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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
39th
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
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
172
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (11th), Network Automation (7th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (29th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Cloudify is 1.4%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 5.7%, down from 9.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Aria Automation5.7%
Cloudify1.4%
Other92.9%
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

"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 solution includes the option to run background scripts and processes from a connected API."
"No need to change the existing application code base."
"Cloudify provides the infrastructure-as-code, as well as operational action capabilities (orchestrated startups or upgrades, and more)."
"Product has given us the ability to catch early scaling issues that many companies hit on with private clouds."
"Cloudify works in cases where you have very advanced service chaining requirements. It really works well there, and it fits the best. They have a standardized markup that's based on TOSCA, which is a standard. I like the fact that they're standards-based. Their solution works extremely well if you have the talent and the manpower to write TOSCA descriptors to deploy and interchange services or to automate the configuration and turn up of services."
"Valuable features are auto-scaling and load balancing."
"We have found that this is not an undue burden, and the extra work gives immense flexibility and portability."
"The automation functionality has been most valuable, as with a click of a button we are able to automate provisioning, the build of new hardware, and apply patches, which are all extremely important and differentiated tasks that can be automated in SaltStack."
"The setup was complex in many ways. The first reason is that we have many teams who work on it so it gets complicated gathering all of the people. The second reason is that it can be complicated to install it quickly, within a reasonable amount of time."
"VMware is the pioneer of virtualization; they are way ahead of everybody else."
"The best feature I saw with the VMware Aria Automation product was that it was easy to handle."
"The benefits are that it gives you a heads-up display and dashboard of the way everything's running. The ability to automate around those tasks is really where we get the value."
"I like its capacity, the self-service portal, and operational automation. The most beneficial feature is that it saves time when creating new virtual machines, deploying security measures, and writing infrastructure code, making things easier and faster. We have a standard we follow, reducing the time spent repeatedly rewriting everything."
"It provides visibility into the VM space."
"I think vRA stands at the top of the list of the products that we rate, because of the problems that it has helped us to solve, in terms of providing the services to our end customers."
 

Cons

"There were some issues with deploying the solution on OpenStack Mitaka."
"The upgrading process could be simplified."
"It lacked the user interface for multitenancy and basic platform management tasks."
"Error handling could be improved; GUI is lacking with respect to user privileges and connectivity."
"The solution is a bit of a headache because mistakes happen in the blueprint every time we deploy and they require modifications."
"Install of the product itself could be improved and I would like to see better event monitoring."
"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."
"I'd like to see a more simplified upgrade process so it can be completed in one step rather than multiple steps (snapshot backup + snapshot restore)."
"I don't find it to be user-friendly or intuitive because, in my case, when I have to deploy SAP systems, I need to jump between the vRA, the vRO, and the actual vCenter itself. I need to go back and forth to do different things... I wish they could make it just one application, just vRA, that does all that. There might be a way to do it but I haven't figured out how to do it yet."
"There is an area of improvement. For example, you are migrating from a customer's existing data center to a new target data center. To facilitate this transition, you'll initially need to evaluate the customer's aging hardware hosting VMware, which is nearing the end of its operational life. The customer expresses the intention to upgrade to a newer version, necessitating an overhaul of everything in the new data center. As a Systems Integrator (SI), consultant, or architect, your recommendation would be to acquire the latest hardware with a specified configuration and then install VMware on top of it. However, there's a crucial aspect related to the infrastructure requirements for VMware to run seamlessly on that hardware. If there's an opportunity to potentially reduce these infrastructure prerequisites, it would be highly beneficial."
"The initial setup is very complex because we have a bunch of customization workflows. They were built-in features that we had to program as code with Orchestration."
"They can improve on the dashboard representations and the options for non-technical people."
"I think debugging can be improved. In case of errors, the devOps team finds it difficult to read the Python stack traces at times."
"The initial setup was complex from beginning to delivery. The current version is a bit more complex than version 7 to deploy."
"It would be better if VMware would provide API documentation for developers and customers on the Internet."
"I think they are going to have a tough time with the Enterprise licensing. I personally think the pricing for Enterprise is hard to justify."
 

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."
"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."
"The solution has helped to increase infrastructure, agility, speed, and provisioning in the time to market."
"I would rate the pricing a ten out of ten, with ten being very expensive."
"They should provide one license for all the sub-products."
"We do plan to see ROI with any new implementation of new technologies being implemented within our environment."
"It made the provisioning of the virtual machines easier and faster. We can react more quickly to customers' demands."
"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 pricing for this solution is roughly 20% lower than the competitive products in the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Construction Company
12%
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: November 2026.
920,939 professionals have used our research since 2012.