Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs VMware Aria Operations comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) and VMware Aria Operations based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Cloud Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs. VMware Aria Operations Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"We haven't faced any problems because Nutanix provides an outside team. We haven't had any issues requiring L3 support, and the L1 and L2 engineers are on-site.""The file server feature in Nutanix is very good, offering a solution-worthy feature that can host files, blocks, and object storage in the same cluster.""One of the solution's greatest strengths is its "Single pane of glass" feature, which allows users to access all pertinent data in one location immediately upon logging in. Additionally, the solution's ease of deployment and mobility are notable aspects that I personally find appealing.""The solution’s ease of use is mind-blowing.""The ease of use is a valuable feature. For us, it's a consistent interface. It's very easy to train our employees on it, and it's a newer generation interface. It's homogeneous, and every product and subset tie together, giving a very similar look to everything.""NCM gives us greater insight into our infrastructure because we have more reporting and alert capabilities. We can get a breakdown of VM efficiency and determine which ones are over-provisioned, constrained, or using up too many resources in an instance.""I like the analytics and the interface. Nutanix is easy to deploy and manage.""The most valuable feature is the ability to automate. Nutanix has made it really easy to automate everything that we do. That's important to me and our organization. We can get more done every day by automating tasks."

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"The last two versions of it, we've gone with the integrated, high-availability built into the product, and that was a welcome change for us. It's even better now not having to have any kind of load-balancer in front of it...""We can detect when, for example, one host is getting hit by a lot of VMs and we can take care of that host. It enables us to add more memory, more CPU, or maybe we just replace the host.""The dashboards are really good. They give you a glimpse of what is really going on in your virtualized environment. The ability to create customized dashboards based on your needs is also great.""VM rightsizing is another very good feature and capacity planning is something else that I like about it.""For project management and new clients, the What-If Analysis is very good. You can use it for workloads. When you are adding new workloads to your platform, it helps you avoid impacting your production.""The capacity planning is one of the most valuable features. That is brilliant.""It helps us by our using the Troubleshooting Dashboard to see if there is contention on the VM that's causing performance issues or if it's a problem with the resources it has or if it doesn't have enough. It helps lower the troubleshooting time on virtual machines.""The most valuable features are the alerts and dashboard, and that the product is simple to use, configure, and upgrade."

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Cons
"Even though it's a lot easier, it could be a bit slicker for the end-users. The ability to create their own blueprints could be without their having to understand the details of what they're trying to do. If they could just tick this, this, this, and this — whatever they need — and it would go spinning those up, that would be better. Now, we still guide them quite a bit.""For Nutanix, there are options to go with different types of hardware vendors for using the AOS operating system. We can deploy it on Dell, Lenovo, or IBM servers. If Nutanix had its own server, it would be good.""The flow and management capabilities of the platform could be improved to handle additional features and functionalities, especially since the company currently uses some other solutions from a competitor.""I consider it a very complete platform, for now, I believe it is very good. It could be advanced and more updated over time. I would like to see updates like the creation of basic applications for monitoring through tables, telephones, external updates, sending manuals, or informational brochures by mail to go hand in hand with the platform and its updates.""It could maybe have better documentation. Nutanix does have really good documentation, but it could have more details in the future.""Our sister company currently uses an outdated database technology, Sybase, which presents challenges in migrating to a newer database. Despite our efforts to encourage them to move to a different database, the company's 25 years of code and data basic make it difficult to do so. We are open to any level of support or guidance that can help us manage the Sybase database, even if it's not a fully managed solution. Direction on how to scale, improve, and optimize tables and queries within Sybase would be greatly appreciated.""I would like to see it be able to apply a category to a project, and then have that category applied to all the VMs that are deployed within a project.""I would like to see a P2V feature like Move or Xtract. The interface for migrating from one VM infrastructure to another is one of the best but going from a physical machine to a Nutanix VM is a bit too challenging."

