Cisco UCS Director vs vCloud Director comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco UCS Director and vCloud Director based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Cloud Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Cisco UCS Director vs. vCloud Director Report (Updated: March 2024).
763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The main feature of this solution is the integration with all the Cisco solutions and other vendors.""The most valuable feature of this solution is the fabric sharing.""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.""An easy and strong configuration, along with its low cost, are some of the features of the solution.""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 solution is helpful for centralized management.""Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.""A product that really aids in systems management without complexity."

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"vCloud Director is a scalable solution, and we have 10 customers who use it.""I like the functionality that's available with Orchestrator. The platform stability stuff that I would be involved in worries me from the automation side because you have a lot less hands-on control of things. Price point, it kind of puts us off.""The compatibility with vSAN and NSX is the greatest feature of vCloud. It also has integration with vROps, which is quite nice.""vCloud Director is a stable solution.""Remote console (ability to control booting and OS installation process).""If a customer is looking for disaster recovery at a cheaper price, this is the best solution.""We can run it on self-hosted systems, and we are happy with the stability of vCloud Director.""I have found the solution scales well."

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Cons
"I would like to see more integration with other solutions.""Simplifying the user interface would go a long way to making it more usable.""The product could allow more programmatic opportunities through better development of the API.""The areas where this product can be improved are the integrations and the UI. These features are not as friendly compared to VMware products.""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.""The product's pricing needs to improve.""The tool should be a lot more intuitive and make it easy for us to understand and migrate.""There are a lot of bugs in the solution. This is an area in the solution that can be improved."

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"vCloud Director could use the vCenter database to store information. This way, we don't end up in a situation where we have things going out of sync.""vRealize Orchestrator is an expensive tool.""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.""Lacks integration with the hyperscalers.""If you use it for a lot of customers, it is too heavy for this solution.""Initially, the setup was complex.""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.""This solution could improve by adding root cause analysis."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "The cost of this solution is significant."
  • "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."
  • "The budget doesn’t work for the state and local governments."
  • "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."
  • More Cisco UCS Director Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "It is better than other solutions out there when it comes to cost."
  • "It enables us to provision new clients more quickly."
  • "We are able to provision new clients faster. Every month, we take on more customers."
  • "The solution is costly, efficient, and robust versus alternative solutions."
  • "It runs our company in the millions of rand every month."
  • "This is an expensive solution."
  • "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."
  • "The license could be less expensive and we are on a perpetual license."
  • More vCloud Director Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer:Currently, Cisco UCS Director is unable to integrate with another product or with a server from another brand. If Cisco UCS Director is able to integrate with another product or with a server from… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer: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 to… more »
    Top Answer: 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… more »
    Ranking
    24th
    out of 75 in Cloud Management
    Views
    946
    Comparisons
    744
    Reviews
    5
    Average Words per Review
    404
    Rating
    6.4
    5th
    out of 75 in Cloud Management
    Views
    3,587
    Comparisons
    2,600
    Reviews
    16
    Average Words per Review
    394
    Rating
    7.9
    Comparisons
    Learn More
    Overview

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

    VMware Cloud Director, also known as vCloud Director, is a cloud management tool that offers secure, flexible, and efficient cloud resources to thousands of enterprises and IT teams across the world. The solution serves as one of the leading cloud service-delivery platforms for businesses that want to manage and operate their services effectively. By deploying this solution, companies can benefit from virtualized networking, computing, security, and storage. These benefits can be received in a timely manner, as the infrastructure of the product is operationally ready within minutes and clients do not need to install and configure physical infrastructure.

    One of the biggest advantages of vCloud Director is that it allows users to build cloud-ready applications. In several ways, it facilitates the process for developers, including:

    • Open to DevOps: The product addresses the needs of DevOps teams by providing Infrastructure as Code services with vCD Terraform Provider. This allows developers to deliver infrastructure directly from code. Additionally, it provides capabilities from Python and vCD API as well as Object Storage API and App Launchpad APIs.

    • Customization: This solution is very customizable and extensible for cloud providers to deliver their own branding, themes, and services to their clients.

    • Dev-ready cloud: vCloud Director offers support for Tanzu Kubernetes Grid for vSphere and multicloud with a plugin for container service extension. Through these, native K8s Clusters or Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Clusters can be delivered and managed through a user interface (UI) and application programming interface (API).

    vCloud Director Features

    This VMware product has various features through which users can virtualize their data and benefit from quality management solutions. Among the popular capabilities of vCloud Director are:

    • Elastic secure virtual data centers: This vCloud Director feature provides tenants with securely isolated virtual resources, fine-grained control of their public cloud services, and independent role-based authentication.

