CloudStack vs VMware Aria Operations comparison

Apache and VMware are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. Apache is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.7, while VMware is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.6. Apache holds a 5.1% mindshare in CM, compared to VMware’s 8.1% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Apache users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of VMware users who would recommend it.

CloudStack

Read 31 CloudStack reviews

1,938 Views
1,445 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Operations

Read 374 VMware Aria Operations reviews

3,960 Views
1,783 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

CloudStack

VMware Aria Operations

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

VMware Aria Operations and CloudStack both compete in the cloud management and virtualization domain. VMware Aria Operations seems to have the upper hand with its intensive monitoring and predictive analytics, which provides a proactive approach to IT management.

Features: VMware Aria Operations offers robust monitoring and management tools that allow users to collect data and use real-time analytics to adjust policies for optimized performance. Its dynamic thresholding and predictive analytics help anticipate and mitigate potential issues. CloudStack provides strong multi-hypervisor support and scalability, catering to diverse cloud environments. Its API integration facilitates diverse operations and supports different hypervisors efficiently.

Room for Improvement: VMware Aria Operations could enhance its usability by simplifying the interface and improving third-party tool integration. Users suggest the need for more intuitive reporting and automation features, along with expanded documentation for customizations. CloudStack users recommend interface improvements and enhanced documentation to better address integration capabilities and user feedback during deployment.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Aria Operations supports both on-premises and hybrid cloud environments, presenting users with flexible deployment choices. It generally receives positive feedback for customer service, though technical support experiences may vary. CloudStack also benefits from a strong community support structure and offers several deployment models, including public cloud capabilities, although professional support could be expanded for complex setups.

Pricing and ROI: VMware Aria Operations can be expensive, particularly for large deployments, but it promises a strong return on investment by optimizing operational efficiency and minimizing downtime. Licensing options are varied and should be closely aligned with business needs. As an open-source platform, CloudStack eliminates licensing fees, presenting a cost advantage, though there might be expenses related to dedicated support and additional features. This flexibility and cost-effectiveness make it appealing for organizations aiming to manage expenses.

To learn more, read our detailed CloudStack vs. VMware Aria Operations Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack vs. VMware Aria Operations

June 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:

Categories and Ranking

CloudStack

Ranking in Cloud Management

11th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VMware Aria Operations

Ranking in Cloud Management

3rd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

374

Ranking in other categories

Virtualization Management Tools (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of CloudStack is 5.1%, down from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations is 8.1%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

Wido Den Hollander

Community Ambassador at 42on

A solution that strikes a balance between user-friendliness, scalability, and stability

The market keeps changing, and so does technology. I think that container technology in CloudStack is an area that needs to be improved. Regarding container technology, Kubernetes is something many people want to use and something which, as of now, many are using currently. However, there is still room for improvement in Kubernetes, particularly with networking functionality and network virtualization. When it comes to what needs to be improved in CloudStack, I would say that it should stay the way it is currently. It should continue being a stable product that people can rely on since many may be inclined to follow the latest trends and hype, which is not always good for a solution's stability. It is crucial to prioritize stability, which is a key factor that companies seek. In my view, the platform could benefit from adding more metrics. More metrics would offer more insights and data on the platform's performance, utilization, and usage. Overall, I believe that having more metrics available would be highly desirable.

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Amar Sorro

Team Lead Virtualization at Hybrid Tech

Manage and monitor crucial banking operations with deep logging and efficient alerting

The most valuable features of VMware Aria Operations include its excellent monitoring capabilities. It allows me to perform deep monitoring and logging of the entire environment, providing a quick alarm and warning system through email. These features help me in efficiently managing virtual machines. The solution also offers easy access to VMware KB articles for problem resolution, ensuring quick access to troubleshooting information.

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

"We like the virtualization capabilities."

"It was easy to deploy, both for PoC and production (with HA)."

"Valuable features include that it is a user-friendly portal, VPN P2S and S2S possibilities, and it's easy to manage accounts and limits."

"CloudStack’s private gateway networking feature is what enables us to offer utmost security and confidentially to our customers and partners, by enabling them to connect to their virtual data centers via dedicated, encrypted, private fiber lines that never touch the public internet space. Ease of setup and management are certainly important additional benefits for us on the engineering team."

"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."

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

"Key features include stability, centralized management design that scales well, and transparent interoperability with different hypervisors and manufacturers.."

