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Runecast vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

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Executive Summary

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

Qualys TotalCloud
Sponsored
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (5th), Container Security (8th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (7th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (2nd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (6th)
Runecast
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
46th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
GRC (64th), Vulnerability Management (82nd), Container Security (50th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (39th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (32nd), Compliance Management (23rd)
VMware Aria Automation
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
29th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
172
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (2nd), Configuration Management (11th), Network Automation (7th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) category, the mindshare of Qualys TotalCloud is 2.1%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Runecast is 0.8%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 1.0%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Qualys TotalCloud2.1%
VMware Aria Automation1.0%
Runecast0.8%
Other96.1%
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2859021 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Security Engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Risk-based triage has transformed container security and now prioritizes high-impact threats
The best features Qualys TotalCloud offers currently include managing cloud infrastructure and container security while facing major challenges such as alert fatigue. Traditional vulnerability scanners flag hundreds of CVEs on short-lived Kubernetes containers, some of which have no internet exposure or are gone before we can even triage them. I leverage Qualys TotalCloud to move beyond static CVSS. I use it to implement runtime exposure, correlation risk reprioritization, and shift-left integration. This notifies developers to fix a base image upstream rather than patching live ephemeral instances. In my work with cloud and container security, the biggest operational hurdle was alert fatigue. I use Qualys to shift left from static CVSS severity to context-aware risk prioritization. I correlated raw vulnerability data with real-time risk factors such as public network exposure, active runtime execution, or overly permissive IAM roles. This allows us to immediately drop the priority of isolated containers and escalate lower-severity CVEs that sit on an exposed, high-risk path. We can map these findings directly back to our CI/CD pipelines so developers can patch the root base images upstream. We have drastically cut down the signal-to-noise ratio, saved a lot of manual hours doing triage work, and ensured engineering effort goes directly towards high-impact risk reduction.
Burak AKCAGUN - PeerSpot reviewer
Business Development Manager at Axoft Ukraine
Helps with risk assessments for containers, assessing security, and ensuring container compliance
I rate the overall product a nine out of ten. Customers can conveniently view all companies in a single dashboard if they have different companies. This feature eliminates the need for different solutions and separate installations. Moreover, the solution extends beyond servers, encompassing various platforms such as VMware and Kubernetes. Additionally, end-users can install the solution from their client's perspective.
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 of the features I appreciate is the ability to generate daily reports without relying on anyone else."
"Qualys TotalCloud has positively impacted my organization by providing visibility into the environment."
"Qualys TotalCloud has saved our time by giving us better asset visibility and risk-based prioritization, as it has reduced the time spent manually reviewing CVEs and deciding what to address first."
"The best part I like is the on-demand scans."
"I would definitely recommend Qualys TotalCloud to other customers."
"The most valuable feature is the consolidated information that it provides from various platforms."
"The best feature would be the ability to create policies. It is easy to control and update policies as required."
"The most valuable feature is extensibility."
"Runecast is a good partner for VMware. Once we have installed it, we can see all the problems and issues. It also has VMware knowledge-based articles."
"vRA's Orchestrator allows you to connect to a huge ecosystem with a huge number of third-party systems to automate any and every IT process that you can think of."
"Salt lets you run commands on hundreds of servers at once; and sync up software, tools, and scripts across your infrastructure."
"The most valuable feature is vRA’s ability to integrate whether with additional VMware vRealize suites or other vendors' cloud products."
"I can make a blueprint with an Active Directory deployment. With everything prepared, people can start installing our products."
"I personally spend a lot of time in vRealize Orchestrator, so being able to directly tie into the back end on the APIs, I find that to be what really is the most advantageous thing for me."
"The solution has helped us to increase infrastructure agility, mostly because, in addition to it being able to do its thing on its own, it has tie-ins to other parts of our CICD pipeline. We use Jenkins for our build process which, of course, vRA has plugins for, to be able to integrate with it. We use Chef and there is the Chef build as part of our image that we standardized to deploy, and that can tie in with our section of the pipeline that it does for applications."
"We spent far less time to upgrade and configure all of our hosts."
"The most valuable feature that we have is that it's able to deploy several different operating systems, it's able to deploy whatever we want. We can take a template, spin it up, revise it, save it back off, and be able to have that for other departments. We can have one for our Dev team and one for our research team which has some specific requirements. We can keep track of them and deploy things automatically."
 

