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Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.0
Nutanix Cloud Manager enhances efficiency and reliability, saving costs by optimizing workloads and reducing hardware and operational tasks.
Sentiment score
7.4
VMware Aria Automation enhances efficiency, reduces workload, decreases VM creation time, improves productivity, and positively impacts business operations.
Anything that reduces bandwidth and reduces the brain work that our teams have to do to maintain systems across all environments is time-saving and cost-saving.
The biggest return on investment for me when using this product is the fast deployment and the rapid integration and migration without impacting our operations during the migration.
Playbooks and automation definitely freed up engineer time. This allows us to focus on other projects and not have to get hands-on, reducing operational costs.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.2
Nutanix Cloud Manager's support is praised for quick response, knowledgeable staff, proactive solutions, and exceptional customer service worldwide.
Sentiment score
6.7
VMware Aria Automation's support is responsive and knowledgeable but sometimes inconsistent; premium plans offer faster resolutions.
There is a feature that allows you to escalate the call.
The handoff with support and the knowledge of the support engineer is significantly better than experience with other vendors.
We have easier access to high-level engineers compared to VMware, where you have to navigate multiple channels for support.
We never had major issues to report or request support.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Nutanix Cloud Manager offers scalable, flexible, and automated management of diverse IT environments, enhancing performance and integration capabilities.
Sentiment score
7.5
VMware Aria Automation is praised for its scalability, supporting large enterprises effectively with easy expansion and robust performance.
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) scales well.
The key aspects include mix-match hardware and hyper-converged infrastructure, combining compute, storage, and network in a single platform.
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) has not had any issues scaling with the growing needs of my company.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Nutanix Cloud Manager is praised for stability with minimal downtime, self-maintenance, and reliability, suitable for critical applications.
Sentiment score
6.8
VMware Aria Automation is stable, with occasional issues during integration, upgrades, or rare service failures, generally efficiently resolved.
We've never had any downtime related to the Nutanix product itself.
I would rate the stability a nine out of ten.
The stability and reliability of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) have been excellent.
 

Room For Improvement

Nutanix Cloud Manager needs enhanced cloud platform support, improved efficiency, streamlined management, and better third-party integration and usability.
Users seek improved VMware Aria Automation integration, streamlined UI, enhanced documentation, and better cloud service pricing and interoperability.
Our primary reason for choosing Nutanix was for mission-critical applications and Kubernetes.
Quick resolution of disconnection issues and errors in plugins is crucial.
If there are licensing errors, for example, being told I have 96 cores licensed but Nutanix Flow not licensed despite having assigned units, it complicates things unnecessarily.
It operates for both of my products, however, as a product, it is complicated to integrate and automate with other products.
 

Setup Cost

Nutanix Cloud Manager provides flexible pricing and cost-effectiveness, appealing to diverse budgets, with discounts often in government sectors.
VMware Aria Automation is cost-effective for cloud stability and integration, though pricing and licensing models can be confusing.
It's not cheap, but there are savings and return on investment when coming from a non-Nutanix shop.
In comparison, Nutanix's pricing is significantly higher than that of other setups.
While VMware costs depend on ESXi hypervisor pricing, the AHV hypervisor for Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is free.
 

Valuable Features

Nutanix Cloud Manager offers a simple interface, robust automation, centralized management, and enhanced data protection for efficient IT operations.
VMware Aria Automation streamlines multi-cloud operations, enhancing efficiency and agility with automation, customization, and intuitive user capabilities.
It's easy to control resources and govern the resources, and it frees up support to focus on other things without having to help developers.
I would approximate the cost savings to be in the 20% to 25% range since we can optimize our resources and avoid the need to purchase more hardware or reuse resources in the infrastructure from one implementation.
The importance of faster outcomes for their environment is significant; for example, when I delivered the Disaster Recovery solution, we included automation for auto-configuration of VMs and resizing of VMs, which replaced many tasks that were previously done manually.
It helps us automate the workflow of creating many VMs and the TensorFlow key method.
We have strong regulations for maintaining compliance and mitigating risks with this product.
 

Categories and Ranking

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)
Ranking in Cloud Management
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
107
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (4th), Virtualization Management Tools (2nd), Cloud Cost Management (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (7th)
VMware Aria Automation
Ranking in Cloud Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
171
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (6th), Network Automation (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (16th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is 5.3%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 9.8%, down from 11.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)5.3%
VMware Aria Automation9.8%
Other84.9%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Kumargaurav Kadam - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers centralized management, cost-effectiveness, and scalability
The licensing is much cheaper than other competitors such as VMware, Cisco UCS, or Microsoft Hyper-V for on-premises data centers. It is very user-friendly and can be managed through Prism Central, a centralized console that allows management of multiple clusters. Due to the recent conversion from VMware to Broadcom, Broadcom has increased their prices five times the existing rates. Most customers are transferring to Nutanix infrastructure because it is scalable, reliable, and performance-focused. The main differentiator from competitors is its cost-effectiveness, and customers have been running and upgrading their technologies for 10 to 15 years. In terms of client satisfaction, performance, upgrades, or protection against ransomware attacks and vulnerabilities, they are regularly releasing patches and upgrading the system. These activities contribute to customer satisfaction and differentiate them from competitors.
Le Quang Long - PeerSpot reviewer
Significantly streamlined operations with good automation that helps with simplifying workflows
It helps me build a big catalog and provide it to my end users. It helps us automate the workflow of creating many VMs and the TensorFlow key method. I do not meet many people to operate it live beforehand. It operates for both of my products, but as a product, it is complicated to integrate and automate with other products.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
32%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise64
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise130
 

Questions from the Community

Which set of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) features do you find to be the most useful?
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 m...
Are the setup process and further maintenance of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) difficult?
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 u...
Is Nutanix Cloud Manager’s Intelligent Operations feature effective?
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 Tic...
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

Nutanix Cloud Manager Intelligent Operations, Nutanix Cloud Manager Self-Service, Nutanix Cloud Management Cost Governance, Nutanix Cloud Manager Security Central
VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco
Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs. VMware Aria Automation and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.