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Cloudify vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

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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

Cloudify
Ranking in Cloud Management
40th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Aria Automation
Ranking in Cloud Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
172
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (10th), Network Automation (7th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (27th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Cloudify is 1.4%, down from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 5.3%, down from 9.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Aria Automation5.3%
Cloudify1.4%
Other93.3%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Ullas Soman - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Consultant at Coforge Growth Agency
Great at enabling a single platform to communicate with an entire infrastructure.
The best feature of Cloudify is that it enables a single platform to communicate with the DB, with applications, and with the entire infrastructure. The product is very stable and has a lot of troubleshooting and analytical features. It's easy to understand and user-friendly. If you want to uninstall something, it's very easy to have the logic created in Cloudify. Other solutions don't have this. For example, if you wanted to decommission after three or four years, rather than going for a full decommission, it's possible to unallocate a particular space. If you want to allocate storage for a new build, it's very easy to deploy, uninstall and release some storage from the TOSCA.
VasilisGiannitsiotis - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT at ITSolutions
Automation has streamlined complex financial workflows but still needs more intuitive orchestration
Something to improve in VMware Aria Automation would be related to VCF 9, as I do not know what it is trying to bring because they exposed it as the solution of everything. So VCF 9 will bring VCF Automation and VCF Operations, the new product line of VMware. I have not seen what this brings or what else it includes. Maybe in the area of vRealize Orchestrator, this would be beneficial because VRO can do everything. Perhaps a more user-friendly way to use that tool would be helpful because the possibilities there are endless. I am looking for more user-friendly navigation in VMware Aria Automation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's easy to create a cloud server, such as Linux with JBoss or WebSphere, which is good for continuous deployment."
"It has enabled us to create the DICE Deployment Service and simplified deployment of any other services (monitoring, continuous integration, etc.)."
"Product has given us the ability to catch early scaling issues that many companies hit on with private clouds."
"We have been able to realize ROI for our customers in the form of reduced cost, higher top line and increased valuation through improved profitability."
"Even with the learning curve, the solution is an interesting concept and reminds me of Vagrant Terraform with its own difficulties and easiness."
"No need to change the existing application code base."
"You can use only what you need. You can remove certain Cloudify functions from the framework to create a "minified" version of what you need. This might only consist of the messaging delivery system, and the orchestration functions."
"The solution includes the option to run background scripts and processes from a connected API."
"We have scaled from two servers to about 140 servers in a very short period of time, which would have been a nightmare had it not been for the SaltStack configurations."
"The product is very user-friendly."
"States, pillars, and custom modules have all taken us a long way in achieving our goals."
"Probably the extensibility as well as the out-of-the-box features it provides, which allow you to be very creative with things you can add on and customise."
"We like the seamless, non-vendor-specific application that we can provide with it."
"With the advent of the automation, we've been able to give DevOps the ability to spin up environments, give them lease times, and then have it automatically reclaim the environment."
"What I like the most about vRA: Its seamless ability for users to be able to go pick a catalog item that we have created for them, while they are testing a new version of their code and say, "Okay, I want you to make my old version (based on these blueprints) run, please deploy me - my entire environment.""
"It has helped IT to support development, for example, one of our customers has a development team and, before this solution, it would take ten days to develop and test their solution, now it is down to one day."
 

Cons

"More of the debug functionality is needed; hopefully, we can pause during the server building process."
"Install of the product itself could be improved and I would like to see better event monitoring."
"I did encounter any issues with scalability."
"There were some issues with deploying the solution on OpenStack Mitaka."
"Certainly the UI could use some intensive work, but nevertheless, overall, it’s a complete product with its 3.4 version and much better features are available with 4.0."
"The solution could be improved with respect to error handling. If we want to troubleshoot further and deep dive, we don't have access to admin privileges to extract those errors."
"The upgrading process could be simplified."
"It lacked the user interface for multitenancy and basic platform management tasks. It is a leader in the niche area that they like to perform in, but it only does about 30% of top-tier advanced functions of platform management. It doesn't meet about 70% of what you need to manage a private cloud platform."
"It would be better if VMware would provide API documentation for developers and customers on the Internet."
"I would like to see a simpler way of provisioning it. As is, we can automate the provisioning of a VM, however, when it comes to the external IPs, that is outside of VMware. But that has to be automated as well. If there was a way for us to have the virtual machines connect to switches that are external to VMware, that would be great. That way, it would handle the entire workflow from creation and provisioning of a VM to the connectivity to the external IP addresses which allow our customers to have access to the VM. Currently, that IP configuration has to be done manually."
"I would like to see better integration capabilities. Maybe if they could develop libraries within Aria Automation for simpler integration with other third-party solutions, instead of just basic integration."
"We would like them to improve the automation part. This is an upcoming area that we would like to focus on."
"I don't find the solution to be intuitive and user- friendly. The GUI is really complicated."
"The customer does not feel comfortable with the new pricing model of VMware Aria Automation. I am not sure regarding the pricing and what the future of it is because customers are already looking for other solutions that are not so pricey."
"More detailed documentation on implementing feature sets and more examples of real world processes would help."
"Minion-based deployment is not very smooth. Most of the time, many minions were in a stale state and didn't respond to the salt-master."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I wasn't involved in the pricing of it because we were just doing prototype work with it, but I was told by the upper management team that it was quite expensive. That was another reason we switched to Morpheus."
"It made the provisioning of the virtual machines easier and faster. We can react more quickly to customers' demands."
"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."
"I would rate the pricing a ten out of ten, with ten being very expensive."
"The solution is pretty expensive but provides good workload management."
"The solution is free of cost."
"From the customer perspective, the value was worth it."
"So much can be done with the Open Source side, and especially for smaller shops. I personally think the pricing for Enterprise is hard to justify."
"It is pricey for what you get."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
18%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Construction Company
13%
Computer Software Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise131
 

Questions from the Community

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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 you need from the software interface. It provides complete visibility over applic...
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 free trial I cannot describe in detail the second and third options as my company ...
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 companies were using it most often: Social organizations Financial institutions and ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Proximus Partner Communications (Israel) VMware NTT Data Metaswitch Spirent Communications Lumina Networks Atos Fortinet
Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudify vs. VMware Aria Automation and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
914,109 professionals have used our research since 2012.