SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

SolarWinds and VMware are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. SolarWinds is ranked #18 with an average rating of 7.4, while VMware is ranked #28 with an average rating of 9.0. SolarWinds holds a 1.6% mindshare in APM, compared to VMware’s 0.9% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of SolarWinds users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of VMware users who would recommend it.

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 42 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

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2,160 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Read 12 VMware Aria Operations for Applications reviews

1,509 Views
968 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

VMware Aria Operations for ...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and VMware Aria Operations for Applications serve the same market niche with varying strengths. VMware seems to have the upper hand due to its robust feature set, despite SolarWinds being appreciated for its pricing.

Features:SolarWinds users value its comprehensive monitoring capabilities, ease of use, and quick issue resolution. VMware users highlight its advanced analytics, extensive integrations with other VMware products, and detailed insights.

Room for Improvement:SolarWinds users suggest enhancements in reporting capabilities, flexible alerting options, and more customization. VMware users point to the need for more intuitive navigation, detailed documentation, and enhanced user experience.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service:SolarWinds users report straightforward deployment and responsive customer service. VMware deployment is more complex due to extensive features but is supported by strong customer service.

Pricing and ROI:SolarWinds is appreciated for its competitive setup cost and quicker ROI. VMware's higher initial investment is mitigated by its long-term value and extensive analytics capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

June 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 Server and Appli...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

18th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (12th), Active Directory Management (10th)

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

28th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (30th), Container Monitoring (6th), Cloud Monitoring Software (23rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.6%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 0.9%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Carlos Camargo

Senior Operations Manager at Sencinet

Provides user-friendly API features and has straightforward deployment process

One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules. The misalignment of licensing terms can present commercial challenges when adding new modules or additional pollers. Additionally, the granularity of polling times for specific components could be enhanced to better meet individual customers' needs without impacting the entire polling pool.

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ToniLindberg

senior consultant at Virtual Consultants Sverige AB

Troubleshooting capabilities have improved application monitoring and support engagement

I can see what happens end to end, which is pretty beneficial. The solution has troubleshooting capabilities, providing a direct connection to knowledge base articles from VMware Broadcom. When I encounter an error, I can search directly within the system to see what solutions have been employed by others. It has a familiar interface, which makes it easy to get started.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Hardware health: It allows for proactive monitoring of the hardware health and is a game changer."

"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is the network devices' performance monitor is the best."

"The most valuable feature is application monitoring."

"The solution is great for monitoring. If something is going wrong, we can immediately find the root cause."

"This product can monitor application environments no matter where they reside and provides capabilities for deep insight into infrastructure."

"The application dependency feature identifies issues between applications and servers or within the network where the application is hosted. It highlights related problems, whether related to packet processing or other issues, enabling the creation of alerts and reports accordingly."

"It's good at monitoring system-specific things like ports, services."

"The solution can be deployed quickly."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

"People are very pleased with the implementation."

"Tanzu itself, integrated with multiple solutions, bestows support and security upon a container platform, especially when it comes to managing open-source container platforms such as Kubernetes."

"No issues with stability."

"For us, the ease of deployment in combination with TMZ was the most important part because we don't have to manually deploy a complex monitoring solution. We can more or less do that with the click of a button, and we are not dependent on the developers to provide us with all the necessary features and functions to make that work. We can just deploy it on a workload cluster and monitor at least a good part of the workload. If we want to go into detail, we clearly need to make changes, but for a good part of application monitoring, it gives us good insights."

"The solution is great for virtualization and preparing the infrastructure in Tanzu to test products. It's very fast and has good visibility."

"It has a familiar interface, which makes it easy to get started."

"The most valuable aspects of the solution are its ease of use and its ease of implementation."

"The features I find most valuable is the querying and alerting capabilities."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications pros

Cons

"The templates could use improvement. Currently, they are quite complex. They should have drag-and-drop functionality instead. It would make it easier to use."

"In terms of the dashboards on offer, they should work to improve them. The types of dashboards that you get in terms of the graphs on offer aren't ideal right now."

"The tool’s report feature created issues for us. We needed to gain skills to use that feature. The tool’s customization is not easy since you have to reconfigure the whole system."

"Some custom applications cannot be monitored, and a lot more applications need to be included."

"I think they need to make reporting easier and more simple & dynamic."

"SAM AppInsight for SQL: The ability to ignore fragmentation of specific indexes."

