Nagios Core vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

Nagios and Broadcom are both solutions in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category. Nagios is ranked #16 with an average rating of 8.8, while Broadcom is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.8. Nagios holds a 1.6% mindshare in IM, compared to Broadcom’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of Nagios users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Nagios Core

Read 51 Nagios Core reviews

8,414 Views
5,722 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Read 14 VMware Aria Operations for Applications reviews

7,303 Views
4,017 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: August 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Nagios Core vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

August 2026

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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

16th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (19th)

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

14th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (18th), Container Monitoring (6th), Cloud Monitoring Software (13th)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Nagios Core is 1.6%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 1.5%, 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 (%)
VMware Aria Operations for Applications	1.5%
Nagios Core	1.6%
Other	96.9%

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

"Alert calls occur anytime a service goes down or a matrix is difficult and that helps us to quickly restore service and transfer work."

"Using Nagios, I'm managing more than 1000 services, which involves the following operating nodes: IBM AIX, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, HP-Unix, Windows enterprise-grade OS, Cisco router/switches, FortiGate and WatchGuard firewalls, APC UPS systems, and many more."

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

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

"Other products are good but from the configuration point of view Nagios is really very lightweight. The price is really good in my opinion. Another important thing is that my Nagios engine still works with Dual core 8GB ram for the last 10 years."

"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 scalability of Nagios Core is very good, we can add as many hosts as we like, and we can work with the concept master and client, making it very scalable and easy to use."

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

More Nagios Core pros

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The solution provides single-console management for multiple VMware environments and cloud integrations, whether hybrid, private, or public cloud."

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

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."

"It would be nice if it was hosted in cloud. Also, they need to improve the graphs."

"t was a little hard to get our setup represented in the configuration."

"Application level monitoring is limited."

"Nagios Core can improve the graphical interface, it would make things a little easier."

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

"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."

"The initial setup was complex, mainly because it was in Linux and had many packages that we're not used to."

More Nagios Core cons

"The initial setup should be easier and more seamless."

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

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

"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."

"The support from VMware is not very helpful. This is because you always receive many questions from the support service but few actual solutions."

"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."

"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."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Nagios Core is a cheap solution."

"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."

"Most the plugin features are free."

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

"The Nagios Core (PNP4Nagios + Core) is free and can be setup by Netadmin within a few hours. The only additional cost is the cloud server."

"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."

"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."

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

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Construction Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Construction Company

Comms Service Provider

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.

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 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...

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?

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

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Nagios Core

August 2026

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Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations for Applications

July 2026

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

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

Buyer's Guide

Nagios Core vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

August 2026

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

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