SolarWinds Virtualization Manager vs VMware Aria Operations comparison

SolarWinds and VMware are both solutions in the Virtualization Management Tools category. SolarWinds is ranked #7 with an average rating of 6.0, while VMware is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.6. SolarWinds holds a 9.6% mindshare in VM, compared to VMware’s 33.2% mindshare. Additionally, 71% of SolarWinds users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of VMware users who would recommend it.

SolarWinds Virtualization M...

Read 7 SolarWinds Virtualization Manager reviews

579 Views
273 Comparison Views

71% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Operations

Read 374 VMware Aria Operations reviews

2,709 Views
616 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Virtualization M...

VMware Aria Operations

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 13, 2024

VMware Aria Operations and SolarWinds Virtualization Manager compete in the virtualization management space. VMware Aria Operations is favored for its integration and analytics capabilities, while SolarWinds Virtualization Manager stands out for its ease of use and specialized virtualization features.

Features: VMware Aria Operations provides robust performance optimization, automation features, and dynamic threshold monitoring that leverages historical data to set performance baselines. Its integration with multiple cloud platforms offers unified visibility and advanced predictive analytics for capacity management. SolarWinds Virtualization Manager delivers simplicity in virtual machine performance insights, capacity planning tools, and customizable dashboards, making it efficient for targeted virtualization management.

Room for Improvement: VMware Aria Operations could enhance its user interface for easier navigation and reduce deployment complexity, especially for smaller organizations. It also requires improvement in reporting granularity. SolarWinds Virtualization Manager could benefit from deeper integration with third-party tools, more comprehensive analytics, and broader support for heterogeneous virtual environments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Aria Operations requires meticulous planning but provides extensive resources and customer support for complex environments. SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is quicker to deploy with an emphasis on user-friendliness, offering efficient customer support specifically tailored for virtualization concerns.

Pricing and ROI: VMware Aria Operations, while potentially entailing higher setup costs, offers substantial ROI for businesses requiring broad IT management functionalities. SolarWinds Virtualization Manager presents a cost-effective solution with solid ROI for enterprises primarily focused on virtualization management, valued for its affordability and efficiency.

To learn more, read our detailed SolarWinds Virtualization Manager vs. VMware Aria Operations Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager vs. VMware Aria Operations

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 Virtualization M...

Ranking in Virtualization Management Tools

7th

Average Rating

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VMware Aria Operations

Ranking in Virtualization Management Tools

1st

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

374

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Management (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Virtualization Management Tools category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is 9.6%, up from 7.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations is 33.2%, down from 34.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Virtualization Management Tools

Featured Reviews

Ravi Khanchandani

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.

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Amar Sorro

Team Lead Virtualization at Hybrid Tech

Manage and monitor crucial banking operations with deep logging and efficient alerting

The most valuable features of VMware Aria Operations include its excellent monitoring capabilities. It allows me to perform deep monitoring and logging of the entire environment, providing a quick alarm and warning system through email. These features help me in efficiently managing virtual machines. The solution also offers easy access to VMware KB articles for problem resolution, ensuring quick access to troubleshooting information.

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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

"SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is a great tool that is easy to use...It is a stable solution."

"The most valuable features of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager are the non-Windows servers' monitoring and capacity planning."

"SolarWinds Virtualization Manager optimizes VM performance and virtualization."

"It is intuitive and user-friendly. It is easy to follow and the reporting engine is easy to use."

"We appreciate that this solution gives accurate reporting."

"It gives us a lot of details about the environment that we normally wouldn't be able to see without using other tools. We get visibility into our infrastructure, a single interface to see storage performance, VM performance, and to find issues in the environment that we wouldn't normally see."

"It tells us when there's an issue with a particular VM or host. It gives us a remediation in order to fix that problem. For example, if there's a shortage of memory or a shortage of CPU, things of that nature, it tells you how to correct that issue."

"The main point of installing, deploying, and troubleshooting with vRealize Operations is to provide visual dashboards to ensure that the entire workload is functioning properly."

"vROps was the only tool which we found which was capable at the time to create customized dashboards."

"It allows us better visibility into our virtual infrastructure than we could get through vCenter or other tools by providing us a lot of metrics. vROps is good at spotting problems."

"The newer version is a lot easier to use than the older version. It's one of the easiest ways to obtain some insight into vCenter."

More VMware Aria Operations pros

Cons

"The problem or issue with the product is related to its pricing."

"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."

"As they're able to add in more vendors for hardware to be able to pull information from different firewalls, switches, or other vendors, I would like to see where we can get more of a complete view of what's going on in the network. That would make this solution better."

"It can be user-friendly once you get the dashboard set up but it can be complicated to get the information you want, the way you want it. Finally, if there were an easier way to share dashboards, that would be a big one."

"Certificate Management should be simplified for non-technical staff members."

"One of the big challenge with vROps is there so much to learn as a user as you're doing it. It is also getting these dashboards in front of the executive committee, so they can actually see the environment."

"One of the big areas that would help us in the future is to focus on using vROps more as a tool to help us respond to these CVEs and security vulnerabilities that are coming in today's world. We're getting CVEs upon CVEs about security vulnerabilities, whether it's a process, or architecture, or VMware bug. It would be nice to be able to have those come into vROps and help us track them across our environment... It would be nice if we could integrate that into a vROps dashboard, which sees every host and every VM in the environment."

"One of the things that we've been limited on is that it only monitors one cluster at a time. We're spread out all across the US. It would be nice to monitor multiple clusters from one instance. That would be the main thing we'd like to see."

"vRLI still needs a lot of improvement to even start comparing with the market leader, Splunk, in terms of data analysis and customized charts/reports generation."

"For the most part, we have found it to be user-friendly. It has gotten better over time since the first version of vROps that I used. The interface has really improved since then."

