AWS Config vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and VMware are both solutions in the Configuration Management category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #16 with an average rating of 8.3, while VMware is ranked #7 with an average rating of 7.8. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 2.2% mindshare in CM, compared to VMware’s 5.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

VMware Aria Automation and AWS Config compete in the cloud automation and configuration space. AWS Config seems to have the upper hand due to its robust compliance features and significant perceived value.

Features:VMware Aria Automation offers strong automation capabilities, seamless operations across various environments, and comprehensive integrations. AWS Config provides detailed compliance monitoring, resource tracking, and robust reporting functionalities.

Room for Improvement:VMware Aria Automation could enhance scalability, improve resource handling efficiency, and upgrade performance. AWS Config could simplify configuration processes, make rule-setting more intuitive, and enhance integration capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service:VMware Aria Automation provides a straightforward deployment process with reliable customer support but some find initial configuration complex. AWS Config offers ease of deployment and prompt customer service but has occasional integration difficulties.

Pricing and ROI:VMware Aria Automation has favorable setup costs and positive ROI with cost-effective automation features. AWS Config has higher setup costs but justifies the expense through extensive compliance and resource management benefits, providing valuable long-term ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Config vs. VMware Aria Automation Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Config vs. VMware Aria Automation

June 2025

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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

Microsoft Intune

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 10.2%, up from 9.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Config is 2.2%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 5.2%, down from 5.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Configuration Management

Featured Reviews

Joseph Merusi

Collaborations engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Everything has worked better since we started using it

Sometimes the syncing is inconsistent. I'm confident that the devices are checking in every eight hours, but sometimes the devices aren't picking up the settings as quickly as I would expect. Some features haven't been updated in a while, and Microsoft doesn't seem interested in developing them. Unless you talk to an engineer, you don't know whether there will be an update. There are communication issues, so you might start working with a feature without knowing if it will be deprecated six months from now. Some reporting areas still need development. For example, I noticed that the reporting for driver updates is still confusing.

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Dineshkumar Thulasiraman

Cloud Engineer at cloudifyops

Useful for vulnerability scanning and data encryption

AWS Config's dashboard improved our company's security as it helps with the vulnerability scanning of resources. AWS Config integrates with the existing security infrastructure of our company, and it is an easy process that is not at all complicated. AWS Config is a security product. The tool protects its users' resources and data from unauthorized access, security breaches, and threats. The product helps with data encryption. You can have your data on AWS KMS, which helps with data encryption. For areas like SSL/TLS encryption, the tool offers data protection between AWS services and endpoints. As I need to learn the components of the product, I rate the overall tool a seven out of ten.

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Le Quang Long

Cloud Engineer at BIDV - Ngân hàng TMCP Đầu tư & Phát triển Việt Nam

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Microsoft integrated BitLocker and Active Directory into Intune, simplifying management."

"It is user-friendly, and the performance is also good. It is a convenient product"

"Stable solution at a good price."

"It's really easy to access."

"Microsoft Intune has been a time saver and reduces the time and effort IT admins have to invest."

"Stable product that's easy to set up compared to other MDM products."

"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Intune is having all our devices compliant with our policies."

"The dashboards, the security, and the customization capabilities work very well for us."

More Microsoft Intune pros

"The tool protects its users' resources and data from unauthorized access, security breaches, and threats."

"Installing the instances and performing upgrades is smooth and clean."

"The solution is scalable and provides over 100 rules."

"The initial setup is super easy, it takes like two minutes. Literally a one-click deployment."

"AWS Config's dashboard improved our company's security as it helps with the vulnerability scanning of resources."

"The scalability is a ten out of ten."

"vRA has enabled us to derive value from the cloud faster. It is five to six times faster than traditional solutions."

"The repetitive tasks which took provisioning storage, network, and compute two to three weeks, now takes five minutes."

"We provided the ability to request virtual machines to our end users. Before, this was a very manual process, which took engineers to do. Now, it's an automated process."

"Even with the virtualization, it would take us at least three or four days to create a VM. With vRA we have brought that down to seven minutes. The solution has helped increase infrastructure, agility, speed of provisioning, time to market, application agility. Everything got super fast."

