Cisco UCS Director Reviews

The typical use case is for web services. It is integrated with our database.

The documentation is very good.

I would like to see more flexibility when it comes to managing other stacks, like VMware virtualization.

I have been using Cisco UCS Director for about one year.

The system runs smoothly. We have not had any big problems.

The scalability is very good and it is flexible.

Technical support is very good overall. They have specialized engineers and they are very proficient.

We had a small problem with incompatibility but it was resolved by Cisco support. It was not a big issue. In total, it took about six months for the deployment.

Our in-house team handled the deployment.

My advice to anybody who is implementing this solution is to first consider and understand the use case. Think about your high-level design, the business requirements, how scalable and how flexible it has to be, and what your own availability is.

Overall, I think that this is a very good product, although nothing is perfect. There are still some small improvements that can be made to make it better.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Our primary use for Cisco UCS is workflow enhancement.

The improvement for our organization has really been ease of use. We'd be a mess without the solution. 

The most valuable feature for me as a user is that you can make API calls to it. That's a cool feature.

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. Any more features would be welcome. They should keep developing API.

As far as the stability of the solution, it's pretty rock solid. It works really well and I have no complaints.

We don't have the need to grow too much or too fast. We're strictly west coast and there's not a lot we're doing to change that. So as far as personal experience with scaling, I wouldn't know too much. If we ever became a national global company, yeah, we'd probably use it and roll it out to scale up and I don't think there would be problems.

It is hard for me to judge technical support because we haven't had to use it. It's a good problem to have. I did call one time — the only time I did have to call in anything on the UCS — and the problem was resolved in like five minutes. So, as my only contact, I'd say he was very good. At a scale of one to ten that experience with support was at least eight. I mean it wasn't anything major — the world wasn't on fire. But it's good to know that the tech people are knowledgeable and dedicated.

We are so committed to this technology that I don't even know if there's another UCS Manager out there.

I'm not sure how complex the initial setup was because it happened before I came to the company.

The initial implementation was done through a VAR (Value Added Reseller). Again, I wasn't here for the rollout but I didn't hear anything negative about the experience.

I think this solution should be considered an eight out of ten. To get a ten from me and for what I do, there has to be more flexibility in the API. I'm tired of being the tip of the sword. Enhance programming and programmability.

As I said, I don't know if there's somebody else who does something like Cisco's UCS management. So I think my capabilities kinda get pigeonholed a little bit.

We primarily use this solution for automation. In my team, we manage approximately one thousand UCS blades. As such, scalability is very important. We use UCS director for simplified deployment, where we can use a single pane of glass to view everything across our thirty-five to forty data centers that we have globally.

This solution provides us with what we need for scalability. When it comes to managing devices, if we had to log into each and every device, one by one to do whatever we need, then that is not scalable. We would require between fifty and a hundred engineers to do that, and I don't have that luxury. I only have about twenty engineers on my team.

UCS plays a role in our ability to be agile in our deployment. It gives us the ability to deploy in a short time period. Prior to using this solution we had to do a lot of manual work, so we had dependencies on several different teams for the network, storage, and whatnot. 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.

The most valuable features are its ease of use and the deployment process. To get started, you have to understand your use case. Once you do, and you have the talent in-house who can manage it once deployed, it is fairly straightforward. We were able to easily bring all of the members of my team up to speed and get them using it, which is one of the major benefits.

The user interface could use improvement. UCS director tries to do just about everything, which means the user interface can get a bit cumbersome if you don't know what you're looking for or know where to find it. It can be really difficult. Simplifying the user interface would go a long way to making it more usable.

The solution is a mature product and it has been fairly stable. Once in a while, we open a tech case with Cisco but generally speaking, it's been fine.

So far, we have not run into any scalability issues.

The few times we have had to use technical support they have been responsive.

Prior to this solution, we had a more manual process. We manage a lot of systems so the goal is always to simplify what we do. Moving to this solution gave us a more unified system.

Once we got all of the requirements and understood our use case, the initial setup was fairly straightforward.

The vendor that we work with, Presidio, assisted us with the implementation of this solution. They took in our requirements and looked at what the end goal should be, and they delivered what they promised. There were no surprises. 

