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NetBrain vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 6, 2025

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

NetBrain
Ranking in Network Automation
7th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Network Troubleshooting (18th)
VMware Aria Automation
Ranking in Network Automation
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
172
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (3rd), Configuration Management (7th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (21st), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Network Automation category, the mindshare of NetBrain is 7.5%, down from 13.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 4.2%, down from 9.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Aria Automation4.2%
NetBrain7.5%
Other88.3%
Network Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Deborah Gamelin - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President at Asset Track for Cloud, LLC
Good monitoring and troubleshoot capabilities, improves overall network traffic visibility
In my organization, we had 130,000 network devices that needed to be brought into the solution and mapped. NetBrain can handle the scale but the engineers that manage those devices have to go in and update all of them to allow NetBrain permission to poll them. It can get a little stressful for everybody when you're trying to roll out new stuff when you've got other issues that have to be addressed with other devices. In some cases, our devices had no automation at all. One example is the Cisco 3650. Right now, if you went through the inventory list, you see that we have different versions running. Some are on one version, whereas others are on another version. The problem with upgrading them is that they need to be done overnight because we don't want to disrupt any network traffic during business hours. Consequently, it could take us years to upgrade the versions before we can even get them onto these new tools. This may be an internal issue but it's a big one when you have a lot of devices. Even if you had 10,000 devices, it's still an issue. You have to consider the compatibility of the device against the tool, and being able to use certain commands to upgrade it.
VasilisGiannitsiotis - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT at ITSolutions
Automation has streamlined complex financial workflows but still needs more intuitive orchestration
Something to improve in VMware Aria Automation would be related to VCF 9, as I do not know what it is trying to bring because they exposed it as the solution of everything. So VCF 9 will bring VCF Automation and VCF Operations, the new product line of VMware. I have not seen what this brings or what else it includes. Maybe in the area of vRealize Orchestrator, this would be beneficial because VRO can do everything. Perhaps a more user-friendly way to use that tool would be helpful because the possibilities there are endless. I am looking for more user-friendly navigation in VMware Aria Automation.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"NetBrain is faster, better and level sets the engineering technical sets."
"Other advice to users considering the solution would be: go with NetBrain."
"Chain management is a good feature. I don't get it on other solutions."
"Enables maps to be drawn out."
"NetBrain is very good when it comes to network mapping, as it looks for different assets within the network available, so router, firewall, applications, et cetera, and it gives you the full mapping, asset mapping along with the full range including the firmware software update and all those things."
"This tool is exactly what we wanted and needed."
"This product has good network monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities."
"Once it's up and running and you don't have the strange requirements I had, and you just want some basic maps, it'll work."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to see both compliance and vulnerabilities in a dashboard view."
"The initial setup was straightforward. It's easy to deploy."
"The product’s most valuable feature is its ability to provide environmental security."
"It's much more stable than the highest available variant."
"We have given internal IT developers the ability to self-provision VMs for development and testing, which has drastically increased their efficiency and increased the communication and transparency between IT development and IT operations."
"Preparation of Hybris Commerce HY300 training laboratory environments and Hybris Expert Services demo infrastructure went from days of effort down to hours."
"Another valuable feature is the flexible user interface. They can manage all of the servers, the full lifecycle of VMs, on one screen."
"vRA is user-friendly. It has the same layout and walk-through GUI, similar to other VMware products."
 

Cons

"The IP interface brief isn't consistent."
"Licensing is based on a per-device basis, which means that it can get very expensive if you have a large number of devices."
"It would be nice if the setup was a little simpler. Also, if the solution could provide more training materials for new people coming into our company so they can quickly learn how to use the functionalities."
"It's okay on the value, a bit expensive for just maps, but makes it a lot easier to see things visually and take it from there."
"When I used the installed product before, I wasn't very satisfied with the support."
"Each device needs to be configured to allow NetBrain to poll for the information it needs, which can be very time-consuming for a large network."
"Netbrain must get AWS functionality done."
"If you're comparing NetBrain as an NDR, I would rate it as a four or five, however, NetBrain has a different aspect of looking at things within the network."
"I would like to see more integration to do things like DR, from a court perspective."
"The infrastructure part and VM reconfigure need improvement so that the end user can smoothly perform all the tasks which they are directly performing on the endpoints."
"As with all recent VMware products, more focus needs to be done on QA. I encountered far too many bugs for an enterprise product."
"It's not a smooth upgrade process. For a DTA environment, which is very simple, it is a smooth process, but for our production environment, which is quite enhanced and has a lot of dependencies, it's not easy at all, and it results in a lot of errors... It takes a lot of retries to upgrade which ends up being costly."
"The flexibility can hurt sometimes, as there are so many ways to accomplish the same task."
"The online documentation is lackluster at best."
"The setup is difficult. You need a technical person to help you set it up."
"It's not cheap. It would be more expensive to get an alternative though because we would have to buy the extras for it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive, but less expensive than some of the competition and worth the price."
"Licensing is based on a per-device basis, which means that it can get very expensive if you have a large number of devices."
"It is pricey for what you get."
"Better pricing is always handy, but I feel it's at the right price point."
"The cost of the solution is reasonable for us. Although it is relatively high, we prioritize stability and integration over cost."
"The solution is free of cost."
"The pricing is very high."
"This is an expensive product and the high price is starting to become an issue for us."
"It is an expensive product. After VMware's acquisition by Broadcom, there was a rise in the price of VMware Aria Automation."
"The pricing for this solution is roughly 20% lower than the competitive products in the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise131
 

Questions from the Community

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What's the difference between VMware vRA (automation) and vROps (operations)?
vROP is a virtualization management solution from VMWare. It is efficient and easy to manage. You can find anything you need from the software interface. It provides complete visibility over applic...
Is there any way to try VMware Aria Automation for free?
When it comes to VMware Aria Automation, you have three choices for free runs: Hands-on Lab (HOL) Advanced lab A free trial I cannot describe in detail the second and third options as my company ...
Which sectors can benefit the most from VMware Aria Automation?
I was looking at VMware Aria Automation case studies recently and I got the impression that three main kinds of companies were using it most often: Social organizations Financial institutions and ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CompuCon, TD Ameritrade, Move Inc.
Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Find out what your peers are saying about NetBrain vs. VMware Aria Automation and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,858 professionals have used our research since 2012.