More CloudStack pros

"The most valuable feature is the ability to right-size a workload, based on historical data for that workload. It also allows us to "sanity-check" the entire infrastructure by getting monthly reports on how everything is performing and where we can make improvements. That's all done automatically, without any administrator involvement."

"It gives the real-time info that we need to diagnose any problems that we have with our VDI infrastructure."

"When there is an issue at the disk level in vSAN, vROps gives us an alarm that the issue is happening on particular disks. Other solutions cannot give this type of alert for vCenter. Even vCenter cannot give that type of information."

"We went from using industry standard KPIs to going to a complete on-demand model based on the algorithms from vRealize Operations. It has enabled us to drive more utilization out of our existing compute infrastructure to the point where, for a period of six months, we didn't purchase a single server or any additional compute. We were able to continue to sweat our existing assets."

"The most valuable feature is the insight into real-time performance."

"For me, it's the dashboard."

"The dashboards are really good. They give you a glimpse of what is really going on in your virtualized environment. The ability to create customized dashboards based on your needs is also great."

"It is efficient and easy to manage. We can find what we need from the software's interface."

More VMware Aria Operations pros

Cons

"The numerous, multi-layered drill-down menus make it difficult to find one simple knob to turn."

"It is not widely used so Google does not help very much when you are troubleshooting, and the CloudStack forum is not very active."

"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."

"There are some minor things that can be improved even more such as, perhaps, a bit more polishing on the GUI side to catch up with the API possibilities (which are really extensive) but otherwise nothing critical."

"The Windows hosts do not get their hostnames from cloud-init."

"I think that container technology in CloudStack is an area that needs to be improved."

"From time to time there is a bug in calculating limits of resources for customer domain/account. Maybe it’s a problem with 4.9.2."

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

More CloudStack cons

"If I put on the hat of a client, I would say cost needs improvement. For clients with reasonable-sized infrastructure farms, you're looking at licensing at either per socket or per VM, and if you have an installation of any size, you're doing it per socket, and the per-socket licensing is a little heavy. Per VM license, if they have large numbers of VM, it is just not practical."

"I would like to have more documentation, in the form of knowledge bases, that better explain the technology, related products, and what the capabilities are."

"The tool should have an easy workflow with some guided steps to make it simpler from the customer's perspective."

"There is room for improvement when it comes to the integration with Active Directory. Sometimes I need to log in to the application using my Active Directory account, instead of using the regular admin for vRealize Operations. If I want to deploy this tool to more users, I need that."

"I'd like to see more out-of-the-box dashboards and less customizing of the environment. The interface could be more streamlined. There are still a lot of old dashboards versus the new UI dashboards."

"One way the solution could be improved, in my opinion: management packs, more native management packs with API."

"The solution must provide better training options to help us make the most of the tool."

"There are some distribution issues, and there is not enough information on the portal."

More VMware Aria Operations cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"The solution is open-source and free."

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

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

"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."

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

"Get the right licensing and increase your licensing as you upgrade and grow. If you get the wrong licensing, it will be expensive, especially if you plan improperly."

"Bundle it in with your license rather than buying it as a separate product. It saves a lot of money that way."

"It was cost effective, because it fixed our problems."

"The product is too expensive to implement."

"The initial costs are a bit on the higher side but the licensing is flexible."

"It has reduced time to troubleshoot issues. With our customized dashboards, we can target issues and attribute them to the correct team."

"I have reduced the time to troubleshoot for my customers."

"The solution requires an annual license which is very expensive."

More VMware Aria Operations pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

21%

Educational Organization

10%

University

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

Manufacturing Company

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 moderate cost.

See all answers

What needs improvement with CloudStack?

CloudStack lacks a billing solution which would complete it as a full 360-degree product. Additionally, more themes and drag-and-drop interfaces could enhance the user experience. Improved document...

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 VMware Aria Operations a user friendly solution?

In terms of user-friendliness, VMware Aria Operations is one of the best solutions out there. It is not overly complex to set up and you can rely on the technical support to provide you with assis...

See all answers

What is the most useful new feature of VMware Aria Operations?

For me, the alerts features are the most unique part of this product, no matter the current name it uses. When they introduced the new version of VMware Aria Operations, they also introduced more a...

