SolarWinds Network Automation Manager vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

SolarWinds and VMware are both solutions in the Network Automation category. SolarWinds is ranked #15, while VMware is ranked #3 with an average rating of 7.8. SolarWinds holds a 3.9% mindshare in NA, compared to VMware’s 9.0% mindshare. Additionally, 50% of SolarWinds users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of VMware users who would recommend it.

SolarWinds Network Automati...

Read 2 SolarWinds Network Automation Manager reviews

501 Views
336 Comparison Views

50% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Automation

Read 170 VMware Aria Automation reviews

8,330 Views
1,416 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Network Automati...

VMware Aria Automation

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 6, 2025

VMware Aria Automation and SolarWinds Network Automation Manager are competitors in the network automation domain. VMware Aria Automation is preferred for its competitive pricing and customer support, while SolarWinds Network Automation Manager stands out for its advanced features.

Features: VMware Aria Automation is recognized for seamless integration, flexibility, and scalability, enhancing business automation processes. SolarWinds Network Automation Manager offers robust network management with advanced alerting and reporting functions, providing detailed network insights beneficial for comprehensive monitoring.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Aria Automation provides a straightforward deployment experience with responsive customer support for smooth implementation. SolarWinds Network Automation Manager also offers user-friendly deployment, supported by extensive documentation that aids in the process. While VMware is noted for its supportive team, SolarWinds benefits from an extensive knowledge base.

Pricing and ROI: VMware Aria Automation is cost-effective, contributing positively to ROI, appealing to cost-conscious buyers. SolarWinds Network Automation Manager requires higher setup costs but offers extensive features that ensure strong ROI for businesses seeking comprehensive network management.

To learn more, read our detailed SolarWinds Network Automation Manager vs. VMware Aria Automation Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Network Automation Manager vs. VMware Aria Automation

July 2025

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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

SolarWinds Network Automati...

Ranking in Network Automation

15th

Average Rating

5.6

Reviews Sentiment

8.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (108th)

VMware Aria Automation

Ranking in Network Automation

3rd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

170

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Management (3rd), Configuration Management (7th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (17th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Network Automation category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Network Automation Manager is 3.9%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 9.0%, down from 12.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Automation

Featured Reviews

Giulio Valeri

Owner at SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS SRL

Threat detection failures, poor technical support, and expensive

We use the solution to manage all of our customer's systems. We monitor and decide if everything is okay and if not, we do changes when needed. For example, if there is a need to change the antivirus software we can automate the process and install the new one. There are scripts within the software…

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Le Quang Long

Cloud Engineer at BIDV - Ngân hàng TMCP Đầu tư & Phát triển Việt Nam

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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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The installation is easy."

"The solution offers so many great resources, it makes them a powerhouse in the market."

"Upgrades have been extremely simple with their Lifecycle Manager product."

"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."

"The most valuable feature is the portal where you can assign permissions to specific people to request specific items in the catalog and allow them to provision things for themselves. Or it enables them to request different services that you can create through vRO and vRA."

"The automation function itself and how to group and publish those groupings is quite easy for customers to learn with Aria."

"vRA provides that single pane of glass for our cloud tenants to deploy, monitor, access, and manage their VMs/guest operating systems."

"If you do a deployment for a proof of concept, it is simple."

"The most valuable feature is, instead of doing the VMotion manually, we have automated everything with a script, using vRealize. That means I don't need to think about things like compatibility. The system will do everything for me and just give me a report."

"Having an enterprise service catalog and being able to automate various parts of our infrastructure are among the most important components."

More VMware Aria Automation pros

Cons

"The price could be a bit lower."

"We did not like SolarWinds because it was not able to communicate between UPSA and our accounting system. They should have better integration."

"I would also like to see them streamline the install. It's split between Windows and Linux appliances, and it would be easier if it was all appliances. I think they're going that way."

"Its configuration process could be better."

"I don't find the solution to be intuitive and user- friendly. The GUI is really complicated. Tracking down logs and errors is very hard. Then, it takes a specialized JavaScript person to build. Also, I'm not sure how the upgrades are going now, but they definitely need to evolve the upgrade process. Finally, the logs are very generalized. Giving more of an indicator of what's actually going wrong, rather than just a generic error code, would help."

"There is an area of improvement. For example, you are migrating from a customer's existing data center to a new target data center. To facilitate this transition, you'll initially need to evaluate the customer's aging hardware hosting VMware, which is nearing the end of its operational life. The customer expresses the intention to upgrade to a newer version, necessitating an overhaul of everything in the new data center. As a Systems Integrator (SI), consultant, or architect, your recommendation would be to acquire the latest hardware with a specified configuration and then install VMware on top of it. However, there's a crucial aspect related to the infrastructure requirements for VMware to run seamlessly on that hardware. If there's an opportunity to potentially reduce these infrastructure prerequisites, it would be highly beneficial."

"in general, it took us a long time to get it off the ground. We had a lot of issues upfront and we determined that we just needed to scrap it. I think we scrapped it two or three times before we actually got it built the way we wanted, and we're still not where we need to be. We have had downtime. There have been some issues, but we're also two iterations behind on version."

