Nagios Core vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

Nagios Core vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

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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

12th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (12th)

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

16th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (16th), Container Monitoring (6th), Cloud Monitoring Software (12th)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Nagios Core is 1.7%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 1.6%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

IT Infrastructure Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Nagios Core	1.7%
VMware Aria Operations for Applications	1.6%
Other	96.7%

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Featured Reviews

Husham Yaqoob

Senior System Administrator at Interactive Group

Monitoring solution provides comprehensive visibility across IT infrastructure

The good thing about Nagios Core is it covers everything. Everything in the IT domain, you can monitor anything. You can even monitor printers, the ports of printers, Core workstations, and storage. You can monitor the workflow Core and the utilization of computes. If you want to grasp everything of your IT equipment on a single interface, you can use Nagios. It's the best one. It provides dashboards, and you can also configure your emails and alerts with it. If something is critical, you can configure it to notify via emails. It has a very handy dashboard, providing live alerts and visibility for everything.

Read full review

Ajay Shukla

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.

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

"We can get real time statistics of our servers which improves our monitoring."

"Nagios Core is a great solution for monitoring pretty much any size of deployment but you do need to know your way around a Linux system to set it up and run it."

"The notifications are definitely one of the most valuable features of Nagios Core. We know what to look for and what to expect when things are down."

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

"We have used this product now for quite some time and we are happy with it."

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

"Nagios doesn't get the respect it deserves; most likely due to the fact that it doesn't have a licensing cost."

"Nagios Core is stable."

More Nagios Core pros

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

"Using Wavefront, we have been able to reduce the complexity of our pipeline."

"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."

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

"Scalability for VMware Aria Operations for Applications is easy to implement and manage."

"It significantly improves application performance management by offering recommendations for resource allocation to avoid wastage or overcommitment."

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

"Wavefront's monitoring tools and visibility into public cloud platforms are competing with the best out there."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications pros

Cons

"Bandwidth monitoring is the pain point for me because Nagios Core does not monitor bandwidth effectively like Cacti does."

"I believe Nagios Core will need to provide an option for big data platforms in the future."

"Nagios Core is not easy to use, so I don't recommend it for everyone."

"We're using the free version, which limits us in terms of the things that we can do. If we had the paid version, a lot of our issues would probably go away. For example, we can't isolate instances that are being built or updated with the production ones. When they're being built, on Nagios, they're showing in red. It'd be nice to be able to partition those off until they're all green, and then we can bring them into the environment. This is probably because we've got the free version and not the paid version. If we went for the paid version, it would probably allow us to do exactly what we want to or remove the restrictions that we have, but if we are able to isolate instances in the free version, it would make life much easier."

"Making it a little easier to configure and set up from the start would help. There are multiple layers that you have to wade through to be able to set it up, to do it the right way, and to get it to do what you want it to do."

"Some of the reporting functionality is a bit basic and configuration is a chore although by the use of NagiosQL this can be made a lot easier."

"It would be nice if the company offered a sales or contract manager that was dedicated to our company so that we would have some sort of link to Nagios, and if we had issues or questions, we'd be able to contact them directly."

"This solution is not scalable at all. If you want to add an AI, or if you wanted to monitor different types of metrics, you won't get the most out of it."

More Nagios Core cons

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

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

"They just need more capability. A few areas still need more enhancements in the technology capability space."

"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 documentation and integration with Kubernetes could be improved."

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

"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."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"Nagios Core is an open source solution, and there are no licensing fees."

"Lessening the price point would be an improvement."

"The solution is expensive."

"Nagios Core is free to use."

"We are using the free version of Nagios Core."

"Most the plugin features are free."

"It's free."

More Nagios Core pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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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902,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Construction 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	24

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

Questions from the Community

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.

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.

What is your primary use case for Nagios Core?

I was a senior system administrator. I've been using Nagios Core for more than ten years now. It can be used to monitor hosts, such as machines, and monitor services of any kind. I'm using it to mo...

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?

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...

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Product Reports

Nagios Core

Download Nagios Core product report

VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Download VMware Aria Operations for Applications product report

VMware Aria Operations for Applications report

Also Known As

No data available

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

Overview

Nagios Core offers a versatile monitoring solution that efficiently manages notifications, reporting, and resource usage. Its open-source architecture provides flexibility and customization options for comprehensive infrastructure health management.

Nagios Core, known for its extensible plugin architecture, proactively enhances infrastructure management with customizable notifications and reliable reporting. Seamlessly integrating various plugins, it offers real-time dashboards and efficient alerting systems for thorough monitoring. Its adaptability and ease of configuration make it popular among users seeking flexible monitoring solutions. However, improvements in the web interface, scalability, performance, and visualization are needed to enhance accessibility. Users seek better alert mechanisms, more robust PDF export features, and simpler setup processes for increased efficiency.

What are the key features of Nagios Core?

Customizable Notifications: Tailor alerts to suit specific needs.
Reliable Reporting: Provides detailed insights into system performance.
Light Resource Usage: Operates efficiently with minimal resource demands.
Extensible Plugin Architecture: Supports a wide range of third-party integrations.
Real-Time Dashboards: Offers instant insights into system health.

What benefits should users expect from Nagios Core?

Flexibility: Allows detailed customization for unique monitoring requirements.
Open-Source Nature: Encourages community-driven enhancements and support.
Integration Capabilities: Facilitates seamless interaction with other tools and platforms.
Adaptability: Supports monitoring across different environments seamlessly.

In many industries, Nagios Core is integral to monitoring infrastructure and services, including cloud servers, applications, and network devices. Users rely on it for issue detection, capacity planning, and maintaining system stability in environments like AWS and on-premise servers. Its capabilities in CPU, memory, and bandwidth monitoring along with alert systems support sectors needing real-time oversight of critical equipment.

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.

Broadcom

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

Nagios Core vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications