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VMware Aria Automation vs nOps comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

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

nOps
Ranking in Cloud Management
16th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
4.6
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Aria Automation
Ranking in Cloud Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
172
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (7th), Network Automation (6th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (21st), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of nOps is 0.9%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 5.5%, down from 10.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Aria Automation5.5%
nOps0.9%
Other93.6%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Tom Weeks - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Director of Engineering at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Automates savings plan management and improves cost visibility while reducing cloud infrastructure needs
I find it to be a valuable cost-savings tool. Its best features include several things: first, it is hands-off, so I can set it and forget it. I get it set up, and it manages AWS savings plans on my behalf. This frees my team up to work on more valuable work without losing out on valuable discounts. It also provides a dashboard with more detailed insights into cost and AWS cloud costs than what comes out of the box with AWS Cost Explorer. Third, the nOps Kubernetes agent automatically resizes pods based on usage, which allows us to run significantly fewer EC2 instances than we would otherwise. nOps has positively impacted my organization by saving both time and money.
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

"One customer saved 35 percent on their cloud bill, which is pretty significant."
"The solution provides actionable reporting and cost-saving recommendations."
"I find it to be a valuable cost-savings tool; its best features include several things: first, it is hands-off, so I can set it and forget it, and it manages AWS savings plans on my behalf, freeing my team up to work on more valuable work without losing out on valuable discounts."
"nOps smoothly integrated with our AWS infrastructure and achieved significant savings without much intervention from our internal team."
"Since making this shift, we have seen a twenty to thirty percent reduction in the total AWS compute expenditure, which represents a significant win for us."
"It has made it easier for IT to support developers, and our tech support people are happy with it."
"In terms of recovery, it takes only a tenth of the time that's required compared to a human element."
"We monitor the configurations against CIS standards. We run CIS benchmarks and maintain configurations with higher CIS values for each server."
"VMware Aria Automation supports integration with ServiceNow, Kubernetes, and other tools. It is cloud-agnostic, making it a stronger platform than Ansible."
"Fast provisioning and integration with public cloud."
"Interoperability between operating systems with the ability to perform mass automation with triggering Integration with many vendors These features are valuable because I need them to complete the work assigned to me."
"Being able to give provisioning of environments over to our developers and the different teams has enabled them to put up environments faster and also freed up time for the IT team. This is really one of our bread and butter solutions for our developers."
"We have faster delivery times through its automation."
 

Cons

"However, it misses a perfect score because multi-cloud feature parity is still catching up to its gold-standard AWS toolset."
"I suggest improving the heat map capability with the option to use showback values as the x and y-axis."
"The customer support is lacking but still pretty good."
"From the features, I would like to see RDS RIs and maybe better visibility on how the engine is deciding whether to use spot or on demand, to replace the instance or not"
"I would like to see better integration capabilities. Maybe if they could develop libraries within Aria Automation for simpler integration with other third-party solutions, instead of just basic integration."
"For the administrator, it can be a little challenging. For the administrator, there are a lot of moving parts. It is fine once you figure out where the knobs are you need to twiddle, but it can be a challenge to get it up and running."
"Improvements in the API. Make it easier because that's where we tend to struggle when we were working with other groups."
"We have seen couple of bugs."
"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."
"VMware Aria Automation could improve reporting of the policies. They are difficult to customize. We have many policies but they are not able to be modified to what we want."
"Automation: We want to be able to have a lot more preconfigured solutions."
"They can improve on the dashboard representations and the options for non-technical people."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Customers say this solution is costlier compared to its competitors."
"We do plan to see ROI with any new implementation of new technologies being implemented within our environment."
"From the customer perspective, the value was worth it."
"The solution is free of cost."
"The solution has helped to increase infrastructure, agility, speed, and provisioning in the time to market."
"vRealize automation really should be a front door to the whole VMware suite of products."
"The pricing is very high."
"I'm very interested in the integration with Puppet. However, my organization doesn't have the funding for something like Puppet right now. If VMware would integrate that feature set (Puppet) into vRA. That would be very awesome."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
25%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
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

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for nOps?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it was very easy, and it was also brokered by us with the client. I did not purchase nOps through the AWS Marketplace.
What needs improvement with nOps?
While the AWS integration is flawless and deeply mature, I believe the multi-cloud capabilities for platforms such as Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud Platform can sometimes feel a bit less comprehe...
What is your primary use case for nOps?
My primary use case for nOps is automated AWS cost optimization, FinOps compliance, and infrastructure visibility. I use it to instantly surface underutilized resources and automate the management ...
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

nOps - Cloud Optimization Platform
VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Find out what your peers are saying about VMware Aria Automation vs. nOps and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.