Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Grafana Enterprise Stack vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

Grafana Labs and Broadcom are both solutions in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category. Grafana Labs is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.5, while Broadcom is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.8. Grafana Labs holds a 1.2% mindshare in IM, compared to Broadcom’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Grafana Labs users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.
Grafana Enterprise Stack
Read 13 Grafana Enterprise Stack reviews
  • 1,190 Views
  • 1,166 Comparison Views
92% willing to recommend
VMware Aria Operations for ...
Read 14 VMware Aria Operations for Applications reviews
  • 2,707 Views
  • 1,381 Comparison Views
93% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report
Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

VMware Aria Operations for Applications and Grafana Enterprise Stack compete in application performance monitoring and data visualization. Grafana Enterprise Stack appears to hold the upper hand due to its comprehensive visualization features and flexibility in handling diverse data sources.

Features: VMware Aria Operations for Applications provides deep insights, predictive analytics, and seamless integration with VMware environments. Grafana Enterprise Stack offers powerful dashboard capabilities, extensive plugin support, and broad platform compatibility.

Room for Improvement: VMware Aria Operations for Applications could expand support beyond VMware environments, improve user interface intuitiveness, and enhance integration with non-VMware tools. Grafana Enterprise Stack may need streamlined configuration processes, improved role-based access control, and enhanced support for newer data sources.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Aria Operations for Applications offers easy deployment within VMware ecosystems and access to VMware’s support network. Grafana Enterprise Stack, although possibly requiring more initial setup due to its open-source nature, benefits from detailed documentation and community engagement, with responsive customer service aiding deployment.

Pricing and ROI: VMware Aria Operations for Applications might involve higher setup costs but can deliver significant ROI in VMware environments due to its compatibility. Grafana Enterprise Stack provides flexible pricing models, generally lower initial costs, and high ROI potential for enterprises focusing on scalable visualization solutions, potentially reducing costs through its open-source foundation.

DOWNLOAD THE COMPLETE REPORT
To learn more, read our detailed Grafana Enterprise Stack vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications Report (Updated: September 2025).
Buyer's Guide
Grafana Enterprise Stack vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications
September 2025
Download the complete report
Helped 868,787 peers since 2012

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

Grafana Enterprise Stack
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
13th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Aria Operations for ...
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (17th), Container Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Grafana Enterprise Stack is 1.2%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 1.5%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Grafana Enterprise Stack1.2%
VMware Aria Operations for Applications1.5%
Other97.3%
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Gregory Diana - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers very good charting capabilities and capable of automatically generating dashboards, even for a large number of data points
In terms of what Grafana provides, it just provides the charting tools. Everything else is third-party. It's like Node-RED. Node-RED is free, and you can choose an application, but that application depends on the person who's supporting it. If they decide not to support it, then you're stuck. However, I believe that it can't be improved or changed because people have to make money and make a living from it. Nothing will ever be changed. It depends on the software. Same as Windward. Windward just decided it could not support a large number of customers, so it focused on high-income, low-volume clients. Whereas Node-RED has millions of followers and fantastic support, the same as Grafana. Grafana is partly free, but it's your problem. That's how all these companies work. If you're big and you pay a lot of money, they'll pay attention to you.
Read full review
ToniLindberg - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"Grafana's full observability stack, known as LGTM, is highly valuable."
"It is truly reliable."
"Grafana's most valuable feature is its ability to provide a graphical representation of data collected from various sources."
"The ability to graph actual, live, or on-the-fly activity is valuable; it is an added value to work with Grafana Enterprise Stack and to display results or logs, which are huge in nature, in graphical characters."
"The most valuable feature of Grafana Enterprise Stack is the dashboards."
"The most valuable features of Grafana for data visualization are its ability to create intuitive dashboards and its wide range of visualization options like graphs, charts, and tables."
"Compared to other packages, Grafana Enterprise Stack is user-friendly and easy to configure quickly."
"The dashboards are pretty good."
More Grafana Enterprise Stack pros
"Tanzu itself, integrated with multiple solutions, bestows support and security upon a container platform, especially when it comes to managing open-source container platforms such as Kubernetes."
"It significantly improves application performance management by offering recommendations for resource allocation to avoid wastage or overcommitment."
"The stability of Aria Operations for Applications has improved significantly over the years."
"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."
"The features I find most valuable is the querying and alerting capabilities."
"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."
"VMware comes with a support team, and if you have trouble, you can easily create a ticket, and VMware will help you. Therefore, the best aspect is the support."
More VMware Aria Operations for Applications pros
 

