Nagios Core vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

Nagios and Broadcom are both solutions in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category. Nagios is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.7, while Broadcom is ranked #16 with an average rating of 8.8. Nagios holds a 2.4% mindshare in IM, compared to Broadcom’s 1.6% 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

4,463 Views
3,526 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Read 14 VMware Aria Operations for Applications reviews

3,211 Views
1,638 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: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Nagios Core vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

January 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

11th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (10th)

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 (19th), Container Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (15th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Nagios Core is 2.4%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 1.6%, 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	2.4%
VMware Aria Operations for Applications	1.6%
Other	96.0%

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

"I like that it's very simple to install, easy to manage and deploy, and easy to use for monitoring."

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

"It has made the life of the network operations staff more proactive in managing the resources of the infrastructure. It prevents disasters long before they can take place."

"Nagios Core is stable."

"The reporting structure and the feature set are valuable to me."

"I like the way the solution sends alerts and how it keeps on escalating them."

"Monitoring with Nagios Core is helpful because it provides immediate alerts if something goes down, such as a server, or wireless router, or if there's a cable break. This allows us to respond promptly to any issues."

"I would rate the overall solution ten points out of ten."

More Nagios Core pros

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

"VMware Aria Operations for Applications offers significant features such as real-time statistics, the ability to identify possible issues within the VM environment, and helpful heat maps."

"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."

"People are very pleased with the implementation."

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

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

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

"No issues with stability."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications pros

Cons

"The dashboard and monitoring features could be improved."

"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."

"The initial setup process could be easier."

"It is a bit slow due to latency."

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

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

"The tool needs to improve the integrations."

"The NetEase reporting structure needs improvement, especially the availability report, which is weak."

More Nagios Core cons

"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 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."

"They could make it more easy to plug-in data so that a nontechnical person will be able to use it, like accountants or finance people. That way they don't have to ask us."

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

"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."

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

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"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."

"Nagios Core is free to use."

"The product is cheaply priced."

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

"It's free."

"The solution is expensive."

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 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."

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

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Government

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

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 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

January 2026

Download Nagios Core product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations for Applications

December 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.

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

January 2026

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: January 2026.

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