"One of the features that's a struggle today is some of the public cloud extensibility. Some of the plugins that are native to vRA and vRO, I'd like to see them come out earlier for vRO. I understand that in vRA, the plugins are a little bit more polished because the VRA is the GUI. But we'd like to see them released earlier in vRO, prior to a GUI being released. Azure, for example, is a public cloud provider but we have some instability issues with the plugin in vRO. It's okay for us if we separate the vRA from vRO plugin releases. So I'd like to see some increased stability in some of those public cloud plugins."

"It's not cheap."

"My impression of its stability is "middle of the road." We've had some issues where it seems to be a little bit sensitive, where deployments fail and we don't really know a specific reason why. We'll dig through logs and try and figure out what's going on, but it's not always apparent as to why it failed. And you can kick it off again and it'll succeed. So stability could be better."

More VMware Aria Automation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of SolarWinds Network Automation Manager is fair. However, it is more expensive than ConnectWise."

"We do plan to see ROI with any new implementation of new technologies being implemented within our environment."

"Better pricing is always handy, but I feel it's at the right price point."

"I would rate the pricing a ten out of ten, with ten being very expensive."

"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."

"Customers say this solution is costlier compared to its competitors."

"There is confusion between licensing levels. There are three different licensed versions of vRealize Automation, and there are different things which can happen in each of them."

"It is an open-source product."

"The pricing for this solution is roughly 20% lower than the competitive products in the market."

More VMware Aria Automation pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Government

15%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

Performing Arts

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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...

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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 ...

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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 ...

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Network Automation

July 2025

SolarWinds Network Automation Manager report

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Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Automation

July 2025

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Also Known As

SolarWinds NAM

VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack

Overview

Scale environments from 1,000 to tens of thousands of nodes with comprehensive performance, traffic, WAN, and switch port monitoring, automated change and configuration management, and IP address management in an integrated network automation software solution.

SolarWinds

VMware Aria Automation is a cloud management tool that allows companies to simplify their cloud experience through a modern automation platform. The solution is designed to deliver self-service clouds, multi-cloud automation with governance, and DevOps-based security and infrastructure management. It helps organizations improve IT agility, efficiency, and productivity through its various features.

VMware Aria Automation has multiple use cases that include the following:

Self-service multi-cloud: VMware Aria Automation can be used to deliver consistent self-service consumption. Another use case in this area is for delivering infrastructure across VMware Clouds as well as public clouds.
Multi-cloud governance: The solution can be used to manage cost, performance, networking, configuration, and security at scale for multi-cloud environments. VMware Aria Automation offers all this with an everything-as-code approach.
DevOps for infrastructure: Through VMware Aria Automation, companies can enable a powerful infrastructure as code platform with support for iterative development and infrastructure pipelining.
Kubernetes automation: Users can utilize VMware Aria Automation to automate the management of Kubernetes clusters and namespaces with support for vSphere with Tanzu.
Security operations: VMware Aria Automation facilitates event-driven automation to deliver full-service IT system compliance enforcement and vulnerability remediation.

VMware Aria Automation Features

VMware Aria Automation has various features that allow users to easily perform operations. Some of the solution's capacities include:

VMware Cloud agnostic template: This feature allows organizations to use a single cloud template to deploy with Infrastructure as a Code. Deployment options include VMware Cloud as well as major public cloud platforms such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and more.
Extensibility and customization: This VMware Aria Automation feature allows users to get full extensibility and customization. This can be achieved through Aria Automation Orchestrator, Action-Based Extensibility (ABX), and built-in integrations with common third-party tools.
Self-service multi-cloud: This feature enables users to request and provision infrastructure resources. It can be done across clouds using a unified and consistent Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) consumption layer, idempotent REST API, and self-service catalog.
Centralized policies and governance: VMware Aria Automation offers a feature for users to manage multiple clouds with templatized cloud and policy definition, automated remediation, and cloud environment visibility.
Configuration management: Through this feature of the product, day 1 and 2 control can be achieved for virtualized and cloud environments. This can be done with intuitive configuration automation, compliance enforcement, and vulnerability remediation.
Infrastructure pipelining: Through this feature, organizations can access user-friendly release automation pipelines. They can be specifically tailored for CI/CD in infrastructure use cases.

VMware Aria Automation Benefits

VMware Aria Automation offers its users various benefits. Some of the biggest advantages that the solution brings to companies that utilize it include:

VMware Aria Automation provides faster time to market for companies through offloading manual tasks with advanced workflows and agile templating.
The solution offers high levels of security and control.
This product is suitable for beginners, as it offers a self-service consumption experience for users.
VMware Aria Automation accelerates innovation through Infrastructure as Code and DevOps principles.
The product provides users with flexibility, as it is compatible with the most popular public cloud solutions.
The solution offers fast deployment because of all natively integrated functions.

Reviews from Real Users

Awais J., CTO/CEO at a tech services company, likes VMware Aria Automation because it saves a lot of time, provides more visibility, and has extensive automation capabilities.

An IT consultant at a government rates VMware Aria Automation highly because the product gives you flexibility to analyze and consume resources.

VMware

Sample Customers

Maalem Financing Company, School City of Hammond

Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Network Automation Manager vs. VMware Aria Automation

July 2025

Free Report: SolarWinds Network Automation Manager vs. VMware Aria Automation

Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds Network Automation Manager vs. VMware Aria Automation and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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