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Groundcover Observability Platform vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Groundcover Observability P...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
47th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (41st), AI Observability (25th)
VMware Aria Operations for ...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
18th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (14th), Container Monitoring (6th), Cloud Monitoring Software (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Groundcover Observability Platform is 0.3%. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 1.4%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Aria Operations for Applications1.4%
Groundcover Observability Platform0.3%
Other98.3%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

EO
Software Engineer at FairMoney
Centralized observability has improved transaction monitoring and now reduces errors through faster troubleshooting
Groundcover Observability Platform is already very vast, and improving it requires proper training for even a software developer to be able to use it. A person in tech needs training to navigate the system. The UI is better, but it can be improved to include a more intuitive design that easily explains itself to users so that navigation is simpler. Many features are hidden, and you need someone who is experienced with the platform to direct you on how to view certain information or complete specific tasks and walk you through the process. It would be better if Groundcover focused more on simplifying the user interface and improving human-computer interactions of the dashboard to make it so easy for a new developer or specialist to navigate and get what they need quickly. Querying data from Groundcover is not easy if you do not have specific information. You cannot perform a wildcard search in the text box. If you go to the log and enter an error message, it will not bring any results for you. You must first specify the workload or pods you are looking for, then enter the error. You need to add tags and put in your strings to be able to search for your particular logs or errors. If you just put a wildcard search in the text box, it will not work and will appear as if there are no logs that relate to that search, when in reality the logs exist. Making it easier for developers, users, and specialists using Groundcover to navigate and get what they need without the help of an experienced person walking them through is very important. This improvement is not about functionality but more about making navigation easier.
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

"We switched to Groundcover Observability Platform primarily because of the difficult query syntax in our previous solution, and we chose Groundcover for their business model as they don't charge based on log storage, they provide the infrastructure, and from a security perspective, the data stays in-house, which wasn't the case with our previous tool."
"Troubleshooting is very fast compared to manual investigation or using the other forms of logging that we used to have, and downtime and errors have decreased because we are able to see our performance and workload pods performing better, increase CPU and memory resources as soon as usage goes above the threshold, and make our application more scalable and improve performance metrics, reducing the number of errors in the application by at least 70%."
"Groundcover Observability Platform has impacted my organization positively as it is the primary way we use observability in our company, so it has a significant impact."
"Groundcover Observability Platform scales effectively with our organization's growth as we add new environments and everything works great, and the migration from our old product went very smoothly, allowing us to deprecate it rather quickly."
"It has a familiar interface, which makes it easy to get started."
"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."
"We haven't had any issues with stability."
"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."
"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."
"This solution will give you a single pane of glass for everything, and centralized monitoring."
"The most valuable aspects of the solution are its ease of use and its ease of implementation."
 

Cons

"I would assess the stability and reliability of Groundcover Observability Platform as an eight out of ten; while I haven't experienced issues personally, I am aware they occasionally encounter some challenges."
"I think it would be beneficial to see the body and content of API calls in the traces as a possible improvement."
"Querying data from Groundcover is not easy if you do not have specific information."
"An area for improvement would be more in-depth reporting, such as analyzing disk IO during business hours compared to after hours."
"The implementation is a long process that should be improved."
"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."
"So far, the solution's learning curve has been pretty high."
"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."
"The initial setup should be easier and more seamless."
"The main problem I have is that the license cost is very high."
"The support from VMware is not very helpful. This is because you always receive many questions from the support service but few actual solutions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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 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."
"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
37%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Recreational Facilities/Services Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Construction Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Groundcover Observability Platform?
Groundcover Observability Platform is already very vast, and improving it requires proper training for even a software developer to be able to use it. A person in tech needs training to navigate th...
What is your primary use case for Groundcover Observability Platform?
My main use case for Groundcover Observability Platform is for application logs, insights, workload observability, and visibility.
What advice do you have for others considering Groundcover Observability Platform?
Groundcover Observability Platform is a good platform and very good to use. I would rate this review as highly positive.
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

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
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 Groundcover Observability Platform vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications and other solutions. Updated: July 2026.
909,948 professionals have used our research since 2012.