SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor vs. VMware Aria Automation

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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

Microsoft Intune

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 8.2%, down from 10.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor is 0.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 5.5%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Configuration Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Intune	8.2%
VMware Aria Automation	5.5%
SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor	0.6%
Other	85.7%

Configuration Management

Featured Reviews

AkashKamble

Sr MacOS specialist engineer at Cyber24

Enables management of multiple operating systems with a single license

The best feature is that it's a Microsoft product, so if anything goes wrong, we get quick support for anything required. Remote system functionality allows us to sit anywhere and take control of any device via remote management. We can enhance security for clients' laptops with built-in Microsoft Defender, which is available with the Microsoft Intune license. We use it for reporting purposes through endpoint analytics. When pushing scripting, there are two types available: remediation script and reservation script. Through endpoint analytics, you can push defender policies to clients. It helps with reporting, inventory updates, and monitoring tenant status health.

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Akhil Reddy

Software Developer at NOESIS Portugal

Alerting has helped us detect server issues across our environment

The alert mechanism is the biggest advantage of SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor. The customizability of the alerting system is particularly valuable. Whatever devices are in the environment, whether EC2 servers or on-premises servers, all of them can be monitored using this service. I can easily find out what exactly is going wrong in the environment. The clear audit trail aids in troubleshooting and optimization. The tool is effective for detecting unauthorized changes across platforms.

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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 most valuable feature for us is the security, including risk analysis and patch management."

"My favorite feature of Microsoft Intune is the dashboard; the dashboard is very simple and user-friendly, and any person, even without prior knowledge, can understand it easily by seeing the interface dashboard."

"Compliance and the policies that can be set are the most valuable features."

"The initial setup is not overly complex or difficult."

"At the moment, Autopilot is the most valuable feature."

"Its direct integration with all the other products that we have from Microsoft is valuable. We're using the E5 license, and we have a whole wealth of different products available. It just makes it easier to have everything from one provider."

"Intune's most valuable features are the device, compliance, and configuration policies."

"The policy and compliance monitoring of devices and the software deployment are most valuable."

More Microsoft Intune pros

"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor is version control. For example, if we began on the first of the month and we considered that as the configuration of the server, I could set that configuration as my baseline. On a daily basis, if there was the operations team that did, for example, server patching, the tool will maintain all levels of versions."

"The customizability of the alerting system is particularly valuable; whatever devices are in the environment, whether EC2 servers or on-premises servers, all of them can be monitored using this service."

"The product’s alert feature is good. We receive notifications whenever some failures occur in the configuration."

"value; It does a lot of things automatically that would take our group, when we're already strapped for time, a lot of time to go through and clean stuff out of databases and the like."

"The customer can set up multiple machine blueprints. Therefore, we are able to customize the template of three machines, then the customer can deploy without knowing anything about the IT business."

"The IT support for developers is nice as well because they are able to manage the environment themselves."

"VMware Aria Automation has made a lot of things easier. It has really helped the operations team to spin up the virtual machines."

"The self-service capabilities are by far the best that we've seen in terms of features. If the user is being able to log in and make requests himself, from the onboarding process all the way to the end, that's very helpful."

"It helps us automate the workflow of creating many VMs and the TensorFlow key method."

"It helps me build a big catalog and provide it to my end users."

"vRA helps automate deployment for developers. We do a lot of orchestration or customization within our environment so it will suit each of our customers. So, we have different business units who have their own templates."

More VMware Aria Automation pros

Cons

"The security features should be improved."

"Intune doesn't provide much control over Windows servers. It's something we struggle with."

"There is room for improvement in server patch management and allowing direct uploads of EXE applications instead of needing to convert them to Intune format, which would save time."

"The difficulty of the the roll out is surprisingly difficult considering this product is supposed to be an integrated part of the 365 suite."

"I am not involved in the day-to-day with Intune, but we have gone with a different product for updating mobile device software. We do not integrate many of our mobile devices that are not Microsoft-based devices, such as Dell laptops, with Intune."

"Microsoft Intune lacks live location tracking capabilities. Improvements should be made in terms of MDM platforms for other devices."

"I heard some pain points. The main thing is the learning curve. It took time to implement. It was not the best product starting out of the gate."

"Reporting could be improved. It needs to be more expensive and robust."

More Microsoft Intune cons

"In a feature release, they could enhance the reporting. However, we have not evaluated this part of the solution extensively."

"Some dashboards I observed in Dynatrace are not available in SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor."

"The product’s support services and licensing models need improvement."

"The initial setup was not straightforward. It was not simple, and we had a PoC. We had VMware help us deploy it, and it took them an exorbitant amount of time."

"It does go down from time to time. We have some issues with the appliances sometimes and we have to do reboots in the middle of the day. That affects the ability for them to deploy."

"Most of the time the upgrade experience has been good but sometimes things break after upgrading. For example, some API codes stopped working."

"It is not super-intuitive. It does require some skills to understand how to use it. I had no problem, but I had spent a lot of time already learning this product ahead of moving it to an operational status. But as we did so, we had a hard time bringing some people from other groups into the fold, to script and work against this environment. So, the ability to build workflows within that automation needs to be streamlined."

"Automation or scripting should be simplified so that administrators who are not experts can have a better grasp of automation."

