Elastic Observability vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

Elastic and VMware are both solutions in the Cloud Monitoring Software category. Elastic is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.1, while VMware is ranked #21 with an average rating of 9.0. Elastic holds a 5.6% mindshare in CMS, compared to VMware’s 1.6% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Elastic users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Elastic Observability

Read 26 Elastic Observability reviews

4,697 Views
4,091 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Read 12 VMware Aria Operations for Applications reviews

1,018 Views
905 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Elastic Observability

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 3, 2025

VMware Aria Operations for Applications and Elastic Observability compete in the observability and performance management sector. Elastic Observability holds the advantage with its advanced analytics capabilities, suited for feature-rich environments.

Features: VMware Aria Operations for Applications offers comprehensive application monitoring, predictive analytics, and workload optimization. Elastic Observability provides real-time insights with powerful log analysis, advanced data visualization tools, and extensive customization options.

Room for Improvement: VMware could enhance its analytics capabilities, offer more customization options, and improve its support for non-VMware environments. Elastic Observability could improve ease of integration with third-party tools, simplify its setup process, and enhance customer support for complex deployments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Aria Operations for Applications integrates seamlessly into VMware-centric infrastructures and offers responsive support. Elastic Observability provides flexible cloud and on-premise deployment options, supported by thorough documentation and a strong community.

Pricing and ROI: VMware Aria Operations for Applications involves higher upfront costs but provides significant ROI through integration and infrastructure efficiency. Elastic Observability offers a flexible pricing model and delivers compelling ROI due to its advanced analytical features, despite potentially higher setup costs.

To learn more, read our detailed Elastic Observability vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications Report (Updated: May 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Elastic Observability vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

May 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

Elastic Observability

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

7th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

7th

Ranking in Container Monitoring

4th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

7th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Log Management (14th)

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

27th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

29th

Ranking in Container Monitoring

6th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

21st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Cloud Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Elastic Observability is 5.6%, down from 6.6% 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.

Cloud Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Adelina Craciun

Product Owner at Swisscom

Customization enables tailored monitoring and alerting across departments

The possibility to customize it has been quite useful. Whatever the other departments want to dream up, we implement. Whatever they want to monitor, the granularity of it, the changes in the threshold, and the anomalies that they want reported all require some development. So far, every single request has been fulfilled.

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ToniLindberg

senior consultant at Virtual Consultants Sverige AB

Troubleshooting capabilities have improved application monitoring and support engagement

I can see what happens end to end, which is pretty beneficial. The solution has troubleshooting capabilities, providing a direct connection to knowledge base articles from VMware Broadcom. When I encounter an error, I can search directly within the system to see what solutions have been employed by others. It has a familiar interface, which makes it easy to get started.

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

"The ability to ensure that the data is searchable and maintainable is highly valuable for our purposes."

"It is scalable and supports multitenancy, which is beneficial for MSPs."

"Elastic provides built-in features for queries and report generation. It's a very good tool for monitoring integration capabilities."

"We use AppDynamics and Elastic. The reason why we're using Elastic APM is because of the license count. It's very favorable compared to AppDynamics. It's inexpensive; it's economical."

"For full stack observability, Elastic is the best tool compared with any other tool ."

"The product has connectors to many services."

"I found Elk to be excellent for log analytics, security analytics, application code-level analytics, collaboration with DevOps teams, CI/CD, microservices, and Kubernetes, specifically cloud-native or cloud-specific tasks."

"The most valued feature of Elastic is its log analytics capabilities."

More Elastic Observability pros

"For us, the ease of deployment in combination with TMZ was the most important part because we don't have to manually deploy a complex monitoring solution. We can more or less do that with the click of a button, and we are not dependent on the developers to provide us with all the necessary features and functions to make that work. We can just deploy it on a workload cluster and monitor at least a good part of the workload. If we want to go into detail, we clearly need to make changes, but for a good part of application monitoring, it gives us good insights."

"The stability of Aria Operations for Applications has improved significantly over the years."

"It has a familiar interface, which makes it easy to get started."

"VMware Aria Operations for Applications offers significant features such as real-time statistics, the ability to identify possible issues within the VM environment, and helpful heat maps."

"I gladly recommend VMware Aria Operations for Applications because it is cost effective and has commendable AI response capabilities."

"The solution is great for virtualization and preparing the infrastructure in Tanzu to test products. It's very fast and has good visibility."

"The most valuable aspects of the solution are its ease of use and its ease of implementation."

"The features I find most valuable is the querying and alerting capabilities."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications pros

Cons

"The interface could be improved."

"The tool's scalability involves a more complex implementation process. It requires careful calculations to determine the number of nodes needed, the specifications of each node, and the configuration of hot, warm, and cold zones for data storage. Additionally, managing log retention policies adds further complexity. The solution's pricing also needs to be cheaper."

"There's a steep learning curve if you've never used this solution before."

"Simplifying the parsing of logs and manual efforts would also be beneficial."

"The price is the only issue in the solution. It can be made better and cheaper."

"They need more skills in the market. There are not enough skills in the market. It is not pervasive enough on the market, in my opinion. In other words, there isn't a big enough user base."

