SUSE Manager vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

SUSE and VMware are both solutions in the Configuration Management category. SUSE is ranked #13 with an average rating of 7.3, while VMware is ranked #7 with an average rating of 7.8. SUSE holds a 3.3% mindshare in CM, compared to VMware’s 5.2% mindshare. Additionally, 85% of SUSE users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

VMware Aria Automation and SUSE Manager compete in infrastructure automation and management. VMware Aria Automation has the upper hand for its pricing and support structure, whereas SUSE Manager is recognized for its feature richness.

Features: VMware Aria Automation offers robust automation capabilities, integration with various cloud services, and comprehensive lifecycle management. SUSE Manager provides extensive support for multiple Linux distributions, flexible deployment options, and enhanced security features.

Room for Improvement: VMware Aria Automation could improve its reporting tools, configuration options, and user experience. SUSE Manager needs better scalability, simplified patch management, and also has user experience issues that need addressing.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Aria Automation is praised for smoother deployment and accessible customer service. SUSE Manager's deployment process is structured but seen as complex, with customer service being harder to reach.

Pricing and ROI: VMware Aria Automation provides better initial setup costs and quicker ROI. SUSE Manager, though having higher setup costs, is valuable for organizations needing its specific features.

To learn more, read our detailed SUSE Manager vs. VMware Aria Automation Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

SUSE Manager vs. VMware Aria Automation

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

Microsoft Intune

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 10.2%, up from 9.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SUSE Manager is 3.3%, up from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 5.2%, down from 5.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Configuration Management

Featured Reviews

Joseph Merusi

Collaborations engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Everything has worked better since we started using it

Sometimes the syncing is inconsistent. I'm confident that the devices are checking in every eight hours, but sometimes the devices aren't picking up the settings as quickly as I would expect. Some features haven't been updated in a while, and Microsoft doesn't seem interested in developing them. Unless you talk to an engineer, you don't know whether there will be an update. There are communication issues, so you might start working with a feature without knowing if it will be deprecated six months from now. Some reporting areas still need development. For example, I noticed that the reporting for driver updates is still confusing.

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Victor Estival

Developer Product Marketing Manager at Parity Technologies

Easy to deploy, offers embedded monitoring, and is very stable

I am a SUSE partner. I have a central server and then I'm connected to the VPN. That way, I can connect to all different customers. I'd advise new users to certainly read the documentation, as that's what I tend to skip. However, it's an important step. Try to automate as much as you can. One of the most powerful things that I noticed when I arrived, was that it was underutilized, and there are all of these automation capabilities that SUSE Manager has. It's saved just so much time for me. I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

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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

"We are a remote company, and the product helps us manage the global endpoints. It helps us natively manage the endpoints in the cloud from anywhere."

"The stability of Microsoft Intune is good."

"Intune has automated the deployment of patches and applications, which is more efficient and easier."

"It is a comprehensive security solution that not only controls access to enterprise resources but also tracks and prevents unauthorized access, ensuring the protection of sensitive data and preventing potential data loss scenarios."

"The mobile application management, MAM, is the most useful aspect of the solution."

"Overall, the stability is good."

"The feature I find most valuable in Microsoft Intune is being able to configure policies and push them directly to mobile phones."

"The solution has significantly improved managing a diverse range of devices. We have observed enhancements across Android, iOS, and Windows devices."

More Microsoft Intune pros

"The setup is straightforward."

"What I appreciate best about SUSE Manager is that it supports most of the Linux flavors."

"SUSE Manager is the best solution for maintaining the Linux environment"

"SUSE Manager helps to optimize operations at a reduced cost."

"SUSE Manager is valuable for managing systems, patching, and utilizing SaltStack connectivity for various installations and other routines."

"When it comes to managing both Red Hat and SUSE environments, it provides the support for live patching, which is something I really, really appreciate."

"The extensibility of it and the customization of a lot of the Blueprints, that you can customize, and the community as a whole. There's a ton of community-generated Blueprints that might be (helpful) to set up a design for your automation needs, that you can use as a base and go on from there and make changes to it."

"Scalability is perfect. We haven't had any issues."

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

"Among the valuable features are the ease and speed of creating the VMs. Originally, we provisioned them manually and it would take us two days to do the provisioning... but with the automation, we are able to provision a VM with the click of a button, within seconds. It cut down on the time as well as cut down on the expense and employee cost in provisioning."

"We have it deployed in a highly-available environment and scalability is nice because we just had another ESX host and then we are able to increase the capacity."

"usability; Ease of use, the GUI, is probably the best feature, so that really anybody can use it. You don't have to be technical to be able to deploy a VM. I find it to be intuitive and user-friendly. Regarding some of the files that you feed it, you don't have to do a ton of development. You can feed it pretty standard configuration files. You don't have to be a developer, you don't have to know C# or Java or the like to get it going."

"Before it would take months to deploy a VM, now, with this solution, we can deploy many VMs in one hour. We can do a stack of them with Mediaware."

"For repeated installations and provisioning of VMs, we now have a clear definition of what has been installed, and we can monitor all that stuff."

More VMware Aria Automation pros

Cons

"The interoperability or communication with a different platform can be better. It is a two-way street. It is not only about Microsoft. The other platforms also have to be willing to share some information, but that absolutely can be improved."

"We faced issues with macOS support. The product should have better inventory and asset management."

