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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
6th
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 (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Virtualization Management Tools category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is 10.5%, up from 9.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations is 24.7%, down from 34.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Virtualization Management Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Aria Operations24.7%
SolarWinds Virtualization Manager10.5%
Other64.8%
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

"Alerting expands, and makes, our monitoring and management much more efficient."
"SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is a great tool that is easy to use...It is a stable solution."
"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."
"The most valuable features of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager are the non-Windows servers' monitoring and capacity planning."
"This product is so helpful out-of-the-box."
"SolarWinds Virtualization Manager optimizes VM performance and virtualization."
"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."
"SolarWinds Virtualization Manager optimizes VM performance and virtualization."
"From infrastructure to application monitoring, vROps has a wide range of visibility into the monitoring spectrum."
"The most valuable feature is all the metrics we get. They're really good. Being able to drill down and find out where the CPU and memory bottlenecks are and being able to tune them is really helpful."
"It is intuitive and user-friendly. As you go through it, with some of the wizards and some of the interfaces that are out there, I think it's fairly easy to step through, even when we're training new employees to work with the product."
"Ten blades at $20,000 a piece, that's a $200,000 savings."
"The ability to look into our environment to see what is going on is the most valuable feature."
"The most valuables features are the collection of assets, security, and configuration data settings from each networked virtual environment in the system."
"Do yourself a favor and look at vROps."
"vROps was the only tool which we found which was capable at the time to create customized dashboards."
 

Cons

"Out of the box support for a wider array of hardware vendor/device-specific SNMP mibs could be improved upon."
"The problem or issue with the product is related to its pricing."
"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."
"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."
"I get in to code whatever I need and then get out. So perhaps they could support different coding languages. I know that JavaScript is their primary "cash cow" but I'd like to see c#, personally. I'd like to see different capabilities for adding code."
"The solution can improve by offering more flexible integration with other platforms or products, such as Hyper-V or Azure."
"When you deploy it as a single node, it's more stable than if you have multiple nodes. We've had some issues with this."
"VMware vRealize Operations (vROps) should improve instant monitoring. Currently, the monitoring is on an interval of five to ten minutes, if I want to know what is happening now I cannot."
"Early on, it was iffy, but the latest releases have been pretty stable."
"Monitoring is useful but if the solution can't automate or function without my input, it's a waste of my time. That's where I found out there are some issues with this product, there are elements that are not as intuitive as they could or should be."
"For me, the technical support is the biggest problem. I've been working with them since 2016 and in the first years their response was faster than it is today. That is a problem. Also, I need to put together and send them a lot of information. And then I wait one day, two days. The support has been getting worse over the last few years. They need to improve it."
"The customization of reports isn't as great as I would like to see it. There are some canned ones."
 

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."
"There has been a bit of cost savings in that we could decide to move workloads around a bit better."
"If the VMs were trimmed, then we wouldn't have to buy as much software/hardware, and this means less licenses. While most of it is VMware licenses, which are relatively cheap, there are SQL licenses for Microsoft, and this is where we could start saving a lot of money."
"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the product price an eight out of ten."
"The initial costs are a bit on the higher side but the licensing is flexible."
"The licensing is quite expensive for our company."
"The license is a one time cost, and you pay for support on a yearly basis. It is a bit expensive, but if you consider the product support and its reliability, it's justifiable."
"It has reduced time to troubleshoot issues. With our customized dashboards, we can target issues and attribute them to the correct team."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Healthcare Company
9%
Government
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
Construction Company
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 Enterprise281
 

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: April 2026.
893,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.