Cons

"They could use more small tutorials to explain a bit about how Grafana works."
"In terms of what Grafana provides, it just provides the charting tools. Everything else is third-party."
"The tool needs to show only fewer updates."
"Integrating AI capabilities for automated self-healing and reduced manual interventions would be valuable."
"I find Grafana really hard to configure. It's difficult to build the dashboard, and it's non-intuitive. In my opinion, it's very difficult to work with Grafana."
"If Grafana Enterprise Stack could display transaction queries in dashboard format similar to New Relic, it would provide more options and capabilities for users."
"I have encountered occasional issues with false inputs or incorrect data in Grafana."
"The solution should include integration with Power BI."
More Grafana Enterprise Stack cons
"The solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor."
"The initial setup should be easier and more seamless."
"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."
"An area for improvement would be more in-depth reporting, such as analyzing disk IO during business hours compared to after hours."
"The documentation and integration with Kubernetes could be improved."
"I would like to see integration with Kubernetes cluster and APIs so that you can manage the entire stack."
"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."
"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."
More VMware Aria Operations for Applications cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I use the tool's free license."
"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."
"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."
"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 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."
report
See which vendors are best for you
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which IT Infrastructure Monitoring solutions are best for your needs.
See recommendations
868,787 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Energy/Utilities Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Grafana Enterprise Stack?
The tool's most valuable feature is real-time monitoring. It helps in securing the application or the node by allowing us to monitor and manage resource consumption during peak times. For instance,...
See all answers
What needs improvement with Grafana Enterprise Stack?
The layout is good, but I think it needs some enhancement based on my experience. I might not have gotten deeper to understand more details, but I believe it needs more improvement. Scalability and...
See all answers
What is your primary use case for Grafana Enterprise Stack?
I have been working for several months with Icinga, but after that, I moved forward to Zabbix, and now I might switch to Grafana Enterprise Stack. I am trying many alternatives to provide monitorin...
See all answers
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...
See all answers
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...
See all answers
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...
See all answers
 

Comparisons

PRTG Network Monitor vs Grafana Enterprise Stack Logo
PRTG Network Monitor vs Grafana Enterprise Stack
Compared 15% of the time
LiveAction LiveNX vs Grafana Enterprise Stack Logo
LiveAction LiveNX vs Grafana Enterprise Stack
Compared 12% of the time
OpsRamp vs Grafana Enterprise Stack Logo
OpsRamp vs Grafana Enterprise Stack
Compared 11% of the time
Lenovo XClarity Orchestrator vs Grafana Enterprise Stack Logo
Lenovo XClarity Orchestrator vs Grafana Enterprise Stack
Compared 10% of the time
Checkmk vs Grafana Enterprise Stack Logo
Checkmk vs Grafana Enterprise Stack
Compared 6% of the time
More Grafana Enterprise Stack Competitors
Grafana vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications Logo
Grafana vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications
Compared 11% of the time
Dynatrace vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications Logo
Dynatrace vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications
Compared 9% of the time
Zabbix vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications Logo
Zabbix vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications
Compared 8% of the time
Datadog vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications Logo
Datadog vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications
Compared 5% of the time
Splunk Observability Cloud vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications Logo
Splunk Observability Cloud vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications
Compared 3% of the time
More VMware Aria Operations for Applications Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Grafana Enterprise Stack
September 2025
Grafana Enterprise Stack reportDownload Grafana Enterprise Stack product report
Buyer's Guide
VMware Aria Operations for Applications
September 2025
VMware Aria Operations for Applications reportDownload VMware Aria Operations for Applications product report
 

Also Known As

No data available
Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability
 

Overview

Grafana Enterprise Stack is a powerful tool for real-time data monitoring and visualization. With its flexible and scalable features, it is widely used for creating dashboards, analyzing metrics, and gaining insights into infrastructure, databases, and applications. 

Its valuable features include powerful visualization capabilities, extensive data source integrations, customizable dashboards, a user-friendly interface, and a robust alerting system. Users appreciate its flexibility, scalability, and ability to integrate with different data sources, making it suitable for a wide range of industries and use cases.

Grafana Labs

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.

Broadcom
 

Sample Customers

1. Uber 2. PayPal 3. eBay 4. Sony 5. Red Hat 6. IBM 7. Cisco 8. Adobe 9. Expedia 10. Booking.com 11. Airbnb 12. LinkedIn 13. Twitter 14. Netflix 15. Spotify 16. Pinterest 17. Slack 18. GitLab 19. Docker 20. Atlassian 21. Salesforce 22. Microsoft 23. Google 24. Amazon 25. Facebook 26. Apple 27. Intel 28. Oracle 29. SAP 30. VMware 31. HP 32. Dell
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
Grafana Enterprise Stack vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications
September 2025
Free Report: Grafana Enterprise Stack vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications
Find out what your peers are saying about Grafana Enterprise Stack vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
DOWNLOAD NOW
868,787 professionals have used our research since 2012.
See our Grafana Enterprise Stack vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications report.
See our list of best IT Infrastructure Monitoring vendors.

We monitor all IT Infrastructure Monitoring reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.