    • Multi-site management: This feature allows companies to stretch data centers across sites and geographies as well as connect to existing dedicated vCenters for access and management or on-broad into VMware vCloud Director.

    • ISV ecosystem: This feature integrates leading cloud service vendors into the product using an open extensibility framework. Some of the partners of vCloud Director include Dell Data Protection, Veeam, Cloudian, AWS S3, and Dell ECS.

    • DRaaS workload protection: This feature allows users to deliver self-service tiered disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) on-premises to cloud and cloud to cloud.

    • Cloud migration: Part of this feature is the plugin VMware Cloud Director Availability, which enables simple migration to cloud, offering self-service cold or warm migration to users' vCloud Director clouds.

    • Operational visibility and insights: The product includes an accessible dashboard and a single pane of glass to provide centralized multi-tenant cloud management views.

    • Cloud-native applications and development: This feature makes the platform suitable for developers to sandbox or deploy apps as it natively supports Tanzu Basic, native K8s, and PKS.

    • Automation: Through various tools and deep integration, the solution allows users to automate complex infrastructure-as-code and tile UI-driven workflows. This allows them to deploy X-as-a-Service and maintain full access control and visibility at the same time.

    • Application Platform as a Service: This feature enables users to deliver their own catalog-based applications or VMware Cloud Marketplace-certified third-party cloud applications through the plugin App Launchpad VMware Cloud Director.

    • GPU as a Service: Utilizing Nvidia AI Enterprise, this feature provides support for GPU as a Service and delivers multi-tenant GPU services for customers who require high-performance compute for GPU-specific applications.

    • Secure cloud: The solution supports multiple security-centric features to deliver an enterprise-class cloud service, including NSX-T distributed firewalling, workload encryption, and integrated disaster recovery replication.

    vCloud Director Benefits

    VMware vCloud Director offers various benefits to its users. Some of these include:

    • The solution provides a highly efficient self-service model which consists of a virtual data center compute, network, storage, and security.

    • VMware vCloud Director offers its users multi-tenancy infrastructure with deep automation which facilitates their daily tasks.

    • The product is cost-efficient, as it is service-ready on its very first day and offers a high revenue from services.

    • Businesses can deliver services to their clients in a timely manner through this product, benefitting from its natively integrated solutions.

    • VMware vCloud Director provides users with high flexibility, as it allows businesses to stretch networks across virtual data centers globally.

    • The solution provides load-balancing capabilities, which facilitate the creation of new hybrid applications and digital transformation initiatives.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Ajit Y., a cloud architect at a computer software company, likes VMware vCloud Director because it is a stable, truly multitenant software and the go-to tool for infrastructure as a service.

    Kashif F., a divisional engineer at National Telecom Corporatio, rates vCloud Director highly because the product can be used for infrastructure provisioning without using a platform service.

    Sample Customers
    Entel, Data#3, Cegal, NESIC, LightEdge
    MicroStrategy, National Democratic Institute, and NYSE Euronext.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm25%
    Energy/Utilities Company25%
    Retailer13%
    Government13%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company29%
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Government11%
    Healthcare Company9%
    REVIEWERS
    Comms Service Provider35%
    Computer Software Company27%
    Transportation Company8%
    Cloud Provider4%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company22%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Government9%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business29%
    Midsize Enterprise7%
    Large Enterprise64%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business24%
    Midsize Enterprise8%
    Large Enterprise68%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business32%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise50%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business28%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise54%
    Buyer's Guide
    Cisco UCS Director vs. vCloud Director
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS Director vs. vCloud Director and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Cisco UCS Director is ranked 24th in Cloud Management with 6 reviews while vCloud Director is ranked 5th in Cloud Management with 21 reviews. Cisco UCS Director is rated 7.2, while vCloud Director is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Cisco UCS Director writes "UI and integrations should be improved; version control is problematic". On the other hand, the top reviewer of vCloud Director writes "Efficient infrastructure management that offers comprehensive cloud management capabilities, including multi-tenancy, self-service provisioning and integration with VMware technologies". Cisco UCS Director is most compared with Cisco Intersight, vCenter Orchestrator, VMware Aria Automation, VMware Aria Operations and Cisco CloudCenter, whereas vCloud Director is most compared with VMware Aria Automation, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), Morpheus, CloudStack and VMware Aria Operations. See our Cisco UCS Director vs. vCloud Director report.

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    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.