the product's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The cost of this solution is significant."
"The solution is expensive so pricing is rated a four out of ten."
"The solution is costly, efficient, and robust versus alternative solutions."
"It's a costly product. The licenses may not be costly, but with every new development in their product, we need to purchase deployment services, and the deployment services are quite costly."
"This is an expensive solution."
"The solution's price is the market standard and depends on usage."
"vCloud Director is a very expensive solution."
"It is better than other solutions out there when it comes to cost."
"My company has no problems with the pricing of the product as we got good discounts from VMware."
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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
15%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
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 Business24
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise39
 

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...
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

Entel, Data#3, Cegal, NESIC, LightEdge
MicroStrategy, National Democratic Institute, and NYSE Euronext.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS Director vs. VMware Cloud Director and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.