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"It would break, and you would have to go fix it. Then it would break, and they would have some other guys that knew a bit more about it, and they fixed it.""We would like the default views on the reports for this solution to be improved; at present we have to customize the view before use.""I would say it's slow. The version we have right now is pretty robust in the sense that after you've installed it, and it's been running for awhile - it has to run for at least thirty days or longer. Then, it really gives you back meaningful data.""I wouldn't say that this solution is user-friendly. You need to know a lot of tricks to know how to use it. It's quite buggy and quite slow when it comes to loading.""They need to improve the capacity and infrastructure planning side of things. Also, I would like to see them integrate more stuff, with more detailed monitoring and different cloud providers.""It is sometimes quite hard to use. If I need details, there is a huge amount of information that I need to review. It isn't a three-click solution.""If it could help with calculating on-prem costs, based on their experience, it would help customers determine whether to remain on-prem or move to the cloud.""At the beginning, the stability was not that good. The latest versions are much better."

More VMware Aria Operations Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Nutanix has good central management tools where one guy can manage the entire system. Looking at other systems, I need a guy to manage the servers and another guy to manage the cell network and storage. I need a bigger team for other solutions compared to Nutanix where I can use a small team and reduce my operations to manage the cluster. Sometimes what you hear with this solution is, "It is so expensive," but the cost and benefits that Nutanix has inside are really good."
  • "Some people say that Nutanix is a bit more expensive. However, when we were looking at Nutanix versus Cisco and NetApp before deploying this solution, the prices were very similar. Being a government entity, we got a bit more of a discount on Nutanix so it was a bit cheaper. The time savings after the fact has been really worth it."
  • "Prism Pro is a bit more upfront. It costs a bit more for some of the features that you get. We have four clusters, and two of them don't have Prism Pro because they weren't even available with what we bought. Those two clusters also run well, but they don't have all the features."
  • "It's cost-effective. It's not necessarily cheap, but it's also not inordinately expensive. It comes down to how much you use it to offset some of the costs."
  • "Don't unlicense your Prism licensing. Pro is the strict minimum for real infrastructure. Go with at least Pro and not with the starter. Ultimate was the best choice for me."
  • "I think it can be more cost-effective."
  • "While the product may seem to be more expensive at first, it ultimately pays for itself within a short time frame due to the hours saved on maintenance."
  • "The solution is a bit high in price for what we are receiving as features. I feel they are overcharging us at approximately 25 percent. That is something that they should change."
  • More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Don't overallocate! This means that you don't have to buy many hosts. You can save money that way."
  • "The pricing: It's expensive."
  • "Pricing is good for us. We're non-profit so we get a break on that."
  • "I would like to see a free offering. Cost is always a factor in any sort of line. Obviously, the value added is there and it's worth it."
  • "We have seen ROI in performance. It used to be our company was giving out eight CPUs to all servers. That was bad performance-wise. People were seeing slow compute times for their applications."
  • "Pricing could always be cheaper, but it's acceptable."
  • "vRealize Operations has proved to be a cost effective solution for our big environment."
  • "As we continue to implement it across multiple environments, it reduces costs as well."
  • More VMware Aria Operations Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:For me, the features related to cost savings are the best part of NCM. Of course, the whole product is worth using and when it comes to cloud management, there is a reason why it is favored by so… more »
    Top Answer:When I came into my current organization, NCM was already set up. According to the team that dealt with it, the product was fairly easy to set up. Compared to other products, our IT rates are set up… more »
    Top Answer:Yes, this is a highly effective feature and the rebranding only made things better as they introduced more improvements. You can benefit from Zero coding task automation Automated optimization… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer: In terms of user-friendliness, VMware Aria Operations is one of the best solutions out there. It is not overly complex to set up and you can rely on the technical support to provide you with… more »
    Top Answer:For me, the alerts features are the most unique part of this product, no matter the current name it uses. When they introduced the new version of VMware Aria Operations, they also introduced more… more »
    Ranking
    3rd
    out of 75 in Cloud Management
    Views
    6,103
    Comparisons
    2,047
    Reviews
    41
    Average Words per Review
    896
    Rating
    8.8
    2nd
    out of 75 in Cloud Management
    Views
    7,915
    Comparisons
    4,308
    Reviews
    28
    Average Words per Review
    457
    Rating
    8.3
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Nutanix Cloud Manager Intelligent Operations, Nutanix Cloud Manager Self-Service, Nutanix Cloud Management Cost Governance, Nutanix Cloud Manager Security Central
    VMware vRealize Operations (vROps), vCenter Operations Manager, VCOPS, vRealize Operations
    Learn More
    Overview

    Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is a cloud management tool that drives consistent governance across private and public clouds for its users. The solution brings simplicity and ease of use to managing and building cloud deployments by providing a unified multicloud management that addresses common cloud adoption challenges.

