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Nagios XI vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

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 XI
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
11th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
21st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (15th), Server Monitoring (7th)
VMware Aria Operations for ...
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
14th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (18th), Container Monitoring (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Cloud Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Nagios XI is 3.9%, up from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 2.1%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Aria Operations for Applications2.1%
Nagios XI3.9%
Other94.0%
Cloud Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Emmanuel Appiah Boateng - PeerSpot reviewer
Network and Security Engineer at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
Simplifies setup and requires user interface enhancement
Nagios XI is easy to install, which sets it apart from other open-source solutions I've tried. Typically, setting up a monitoring system on Linux involves cloning files from GitHub, building it, and installing many dependencies, but with Nagios XI, it wasn't like that. Nagios XI simplifies our setup and reduces the time spent configuring monitoring tools.
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

"Our infrastructure is now under monitoring proactively and we don't have to wait for complaints from the customers or internal operation team to inform regarding any issue with the service."
"The alerting system is very effective."
"The Script Module in Nagios is really easy to use and is really cost efficient."
"It is an open-source platform with valuable features for performance and stability."
"It's great for monitoring IT services infrastructure."
"All of them, but mainly: Highly-efficient server performance monitoring engine Configuration wizards Infrastructure management Configuration snapshot."
"The technical support is good."
"Nagios XI helped me to draw the network and check for system failures."
"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."
"Wavefront gives us the complexity we need, instead of spending time coming up with a nice dashboard from some other means, or just creating and coding our own app."
"Scalability for VMware Aria Operations for Applications is easy to implement and manage."
"The solution is great for virtualization and preparing the infrastructure in Tanzu to test products. It's very fast and has good visibility."
"People are very pleased with the implementation."
"The features I find most valuable is the querying and alerting capabilities."
"I gladly recommend VMware Aria Operations for Applications because it is cost effective and has commendable AI response capabilities."
 

Cons

"I would like to be able to extend it to all of our data centers, whether they are in the cloud or not. It would be helpful if I could connect everywhere."
"The PNP4Nagios plugin not working easily with XI is an issue for me, because some open source monitoring plugins do not work out of the box. But in the end, you learn to live with it."
"As it is open-source, it is not user-friendly. Open-source software is usually not user-friendly."
"There's room for improvement in the visibility, and in the ability to extract information. Stuff like this should be more simple."
"Nagios XI doesn't provide scripting. For example, if we have built up multiple IPX tunnels from a base location to a data center location and want to monitor or trigger an alert if the tunnel goes down, Nagios XI does not automatically send alerts notifying us that the tunnel is down."
"The important separation between Interface and Core to maintain historical plugins and methods generate complexity that makes Nagios unusable for repeat work."
"Improve the documentation, examples, and best practices, therefore users can understand how to do things."
"Nagios provides most of the features by default, however to add more services to it, it requires additional plugins which require little effort on administrative end."
"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 solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor."
"They just need more capability. A few areas still need more enhancements in the technology capability space."
"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."
"The support from VMware is not very helpful. This is because you always receive many questions from the support service but few actual solutions."
"The main problem I have is that the license cost is very high."
"The initial setup should be easier and more seamless."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Nagios Core does not have any payment, but Nagios XI requires payment for the license."
"Licensing costs are reasonable."
"For our country in North Africa, it's expensive and we could purchase another solution for that price. But it's a reasonable price if we're speaking in international terms."
"The pricing is really cost efficient. The licensing is perpetual and can be renewed very easily."
"This solution is very expensive, at approximately $5,000 USD when I purchased it, which is why I haven't upgraded my version in several years."
"Nagios XI is open source."
"Nagios XI is an expensive solution."
"The pricing is high with separate licensing for the product and support."
"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."
"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."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nagios XI?
The pricing for the Nagios XI product is good and better than other solutions. I would give it a four or five.
What needs improvement with Nagios XI?
The user interface needs improvement. Many tools have poor user interfaces, making them hard to manage and navigate.
What is your primary use case for Nagios XI?
I normally use Nagios XI for our servers. It's not particularly used for network equipment, however, I use it for monitoring our server performance, including CPU, memory, data, and services runnin...
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

Nagios has over one million users globally, including AOL, DHL, McAfee, MCI, MTV, Yahoo!, Universal, Toshiba, Sony, Siemens, and JPMorgan Chase.
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 Nagios XI vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
914,109 professionals have used our research since 2012.