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DX Spectrum vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 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

DX Spectrum
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
20th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
117
Ranking in other categories
Network Management Applications (7th), Network Monitoring Software (20th), Network Troubleshooting (7th), DX NetOps (1st)
VMware Aria Operations for ...
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (18th), Container Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of DX Spectrum is 0.9%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 1.6%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
VMware Aria Operations for Applications1.6%
DX Spectrum0.9%
Other97.5%
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Balabrahmam_Chakka - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Program Manager at Tata Consultancy Services
Comprehensive device monitoring enhances operational efficiency
DX Spectrum should have an automatic ticketing mechanism with ServiceNow. I need to use other tools for event management. It has a dashboarding mechanism and monitors devices and network switches through SNMP without an agent, which is good, but it should also have event management. Its LDAP authentication is fine. However, event management is not available, which is a concern. Not much else. If they can add event management, it would help. The event management should have more deduplication and alert correlation and check the bidirectional communication with ServiceNow. If a previous ticket is open and the same alert is generated, there's no need to create another ticket; updating the work notes would suffice. It should help reduce noise in alerting.
AS
Consultant at HCLTech
Automation and insightful diagnostics elevate operations while improvements are welcome
The new version 8.18 has brought significant improvements. The main purpose of using this tool is having a single console to manage all entities. The cloud integration capabilities, including private, public, and hybrid, are already well-implemented. The ability to manage multiple vCenters across different geographical locations is very effective. The new Skyline health feature and certificate and licensing management are particularly useful improvements. The dashboard's overview tab provides comprehensive information about current vCenter status, resizable amounts, reclamation opportunities, anomalies, diagnostics, licensing, and certificates. However, there is room for improvement in application analysis. The current functionality lacks detailed monitoring at the kernel level, focusing mainly on CPU, memory, and storage matrices. Enhanced application monitoring capabilities, including tracking downtime for specific types of applications such as transactional or e-commerce applications, would be beneficial.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution's most valuable features are its integration with Broadcom tools and scalability."
"​It covers a lot of different types of hardware. It can do a lot and saves us time.​"
"The Spectrum tool improved our network assurance levels for our business units."
"We use Spectrum for network analysis, failure detection, and sending information to our service management tool."
"It is very stable. We have not had any major issues in over 10 years."
"The monitoring just comes to us: "Oh, there's something wrong with that machine." It tells us. There are some 50,000 machines or so, all doing different things. And if they go down we hear about it."
"Offers a lot of functionality."
"The most valuable feature is automatic discovery."
"The stability of Aria Operations for Applications has improved significantly over the years."
"I gladly recommend VMware Aria Operations for Applications because it is cost effective and has commendable AI response capabilities."
"The features I find most valuable is the querying and alerting capabilities."
"It has a familiar interface, which makes it easy to get started."
"People are very pleased with the implementation."
"No issues with stability."
"I find VMware Aria Operations for Applications to be very stable, and I would rate it a ten out of ten."
"The solution provides single-console management for multiple VMware environments and cloud integrations, whether hybrid, private, or public cloud."
 

Cons

"Support from Broadcom could be better. Sometimes we wait a very long time for a solution to level three problems."
"The platform is complicated to use."
"We have had some issues with the spec server and the high availability replication of data. It fails over well, but it does not come back very well. We get duplicated events."
"It doesn't really allow for multi-tenancy. If you're an ISP or an MSP and you want to use this tool to provide these types of fault management services to your customers, you would need a separate SpectroSERVER for each customer..."
"DX Spectrum should have an automatic ticketing mechanism with ServiceNow."
"Technical support for this product is not so good. It needs improvement."
"It needs better integration with other CA products."
"Needs better integration with all the other products in the Agile suite of tools; anything they could do to make that less complex, would be great."
"The documentation and integration with Kubernetes could be improved."
"The solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor."
"Its billing model is consumption-based. I understand the consumption-based model, but it is not necessarily easy to estimate and guess how many points or how much we are going to consume on a specific application up until we get to that point. So, for us, it would be helpful to have more insights or predictability into what we can expect from a cost perspective if we are starting to use specific features. This can potentially also drive our consumption a bit more."
"I find that there could be improvements in the support service response time, as the urgency varies unless specified as Priority 2 or 1 cases."
"The return on investment is best suited for organizations that do not have the resources for a dedicated VM environment team. However, the cost of the product doesn't show significant benefits."
"The initial setup should be easier and more seamless."
"The implementation is a long process that should be improved."
"VMware technical support has declined since the Broadcom acquisition. Previously, they were more focused on issue resolution, but now they prioritize licensing verification before providing support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product, support, and maintenance are all expensive, which is another reason that we are switching to another solution."
"DX Spectrum's pricing depends on the license number. It is affordable."
"It is expensive compared to other tools in the market."
"In general, the license cost will be about 30% of the total TCO for this tool (hardware/support team, OS costs, and OS management)."
"It is very pricey. With the current trend of enterprises moving towards cheaper and more modern looking solutions like ManageEngine, SevOne, ServicePilot, and Paesller."
"Since the acquisition by Broadcom, we have not had such a good experience with licensing and pricing. Since they were bought by Broadcom, every sales contract is getting complicated. It's very complicated, and it's much more expensive than before. It's not a good pricing strategy from Broadcom."
"The price is very high."
"It’s a great tool, but an expensive one. Learn how to use it properly."
"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."
"I don't have the details. In our case, there is a mixture in place. We have production usage, and we are also doing training for VMware. So, we also have a training instance. It is worth the money you would spend on it. That's because if you were to build all of this yourself by using some of the open source tools, then you would need a lot of time."
"The licensing costs are very high, particularly when you consider that we have to purchase a level 1 license for every integration, such as the load balancer, HAProxy, and the MSSP. And if you want to use vSAN, that's another license. Then, of course, Tanzu Observability has its own separate license."
"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Energy/Utilities Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise89
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about DX Spectrum?
The solution's most valuable features are its integration with Broadcom tools and scalability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DX Spectrum?
The price of DX Spectrum is not competitive when compared to other solutions, such as SolarWinds. The high price has caused us to lose many deals.
What needs improvement with DX Spectrum?
I would like to see improvements in making the interface more user-friendly. Many people find it not simple to use. One of the common customer complaints is about the alarm notifications. Currently...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
The solution includes cost drivers that can be configured according to your environment. You can input server-wise, CPU-wise, storage, and memory costs per hour or day. Once cost drivers are provid...
What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
The new version 8.18 has brought significant improvements. The main purpose of using this tool is having a single console to manage all entities. The cloud integration capabilities, including priva...
What is your primary use case for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
I have been involved in several projects where I had to implement automation and monitoring alerting. I performed automation using VMware Aria Operations for Applications. There is an automation ta...
 

Also Known As

CA Spectrum
Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

National Informatics Centre India, Banese, Olympus, AlphaServe Technologies, Sicredi
1. Atlassian 2. Cisco 3. Databricks 4. DigitalOcean 5. Equinix 6. Fidelity Investments 7. Google 8. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 9. Honeywell 10. IBM 11. Intel 12. JetBlue Airways 13. LinkedIn 14. Lyft 15. Mastercard 16. Microsoft 17. MongoDB 18. Netflix 19. Nvidia 20. Oracle 21. PayPal 22. Pinterest 23. Qualcomm 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. SAP 27. Spotify 28. Square 29. TMobile 30. Twitter 31. Uber 32. VMware
Find out what your peers are saying about DX Spectrum vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications and other solutions. Updated: November 2025.
879,371 professionals have used our research since 2012.