"We automated many tool deployments with the help of the product, cutting short manual deployments and eliminating the need for human interaction. Its most valuable features include integrating various tools and working with different products using plugins."

"usability; It's very user-friendly. It is not hard to go and find things. There is a one-click Help that you can use to find all the documentation you need to manage it."

"We can connect between multiple VMs in a matter of seconds."

"It provides velocity both from management and customer perspectives, from ingesting new catalog items, developing new workflows for additional features, and/or allowing customer access to multiple guest OS instances at scale in a shorter time frame."

More VMware Aria Automation pros

Cons

"There have been instances where enrolling devices should take 10 minutes but ends up taking an hour due to various issues."

"Microsoft Intune's app deployment presents challenges for non-MSI and non-store apps, particularly EXEs, requiring the use of a Win32 wrapper tool and adding overhead to the process."

"Some enrollment features could be improved."

"There could be more competent processes and improvements in the policy space."

"Intune's areas for improvement revolve around security and certificate management."

"Microsoft Intune is not as fast and extensive as traditional solutions such as SCCM and others."

"Intune does not provide real-time visibility."

"We need the capabilities of the Cloud Management Gateway (CMG) to be enhanced through Intune instead of Azure."

More Microsoft Intune cons

"There is room for improvement in built-in tools, they are not up to the mark."

"The reboot process for AWS instances could be improved. Microsoft Azure does not have this problem, so AWS could consider making their instances more robust. You would not need to reboot your instances frequently to replace the hardware and stuff. They can look for a better approach or mechanism to improve in the future. The concern is that you need to plan for the outage when you reboot an instance. You need to have a maintenance window where you can properly reboot the instance without affecting your application. When Amazon announces that you need to reboot an instance and are not ready, this becomes a problem."

"Improvements are needed as per customer requirements."

"The solution is missing a configuration that can assist us when writing our programming languages."

"I would like to see more automation, more ways to automate automation tasks."

"As a product, it is complicated to integrate and automate with other products."

"It's not a smooth upgrade process. For a DTA environment, which is very simple, it is a smooth process, but for our production environment, which is quite enhanced and has a lot of dependencies, it's not easy at all, and it results in a lot of errors... It takes a lot of retries to upgrade which ends up being costly."

"I don't think it's intuitive or user-friendly. I think it's a good tool. Any automation tool, these days, the learning curve is kind of high. You're teaching sysadmins who never developed stuff. Maybe they modified a little bit of code and now you tell them, "Hey, here's the tool, use it." But you have to know a little bit of DevOps. So you have to train them how to do the scripting."

"Deploying and configuring the solution takes a lot of time."

"in general, it took us a long time to get it off the ground. We had a lot of issues upfront and we determined that we just needed to scrap it. I think we scrapped it two or three times before we actually got it built the way we wanted, and we're still not where we need to be. We have had downtime. There have been some issues, but we're also two iterations behind on version."

"They can improve on the dashboard representations and the options for non-technical people. I would like to see the ability to customize that and maybe provide them with helpful guides to what subscriptions they have. Sometimes, I find that I have to do more explanation to people who do approvals. I would really like to customize the display to the terms they use in their particular business unit. So a little bit more of a nod to the customization of the UI for non-technical users would be helpful."

"SaltStack's features are minimal."

More VMware Aria Automation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a license required to use this solution. However, it was part of a bundle package. Microsoft Intune is far less expensive than other solutions, such as Workspace ONE."

"It is reasonable for the features it has."

"The price could be better."

"On a scale of one to ten with one being the cheapest, the cost of Microsoft Intune is a five."

"Intune is moderately expensive. You can get the license bundled with Office 365 E3 or E5 licenses. The E5s are a bit expensive, but you get some cheaper solutions with Intune."

"It comes as a bundle, so you do not really know what the prices are. Microsoft does not break it down to the user cost for us. It is just bundled with our E5 license."

"The cost of the license and the features are justified for myself as a technical person."

"It's reasonable. They're not giving it away, but it's reasonable."

More Microsoft Intune pricing and cost advice

"The solution charges us per hour. There's no license."

"It is a very expensive tool. AWS pricing for Config is not fixed and depends on your organization's size and complexity."