"We would like to see the ability to use multiple personas on a device, similar to Samsung Knox, included in future updates."

"Microsoft Intune lags market leaders, such as Apperian, in its MAM capabilities."

"Could benefit from user having more control over devices."

"Each feature has a separate license, making logistics and cost management difficult if not strategically bundled together."

"The solution can have some compliance problems in general and the end-point user can bypass easily the company policies in Intune."

"Intune is not the most user-friendly mobile device management platform available."

More Microsoft Intune cons

"I really would like to have a broader library of VCP's or playbooks that I can deploy."

"The initial setup of SUSE Manager is quite complex."

"We sometimes have server issues and need to restart the service."

"The initial stage is a bit complex, but after that, everything runs seamlessly."

"It can be complex and difficult for users who are new to Linux and don't have any technical expertise."

"From an integration perspective, it is difficult to integrate with Jira or any ticketing tool, which is challenging."

"The setup needs coding. It's not easy. It's not straightforward."

"vCenter and vRA, I believe they share two different databases so sometimes you have to somehow sync them up. I wish there was only one database between the two or, somehow, one database would rule over the other one, so if you have both products, the vCenter might use the vRA database. Otherwise, when you do stuff in vCenter, you have to write a command on vRA to update the databases."

"I would like to see more integration to do things like DR, from a court perspective. Today, for us, SRM doesn't scale because each of our customers has a local vCenter environment as well as the vCenter in our environment. So we can't get SRM to scale to the point to which we need. From an integration perspective, DR inside of that would be good."

"My impression of its stability is "middle of the road." We've had some issues where it seems to be a little bit sensitive, where deployments fail and we don't really know a specific reason why. We'll dig through logs and try and figure out what's going on, but it's not always apparent as to why it failed. And you can kick it off again and it'll succeed. So stability could be better."

"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."

"It's not cheap."

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

"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."

More VMware Aria Automation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It comes with the E5 plan. We bought the E5 plan from Microsoft."

"It's affordable. It's cheaper if you have an Office 365, E5, or E3 subscription because everything is there."

"Intune is inexpensive. It also comes bundled in some Office 365 licenses, so you can choose to purchase it separately or as a package."

"Microsoft Intune is available for individual purchase at a low per-device cost."

"If you're ever going to buy an Office 365 environment, then pricing is reasonable given all that it does, but if you're not, then you might find the pricing expensive."

"It's affordable. In comparison to the competitors, the price depends on what features you need from Intune, but it's affordable. There are no hidden costs, but there are some features that go for a premium price. Those are the add-ons for which you have to pay extra."

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

"Even if they charge a premium, they aim to provide equal value."

More Microsoft Intune pricing and cost advice

Information not available

"I'm very interested in the integration with Puppet. However, my organization doesn't have the funding for something like Puppet right now. If VMware would integrate that feature set (Puppet) into vRA. That would be very awesome."

"I would rate it high because, compared to other solutions, VMware’s pricing is quite expensive. VMware products have become significantly more costly in recent years, leading to higher costs."

"The solution is free of cost."

"The cost of the solution is reasonable for us. Although it is relatively high, we prioritize stability and integration over cost."

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

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

"vRealize automation really should be a front door to the whole VMware suite of products."

"Customers say this solution is costlier compared to its competitors."

More VMware Aria Automation pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Energy/Utilities Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 ...

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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...

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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 ...

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What do you like most about SUSE Manager?

SUSE Manager helps to optimize operations at a reduced cost.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SUSE Manager?

From an integration perspective, it is difficult to integrate with Jira or any ticketing tool, which is challenging. ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for SUSE Manager?

My use cases include using SUSE Manager for patching the Linux operating system. I used to use SUSE Manager in my pre...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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Comparisons

Jamf Pro vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 11% of the time

Workspace ONE UEM vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Entra ID vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 7% of the time

ManageEngine Endpoint Central vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 5% of the time

More Microsoft Intune Competitors

Red Hat Satellite vs SUSE Manager

Compared 78% of the time

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs SUSE Manager

Compared 17% of the time

Microsoft Configuration Manager vs SUSE Manager

Compared 4% of the time

More SUSE Manager Competitors

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 16% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 14% of the time

Morpheus vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 11% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 9% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 7% of the time

More VMware Aria Automation Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Intune

June 2025

Download Microsoft Intune product report

Buyer's Guide

Configuration Management

June 2025

Download SUSE Manager product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Automation

June 2025

Download VMware Aria Automation product report

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager

No data available

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

SUSE Manager was designed to help your enterprise DevOps and IT Operations teams reduce complexity and regain control of your IT assets with a single tool to manage Linux systems across a variety of hardware architectures, hypervisors as well as container, IoT and cloud platforms. It automates Linux server and IoT device provisioning, patching and configuration for faster, consistent and repeatable server deployment helping to optimize operations and reduce costs. And with automated monitoring, tracking, auditing and reporting of your systems, VMs, and containers across your development, test and production environments, you can ensure compliance with internal security policies and external regulations.

SUSE

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.

VMware

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway

Day & Zimmermann, Cisco, CEMEX, L.B. Foster, Adient, Istanbul Technical University, 7Pixel, University of Maine System, Guerbet

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

Buyer's Guide

SUSE Manager vs. VMware Aria Automation

June 2025

Free Report: SUSE Manager vs. VMware Aria Automation

Find out what your peers are saying about SUSE Manager vs. VMware Aria Automation and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

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