    Nutanix Cloud Manager offers four key value drivers:

    • Intelligent operations: They include monitoring, insights, and automated remediation.

    • Self-service and orchestration: This capacity category of the product includes tools for managing application and infrastructure workloads across multicloud environments.

    • Cost governance: NCM offers cost governance through accurate visibility into public and private cloud metering, cost optimization, and chargeback.

    • Security central: The solution facilitates users' security operations through alert automations with intelligent analysis and compliance controls.

    Nutanix Cloud Manager provides coverage for Nutanix private clouds as well as for VMware's. The solution also supports several popular public cloud providers, including Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). NCM provides additional flexibility for users, as it is also available as a fully managed Software as a Service (SaaS). This product allows companies to benefit from all of Nutanix multicloud self-services, application automation, security compliance, and governance, without depending on Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure.

    Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Features

    Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) has features in the four key categories already mentioned. Some of the main capacities of the solution include:

    • Codeless task automation: This Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) feature allows IT teams to build automation and improve productivity with zero coding required.

    • Automated optimization: This feature detects the performance of VM deviates and raises an anomaly alert automatically without the need for configuration.

    • Capacity usage and scenario analysis: This feature’s runways enable pay-as-you-grow scaling and improves capacity usage with optimizations.

    • Self-service provisioning: This feature allows users to publish blueprints directly to end users through Nutanix Marketplace.

    • Application lifecycle management: Through this NCM feature, users can provision, configure, scale, upgrade, and delete applications across cloud environments as well as provide access to multiple teams at a time.

    • Hybrid multicloud orchestration: This Nutanix Cloud Manager feature allows users to automate the provisioning of hybrid cloud architectures from a single control plane.

    • Showback, chargeback, and budgeting: Nutanix Cloud Manager uses this feature to allow users to automatically create cloud consumption reports, define chargeback policies, and set up budget alerts.

    • Automated right-sizing and intelligent purchases: Through leveraging machine learning (ML) algorithms, users can benefit from the automatic detection of anomalous spending patterns.

    • Security monitoring and remediation: This feature of Nutanix Cloud Manager allows users to utilize over 250 audits for public clouds and over 500 for Nutanix on-premises.

    Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Benefits

    Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) provides its users with several benefits. These include:

    • Nutanix Cloud Manager offers intelligent operations through the automation of operational tasks.

    • NCM gives users self-service opportunities and centralized role-based IT governance, which allows them the freedom to control their processes better.

    • Companies can benefit from cost and security governance with intelligent analysis and regulatory compliance.

    • The product has been made available across all regions in 2022, allowing worldwide access to its services without limitations.

    • NCM is suitable for beginners, as it offers low to no code actions.

    • Nutanix Cloud Manager provides real-time security, ensuring the cloud data of companies is protected at all times.

    Reviews from Real Users

    An IT Operations at an energy/utilities company likes Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) because the product provides visibility, simplifies operations, and saves time and cost.

    Drew P., a network systems administrator at Moda Health, rates NCM highly because the product saves man-hours with excellent speed on outcomes and provides a continuous validation process.

    VMware Aria Operations is a high-ranking virtualization management and cloud management tool that automates and simplifies IT management to the applications it supports. It achieves this through full-stack visibility from physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructure. The product allows users to enable self-driving IT operations management across private, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments. This is conducted with the unified operations platform that delivers continuous performance, capacity and cost optimization, and integrated compliance through artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and predictive analytics.

    VMware Aria Operations Use Cases

    VMware Aria Operations has several use cases, some of which include:

    • Continuous performance optimization: VMware Aria Operations allows users to assure application performance at a minimal cost, facilitated by real-time predictive analytics and artificial intelligence. The product can be used to automatically balance workloads, improve consolidation rations, optimize and rightsize workloads, and avoid contention.

    • Capacity and cost management: VMware Aria Operations can be utilized to reduce cost and improve efficiency with real-time ML-based capacity and cost analytics. The solution uses these tools to visualize cost savings opportunities and accelerate decision-making.

