Cisco UCS Director vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

Cancel
You must select at least 2 products to compare!
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco UCS Director and VMware Aria Automation 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. VMware Aria Automation 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 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.""Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.""This is a user-friendly solution that is very good and easy to use.""Feature-wise, the solution helps one to add multiple environments in one place...It is a scalable product.""A product that really aids in systems management without complexity.""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."

More Cisco UCS Director Pros →

"To manage when VM's aren't being used, we have it set up so that it will auto-destroy them after a certain amount of time, obviously with permission from the user who owns it.""Our QA department is able to spin up a new instance of Windows virtual machine and test whatever use case they have, then turn it back down whenever they are done.""We also use it to pre-install the applications that the people selected when they ordered the machine, so they get a fully functional machine.""For repeated installations and provisioning of VMs, we now have a clear definition of what has been installed, and we can monitor all that stuff.""The most valuable feature is the portal where you can assign permissions to specific people to request specific items in the catalog and allow them to provision things for themselves. Or it enables them to request different services that you can create through vRO and vRA.""It has integration with the rest of VMware solutions.""We are able to provide self-service to all of our IT/development teams to expand and decrease their environments at will.""Our speed of provisioning has improved. We used to build systems manually, which would take four hours or a day. Nowadays we're able to spin something up off a template... and it takes about 20 minutes."

More VMware Aria Automation Pros →

Cons
"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.""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 could allow more programmatic opportunities through better development of the API.""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's pricing needs to improve.""There are a lot of bugs in the solution. This is an area in the solution that can be improved."

More Cisco UCS Director Cons →

"When you start to do a deployment where you need higher availability and more resiliency, then the complexity goes up drastically.""We would like them to improve the automation part. This is an upcoming area that we would like to focus on.""With the workflow aspect, which has manual intervention, a policy needs to be approved by somebody. There could be better management of that piece with better templates. It is like a workflow engine, but does not have enough example templates to do certain things. A lot of people waste a lot of time trying to figure out the same thing, and everybody is trying to figure out the same thing, e.g., how to make a MySQL cluster in a Windows environment?""I'm not wanting any particular feature; but there should be cost reductions. VMware comes at a high cost, and that's why we are in the process of transitioning to a more affordable alternative.""Something as simple as formatting the catalog in a different way would be helpful because there is no option for doing so. A lot of the contents for the virtual machine, blueprints that you can request, are hidden from view and there's no way to change the view.""I know you can spin up virtual desktops in vRA, but they're not thin-provisioned. I don't know if that's because the other product, Horizon View, is there, but it would be nice to see more integration.""We still struggle a little bit with the configuration as far as making sure that we have all the endpoints where they need to be, because that's not as agile as we'd like in the back-end. We're working towards that with our DevOps teams to make sure that we're touching the right endpoints and getting the right data.""The basic support is not there for Google Cloud and Azure. They are unable to provision nor do cost controls. Google is still left out. It is great that they have done AWS, but we are a retailer which means nothing to us because it is a competitor. Azure is good, but Google is where a lot of our development environments are."

More VMware Aria Automation Cons →

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 →

  • "From the customer perspective, the value was worth it."
  • "I'm very interested in the integration with Puppet. However, my organization doesn't have the funding for something like Puppet right now. If VMware would integrate that feature set (Puppet) into vRA. That would be very awesome."
  • "Better pricing is always handy, but I feel it's at the right price point."
  • "We have seen significant ROI. We used to have physical servers, it took 90 days to get a server, order it, buy it, and get it in. We have it down to 10 minutes, building a server with virtualization, and now that's too slow. So, we let the customer do it at their speed. Therefore, it is pretty much up in a couple of minutes and they have a server."
  • "The solution has helped to increase infrastructure, agility, speed, and provisioning in the time to market."
  • "There is confusion between licensing levels. There are three different licensed versions of vRealize Automation, and there are different things which can happen in each of them."
  • "vRealize automation really should be a front door to the whole VMware suite of products."
  • "As far as value is concerned, it has been essential to our environment. We have been able to deploy VMs quickly and the developers have their own sandbox, so they can spin up and destroy VMs at their own will."
  • More VMware Aria Automation Pricing and Cost Advice →

    report
    Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Management solutions are best for your needs.
    763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    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: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… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Ranking
    24th
    out of 75 in Cloud Management
    Views
    946
    Comparisons
    744
    Reviews
    5
    Average Words per Review
    404
    Rating
    6.4
    1st
    out of 75 in Cloud Management
    Views
    8,994
    Comparisons
    5,286
    Reviews
    14
    Average Words per Review
    609
    Rating
    7.9
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite
    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 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.

    Sample Customers
    Entel, Data#3, Cegal, NESIC, LightEdge
    Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm25%
    Energy/Utilities Company25%
    Retailer13%
    Government13%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company29%
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Government11%
    Healthcare Company9%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Healthcare Company15%
    Comms Service Provider11%
    Government9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Government9%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business29%
    Midsize Enterprise7%
    Large Enterprise64%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business24%
    Midsize Enterprise8%
    Large Enterprise68%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business13%
    Midsize Enterprise9%
    Large Enterprise78%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise69%
    Buyer's Guide
    Cisco UCS Director vs. VMware Aria Automation
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS Director vs. VMware Aria Automation 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 VMware Aria Automation is ranked 1st in Cloud Management with 16 reviews. Cisco UCS Director is rated 7.2, while VMware Aria Automation 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 VMware Aria Automation writes "Good stability, supports a hybrid model and easy to use ". Cisco UCS Director is most compared with Cisco Intersight, vCenter Orchestrator, VMware Aria Operations, vCloud Director and Cisco CloudCenter, whereas VMware Aria Automation is most compared with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, VMware Aria Operations, vCloud Director, Morpheus and vCenter Orchestrator. 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.