CloudStack vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Apache and Broadcom are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. Apache is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.2, while Broadcom is ranked #3 with an average rating of 7.8. Apache holds a 2.1% mindshare in CM, compared to Broadcom’s 5.3% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Apache users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

CloudStack

Read 34 CloudStack reviews

3,963 Views
3,804 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Automation

Read 172 VMware Aria Automation reviews

18,397 Views
10,486 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

CloudStack

VMware Aria Automation

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

CloudStack and VMware Aria Automation compete in the cloud management and automation domain, appealing to enterprises enhancing cloud operations. VMware Aria Automation exhibits a feature advantage with its extensive offerings.

Features: CloudStack supports API-driven operations, enables scalability across multiple hypervisors, and offers simplified management. VMware Aria Automation includes advanced provisioning automation, governance, and lifecycle management, optimized for complex cloud environments.

Room for Improvement: CloudStack could benefit from an enhanced user interface, better documentation, and more frequent updates to improve stability. VMware Aria Automation might improve by streamlining complex customizations, increasing integration capabilities, and simplifying initial setup processes.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: CloudStack offers quick deployment with community-based support. In contrast, VMware Aria Automation involves complex deployment processes but provides extensive customer service and professional support for intricate setups.

Pricing and ROI: CloudStack offers a cost-effective entry point with solid ROI for those embracing open-source solutions. VMware Aria Automation, though pricier at the onset, promises substantial ROI through its comprehensive feature set and robust automation capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed CloudStack vs. VMware Aria Automation Report (Updated: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack vs. VMware Aria Automation

September 2026

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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

CloudStack

Ranking in Cloud Management

7th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

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) (28th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (7th)

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of CloudStack is 2.1%, down from 4.3% 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
Product	Mindshare (%)
VMware Aria Automation	5.3%
CloudStack	2.1%
Other	92.6%

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

Tharun Kumar Reddy Thamatam

Senior Infrastructure Consultant at Infosys

Achieving seamless infrastructure management with optimized network and user access controls

I believe enhancements could be made in CloudStack, particularly in the management servers. I had the opportunity to collaborate with one of the Apache CloudStack developers, leading to the installation of additional agents for better information retrieval from hypervisors. We implemented configurations, ensuring consistency across hosts and VMs. We also utilized Ansible or YAML files to automate password upgrades during patching activities and database management, showcasing our customization efforts for improvement. For future releases, it would be beneficial if Apache enhanced CloudStack by integrating alerting systems directly. We've had instances where hypervisors experienced overloads without prior alerts, so proactive alerts within the tool would better prepare us for addressing issues swiftly, preventing disruption in business operations. A portal summarizing system metrics alongside alert capabilities would greatly enhance our operational efficiency.

Read full review

VasilisGiannitsiotis

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"CloudStack manages infrastructure with 2-4 thousands of hosts easily."

"Over the years, we have valued CloudStack for its stability."

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

"CloudStack is a very feature-rich product; it gives you a lot of control over your VM networks and has extensive integration with storage plugins where you can use many open source tools to bring storage into your CloudStack environment for backups or even to run VMs."

"It has become easy to deploy new devices with no or minimal hardware changes. Now, a user can be ready to use a firewall within a few minutes, as compared to the traditional physical model which involved purchase, shipping, hardware configuration, cabling, power, etc."

"CloudStack, by default, gives us a zone-based setup which makes it easier to manage datacenters located in different geographical areas."

"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 most valuable feature from my point of view is access to environment via console through separate browser window."

More CloudStack pros

"The solution is user-friendly and intuitive."

"vRA helps automate deployment for developers. We do a lot of orchestration or customization within our environment so it will suit each of our customers. So, we have different business units who have their own templates."

"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."

"It made the provisioning of the virtual machines easier and faster, so we can react more quickly to customers' demands."

"The product's most valuable features are ease of automation."

"The most valuable feature is the portal where you can assign permissions to specific people to request specific items in the catalog and allow them to provision things for themselves. Or it enables them to request different services that you can create through vRO and vRA."

"It cuts out a lot of waste, unutilized hardware, and improves performance."

"In one use case for a large marketplace, a typical release cycle took about 80 hours and was brought down to three hours by automating deployment for developers."

More VMware Aria Automation pros

Cons

"This product needs a lot improvement on the development side. Every new version introduces new bugs. It lacks many features needed for NFV like DPDK, SR-IOV support, etc."

"The absence of the feature, deploy an instance from a snapshot, is the weak point of the platform. It is a feature that everyone needs nowadays."

"I would like to see support for native VLAN, and fault-tolerance."

"I have encountered some challenges during the initial setup or deployment of CloudStack."

"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."

"We recognize that CloudStack is an easy-to-use cloud management platform and, in my opinion, there has been a large number of improvements in the past few years, particular when it comes to the modern UI and overall ease of management. However, I believe that CloudStack needs to grow their marketing in the commercial side. They don't have a great piece of market share right now."

"With all that simplicity come limitations that need to be understood and planned for: Accounts, domains, and user accounts are set up with public cloud in mind, not private."

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

More CloudStack cons

"Each new version seems to bring a new set of bugs to the table and upgrading is risky, especially for a tool at the core of the operations and infrastructure."

"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."

"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 most important thing that we missed in vRanger was the possibility to mount several images instantaneously and present it so we can run it immediately."

"We still struggle a little bit with the configuration as far as making sure that we have all the endpoints where they need to be, because that's not as agile as we'd like in the back-end. We're working towards that with our DevOps teams to make sure that we're touching the right endpoints and getting the right data."

"It has some limitations for scalability, especially for remote data center management. For some components, everything need to be centralized."

