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SolarWinds Virtualization Manager vs VMware Aria Operations comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 13, 2024

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 Virtualization M...
Ranking in Virtualization Management Tools
7th
Average Rating
7.4
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Aria Operations
Ranking in Virtualization Management Tools
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
376
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Virtualization Management Tools category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is 11.5%, up from 9.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations is 25.2%, down from 33.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Virtualization Management Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Aria Operations25.2%
SolarWinds Virtualization Manager11.5%
Other63.3%
Virtualization Management Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Ravi Khanchandani - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder Director at Techsa Services
Optimizing virtual environments by reclaiming and allocating resources efficiently
SolarWinds Virtualization Manager optimizes VM performance and virtualization. It provides me with recommendations for resource allocation, indicating if a virtual machine is under-provisioned or over-provisioned. This allows me to reclaim resources, such as reducing the number of CPU cores or RAM, which is beneficial. Its capacity planning feature is also very useful for me. The GUI is highly simplified, cutting across various virtualization platforms, including VMware, Hyper-V, and Nutanix environments.
AldoDomini - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Network Analyst at Net spa
Have faced limitations due to high costs but have maintained reliability over time
The primary issue is the pricing, which is very expensive for my company's budget. We cannot afford to pay such a large fee. We are not Microsoft or BMW; we are a small company. As a small company, I have no power to negotiate directly with VMware. Perhaps larger companies have more opportunity to contract directly with VMware, but I do not have that leverage. The only path I can follow is to change solutions. Net.spA is a company working in the field of waste management. We are not a technological company, so we do not have a large margin to justify purchasing and maintaining the VMware infrastructure at current costs.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This product is so helpful out-of-the-box."
"The most valuable features of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager are the non-Windows servers' monitoring and capacity planning."
"SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is a great tool that is easy to use...It is a stable solution."
"SolarWinds Virtualization Manager optimizes VM performance and virtualization."
"The most valuable features of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager are the non-Windows servers' monitoring and capacity planning."
"If you’re looking to get a lot more insight into your virtualization environment and more than just basic information, SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is the choice you should make."
"Virtualization manager’s cost analysis comparison report identified areas in which specific customers were being grossly undercharged for their resource consumption levels, as compared to rates available through AWS."
"SolarWinds Virtualization Manager optimizes VM performance and virtualization."
"It gives us a single pane of glass to look at whenever we're trying to troubleshoot issues, so we can go to one place as opposed to multiple places."
"The most valuable features are the alerts and dashboard, and that the product is simple to use, configure, and upgrade."
"vROps was the only tool which we found which was capable at the time to create customized dashboards."
"Vmware always gives us the best support. They are friendly to talk to and they understand the real impact of what's happening. They are trying to get into the issue as one of your team. They also fit into your working hours to solve your issues."
"It helps an organization quickly create test and dev environments for developers to come up with new software and patch tests."
"This is a very good tool, because we can customize it according to the needs of our customers."
"It has enabled us to drive more utilization out of our existing compute infrastructure to the point where, for a period of six months, we didn't purchase a single server or any additional compute."
"vROps would be my advice because it's simple to use, you have a panel to very quickly identify trouble, eventual problems; and it's easy to troubleshoot."
 

Cons

"The SolarWinds Virtualization Manager platform in general can have a better response time in the performance."
"The problem or issue with the product is related to its pricing."
"Adhoc reporting takes time to get used to – due mainly to the fact that the team I am on are all admins, and not necessarily accustomed to query reporting in the manner utilized by Solarwinds Virtualization Manager."
"I had some stability issues. I lost my environment."
"SolarWinds needs to support integration with other virtualization platforms like KVM or Linux-based systems."
"The SolarWinds Virtualization Manager platform in general can have a better response time in the performance."
"SolarWinds needs to support integration with other virtualization platforms like KVM or Linux-based systems."
"The UI is a little cumbersome at first, but the more you use it and get accustomed to it, the simpler it becomes."
"If it could help with calculating on-prem costs, based on their experience, it would help customers determine whether to remain on-prem or move to the cloud."
"I'd like to be able to access some demo sessions to enable a deeper understanding of the product to help our clients because it's quite a complex solution."
"It's a very complex product. It has gotten better over the years, but they still have some work to do."
"It's great at providing information but to the point where it can be overwhelming sometimes."
"In the past, when we have raised priority one tickets and they have sent us level one engineers. This wasted time because the L1 was only able to perform the troubleshooting steps that we had already completed."
"I'd like to see more integration with other applications."
"Like everything at VMware, they should just throw the FLEX stuff - the UI abstraction - out. It's terrible."
"In some respects, the UI is pretty stale. It has been that way from the beginning. Some easier ways to create custom dashboards for management, versus the tech guys, versus administrators, that would be helpful."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The maintenance and support are a part of the package, meaning it is included in the product's price."
"The is an annual subscription needed to use this solution."
"Most small users don't adopt VMware Aria Operations until it's necessary. Small businesses are looking for it, too. We need more monitoring and insights, so we're analyzing solutions to help us out here. I rate the solution’s pricing a five out of ten."
"Don't overallocate! This means that you don't have to buy many hosts. You can save money that way."
"It has reduced time to troubleshoot issues. With our customized dashboards, we can target issues and attribute them to the correct team."
"The price of the solution is expensive."
"Pricing could always be cheaper, but it's acceptable."
"The solution has a huge cost. If we could just have one license covering everything that vROps can do, that would be great. I would prefer it this way."
"The solution is slightly expensive."
"We would like to build custom dashboards in the standard license. Right now, this is available in the enterprise license, not the standard license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Non Profit
10%
Government
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business65
Midsize Enterprise62
Large Enterprise278
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?
This solution delivers significant cost savings, especially from a capacity perspective. Consistent monitoring is essential in a virtualization environment, and Virtualization Manager, or VMAN as i...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?
SolarWinds needs to support integration with other virtualization platforms like KVM or Linux-based systems.
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?
We predominantly work with financial organizations such as large banks, stock exchanges, and insurance companies, as well as IT-enabled services (ITES). I use SolarWinds Virtualization Manager at o...
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 VMware Aria Operations a user friendly solution?
In terms of user-friendliness, VMware Aria Operations is one of the best solutions out there. It is not overly complex to set up and you can rely on the technical support to provide you with assis...
What is the most useful new feature of VMware Aria Operations?
For me, the alerts features are the most unique part of this product, no matter the current name it uses. When they introduced the new version of VMware Aria Operations, they also introduced more a...
 

Also Known As

SolarWinds VMAN
VMware vRealize Operations (vROps), vCenter Operations Manager (VCOPS)
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Elliot Health System
Science Applications International Corporation, Tribune Media, Heartland Payment Systems, Telkom Indonesia, Columbia Sportswear, iGATE, CSS Corp, Angel Broking, Adira Finance, Hipskind, Beiersdorf Shared Services, Innovate Mas Indonesia, Adobe, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi , Join Experience S.A, Borusan Holdings, Department of Transport - Abu Dhabi
Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds Virtualization Manager vs. VMware Aria Operations and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.