"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 stability needs a lot of work. The troubleshooting component of vRealize is a pain. The administration and the upgrades are not up to the mark. If they were able to improve on that, that would be the best thing and would make it much easier to run it in the enterprise."

"They can improve on the dashboard representations and the options for non-technical people. I would like to see the ability to customize that and maybe provide them with helpful guides to what subscriptions they have. Sometimes, I find that I have to do more explanation to people who do approvals. I would really like to customize the display to the terms they use in their particular business unit. So a little bit more of a nod to the customization of the UI for non-technical users would be helpful."

More VMware Aria Automation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is not expensive."

"Our Office 365 Business Premium license, including Office 365 and Intune Management, offers excellent value."

"It is reasonable. When you have Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 license, it is already licensed in that license. So, you could say it is free."

"The price of Intune is included with the license for Office 365, so we don't have to pay anything extra for it."

"Most of our clients come to us with licensing already in place. On average, it costs $6 per device per month to add Intune to an Office 365 subscription, but I am not sure."

"On a scale of one to ten with one being the cheapest, the cost of Microsoft Intune is a five."

"We don't get Intune as a separate module. Most of the time, we use it within an enterprise agreement like E3 or E5. Those licenses are at a good price, but what is annoying is that every single year they go higher."

"Existing E5 license holders for M365, Intune, and Azure, receive a free license."

More Microsoft Intune pricing and cost advice

"SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor has medium pricing compared to other solutions."

"The price of SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor is not reasonable, it is slightly on the higher side."

"From a budget point of view, the pricing is a bit on the higher side."

"The solution is pretty expensive but provides good workload management."

"The solution has helped to increase infrastructure, agility, speed, and provisioning in the time to market."

"This is an expensive product and the high price is starting to become an issue for us."

"It is an expensive product. After VMware's acquisition by Broadcom, there was a rise in the price of VMware Aria Automation."

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

"It is an open-source product."

"It made the provisioning of the virtual machines easier and faster. We can react more quickly to customers' demands."

More VMware Aria Automation pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

No data available

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	119
Midsize Enterprise	47
Large Enterprise	153

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	32
Midsize Enterprise	24
Large Enterprise	130

Questions from the Community

How does Microsoft Intune compare with VMware Workspace One?

Microsoft Intune is a great tool for managing a mobile device fleet while keeping access control. The solution makes ...

What are the pros and cons of Microsoft Intune?

Microsoft Intune is a great configuration management tool and has a lot of good things going for it. Here are some of...

How does Google Cloud Identity compare with Microsoft Intune?

Microsoft Intune offers not only an easy-to-deploy data protection and productivity management solution, but also ...

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

In general, I think that licensing for SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor is acceptable, and the solution is qui...

What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor?

Some dashboards I observed in Dynatrace are not available in SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor. The dashboard f...

What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor?

I work only with SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor. My major use case is the monitoring of environment servers ...

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...

Jamf Pro vs Microsoft Intune

Comparisons

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Workspace ONE UEM vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 8% of the time

ManageEngine Endpoint Central vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 6% of the time

IBM MaaS360 vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Entra ID vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 5% of the time

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HashiCorp Terraform vs SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor

Compared 56% of the time

Red Hat Satellite vs SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor

Compared 44% of the time

More SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor Competitors

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 15% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 10% of the time

Morpheus vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 9% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 5% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Microsoft Intune

Download Microsoft Intune product report

Configuration Management

Download SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor product report

SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor report

VMware Aria Automation

Download VMware Aria Automation product report

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager

SolarWinds SCM

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

Overview

Microsoft Intune provides centralized management of mobile devices and applications, ensuring security, compliance, and productivity through integration with Microsoft services like Microsoft 365 and Azure Active Directory.

Organizations use Intune for managing mobile devices and applications, enhancing security and compliance across platforms. With features like single sign-on, conditional access, and zero-touch deployment via Autopilot, it facilitates efficient operations. Intune's scalability, easy enrollment, and capabilities such as remote wipe support diverse device management, offering robust data protection and efficient operation. Despite its features, improvement areas include reporting, compatibility with non-Microsoft devices, and better support for macOS and Linux devices.

What are the key features of Microsoft Intune?

Seamless Integration: Works with Microsoft 365, Azure Active Directory, and System Center for streamlined management.
Conditional Access: Enhances security with policies that restrict access based on conditions.
Autopilot: Provides zero-touch deployment for setting up new devices efficiently.
Mobile Device Management: Enables control over both personal and corporate devices.
Application Deployment: Facilitates app delivery across a range of devices.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Centralized Management: Reduces complexity by managing devices and applications in one place.
Security Enhancement: Protects data with features like remote wipe and compliance monitoring.
Improved Productivity: Enhances efficiency with seamless integration and automation features.
Device Scalability: Supports diverse device management for growing business needs.

In industries such as finance, healthcare, and education, Microsoft Intune is implemented to ensure secure and compliant device management. Companies leverage its capabilities to deploy security policies and manage both corporate-owned and BYOD environments, facilitating a unified approach to data protection and compliance.

Microsoft

Network compliance
Network automation
Configuration backup
Vulnerability assessment
Network Insight for Cisco and Palo Alto
Integration with Network Performance Monitor

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.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway

Information Not Available

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

SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor vs. VMware Aria Automation