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VMware Aria Automation vs vCenter Configuration Manager comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 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

Microsoft Intune
Sponsored
Ranking in Configuration Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
296
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (1st), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
vCenter Configuration Manager
Ranking in Configuration Management
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.2
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Aria Automation
Ranking in Configuration Management
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
170
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (3rd), Network Automation (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (17th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 9.9%, up from 9.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vCenter Configuration Manager is 0.8%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 5.2%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Configuration Management
 

Featured Reviews

AkashKamble - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables management of multiple operating systems with a single license
The best feature is that it's a Microsoft product, so if anything goes wrong, we get quick support for anything required. Remote system functionality allows us to sit anywhere and take control of any device via remote management. We can enhance security for clients' laptops with built-in Microsoft Defender, which is available with the Microsoft Intune license. We use it for reporting purposes through endpoint analytics. When pushing scripting, there are two types available: remediation script and reservation script. Through endpoint analytics, you can push defender policies to clients. It helps with reporting, inventory updates, and monitoring tenant status health.
Nikhil Nikhil - PeerSpot reviewer
Compliance management has improved efficiency but licensing changes pose challenges
I am not using any advanced features or AI. I am employing a basic VMware vCenter setup for my infrastructure. Scalability has no major limitations, and the solution is efficient. Overall, it's satisfactory. I would rate the vCenter experience as seven out of ten due to concerns regarding license, pricing, and AI features.
Le Quang Long - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Microsoft Intune scales very effectively with our growing needs."
"If the product works, remote access will be a benefit. To this point we have not had reason to have confidence in achieving that access."
"I am easily able to manage devices and assets, especially laptops and desktops."
"The best features of Microsoft Intune include helping to know if computers are configured correctly and if users have access to apps or the platform."
"The most useful features in Microsoft Intune are the policy enforcement and conditional access. These features make our operations easier from a company perspective."
"The most valuable includes managing everything from a single console."
"It is user-friendly, and the performance is also good. It is a convenient product"
"Third party integrations are very convenient to use with Microsoft Intune."
"The most valuable feature of vCenter Configuration Manager is the automated processes."
"The online configuration, especially in the latest version, is very good."
"I like vMotion because it manages fault tolerance."
"It's a very nice solution for our needs."
"My primary use case is for migration"
"The most valuable features of this solution are the ability to manage all of our environments allowing us to have better functionality and high availability."
"The most valuable features of vCenter Configuration Manager are highly mature technology."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"It has saved us a lot of time and work. It helped us to reorganize some of our service lines, so we could be more efficient. For example, on our open system server team, we had 15 people building servers, now we have two."
"We provided the ability to request virtual machines to our end users. Before, this was a very manual process, which took engineers to do. Now, it's an automated process."
"The most valuable feature is the way that it plugs into our monitoring systems, and Infoblox and Puppet."
"Another valuable feature is the flexible user interface. They can manage all of the servers, the full lifecycle of VMs, on one screen."
"vRA is user-friendly. It has the same layout and walk-through GUI, similar to other VMware products."
"Aria Automation gives you the flexibility to deploy tenants with customized blueprints for permissions and policies. Version 7.8 consisted of multiple products, so you had to deploy a lot of virtual machines on one of the servers. Starting from 8.6, VMware consolidated all the components into one Linux appliance. This allows the option to use vRA or DevOps capabilities."
"vRealize automation stability is pretty good. They are always fixing bugs. The product team is doing a great job of addressing any issues that we might have."
"The most valuable feature is, instead of doing the VMotion manually, we have automated everything with a script, using vRealize. That means I don't need to think about things like compatibility. The system will do everything for me and just give me a report."
 