"The solution would be better if it was capable of more automation, especially in a monitoring capacity or for the response to abnormalities."

"Elastic APM's visualization is not that great compared to other tools. It's number of metrics is very low."

More Elastic Observability cons

"It could use a URL document server. Everything in the market is moving towards automation and everybody's looking for the single click operations as well relational data locality."

"The implementation is a long process that should be improved."

"The solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor."

"The main problem I have is that the license cost is very high."

"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."

"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."

"An area for improvement would be more in-depth reporting, such as analyzing disk IO during business hours compared to after hours."

"In the new version, I would love to see more prediction capabilities. It would be great if one could see the alerts get a little more enriched with information and become more human-friendly instead of the technical stuff that they put in there. I think those would be really awesome outcomes to get."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"One needs to pay for the licenses, and it is an annual subscription model right now."

"There are two types: cloud and SaaS. They charge based on data ingestion, ingest rate, hard retention, and warm retention. I believe it costs around $25,000 annually to ingest 30GB of data daily. That is the SaaS version. There is also a self-managed license where the customer manages their own infrastructure on-prem. In such cases, there are three license tiers that respectively cost $5,000 annually per node, $7,000 per node, and $12,500 per node."

"The product’s pricing needs improvement."

"We will buy a premium license after POC."

"Users have to pay for some features, like the alerts on different channels, because they are unavailable in different source versions."

"We have been using the open-source version."

"Pricing is one of those situations where the more you use it, the more you pay."

"Elastic Observability is cheaper than other similar solutions, such as Dynatrace. Its license calculation is based on various factors like data volume and physical infrastructure, particularly related to RAM capacity."

More Elastic Observability pricing and cost advice

"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."

"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."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Elastic Observability?

Elastic Observability significantly improves incident response time by providing quick access to logs and data across various sources. For instance, searching for specific keywords in logs spanning...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Observability?

Elastic Observability is cost-efficient and provides all features in the enterprise license without asset-based licensing. However, sizing and licensing information could be clearer.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?

Of course, maintenance is necessary, as with any software, requiring updates with the latest features and security enhancements. It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like netw...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

The cost of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is fair and reasonable compared to what we receive in support and packages from VMware.

See all answers

What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

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.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

Our primary use case for VMware Aria Operations for Applications is to enhance application monitoring tasks, allowing us to set up alerts for different components and send them via SMTP to a team d...

See all answers

Comparisons

New Relic vs Elastic Observability

Compared 15% of the time

Sentry vs Elastic Observability

Compared 13% of the time

Dynatrace vs Elastic Observability

Compared 12% of the time

Grafana vs Elastic Observability

Compared 9% of the time

Zabbix vs Elastic Observability

Compared 8% of the time

More Elastic Observability Competitors

Grafana vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 12% of the time

Dynatrace vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 10% of the time

Zabbix vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 7% of the time

Prometheus Group vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 6% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 6% of the time

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Elastic Observability

May 2025

Download Elastic Observability product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations for Applications

April 2025

VMware Aria Operations for Applications report

Download VMware Aria Operations for Applications product report

Also Known As

No data available

Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability

Overview

Elastic Observability is primarily used for monitoring login events, application performance, and infrastructure, supporting significant data volumes through features like log aggregation, centralized logging, and system metric analysis.

Elastic Observability employs Elastic APM for performance and latency analysis, significantly aiding business KPIs and technical stability. It is popular among users for system and server monitoring, capacity planning, cyber security, and managing data pipelines. With the integration of Kibana, it offers robust visualization, reporting, and incident response capabilities through rapid log searches while supporting machine learning and hybrid cloud environments.

What are Elastic Observability's key features?

Economic licensing: Offers cost-effective plans.
Extensive metrics tracking: Helps in comprehensive system monitoring.
Comprehensive logging: Centralizes log data efficiently.
Performance Monitoring: Provides robust APM capabilities.
Integration: Seamlessly integrates with other solutions.
Kibana visualization: Facilitates data visualization and reporting.
Machine learning support: Enables advanced data analysis.
Flexible deployment: Supports various deployment environments.
Rapid log searches: Enhances quick incident response.
Accessibility: Offers extensive online documentation and connector support.

What benefits or ROI should users look for in Elastic Observability reviews?

Stability: Look for consistent performance and reliability.
Compliance: Effective monitoring aids in regulation adherence.
System Security: Enhanced system monitoring and alert management.
Cost-Effectiveness: Evaluate the economic pricing models.
Scalability: Adequate scalability options for growing needs.

Companies in technology, finance, healthcare, and other industries implement Elastic Observability for tailored monitoring solutions. They find its integration with existing systems useful for maintaining operation efficiency and security, particularly valuing the visualization capabilities through Kibana to monitor KPIs and improve incident response times.

Elastic

VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront is a powerful tool for monitoring and analyzing the performance and availability of applications and infrastructure in real-time.

With its comprehensive monitoring capabilities, visualizing and analyzing data becomes effortless. The real-time alerting system ensures timely issue resolution, while scalability and a user-friendly interface provide a seamless experience for smooth operations.

VMware

Sample Customers

PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank

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

Buyer's Guide

Elastic Observability vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

May 2025

Free Report: Elastic Observability vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

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