

VMware Aria Automation and Spacelift compete in the automation software category. VMware Aria Automation seems to have the upper hand in enterprise-level features and integrations, while Spacelift stands out with its simplicity and modern interface.
Features: VMware Aria Automation offers extensibility and integration capabilities ideal for complex environments. It includes infrastructure automation, multi-machine blueprints, and integration with other VMware products. Spacelift integrates seamlessly with Terraform, provides a user-friendly interface, and supports infrastructure as code, making it appealing for uncomplicated cloud management. Additionally, it incorporates GitOps for DevOps workflow support. The primary distinction is VMware's comprehensive customization and integration versus Spacelift's emphasis on ease of use.
Room for Improvement: VMware Aria Automation could benefit from better documentation, easier platform integration, and enhanced user interfaces. The complexity in managing its components is another area for improvement. Spacelift lacks features for complex deployments, particularly in orchestration and dependency management. The SaaS version of Spacelift surpasses the self-hosted one, suggesting a need for feature parity.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Aria Automation is generally deployed on-premises or in private clouds. While the technical support is commendable, some complexity in deployment phases exists. In contrast, Spacelift focuses on public cloud deployment simplicity, offering community-driven support praised for its effectiveness. VMware has established customer support, whereas Spacelift relies more on community resources.
Pricing and ROI: VMware Aria Automation, while expensive, is viewed as valuable due to its feature-rich offerings, particularly for large enterprises. Its pricing is often bundled with other VMware products, a point of contention for some users. Spacelift offers a more cost-effective solution compared to competitors like Terraform Enterprise, making it appealing for enterprises aiming for reduced expenses. VMware’s pricing is higher but justified by its features, whereas Spacelift is noted for significant cost savings through effective use.
We are just pushing code from Git to GitHub, which then sends it to Spacelift, checking for drifts and starting continuous deployment.
The metrics show that fewer employees are needed, money is saved based on past experiences with different cloud management or Infrastructure as Code management tools, and efficiency has improved significantly in terms of Infrastructure as Code deployment.
Anything that reduces the amount of work needed to do repetitive tasks is a bonus.
I have asked them various queries, and they provided perfect solutions along with good detailed documentation.
The customer support is fantastic as they reply over Slack immediately and get to work on a solution whenever I need them.
The SLO and SLA being really fast to answer.
I see a lot of lack of knowledge and lack of training.
We never had major issues to report or request support.
Spacelift's scalability is very good as it scales very well with the environment because I can add agents to it with more workload, so it's quite excellent.
Spacelift can handle increased workloads well, managing more servers as our organization grows, and it is indeed scalable.
Based on the requests and the Linux Docker machines I provision, it becomes more stable, and the runs happen very quickly.
Until version six or seven, it was perfect.
It can improve areas in scalability and integrate some open-source tools.
The engineering team behind Spacelift is very responsive whenever I submit a feature request, and there's a very good chance I would see it within the next year.
The OPA policy writing is not very beginner-friendly either, and the error messages when a policy fails are not always clear.
VCF 9 will bring VCF Automation and VCF Operations, the new product line of VMware.
It operates for both of my products, however, as a product, it is complicated to integrate and automate with other products.
The next standard plan costs three hundred ninety-nine dollars per month for ten concurrent users.
The spaces have been a major aspect of managing things, and the contacts for the resources I provide internally in Spacelift are quite affordable, effective, and useful.
My experience with pricing shows that the setup cost is reasonable, and the licensing also seems reasonable.
We can apply those policies in Spacelift, and the RBAC and access policies features are really excellent in Spacelift, which we do not find in any of the other competitor tools.
Spacelift has positively impacted my organization by reducing manpower, as it reduced the efforts of resources in the team, where previously a job done by two or three engineers can now be easily managed by one engineer using Spacelift.
You create so many different modules and so many different versions. Having a very easy way to navigate and search through them all, and the fact that you can actually see the commit ID and description really helps in discovering what was actually in that version of the module.
We leverage VRO when the going gets tough. When something is not doable with the tools we have with VMware Aria Automation, we use the capabilities of VRO because it has many plugins for many things.
It helps us automate the workflow of creating many VMs and the TensorFlow key method.
We have strong regulations for maintaining compliance and mitigating risks with this product.
| Product | Mindshare (%) |
|---|---|
| VMware Aria Automation | 5.5% |
| Spacelift | 1.2% |
| Other | 93.3% |


| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 6 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 3 |
| Large Enterprise | 8 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 33 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 24 |
| Large Enterprise | 131 |
The Spacelift orchestration platform combines infrastructure provisioning, configuration, and governance to increase platform team efficiency, accelerate developer velocity, and control costs. It connects to and orchestrates infrastructure as code, version control systems (VCSs), observability tools, control and governance solutions, and cloud providers to help deliver secure infrastructure faster. With Spacelift Intelligence, teams can also understand, design, deploy, and govern infrastructure using natural language, giving developers a fast, governed path to infrastructure without adding to the platform team's backlog.
Infrastructure provisioning: Stacks ensure faster, more secure provisioning by automatically combining source code, current infrastructure state, and configuration. The platform works with any major IaC tool or cloud platform and the VCS provider where your teams store infrastructure code.
Configuration automation: Expand your capabilities beyond Terraform and OpenTofu with a workflow that also manages Ansible playbooks.
Governance to balance speed and control: Reinforce security and compliance with controls over developer/DevOps activity. Provide Golden Paths and define custom policies for third-party security vulnerability scanning tools, while accelerating policy creation with best-practice templates. Detect drift automatically, and restore resources to their expected state with drift remediation.
Integrated workflow: Easily create workflows that combine IaC for provisioning, Ansible for configuration management, Kubernetes for container orchestration, and policies for governance. Blueprint templates allow you to open your infrastructure pipelines to developers without losing control.
Infra Assistant: Your AI infrastructure assistant that can understand, design, deploy, and govern infrastructure in plain language. Ask questions about your infrastructure state that dashboards and reports can't answer. Get expert design guidance before you deploy, create and apply policies with AI assistance and diagnose failures faster with AI-generated context across your stacks, dependencies, and history.
Intent: A no-code, AI-based deployment model for maximum speed. Developers request infrastructure through their LLM via Spacelift MCP. Intent translates those requests into governed infrastructure actions with the same policies, credentials, and visibility as IaC, without requiring Terraform expertise.
VMware Aria Automation is known for its automation capabilities, integrating with VMware and third-party tools to enhance workflow efficiency, save time, and manage resources effectively.
VMware Aria Automation offers a diverse set of features including a self-service portal and a streamlined user-friendly interface, which make it ideal for organizations aiming to automate virtual machine provisioning. The platform supports extensive automation capabilities across multi-cloud environments, featuring flexible blueprint designs and comprehensive integration with platforms like AWS, Azure, and ServiceNow. Though improvements are desired in areas like logging, template management, and vCenter integration, its robust framework facilitates IT infrastructure services, disaster recovery, and development operations. It is specifically beneficial for orchestrating workflows, automating routine tasks, and managing workloads efficiently in private and hybrid cloud environments.
What are the most important features of VMware Aria Automation?VMware Aria Automation is implemented across industries for automating the provisioning of virtual machines and managing cloud environments. It is used in sectors requiring efficient server deployment, network configurations, and seamless integration with tools such as AWS and Azure. It aids in reducing manual efforts, supporting IT infrastructure services, and enhancing disaster recovery protocols.
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