More VMware Aria Operations cons

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."

"It was cost effective, because it fixed our problems."

"The licensing model is annual. Compared to the price of other products, VMware vRealize Operations (vROps) is a bit on the high side. If it could be cheaper, it would be good."

"VMware support is very costly compared to other organizations' support. When you purchase a VMware product, such as vSphere or vROps, the license is perpetual, but you also have to purchase the support service for a number of years. The support service pricing is very high compared to the license, and compared to competitive vendors."

"We have seen ROI in performance. It used to be our company was giving out eight CPUs to all servers. That was bad performance-wise. People were seeing slow compute times for their applications."

"The pricing is a little bit expensive. Licensing is an issue because there are always changes, and by that I mean cost increases. And that's not only for vROps but for VMware, vSphere, and all the products that are involved."

"We have definitely seen ROI by removing unnecessary servers and VMs. By having vROps as an assistant when it comes to monitoring and managing resources, it has helped us a lot with cost savings and managing expenses."

"The solution has helped to reduce the time to troubleshoot issues."

"Our budgets are always tight. We would like to have more features at lower licensing levels for easier access to them."

More VMware Aria Operations pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

11%

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is a great tool that is easy to use...It is a stable solution.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?

SolarWinds needs to support integration with other virtualization platforms like KVM or Linux-based systems.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

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Comparisons

Veeam Data Platform vs SolarWinds Virtualization Manager

Compared 21% of the time

IBM Turbonomic vs SolarWinds Virtualization Manager

Compared 16% of the time

More SolarWinds Virtualization Manager Competitors

VMware Aria Automation vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 21% of the time

IBM Turbonomic vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 11% of the time

VMware vSphere vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 10% of the time

Nutanix Prism vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 9% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 7% of the time

More VMware Aria Operations Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Virtualization Management Tools

June 2025

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager report

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Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations

May 2025

Download VMware Aria Operations product report

Also Known As

SolarWinds VMAN

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

Overview

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager reduces downtime by 53% and time spent troubleshooting by 59%. Analyze and remediate VM performance problems by viewing active, critical, and warning issues in your environment.

SolarWinds

VMware Aria Operations is a high-ranking virtualization management and cloud management tool that automates and simplifies IT management to the applications it supports. It achieves this through full-stack visibility from physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructure. The product allows users to enable self-driving IT operations management across private, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments. This is conducted with the unified operations platform that delivers continuous performance, capacity and cost optimization, and integrated compliance through artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and predictive analytics.

VMware Aria Operations Use Cases

VMware Aria Operations has several use cases, some of which include:

Continuous performance optimization: VMware Aria Operations allows users to assure application performance at a minimal cost, facilitated by real-time predictive analytics and artificial intelligence. The product can be used to automatically balance workloads, improve consolidation rations, optimize and rightsize workloads, and avoid contention.
Capacity and cost management: VMware Aria Operations can be utilized to reduce cost and improve efficiency with real-time ML-based capacity and cost analytics. The solution uses these tools to visualize cost savings opportunities and accelerate decision-making.
Intelligent remediation: This product can also be used to predict, prevent, and troubleshoot issues with actionable insights. Through other VMware integrations, users can streamline and centralize IT operations.
Integrated compliance: The solution can be utilized to reduce risk and enforce IT regulatory standards for VMware Cloud through integrated compliance and automated drift remediation.

VMware Aria Operations Features

The product has various features which users can utilize. Several of the features that the 2022 version of VMware Aria Operations introduced include:

Management pack builder: This feature is a no-code solution that allows users to expand their operations visibility to anywhere they wish. The builder allows users to connect to a data source using an HTTP or Amazon AWS data source, as well as to make API calls, create objects, and build out relationships with other objects in the product.
Public cloud basic actions: This is a set of features that allows VMware Aria Operations users to initiate actions automatically via the product's UI for AWS, Microsoft Azure, or GCP CE instances.
Rule-based application discovery: Through this new feature of the product, users can easily discover multiple applications running in all or specific areas of infrastructure and view associated resources. This can be achieved through simple user-defined rules, including discovering applications based on tags, object names, and properties.
Aria Operations capacity management: This feature allows organizations to view the results of what-if analysis based on their allocation model and specify business hours for capacity calculations.
Alerts: This is a set of features that include components called Conditions and Symptoms, which are used to alert different types of issues on the platform.
User access management: Through this feature, users can benefit from improved ways to configure in VMware Aria Operations with the introduction of scopes.
Support for raw device mapping storage: This feature allows users to get configuration details about their raw device mapping (RDM), such as disk sharing, compatibility mode, and SCSI Bus Sharing.

VMware Aria Operations Benefits

VMware Aria Operations brings various benefits to the organizations using it. Among them are the following:

The product helps organizations reduce unplanned downtime and maximize return on investment (ROI) in hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
VMware Aria Operations simplifies management for hybrid clouds from migration assessments.
Users can benefit from an accelerated journey to VMware Cloud on AWS through this solution.
The product can be delivered on premises or as a service, providing flexibility for its users.
VMware Aria Operations can increase operational efficiency through monitoring and management features.
The solution accelerates decision-making through detailed cost analytics, which is visualized for users' convenience.
VMware Aria Operations allows users to both utilize standard compliance templates and create their own custom ones.

Reviews from Real Users

Mohamed N., a tech lead VMware support engineer at a tech services company, appreciates VMware Aria Operations because it is easy to use, stable, and support is always available.

Mojtaba K., a senior system administrator at a comms service provider, values VMware Aria Operations due to the fact that its dashboards give you a glimpse of what is really going on in your virtualized environment.

VMware

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

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager vs. VMware Aria Operations

June 2025

Free Report: SolarWinds Virtualization Manager vs. VMware Aria Operations

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