CloudStack vs Red Hat CloudForms vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

Apache and Red Hat are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. Apache is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.0, while Red Hat is ranked #31. Apache holds a 4.7% mindshare in CM, compared to Red Hat’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Apache users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 66% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

CloudStack

Read 31 CloudStack reviews

2,031 Views
1,848 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Red Hat CloudForms

Read 10 Red Hat CloudForms reviews

653 Views
640 Comparison Views

66% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Automation

Read 170 VMware Aria Automation reviews

8,330 Views
4,498 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

CloudStack

Red Hat CloudForms

VMware Aria Automation

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between CloudStack, Red Hat CloudForms, and VMware Aria Automation based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix, VMware, IBM and others in Cloud Management.

To learn more, read our detailed Cloud Management Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Management

July 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:

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of CloudStack is 4.7%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat CloudForms is 1.5%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 10.6%, down from 11.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

Nelson Marcos

Engineer Manager at Globo.com

It's easier to provision VMs than other solutions and you can customize it to integrate with load balancers

My teammates have complained about the upgrade. The source code had massive files that had to be merged with our own development to upgrade to the latest version of CloudStack. It was quite painful for them. CloudStack could add some cost management tools to give me some control over the costs associated with the number of users of my services.

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Ilhami Arikan

Cloud Services Automation Technologies Manager at Garanti Teknoloji

A stable solution that helps to provision servers

We use the solution to provision servers. I am impressed with the product's ability to create dynamic catalogs. The solution's provisioning engine needs to be improved. I would rate the solution's stability an eight out of ten. I would rate the product's scalability a seven out of ten and…

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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

"CloudStack provides an environment that is very simple to use, with built-in APIs and a web interface that supports almost all features of AWS and Azure."

"When compared to OpenStack, CloudStack is also an open-source platform that is continuously improving its features and capabilities with each new version release. Having worked with CloudStack 4.7, 4.14, and most recently, 4.17, I have noticed significant enhancements in the platform's features and customer experience, such as the introduction of a new user interface in the latest release. Notably, the latest versions have made major improvements to VM live migrations, making them more efficient and effective."

"Everything in CloudStack works effectively."

"The structuring of the components and isolated environments helped us when using parts of the framework at different levels of product development."

"CloudStack is simple to stand up and get off the ground in a hurry. Its centralized design allows for easier troubleshooting when compared to OpenStack. Out of the box, it’s very well suited for white labeling and IaaS."

"The back-end database design is simple and straight forward. The user interface is designed with external users in mind. Billing is relatively straightforward with this product. Not being restricted to just one hypervisor was nice."

"We had a relevant reduction of bureaucracy tasks."

"You can build your own cloud and make it customizable with APIs."

More CloudStack pros

"I am impressed with the product's reports."

"They are a very mature product."

"Red Hat CloudForms is a stable product. There is no issue with the stability."

"I am impressed with the product's ability to create dynamic catalogs."

"Red Hat CloudForms is stable once it is up and running."

"The most valuable features of Red Hat CloudForms are the benefit of the collective functionality."

"The multi-tenancy feature has been very helpful for our clients. It has been working fine and seamlessly for them. Its interface is also very simplified, and it is also an open and easy-to-scale solution."

"The solution is compatible and integrates with various infrastructures or providers."

More Red Hat CloudForms pros

"Among the valuable features are the ease and speed of creating the VMs. Originally, we provisioned them manually and it would take us two days to do the provisioning... but with the automation, we are able to provision a VM with the click of a button, within seconds. It cut down on the time as well as cut down on the expense and employee cost in provisioning."

"The automation part is valuable, especially where vRA integrates with vRO, because it reduces the amount of effort we have to make."

"Instead of only deploying templates, we can deploy blueprints which are easier on day-to-day operations."

"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."

"It allows some of the tenants to self-provision their machines, so they don't have to wait for us to create the machine for them."

"The IT support for developers is nice as well because they are able to manage the environment themselves."

"Being able to give provisioning of environments over to our developers and the different teams has enabled them to put up environments faster and also freed up time for the IT team. This is really one of our bread and butter solutions for our developers."

"The most valuable feature is being able to deploy a virtual machine from a low level. We can automate everything including network configuration, firewall configuration, storage, storage attachment, OS deployment, middleware, and so forth."

More VMware Aria Automation pros

Cons

"The area of improvement could be the regionalization aspect. For example, managing multiple regions or HubStack deployments together was not thought out thoroughly in the versions I used. We faced issues around managing the global infrastructure and had to develop around it."

"A technology upgrade is one item which could be improved upon a lot."

"VPN P2S is cutting all connections except the CloudStack environment for the user when he is connected. I would like to have VPN like Cisco's AnyConnect."

"It would be great to have a couple of “external” networks for VPC and have the possibility, for each domain, to choose they type of “external” network."

"The user can't upload SSH keys from the UI. We have to use the API for this, and it is not always convenient."

"Environment is sensitive, so, unlike VMware, you can not afford middle-skilled engineers, they will ruin everything."

"The main reason why we started looking for another solution: backups, replication, HA, and dependency on secondary storage. CS is quite sensitive for infrastructure, and any kind of network disruption between CS and secondary storage leads to VM hanging."

"My teammates have complained about the upgrade. The source code had massive files that had to be merged with our own development to upgrade to the latest version of CloudStack. It was quite painful for them. CloudStack could add some cost management tools to give me some control over the costs associated with the number of users of my services."

More CloudStack cons

"All of the areas of Red Hat CloudForms could improve. It doesn't do half of the things that it says it can do out of the box. It takes configuration to make any of it work, which is not uncommon for solutions similar to this. However, it is frustrating."

"It is difficult to create a complete dashboard that includes all the needed features or catalogs."

