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CloudSphere 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

CloudSphere
Ranking in Cloud Management
29th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (13th)
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 CloudSphere is 1.5%, up from 0.9% 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%
CloudSphere1.5%
Other92.8%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Asad-Ali - PeerSpot reviewer
Dev Ops Engineer at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Cloud security assessments have improved cost control and vulnerability management across clients
The alerting system could be explored further, as it would help users integrate the alerting system more effectively. Additionally, an AI feature would be beneficial, as AI is prevalent nowadays and could integrate into environments to help customers. I would particularly like to see the AI feature added to CloudSphere so it automatically integrates into our environment and generates comprehensive reports, which would decrease workload from the engineer's perspective. If CloudSphere integrates AI and guides users on which security compliance they need to follow, AI could automatically scan everything and provide a report stating which areas need improvement and what points require attention.
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

"To others, if a company is looking for a security vulnerability tool or governance and policy tools that help improve their environment, I would recommend CloudSphere because it is very helpful, easy to use, user interactive, and provides many functions and features."
"We do not need to install any appliances or any agents."
"Provides multiple kinds of services for managing the clouds of multiple customers."
"The scalability of the solution is a godsend."
"CloudSphere is very mature and very effective."
"CloudSphere is a good solution that works well and can integrate with multiple clouds and manage all our customers."
"For the customers I work with, it provides flexibility as far as storage is concerned, so it's security and access."
"When I started using CloudSphere, it wasn't mature, and it had multiple issues. For example, my team experienced server issues while using the solution, but recently, I noticed how much CloudSphere has improved. There used to be some latency issues with CloudSphere. It even gave error messages in the past when you select an option such as "the web server is not responding", but it has improved a lot, and now I don't get any errors from CloudSphere. What I like best about CloudSphere is that it has a lot of beneficial features, and it has a single pane for managing multi-cloud environments, which I find very helpful, and it's the main benefit you can get from CloudSphere."
"The most valuable features for us are capacity planning as well as environment life management; putting in specific templates and workflows that we know are secure. That solidifies the environments that we're in or that are being provisioned. We also know that every environment being provisioned has a lifespan. It affects capacity, so it's great for budgeting, from my perspective, and good for my team."
"After utilizing vRA we have reduced this to less than an hour for a complete, production-ready infrastructure deployment."
"I want to build automation that is intelligent, part of the fabric of our environment, and is somewhat self-sustaining. I think SaltStack can help me do this."
"I recommend the product due to its effectiveness in automation and integration."
"The blueprint functionality of the product is intuitive and user-friendly. The concept of the blueprints is visual and easy to use."
"usability; Ease of use, the GUI, is probably the best feature, so that really anybody can use it. You don't have to be technical to be able to deploy a VM. I find it to be intuitive and user-friendly. Regarding some of the files that you feed it, you don't have to do a ton of development. You can feed it pretty standard configuration files. You don't have to be a developer, you don't have to know C# or Java or the like to get it going."
"The most valuable feature is, instead of doing the VMotion manually, we have automated everything with a script, using vRealize. That means I don't need to think about things like compatibility. The system will do everything for me and just give me a report."
"We needed vRA to easily integrate with our hypervisor, orchestration, security (tenant segmentation, PCI), workflows, custom code, and internal monitoring/management tools. Since we didn’t have time to develop our own web front-end during the development sprints, vRA saved considerable time and resource cycles. Its ability to easily integrate with all of the VMware cloud products as well as public cloud providers, like AWS and Azure, out-of-the-box, makes it an even more powerful tool."
 

Cons

"CloudSphere is not keeping up with the pace of the cloud and there are a number of services that can't be deployed using CloudSphere."
"The alerting system could be explored further, as it would help users integrate the alerting system more effectively."
"The next feature I would like to have full disclosure of what's being done with the data."
"When we start the scanning of, for example, 500 servers, it will not handle the scan. We need to differentiate the jobs - for example, one job for 100 servers, a second job for another 100 servers, et cetera."
"Their customer support leaves a lot to be desired. The standards are not that great."
"The solution must have a single management console for the resources and VMs."
"The main issue I experienced from CloudSphere was recently resolved, but an area for improvement in the solution is that it lacks the functionality of migrating resources from one public cloud to another. If CloudSphere could provide that functionality, that would be very beneficial to users and companies."
"One of the cons of this product is that it will not discover all the applications running."
"There is a lot of information to go over and it’s hard to keep it all straight."
"It needs to be more dynamic with variable customization to make new workloads more reliable. It also needs to be faster. We are exploring vRA version 8 right now and maybe what I'm requesting is available in the new version, but we haven't yet explored it fully."
"It's not cheap."
"The setup needs coding. It's not easy. It's not straightforward."
"Salt Cloud Windows support isn't that mature."
"One pain point we have seen is users are able to set their lease expirations to zero, which means the lifecycle management gets disabled."
"The initial setup is complex. There are too many components to integrate, especially when we integrated with different storage types and backup vendors. All the integration made it more complex."
"There are some issues with stability. We discovered some bugs and we constantly have to work with VMware to figure out a way to fix them."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It depends on how that model will be used. It might be anywhere between $4 and $15 per license per month. It’s less expensive than other options."
"The product is very expensive."
"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."
"It made the provisioning of the virtual machines easier and faster. We can react more quickly to customers' demands."
"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."
"They should provide one license for all the sub-products."
"Customers say this solution is costlier compared to its competitors."
"vRealize automation really should be a front door to the whole VMware suite of products."
"It is an open-source product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Construction Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
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 Business1
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise131
 

Questions from the Community

What is your primary use case for CloudSphere?
My company relies on security assessments and vulnerabilities in our cloud environment in Azure, so we scan using CloudSphere. We work in MSP and Azure MSP with multiple clients, using two tools: P...
What advice do you have for others considering CloudSphere?
To others, if a company is looking for a security vulnerability tool or governance and policy tools that help improve their environment, I would recommend CloudSphere because it is very helpful, ea...
What needs improvement with CloudSphere?
The alerting system could be explored further, as it would help users integrate the alerting system more effectively. Additionally, an AI feature would be beneficial, as AI is prevalent nowadays an...
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

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Affymetrix, Bell Helicopter, Yavapai-Prescott Indian Tribe, Porterville Unified School District, Interact for Health, VirtueCom, Warren Memorial Hospital, Front Porch, RMH Group, Meyers Nave, Intraworks, Information Technology, ETTE, Clackamas Community College
Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Find out what your peers are saying about CloudSphere vs. VMware Aria Automation and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,148 professionals have used our research since 2012.