"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 solution has helped to increase infrastructure, agility, speed, and provisioning in the time to market."

"From a budget point of view, the pricing is a bit on the higher side."

"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."

"From the customer perspective, the value was worth it."

"A simplified version for small businesses would be good."

"I would rate the pricing a ten out of ten, with ten being very expensive."

"It is pricey for what you get."

More VMware Aria Automation pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

25%

Photography Company

Comms Service Provider

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

How does Microsoft Intune compare with VMware Workspace One?

Microsoft Intune is a great tool for managing a mobile device fleet while keeping access control. The solution makes ...

See all answers

What are the pros and cons of Microsoft Intune?

Microsoft Intune is a great configuration management tool and has a lot of good things going for it. Here are some of...

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How does Google Cloud Identity compare with Microsoft Intune?

Microsoft Intune offers not only an easy-to-deploy data protection and productivity management solution, but also ...

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What do you like most about AWS Config?

The initial setup is super easy, it takes like two minutes. Literally a one-click deployment.

See all answers

What needs improvement with AWS Config?

Improvements are needed as per customer requirements.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for AWS Config?

I use the solution in my company to check the vulnerabilities for all the resources, including tools like S3, EC2 Ins...

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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 y...

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 fre...

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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 compa...

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Comparisons

Jamf Pro vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 11% of the time

Workspace ONE UEM vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Entra ID vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 7% of the time

ManageEngine Endpoint Central vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 5% of the time

More Microsoft Intune Competitors

AWS Systems Manager vs AWS Config

Compared 73% of the time

Spring Cloud vs AWS Config

Compared 19% of the time

More AWS Config Competitors

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 16% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 14% of the time

Morpheus vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 11% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 9% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 7% of the time

More VMware Aria Automation Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Intune

June 2025

Download Microsoft Intune product report

Buyer's Guide

Configuration Management

June 2025

Download AWS Config product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Automation

June 2025

Download VMware Aria Automation product report

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager

No data available

VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack

Overview

Microsoft Intune provides centralized management of mobile devices and applications, ensuring security, compliance, and productivity through integration with Microsoft services like Microsoft 365 and Azure Active Directory.

Organizations use Intune for managing mobile devices and applications, enhancing security and compliance across platforms. With features like single sign-on, conditional access, and zero-touch deployment via Autopilot, it facilitates efficient operations. Intune's scalability, easy enrollment, and capabilities such as remote wipe support diverse device management, offering robust data protection and efficient operation. Despite its features, improvement areas include reporting, compatibility with non-Microsoft devices, and better support for macOS and Linux devices.

What are the key features of Microsoft Intune?

Seamless Integration: Works with Microsoft 365, Azure Active Directory, and System Center for streamlined management.
Conditional Access: Enhances security with policies that restrict access based on conditions.
Autopilot: Provides zero-touch deployment for setting up new devices efficiently.
Mobile Device Management: Enables control over both personal and corporate devices.
Application Deployment: Facilitates app delivery across a range of devices.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Centralized Management: Reduces complexity by managing devices and applications in one place.
Security Enhancement: Protects data with features like remote wipe and compliance monitoring.
Improved Productivity: Enhances efficiency with seamless integration and automation features.
Device Scalability: Supports diverse device management for growing business needs.

In industries such as finance, healthcare, and education, Microsoft Intune is implemented to ensure secure and compliant device management. Companies leverage its capabilities to deploy security policies and manage both corporate-owned and BYOD environments, facilitating a unified approach to data protection and compliance.

Microsoft

AWS Config is a service that enables you to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of your AWS resources. Config continuously monitors and records your AWS resource configurations and allows you to automate the evaluation of recorded configurations against desired configurations. With Config, you can review changes in configurations and relationships between AWS resources, dive into detailed resource configuration histories, and determine your overall compliance against the configurations specified in your internal guidelines. This enables you to simplify compliance auditing, security analysis, change management, and operational troubleshooting.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

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

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway

Flatiron, Prezi, iZettle, British Gas, Burt, Autodesk, FanDuel

Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual

Buyer's Guide

AWS Config vs. VMware Aria Automation

June 2025

Free Report: AWS Config vs. VMware Aria Automation

Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Config vs. VMware Aria Automation and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

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