"Because the solution needs to integrate with other products that surround it, there is a lot of configuration required, and this can be quite complex. It's not as easy as it is with, for example, VMware."

"The complexity of the solution is a bit high in comparison to VMware."

"The solution is still quite immature."

"Red Hat CloudForms could improve by allowing more customization of reports. We have to do a lot of coding to accomplish what we want. Additionally, the compatibility with the multi-cloud could improve. The latter versions of the solution removed Google support and the cost comparison between other clouds was high."

"I have issues with the solution's permissions. Unlike VMware, the product doesn't allow folder-type permissions."

"Our clients had challenges or issues with the updates. Its updates should be better managed. They should provide quicker and more stable updates. Its stability can also be better. We initially faced ease-of-use and compatibility issues while integrating it. We had a lot of compatibility issues with other products. Our clients are concerned about whether it is under IBM or it is still Red Hat. Clients are not very clear about the support, and they're not really happy with it. Currently, they're getting support from Red Hat, but going forward, they're not really clear about what would be the life cycle of the product, which is a concern for them."

More Red Hat CloudForms cons

"It is complex to use for new users. It should have automated tools or drag-and-drop functionality."

"They should make it a little bit more dynamic, a little bit easier to deal with large-scale AD deployments. They need to make it a little more enterprise-ready. That is the one thing that kills us."

"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."

"Normally, on the first call to technical support, you don't get the right person. The log analysis takes a long time. This is something which should be improved."

"It's not cheap."

"It is not super-intuitive. It does require some skills to understand how to use it. I had no problem, but I had spent a lot of time already learning this product ahead of moving it to an operational status. But as we did so, we had a hard time bringing some people from other groups into the fold, to script and work against this environment. So, the ability to build workflows within that automation needs to be streamlined."

"vRO can get out of sync with vRA. We've run into every once in a while."

"The stability is 95 percent. There are some situations where it gets a little bit clumsy. When it gets really big, when you're dealing with a very large deployment, it can be a little bit difficult, but it's better than nothing. It does a significant job, given what it's tasked to do."

More VMware Aria Automation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As far as I know, CS is still free of charge. If you want to pay some money, Citrix Cloud Platform is based on CS, I think. As for hypervisors – everything as usual, you need to pay for VMware and vCenter. As for XenServer, recently they changed the free feature list, so you may need to pay some money to get useful features like XenMotion."

"CloudStack is an open-source product."

"CloudStack is an open source solution, so you don't need to pay anything for it. When our company develops something specially for CloudStack, it is donated to the Apache Software Foundation and provided to anyone that wants to use it."

"Give an effort to planning. If possible, contract a specialized consultant company for the initial setup and knowledge transfer."

"It is a 100% open-source solution needing just an Apache license. Also, there are no hidden fees to be paid."

"The solution is open-source and free."

"There is no license, so the product is free unless you are buying professional technical support services."

"The Apache CloudStack is open source, so you do not have licenses to purchase."

"Red Hat CloudForms has a subscript-based pricing model. The cost is approximately $20,000 annually which allows you to use as many users as you want."

"It is definitely cheaper than VMware. Everything is included. There is no challenge there."

"Red Hat CloudForms is a bit expensive."

"The price of Red Hat CloudForms was not competitive, it was expensive."

"The product's licensing is based on the number of servers."

"The solution is free of cost."

"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."

"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."

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

"vRealize automation really should be a front door to the whole VMware suite of products."

"The tool is expensive since it is an enterprise product."

"It is an expensive product. After VMware's acquisition by Broadcom, there was a rise in the price of VMware Aria Automation."

More VMware Aria Automation pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

Educational Organization

12%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

19%

Manufacturing Company

14%

University

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about CloudStack?

The initial implementation process was quite good.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CloudStack?

CloudStack is open-source, so there is no cost apart from learning. Billing solutions, if outsourced, come at a moder...

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What needs improvement with CloudStack?

CloudStack lacks a billing solution which would complete it as a full 360-degree product. Additionally, more themes a...

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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

OpenNebula vs CloudStack

Compared 72% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs CloudStack

Compared 8% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs CloudStack

Compared 7% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs CloudStack

Compared 6% of the time

CloudCheckr vs CloudStack

Compared 3% of the time

More CloudStack Competitors

VMware Cloud Director vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 25% of the time

Morpheus vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 24% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 18% of the time

OpenNebula vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 14% of the time

More Red Hat CloudForms 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 10% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 8% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 6% of the time

More VMware Aria Automation Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack

August 2025

Download CloudStack product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat CloudForms

July 2025

Download Red Hat CloudForms product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Automation

July 2025

Download VMware Aria Automation product report

Also Known As

Vmops, Cloud.com

No data available

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

Overview

Apache CloudStack is open source software designed to deploy and manage large networks of virtual machines, as a highly available, highly scalable Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing platform.

Apache

Manage container, virtual, private, and public cloud infrastructures

Managing a complex, hybrid IT environment can require multiple management tools, redundant policy implementations, and extra staff to handle the operations. Red Hat® CloudForms simplifies IT, providing unified management and operations in a hybrid environment.

As your IT infrastructure progresses from traditional virtualization toward an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) model, CloudForms evolves, protecting your investments and providing consistent user experience and functionality.

Red Hat

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

GreenQloud, Exoscale, TomTom, ASG, PC Extreme, ISWest, Grid'5000

Cox Automotive, Penn State, FICO, G-ABLE, Seneca College, ITandTEL, The Paris Lodron University of Salzburg (PLUS), MyRepublic, Macquarie, The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, CBTS, Network Data Solutions (NDS)

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

Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix, VMware, IBM and others in Cloud Management. Updated: July 2025.

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