I think that the ROI we have gotten so far makes it worth the cost of the solution.

The cost of this solution is significant.

USC Director was the only product that we looked at because it was a Cisco environment that we were trying to manage. Our thinking was that a Cisco product would work better with Cisco systems.

I am very happy with the product, and we will be pushing it to its limits as we go forward.

My management team likes the fact that we are now more agile. When we have new business, we no longer have to wait for weeks to get systems into production. It is now a matter of days, or sometimes hours, from the time we receive shipments at a data center to the time it's live in production. Without UCS director it wouldn't be possible.

As your environment grows, manageability becomes a problem. When you're trying to deploy rapidly, and your goal is to get to market as quickly as possible, you need to be agile. UCS Director allows us to be agile and deploy on all sorts of systems, both for VMware and for non-VMware systems. Anything that has to do with hardware, we can manage with UCS Director. It works well for our organization, so far.

Is this solution a fit for everybody? It depends on how large and how complex the environment is. If you are only managing ten systems then I wouldn't tell you to invest in Cisco UCS director because you're not going to get the same benefits that I'm getting from it. It just depends on the environment, the situation, and the size.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this solution is to recognize that sometimes you need outside help to understand what you're trying to do, in terms of your end goal. If you just jump into it, you might not realize the full investment. As long as you know what you're trying to get, and you're a fit, then I would recommend this solution. Outside of that, I wouldn't tell just anybody to try UCS Director because it's not for everybody.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

The primary use case of this solution is the interconnection between two applications. One that resides on the data center and the other that resides in the architecture. 

It's a scale-out architecture and a hybrid setup. In case there are any workloads, it works on either public or private cloud architecture.

One of the features that I would like to highlight is the multi-cloud management capabilities on the USC Director. I can manage multiple workloads whether it's on AWS, Azure, or on-premises. They can be managed by using the UCS Director. That is one of the most important features that I find to be the most relevant.

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.

I have been working with this solution for two years.

In terms of stability, it is very good.

There is a significant amount of development happening in the background and constant releases for bug fixes, which is one of the features that is offered. Cisco provides very thorough release cycles. 

When you are looking at upgrades and bug fixes, we have a more stable solution compared to any other vendor.

Scalability is amazing. As of now, it supports the open virtualization format, which is the format for VMware and vSphere. We have the virtual hard disk as a concept, which is the VHD. It works with Microsoft Hyper-V.

If you look at the ecosystem, you have better compatibility metrics. The only problem is that if I have an HP infrastructure already in place, I have to set it with external APIs to manage third-party solutions.

As usual, the technical support from Cisco is amazing. The process is clearly defined, and if you have the right service contract it is easy to approach them. It is very easy to get support from them.

The support is offered during the pre-sale activity when you are doing the sizing of the requirements, as well as post-sale. If you run into a problem then there is consultative support available.

The initial setup was easy.

We were able to deploy UCS Director and get it up and running within four to six hours.

My advice is to look at the features that you are looking for. 

If you are looking for central management and a self-service catalog, and are predominantly in a mix of the cloud as well as on-premises architecture, then you should look at UCS Director as a solution.

There are some advantages offered, such as:

• Adaptive provisioning, which ensures real-time availability, capacity planning, and internal policy. 
• Dynamic capacity management, which provides continuous monitoring of the infrastructure and resources. 
• Multiple hypervisor support, which is very important.
• Computing management, which allows you faster provisioning, providing you with monitoring and management on a physical and bare-metal server.

Before you do the sizing and the requirement, ensure that you go through with the compatibility metrics of UCS Director before you invest.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

The main use for this solution is for orchestration.

The main feature of this solution is the integration with all the Cisco solutions and other vendors.

There could be an improvement with the integration with the newest solutions from other vendors' technologies.

I have been using this solution for three years.

The stability has been good.

The solution is scalable.

The technical support has been very good and responsive.

The installation was straightforward.

I believe this solution provides a good return on investment.

I would recommend this solution to others because it simplifies a lot of tasks via orchestration.

I rate Cisco UCS Director a nine out of ten.