"An additional feature that would improve this solution is the ability to complete root cause analysis."

"Solarwinds should come up the same monitoring system for other certificate expiration alert apart from SSL."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

"An area for improvement would be more in-depth reporting, such as analyzing disk IO during business hours compared to after hours."

"It could use a URL document server. Everything in the market is moving towards automation and everybody's looking for the single click operations as well relational data locality."

"The solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor."

"They could make it more easy to plug-in data so that a nontechnical person will be able to use it, like accountants or finance people. That way they don't have to ask us."

"The solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor."

"I find that there could be improvements in the support service response time, as the urgency varies unless specified as Priority 2 or 1 cases."

"The documentation and integration with Kubernetes could be improved."

"The return on investment is best suited for organizations that do not have the resources for a dedicated VM environment team. However, the cost of the product doesn't show significant benefits."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."

"I have always said SolarWinds is very “proud” of their products, meaning they are expensive. I cannot afford to purchase all the licenses I need for all the SolarWinds products."

"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."

"Nagios XI, WhatsUpGold, Uptime Software, PRTG, Manage Engine, and SpiceWorks are the other tools that have lower pricing and licensing costs. However, they can't compete with SolarWinds when it comes to the features and functionality that SolarWinds can provide."

"Understanding the counts of objects to monitor will determine the licensing need. In terms of pricing, it’s not cheap but it’s not expensive as larger vendors whose products don’t have all the features or integrations."

"When planning for the number of licenses to purchase, make sure you understand all of the elements within an application required to really understand performance well. In our case, we quickly came to the conclusion that an unlimited license for SAM was the way to go."

"The tool is available for my company at a good price point."

"The price is too high."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."

"The licensing costs are very high, particularly when you consider that we have to purchase a level 1 license for every integration, such as the load balancer, HAProxy, and the MSSP. And if you want to use vSAN, that's another license. Then, of course, Tanzu Observability has its own separate license."

"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."

"I don't have the details. In our case, there is a mixture in place. We have production usage, and we are also doing training for VMware. So, we also have a training instance. It is worth the money you would spend on it. That's because if you were to build all of this yourself by using some of the open source tools, then you would need a lot of time."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

26%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

Identifying the problem statement is easy.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

The initial cost is quite high, but the renewal cost is reasonable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

There are no specific features or functionality I would like to see improved or enhanced in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor at this time. I have not encountered any missing features or fu...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

The cost of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is fair and reasonable compared to what we receive in support and packages from VMware.

See all answers

What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

I find that there could be improvements in the support service response time, as the urgency varies unless specified as Priority 2 or 1 cases.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

Our primary use case for VMware Aria Operations for Applications is to enhance application monitoring tasks, allowing us to set up alerts for different components and send them via SMTP to a team d...

See all answers

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Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

May 2025

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations for Applications

May 2025

VMware Aria Operations for Applications report

Download VMware Aria Operations for Applications product report

Also Known As

SolarWinds SAM

Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability

Overview

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) delivers powerful application and server monitoring capabilities for IT pros, enabling them to diagnose and troubleshoot performance issues faster. Do not let slow applications and downtime impact your end-users and business services. Pinpoint the root cause of application issues across various layers of the IT stack. SolarWinds SAM is affordable and easy to deploy, use, and customize. You can automatically discover your system's environment and start monitoring in about an hour. No professional services or consultation needed.

SolarWinds

VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront is a powerful tool for monitoring and analyzing the performance and availability of applications and infrastructure in real-time.

With its comprehensive monitoring capabilities, visualizing and analyzing data becomes effortless. The real-time alerting system ensures timely issue resolution, while scalability and a user-friendly interface provide a seamless experience for smooth operations.

VMware

Sample Customers

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

1. Atlassian 2. Cisco 3. Databricks 4. DigitalOcean 5. Equinix 6. Fidelity Investments 7. Google 8. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 9. Honeywell 10. IBM 11. Intel 12. JetBlue Airways 13. LinkedIn 14. Lyft 15. Mastercard 16. Microsoft 17. MongoDB 18. Netflix 19. Nvidia 20. Oracle 21. PayPal 22. Pinterest 23. Qualcomm 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. SAP 27. Spotify 28. Square 29. TMobile 30. Twitter 31. Uber 32. VMware

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

June 2025

Free Report: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

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