Cons

"Microsoft Intune is not as fast and extensive as traditional solutions such as SCCM and others."
"A new Intune feature allows application packaging, but it incurs additional licensing costs for a significant number of applications."
"There are challenges with Intune, specifically in reporting. Many third-party companies offer single-pane-of-glass reporting that shows you what your update environment looks like, how your patch is doing, application status, etc., but Intune's reporting is not intuitive. You can connect to Azure, monitoring, and the workbooks, but it's not streamlined."
"The solution could improve by having better integration with Apple."
"Microsoft Intune has potential for improvement; I would like to see a lot more customization in the reporting tools."
"It's the granularity: 'Is your firewall on? Is BitLocker on?' It's not amazing granularity. But I've looked into other products, like Duo, and they're all similar."
"The time we have to wait to deploy policies has room for improvement."
"The most significant challenge is reporting and monitoring. The reporting accuracy for deploying applications and all aspects of Intune needs to be improved."
"Error reporting should be more precise and descriptive, and there is no way to filter the logs. It would be helpful if its logs analysis can be more detailed, and the logs can be filtered."
"Regarding the licensing part, previously I was able to acquire the license with an eight-core configuration. Now it requires a 16-core setup, which is difficult for customers who have fewer connections to the servers."
"The product's high price is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"The reporting could be improved."
"The solution could be more integrated with the Microsoft environment."
"When vCenter is in a Microsoft environment, there is a lot of licensing involved, where we face some difficulties."
"I think the logging side should be improved because it's pretty difficult to keep up to date VMware and with vCenter."
"We would like to improve the UI interface and customer experience in vCenter Configuration Manager. We need a speed-based system, which is methodology checked. The migration functions, from one hardware to another and the nodes must be a partner of four nodes, which acts as a weakness. They should have advanced training and course material for vCenter solutions."
"The solution is intuitive, but not necessarily user-friendly. In particular, it's the documentation. It's a lot of going-through-the-weeds types of scenarios. There is just an abundance of information, so it's a matter of understanding how the objects or the relationships exist, and then, obviously, being able to access that information and knowing how to make use of it."
"The stability is 95 percent. There are some situations where it gets a little bit clumsy. When it gets really big, when you're dealing with a very large deployment, it can be a little bit difficult, but it's better than nothing. It does a significant job, given what it's tasked to do."
"The back-end has a steep learning curve."
"I know you can spin up virtual desktops in vRA, but they're not thin-provisioned. I don't know if that's because the other product, Horizon View, is there, but it would be nice to see more integration."
"There is a little bit of pain when it comes to libraries and what is needed to run the product."
"7.5 is not user-friendly, in fact, it's a nightmare. They changed everything on the graphic user interface, the mode where the user interacts with the product."
"We still struggle a little bit with the configuration as far as making sure that we have all the endpoints where they need to be, because that's not as agile as we'd like in the back-end. We're working towards that with our DevOps teams to make sure that we're touching the right endpoints and getting the right data."
"It would be nice in the next release if they added in tool tips. Whether you're putting it together, adding a blueprint, or you're making a change in the system, highlighting or selecting something and having it tell you what it does or what it will do would be nice. Because it's such a complex system, it's hard to work with unless you've been using it for years to know what everything is doing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's affordable. It's cheaper if you have an Office 365, E5, or E3 subscription because everything is there."
"Microsoft Intune has been incorporated into our Microsoft E5 licenses."
"I liked the tool's pricing until P2 came into effect. I am unsure about the current value versus the cost of the new licensing model."
"Microsoft Intune is not cost-effective as a standalone product."
"Microsoft Intune is expensive."
"It comes as a bundle, so you do not really know what the prices are. Microsoft does not break it down to the user cost for us. It is just bundled with our E5 license."
"Consider the Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite rather than choosing specific sub-components, e.g. only Microsoft Intune."
"Existing E5 license holders for M365, Intune, and Azure, receive a free license."
"It is an expensive solution."
"It is on a yearly basis."
"While the pricing is reasonable for large corporations, it presents a substantial financial challenge for medium-sized businesses."
"The price of the solution is too expensive for us and we are looking to move to another solution."
"The product is highly-priced."
"vCenter's pricing is reasonable, but nowadays, they are drastically increasing their prices, which is pathetic."
"Price-wise, the product is an affordable one. The additional expenses, apart from the licensing costs of the solution, are attached to the support a user wants to receive from vCenter Configuration Manager's end."
"The solution comes with three-year support. We have to renew the support annually after the three years are up."
"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."
"They should provide one license for all the sub-products."
"The solution is free of cost."
"The pricing is very high."
"VMware Aria Automation is expensive."
"There is confusion between licensing levels. There are three different licensed versions of vRealize Automation, and there are different things which can happen in each of them."
"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."
"From a budget point of view, the pricing is a bit on the higher side."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Insurance Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
 

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 ...
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...
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 ...
What do you like most about vCenter Configuration Manager?
Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for vCenter Configuration Manager?
Nowadays, it is a bit expensive. It's costly, primarily due to the licensing aspect.
What needs improvement with vCenter Configuration Manager?
My impression on the impact of the real-time monitoring features of vCenter Configuration Manager is that it's somewh...
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...
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...
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...
 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
vCM
VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
Bank Al Bilad, Thomas-Krenn.AG, Pronto!, Unimed Juiz de Fora
Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Find out what your peers are saying about VMware Aria Automation vs. vCenter Configuration Manager and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.