"The solution is intuitive, but not necessarily user-friendly. In particular, it's the documentation."

More VMware Aria Automation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"The solution is open-source and free."

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

"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 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."

"CloudStack is an open-source product."

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

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

"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."

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

"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 cost of the solution is reasonable for us. Although it is relatively high, we prioritize stability and integration over cost."

"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."

"We do plan to see ROI with any new implementation of new technologies being implemented within our environment."

"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."

"This is an expensive product and the high price is starting to become an issue for us."

More VMware Aria Automation pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Outsourcing Company

15%

Construction Company

Manufacturing Company

University

Outsourcing Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	33
Midsize Enterprise	24
Large Enterprise	131

Questions from the Community

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 moderate cost.

See all answers

What needs improvement with CloudStack?

Enhancements for CloudStack can focus on integrating more hypervisors, as mentioned regarding current features. We're working on a new feature that will allow for certain limited functions, but ove...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for CloudStack?

My usual use cases for CloudStack involve an AWS style private cloud or public cloud. I can deploy an AWS style cloud using the open source tool that is CloudStack. The use case depends on the cust...

See all answers

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...

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 free trial I cannot describe in detail the second and third options as my company ...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

Comparisons

OpenNebula vs CloudStack

Compared 10% of the time

Turbo360 (Formerly Serverless360) vs CloudStack

Compared 6% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs CloudStack

Compared 5% of the time

Persistent Intelligent Cloud (PiCloud) vs CloudStack

Compared 5% of the time

CloudCheckr vs CloudStack

Compared 4% of the time

More CloudStack Competitors

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 3% of the time

HashiCorp Terraform vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 3% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 3% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 2% of the time

More VMware Aria Automation Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack

September 2026

Download CloudStack product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Automation

August 2026

Download VMware Aria Automation product report

Also Known As

Vmops, Cloud.com

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

Overview

CloudStack offers an easy-to-manage platform compatible with multiple hypervisors, enabling seamless networking and efficient workload scaling. Its advanced APIs and open-source nature facilitate automation and customization, making it ideal for extensive cloud environments.

CloudStack is recognized for ease of setup, robust networking, and hypervisor compatibility. Supporting a range of workloads, it scales efficiently, offering flexible features like VM migration, private networking, and multi-zone support. Its user-friendly open-source design aids troubleshooting and customization, making it ideal for managing broad cloud deployments. Despite needing upgrades in interface and integration with third-party vendors and container technology, CloudStack remains a strong choice for businesses seeking effective virtualization solutions. Improvements in documentation, regional management, and emerging tech support would enhance usability and performance.

What are CloudStack's notable features?

Hypervisor compatibility: Supports diverse virtualization technologies for flexible deployment.
Robust networking: Ensures reliable and scalable network infrastructure management across zones.
Advanced APIs: Facilitates automation and integration to streamline cloud operations.
VM migration: Enhances operational flexibility with seamless virtual machine relocations.
Private networking: Provides secure and isolated network environments for critical tasks.
Multi-zone support: Offers scalable solutions for distributed cloud management.

What benefits and ROI should users consider?

Open-source model: Allows extensive customization without licensing costs, enhancing ROI.
Ease of management: Simplifies operations, reducing time and resources spent on maintenance.
Scalability: Enables growth and adaptability, fostering agility in expanding businesses.
Flexibility: Supports various workloads and environments, meeting diverse operational needs.

CloudStack is implemented across industries, used in managing virtual environments, offering IaaS in public, private, and hybrid cloud models. Companies use it for internal virtualization and customer service, integrating with hypervisors across data centers to orchestrate virtual machines and support development and testing globally.

Apache

VMware Aria Automation is known for its automation capabilities, integrating with VMware and third-party tools to enhance workflow efficiency, save time, and manage resources effectively.

VMware Aria Automation offers a diverse set of features including a self-service portal and a streamlined user-friendly interface, which make it ideal for organizations aiming to automate virtual machine provisioning. The platform supports extensive automation capabilities across multi-cloud environments, featuring flexible blueprint designs and comprehensive integration with platforms like AWS, Azure, and ServiceNow. Though improvements are desired in areas like logging, template management, and vCenter integration, its robust framework facilitates IT infrastructure services, disaster recovery, and development operations. It is specifically beneficial for orchestrating workflows, automating routine tasks, and managing workloads efficiently in private and hybrid cloud environments.

What are the most important features of VMware Aria Automation?

Self-Service Portal: Empowers users with easy access to resources and tools needed for automation.
User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies navigation and usage for both technical and non-technical users.
Extensive Automation Capabilities: Streamlines VM deployment and processes across various platforms.
Integration with VMware and Third-Party Tools: Enhances workflow automation and extends functionality.
Flexible Blueprint Designs: Allows for customized and scalable deployment solutions.

What are the benefits and ROI users should consider?

Efficiency: Reduces manual workload, leading to time and cost savings.
Scalability: Supports dynamic growth and resource management.
Enhanced Workflow Automation: Improves process efficiency with comprehensive integrations.
Customizable Orchestration: Enables tailored solutions that meet specific requirements.
Resource Management: Efficiently utilizes resources, reducing waste and optimizing operations.

VMware Aria Automation is implemented across industries for automating the provisioning of virtual machines and managing cloud environments. It is used in sectors requiring efficient server deployment, network configurations, and seamless integration with tools such as AWS and Azure. It aids in reducing manual efforts, supporting IT infrastructure services, and enhancing disaster recovery protocols.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

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

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

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack vs. VMware Aria Automation

September 2026

Free Report: CloudStack vs. VMware Aria Automation

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