Cons

"The cloud licensing unit system is unclear, especially since "units" aren't well-defined."
"Areas that need improvement in every solution include the remediation part. The remediation steps should be simple enough for everyone to understand."
"Qualys TotalCloud needs to enhance its scanning capabilities in the IP domain, as it currently lacks the functionality to resolve IPs to their corresponding domain names."
"A feature improvement could be the inclusion of Windows OS support for container security, as it is currently only supported for Linux."
"In my opinion, what can be improved in Qualys TotalCloud includes pricing and container scanning."
"Enhancing clarity regarding its compliance capabilities would be beneficial, as the current scope is limited in geographic coverage."
"There is room for improvement in vulnerability scanning, particularly for PaaS environments. Currently, Qualys does not have full access to these instances, which limits its effectiveness."
"It is already perfect, but they can bring some newer dashboards and customization options for the dashboard. It would be great to be able to include on-prem assets on the dashboard."
"The product lacks network assessment capabilities. We cannot view our network assets or scan switches, routers, or IPs for vulnerabilities and issues."
"One pain point we have seen is users are able to set their lease expirations to zero, which means the lifecycle management gets disabled."
"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 deployment mechanisms for the initial deployment of the product line lacks the appropriate documentation to give someone who's never used it before... There might be cases where someone wants to go to the website, go to the doc section, and do a step-by-step on how to deploy it. That's really not as brushed-up as other documents I've seen that they have. That would definitely be an improvement on their end."
"I don't find it to be entirely user-friendly. There are a lot of complicated menus within menus within menus. Things move around from version to version."
"Stability has gotten a lot better. However, the vRO aspect, when you have a multi vRA head, is a little bit finicky still. vRO still needs to stay on one appliance and be one application, because, when you have two, you can't see runs on the other one that are happening when you're not logged into that one."
"It's not cheap."
"New versions are quite scalable, but when it comes to managing a Telco environment, it has bottleneck."
"7.5 is not user-friendly, in fact, it's a nightmare. They changed everything on the graphic user interface, the mode where the user interacts with the product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Qualys TotalCloud offers cost-effective licensing flexibility."
"Its price seems higher compared to other tools, but it is worth it. If they could adjust the pricing and make it comparable with other tools, that would be great."
"Qualys TotalCloud offers good pricing that is affordable and competitive with the market. Our partnership also provides us with additional benefits."
"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive, but it offers a premier solution with no headaches."
"The pricing is comparable. It is built into our other product, so I cannot piecemeal it. It is a part of our subscription."
"It isn't cheap, but it's reasonable. It helps us to manage things with very few resources."
"As a middle management member, I do not have direct pricing knowledge, but based on the knowledge from our meetings, its pricing is competitive."
"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive."
"Runecast's pricing is cheaper than that of its competitors."
"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."
"It made the provisioning of the virtual machines easier and faster. We can react more quickly to customers' demands."
"The pricing is very high."
"The pricing for this solution is roughly 20% lower than the competitive products in the market."
"From the customer perspective, the value was worth it."
"As far as value is concerned, it has been essential to our environment. We have been able to deploy VMs quickly and the developers have their own sandbox, so they can spin up and destroy VMs at their own will."
"It is an expensive product. After VMware's acquisition by Broadcom, there was a rise in the price of VMware Aria Automation."
"Customers say this solution is costlier compared to its competitors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
18%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
22%
Construction Company
20%
Government
9%
Educational Organization
8%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise38
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 Qualys TotalCloud?
We purchased Qualys TotalCloud for GCP and Azure as well. It is comparatively better than others regarding pricing. T...
What needs improvement with Qualys TotalCloud?
I am unsure about how Qualys TotalCloud can be improved. I do not have anything else to add about the needed improvem...
What is your primary use case for Qualys TotalCloud?
My main use case for Qualys TotalCloud is telemetry, although I am unsure about the specifics. A quick specific examp...
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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 y...
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 fre...
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 compa...
 

Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan
Runecast Analyzer
VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Our customers tell us regularly how Runecast benefits CIOs, CISOs, and both Security and Operations teams across verticals with a proactive approach that results in major time and cost savings, increased uptime and security standards complianceSuccess Highlight 75-85% troubleshooting time savings – Kiel Municipal Hospital90% time savings on reactive troubleshooting – Near East Bank90% time savings in upgrade planning– FLEXdata80% reduction in monthly incidents and issues – University of St Andrews78,000 EUR/year minimum annual cost savings – Notino100s of hours saved on security compliance with remediation scripts alone – Kiel Municipal Hospital75% time saved on troubleshooting and root cause analysis – de Volksbank
Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Find out what your peers are saying about Wiz, SentinelOne, Microsoft and others in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM). Updated: October 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.