See all answers

Comparisons

OpenNebula vs CloudStack

Compared 71% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs CloudStack

Compared 9% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs CloudStack

Compared 5% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs CloudStack

Compared 5% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs CloudStack

Compared 4% of the time

More CloudStack Competitors

VMware Aria Automation vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 21% of the time

IBM Turbonomic vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 11% of the time

VMware vSphere vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 10% of the time

Nutanix Prism vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 9% of the time

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 8% of the time

More VMware Aria Operations Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack

June 2025

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Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations

May 2025

Download VMware Aria Operations product report

Also Known As

Vmops, Cloud.com

VMware vRealize Operations (vROps), vCenter Operations Manager (VCOPS)

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

VMware Aria Operations is a high-ranking virtualization management and cloud management tool that automates and simplifies IT management to the applications it supports. It achieves this through full-stack visibility from physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructure. The product allows users to enable self-driving IT operations management across private, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments. This is conducted with the unified operations platform that delivers continuous performance, capacity and cost optimization, and integrated compliance through artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and predictive analytics.

VMware Aria Operations Use Cases

VMware Aria Operations has several use cases, some of which include:

Continuous performance optimization: VMware Aria Operations allows users to assure application performance at a minimal cost, facilitated by real-time predictive analytics and artificial intelligence. The product can be used to automatically balance workloads, improve consolidation rations, optimize and rightsize workloads, and avoid contention.
Capacity and cost management: VMware Aria Operations can be utilized to reduce cost and improve efficiency with real-time ML-based capacity and cost analytics. The solution uses these tools to visualize cost savings opportunities and accelerate decision-making.
Intelligent remediation: This product can also be used to predict, prevent, and troubleshoot issues with actionable insights. Through other VMware integrations, users can streamline and centralize IT operations.
Integrated compliance: The solution can be utilized to reduce risk and enforce IT regulatory standards for VMware Cloud through integrated compliance and automated drift remediation.

VMware Aria Operations Features

The product has various features which users can utilize. Several of the features that the 2022 version of VMware Aria Operations introduced include:

Management pack builder: This feature is a no-code solution that allows users to expand their operations visibility to anywhere they wish. The builder allows users to connect to a data source using an HTTP or Amazon AWS data source, as well as to make API calls, create objects, and build out relationships with other objects in the product.
Public cloud basic actions: This is a set of features that allows VMware Aria Operations users to initiate actions automatically via the product's UI for AWS, Microsoft Azure, or GCP CE instances.
Rule-based application discovery: Through this new feature of the product, users can easily discover multiple applications running in all or specific areas of infrastructure and view associated resources. This can be achieved through simple user-defined rules, including discovering applications based on tags, object names, and properties.
Aria Operations capacity management: This feature allows organizations to view the results of what-if analysis based on their allocation model and specify business hours for capacity calculations.
Alerts: This is a set of features that include components called Conditions and Symptoms, which are used to alert different types of issues on the platform.
User access management: Through this feature, users can benefit from improved ways to configure in VMware Aria Operations with the introduction of scopes.
Support for raw device mapping storage: This feature allows users to get configuration details about their raw device mapping (RDM), such as disk sharing, compatibility mode, and SCSI Bus Sharing.

VMware Aria Operations Benefits

VMware Aria Operations brings various benefits to the organizations using it. Among them are the following:

The product helps organizations reduce unplanned downtime and maximize return on investment (ROI) in hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
VMware Aria Operations simplifies management for hybrid clouds from migration assessments.
Users can benefit from an accelerated journey to VMware Cloud on AWS through this solution.
The product can be delivered on premises or as a service, providing flexibility for its users.
VMware Aria Operations can increase operational efficiency through monitoring and management features.
The solution accelerates decision-making through detailed cost analytics, which is visualized for users' convenience.
VMware Aria Operations allows users to both utilize standard compliance templates and create their own custom ones.

Reviews from Real Users

Mohamed N., a tech lead VMware support engineer at a tech services company, appreciates VMware Aria Operations because it is easy to use, stable, and support is always available.

Mojtaba K., a senior system administrator at a comms service provider, values VMware Aria Operations due to the fact that its dashboards give you a glimpse of what is really going on in your virtualized environment.

VMware

Sample Customers

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

Science Applications International Corporation, Tribune Media, Heartland Payment Systems, Telkom Indonesia, Columbia Sportswear, iGATE, CSS Corp, Angel Broking, Adira Finance, Hipskind, Beiersdorf Shared Services, Innovate Mas Indonesia, Adobe, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi , Join Experience S.A, Borusan Holdings, Department of Transport - Abu Dhabi

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack vs. VMware Aria Operations

June 2025

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