    • Intelligent remediation: This product can also be used to predict, prevent, and troubleshoot issues with actionable insights. Through other VMware integrations, users can streamline and centralize IT operations.

    • Integrated compliance: The solution can be utilized to reduce risk and enforce IT regulatory standards for VMware Cloud through integrated compliance and automated drift remediation.

    VMware Aria Operations Features

    The product has various features which users can utilize. Several of the features that the 2022 version of VMware Aria Operations introduced include:

    • Management pack builder: This feature is a no-code solution that allows users to expand their operations visibility to anywhere they wish. The builder allows users to connect to a data source using an HTTP or Amazon AWS data source, as well as to make API calls, create objects, and build out relationships with other objects in the product.

    • Public cloud basic actions: This is a set of features that allows VMware Aria Operations users to initiate actions automatically via the product's UI for AWS, Microsoft Azure, or GCP CE instances.

    • Rule-based application discovery: Through this new feature of the product, users can easily discover multiple applications running in all or specific areas of infrastructure and view associated resources. This can be achieved through simple user-defined rules, including discovering applications based on tags, object names, and properties.

    • Aria Operations capacity management: This feature allows organizations to view the results of what-if analysis based on their allocation model and specify business hours for capacity calculations.

    • Alerts: This is a set of features that include components called Conditions and Symptoms, which are used to alert different types of issues on the platform.

    • User access management: Through this feature, users can benefit from improved ways to configure in VMware Aria Operations with the introduction of scopes.

    • Support for raw device mapping storage: This feature allows users to get configuration details about their raw device mapping (RDM), such as disk sharing, compatibility mode, and SCSI Bus Sharing.

    VMware Aria Operations Benefits

    VMware Aria Operations brings various benefits to the organizations using it. Among them are the following: 

    • The product helps organizations reduce unplanned downtime and maximize return on investment (ROI) in hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

    • VMware Aria Operations simplifies management for hybrid clouds from migration assessments.

    • Users can benefit from an accelerated journey to VMware Cloud on AWS through this solution.

    • The product can be delivered on premises or as a service, providing flexibility for its users.

    • VMware Aria Operations can increase operational efficiency through monitoring and management features.

    • The solution accelerates decision-making through detailed cost analytics, which is visualized for users' convenience.

    • VMware Aria Operations allows users to both utilize standard compliance templates and create their own custom ones.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Mohamed N., a tech lead VMware support engineer at a tech services company, appreciates VMware Aria Operations because it is easy to use, stable, and support is always available.

    Mojtaba K., a senior system administrator at a comms service provider, values VMware Aria Operations due to the fact that its dashboards give you a glimpse of what is really going on in your virtualized environment.

    Sample Customers
    JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco
    Science Applications International Corporation, Tribune Media, Heartland Payment Systems, Telkom Indonesia, Columbia Sportswear, iGATE, CSS Corp, Angel Broking, Adira Finance, Hipskind, Beiersdorf Shared Services, Innovate Mas Indonesia, Adobe, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi , Join Experience S.A, Borusan Holdings, Department of Transport - Abu Dhabi
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Computer Software Company9%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    University7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company34%
    Educational Organization18%
    Financial Services Firm5%
    Comms Service Provider5%
    REVIEWERS
    Healthcare Company18%
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    Energy/Utilities Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm16%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Government10%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business19%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise58%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise24%
    Large Enterprise59%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business14%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise70%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise69%
    Buyer's Guide
    Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs. VMware Aria Operations
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs. VMware Aria Operations and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is ranked 3rd in Cloud Management with 72 reviews while VMware Aria Operations is ranked 2nd in Cloud Management with 360 reviews. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is rated 8.8, while VMware Aria Operations is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) writes "An intuitive and easy-to-learn product that saves cost and time". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware Aria Operations writes "It has good stability, but the report-generating feature needs improvement". Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is most compared with vCloud Director, Morpheus, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), OpenNebula and VMware Aria Automation, whereas VMware Aria Operations is most compared with VMware Aria Automation, VMware vSphere, IBM Turbonomic, Veeam ONE and ServiceNow IT Operations Management. See our Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs. VMware Aria Operations report.

    See our list of best Cloud Management vendors and best Virtualization Management Tools vendors.

    We monitor all Cloud Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.