Nagios Core vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

Nagios and VMware are both solutions in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category. Nagios is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.3, while VMware is ranked #17 with an average rating of 8.8. Nagios holds a 3.2% mindshare in IM, compared to VMware’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of Nagios users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Nagios Core

Read 51 Nagios Core reviews

4,252 Views
3,699 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Read 14 VMware Aria Operations for Applications reviews

2,704 Views
1,379 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Nagios Core

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

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VMware Aria Operations for Applications and Nagios Core compete in application monitoring and management. VMware often has the upper hand due to its flexibility and modern analytics, while Nagios is favored for customization and simplicity.

Features: VMware Aria Operations for Applications includes advanced analytics, real-time performance monitoring, integrated automation, unified visibility, and proactive issue resolution. Nagios Core offers robust alerting, highly customizable monitoring, community-supported extensions, open-source flexibility, and scalability for various environments.

Room for Improvement: VMware Aria Operations for Applications could improve in user interface simplicity, cost efficiency, and scalability for smaller organizations. Nagios Core may need enhancements in documentation clarity, integration with third-party tools, and professional customer support options.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Aria Operations for Applications provides a streamlined deployment process with extensive support and is ideal for complex environments. Nagios Core offers a straightforward deployment model but requires more manual configuration, relying on community-driven support.

Pricing and ROI: VMware Aria Operations for Applications may involve higher upfront costs but delivers substantial long-term ROI through automation and efficiency. Nagios Core, as an open-source solution, presents a lower initial cost with good ROI for those investing time in setup and customization.

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To learn more, read our detailed Nagios Core vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Nagios Core vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

September 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

Nagios Core

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

10th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (13th)

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

17th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (18th), Container Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (14th)

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Nagios Core is 3.2%, down from 3.6% 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
Product	Market Share (%)
Nagios Core	3.2%
VMware Aria Operations for Applications	1.5%
Other	95.3%

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Featured Reviews

Nishith-Vyas

Tech Lead at STL Digital Limited

Valuable reporting and alert system with room for PDF export improvements

The NetEase reporting structure needs improvement, especially the availability report, which is weak. It should be generated automatically with minimal human intervention and should be exportable as a PDF. Besides that, an integrated PDF export feature for reports is necessary. Also, the alert mechanism and graphing mechanism need to be integrated properly into Nagios Core. Currently, integrating these requires advanced Linux knowledge. Integration of more visualization tools like Grafana and Prometheus for better graphing and visualization is also recommended.

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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

"Nagios Core is very configurable. Whatever you want, you can do it."

"Nagios Core integrates with tools like Splunk, Datadog, or Dynatrace. It is usually used as a feed to provide more technical information about devices or hosts to another system."

"Key features include the GUI interface, its notification capabilities, and the real-time reporting."

"We mostly use Nagios Core to integrate with Python and Bash Script."

"The solution's most valuable feature is that it offers proper alerting capabilities."

"Nagios monitors our servers, so we know if anything goes wrong and can solve the problem before it happens."

"The most valuable feature of Nagios Core is the ability to check the availability of the server for network connectivity. Additionally, the interface is good."

"The most valuable feature is the performance parameters of the system."

More Nagios Core pros

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

"I find VMware Aria Operations for Applications to be very stable, and I would rate it a ten out of ten."

"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."

"This solution allows me to have true visibility for any metrics when it comes to my cloud, and private."

"No 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."

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

"People are very pleased with the implementation."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications pros

Cons

"The UI is a little outdated and graphics could be displayed in a better way."

"There is room for improvement in the graphics."

"I would like to see a sensor that shows the traffic of a user and what they're doing on the network."

"Nagios Core could improve by adding a user interface. If you want the user interface you have to use Nagios XI."

"It's not that easy to install the product itself. Also, the UI is a bit hard for regular users to navigate through."

"The dashboard and monitoring features could be improved."

"The mapping is a little hard."

"Would benefit from aggregations if a particular server goes down."

More Nagios Core cons

"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 would like to see integration with Kubernetes cluster and APIs so that you can manage the entire stack."

"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."

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

"The documentation and integration with Kubernetes could be improved."

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

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

"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."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's free."

"We are using the open-source, unpaid version."

"We have saved a lot of time, money, and effort in reducing disaster times, which is owed to Nagios quick alerting."

"The product is cheaply priced."

"The solution is expensive."

"Most the plugin features are free."

"We are using the free version."

"I would rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."

More Nagios Core pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	22

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	10

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Nagios Core?

What I like about Nagios Core is that it helps me ensure everything is running smoothly by checking the status of hosts and services.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nagios Core?

Nagios Core is a free and open-source product. We don't charge for the product itself, but we charge for the man-hour costs related to installation, configuration, ongoing operation, and maintenance.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Nagios Core?

The dashboard should be improved. It's very simple. I don't have a very clear or specific suggestion. You can change the skin of the dashboard, however, it's good for me.

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

Icinga vs Nagios Core

Compared 23% of the time

Nagios XI vs Nagios Core

Compared 15% of the time

Zabbix vs Nagios Core

Compared 13% of the time

Centreon vs Nagios Core

Compared 7% of the time

Checkmk vs Nagios Core

Compared 6% of the time

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Grafana vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 10% of the time

Dynatrace vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 9% of the time

Zabbix vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 7% of the time

Datadog vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 5% of the time

Prometheus Group vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 4% of the time

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Nagios Core

August 2025

Download Nagios Core product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations for Applications

August 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

This is IT infrastructure monitoring's industry-standard, open-source core. Free without professional support services.

Nagios

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

Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel

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

Nagios Core vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

September 2025

Free Report: Nagios Core vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Find out what your peers are saying about Nagios Core vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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