VMware Aria Automation vs vCenter Orchestrator comparison

The compared vCenter Orchestrator and VMware Aria Automation solutions aren't in the same category. vCenter Orchestrator is ranked #7 in PA , with an average rating of 8.2, and holds a 0.2% mindshare in the category. VMware Aria Automation is ranked #1 in CM , with an average rating of 7.8, and holds a 11.8% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of vCenter Orchestrator users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of VMware Aria Automation users who would recommend it.

vCenter Orchestrator

Read 50 vCenter Orchestrator reviews

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84 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Automation

Read 170 VMware Aria Automation reviews

4,998 Views
2,182 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

vCenter Orchestrator

VMware Aria Automation

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

vCenter Orchestrator and VMware Aria Automation compete in the realm of virtualization and cloud automation software. VMware Aria Automation seems to have the upper hand due to its robust integration with third-party tools and advanced automation capabilities for hybrid cloud environments.

Features: vCenter Orchestrator is notable for its workflow automation and integration with VMware environments, providing a user-friendly single management interface and effective VM management. On the other hand, VMware Aria Automation is recognized for its automation strength in hybrid cloud settings, advanced orchestration capabilities, and its ability to enable complex service delivery and multi-cloud management.

Room for Improvement: vCenter Orchestrator needs to improve its cost-effectiveness, integrate better with non-VMware platforms, and simplify its interface for enhanced usability. VMware Aria Automation could benefit from better integration with third-party systems, streamlined documentation, and more user-friendly interfaces.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: vCenter Orchestrator is mainly used for on-premises deployments with established technical support but requires better response times and improved support quality. VMware Aria Automation is praised for its quick deployment in straightforward environments, though complex setups might require more effort and third-party support for smoother operations.

Pricing and ROI: vCenter Orchestrator's pricing model is complex and sometimes costly, but it provides value through its reliable virtualization management. VMware Aria Automation faces criticism for its high cost, particularly after transitioning to a subscription pricing model, but offers justified ROI for larger enterprises seeking comprehensive automation and hybrid cloud management.

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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

vCenter Orchestrator

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Process Automation (7th)

VMware Aria Automation

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

170

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Management (1st), Configuration Management (7th), Network Automation (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (17th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (4th)

Mindshare comparison

vCenter Orchestrator and VMware Aria Automation aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. vCenter Orchestrator is designed for Process Automation and holds a mindshare of 0.2%, down 0.4% compared to last year.
VMware Aria Automation, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud Management, holds 11.8% mindshare, up 11.5% since last year.

Process Automation

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

Gerhard Gmelch

IT architect endpoint at Rohde & Schwarz

Enhance automation efficiency with cost-effective graphical workflow design

I use vCenter Orchestrator for automation purposes, specifically to run automation workbooks The most valuable features are the graphical UI for designing the workflows and the interfaces that come out of the box. Additionally, it is included in the VMware Vitalization Stack, which means there…

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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

"The most valuable features are the graphical UI for designing the workflows and the interfaces that come out of the box."

"It's 100% stable, it's always stable. We haven't had any bugs. The solution works very well and we haven't had any problems."

"The hardware abstraction layer, being able to make the VMs portable when moving to a different platform or over a WAN."

"The tool is very beneficial for automating workflow."

"We can manage and relocate resources easily."

"The product's integration is good, it works well with other programs and solutions."

"The storage motion is a good feature. It is a very good tool."

"We can scale the solution."

More vCenter Orchestrator pros

"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."

"SaltStack has given us the ability to deal with systems at scale and rectify issues at scale."

"The product’s most valuable feature is its ability to provide environmental security."

"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."

"It is possible to completely automatize the creation and removal of a virtual machine."

"vRealize Automation has improved the speed of provisioning just by automating things, making people think about whether a human really needs to do something or can we make the machines do it for us. It is a lot faster to deploy things now."

"One of the most valuable features is lifecycle management. It allows my teams to create, manage, and retire all of our infrastructure objects in the data center."

"Scalability is probably the best part about it. You can take things that you've already defined, that you've already built once, and build them again multiple times, without significant effort."

More VMware Aria Automation pros

Cons

"I would like to see, from within the Web Console, being able to define the project and custom templates per user; almost like how CloudSpec has approached the solution."

"I did not do the initial setup. However, it was complex at the beginning."

"We would like more flexibility in sizing data storage and virtual machines, as the current options aren't very adaptable."

"The response time of vCenter Orchestrator's support could be improved."

"VMware tools would benefit from more automation. When installing our devices and servers, we often need to install the VMware tools manually. This process should be automated during the VM installation process."

"This solution needs to have more built-in workflows."

"There are some update-related issues with the product."

"The GUI should be enhanced in the future."

More vCenter Orchestrator cons

"The initial setup was complex from beginning to delivery. The current version is a bit more complex than version 7 to deploy."

"The deployment mechanisms for the initial deployment of the product line lacks the appropriate documentation to give someone who's never used it before... There might be cases where someone wants to go to the website, go to the doc section, and do a step-by-step on how to deploy it. That's really not as brushed-up as other documents I've seen that they have. That would definitely be an improvement on their end."

"Most of the time the upgrade experience has been good but sometimes things break after upgrading. For example, some API codes stopped working."

"We upgraded twice. The last upgrade was a bit problematic."

"For the administrator, it can be a little challenging. For the administrator, there are a lot of moving parts. It is fine once you figure out where the knobs are you need to twiddle, but it can be a challenge to get it up and running."

"The setup is difficult. You need a technical person to help you set it up."

"The solution could be lighter. As an administrator, I would like to simplify the number of services I need to deploy. They took a significant step in that direction by removing all the Windows dependencies that we had in the past, but there are still a lot of services consuming resources."

"Maintaining the product requires effort and a good understanding of the environment, including how to set up the codes and other configurations. Pricing needs to be improved to improve the customer penetration."

More VMware Aria Automation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"vCenter Orchestrator could be more affordable."

"Our licensing is on a yearly basis. We pay for the license and then we pay the support every year."

"The product is expensive."

"This solution is expensive and the licensing is more attractive for Haveri."

"The concept of hyper-convergence is smart. I don't know if it can be applied with less cost to be more affordable for small or medium-sized companies. The cost is a very important factor for it. We are currently depending on SAN storage. However, the hyper-converged solutions are depending on the storage within the hosts, such as vSAN in the VMware. It is a smart solution."

"We pay a yearly fee, based on our entries."

"The licensing module is somewhat complex. Calculating the cost is complicated. Many of our clients are unclear about the billing system and the traffic metering."

"I rate the product price a seven to eight out of ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."

More vCenter Orchestrator pricing and cost advice

"The solution is free of cost."

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

"From the customer perspective, the value was worth it."

"A simplified version for small businesses would be good."

"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'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."

"Better pricing is always handy, but I feel it's at the right price point."

More VMware Aria Automation pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

21%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Government

12%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about vCenter Orchestrator?

The stability of the product is very good.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for vCenter Orchestrator?

We're running a low-profile budget. This is not our main focus on investment technology, so we're trying to reduce costs due to the change from perpetual to subscription licenses.

See all answers

What needs improvement with vCenter Orchestrator?

After the change from perpetual licensing to subscriptions, the cost model changed. We are considering alternatives since we lost the perpetual aspect, and support is changing.

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 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 free trial I cannot describe in detail the second and third options as my company ...

See all answers

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 companies were using it most often: Social organizations Financial institutions and ...

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Comparisons

VMware Aria Operations vs vCenter Orchestrator

Compared 23% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs vCenter Orchestrator

Compared 14% of the time

Microsoft System Center Orchestrator vs vCenter Orchestrator

Compared 12% of the time

More vCenter Orchestrator Competitors

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 15% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 15% 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

Red Hat OpenShift vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 3% of the time

More VMware Aria Automation Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

vCenter Orchestrator

May 2025

Download vCenter Orchestrator product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Automation

May 2025

Download VMware Aria Automation product report

Also Known As

No data available

VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack

Overview

VMware vCenter Orchestrator simplifies the automation of complex IT tasks and integrates with VMware vCloud Suite components to adapt and extend service delivery and operational management, effectively working with existing infrastructure, tools and processes.

VMware

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

Beiersdorf Shared Services

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

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