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VMware Aria Operations vs vCenter Orchestrator comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
50
Ranking in other categories
Process Automation (10th)
VMware Aria Operations
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
374
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (3rd), Virtualization Management Tools (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

vCenter Orchestrator and VMware Aria Operations 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 0.5% compared to last year.
VMware Aria Operations, on the other hand, focuses on Virtualization Management Tools, holds 33.2% mindshare, down 34.0% since last year.
Process Automation
Virtualization Management Tools
 

Featured Reviews

David Villota - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides automatic monitoring capabilities that save time for users
In my company's IT environment, we use the tool to deploy production environments for products, including live manufacturing systems. The product improves my company's IT automation processes since we can use fewer resources currently. In my company, we need to spend less time considering that vCenter Orchestrator monitors everything. In general, we don't have to be present in our company to do active monitoring. Automatic monitoring is available for everything with vCenter Orchestrator, so we have proactive alerts in our company. The most valuable feature of the product in streamlining our company's workflow stems from the fact that we need to spend fewer resources and less time in general. Our company can spend time on more effective tasks like working with the plans to improve processes and so on, instead of taking care of the systems. The benefits of the product's integration capabilities were useful for HPE. My company has HPE infrastructure, and we are keen to integrate everything into the host, VMware ESXi. It is really important to have an easy integration method that allows for everything to be installed easily in a matter of minutes. I was not involved in the product's setup process. My colleague took care of the product's setup process. From what I know, I can say that the product's setup phase was straightforward. Some custom setups were to be done manually in the tool, but everything was well documented. I recommend the product to those who plan to use it. One of the benefits of the product is that it is a low-cost and stable solution that offers a lot of resources. I rate the overall tool a nine out of ten.
Gaurav Amar - PeerSpot reviewer
Enabled us to cut the cost of resources and manage our infrastructure with a smaller team
There's a feature known as Smart Alerts in vRealize Operations, which I have found to be useful if there's anything going wrong in the infrastructure. What usually happens is that you get so many alerts that you become confused. Smart Alerts give you visibility into your infrastructure and also recommend how to fix the situation. That's a feature which I'm really a fan of. Control, from the compliance perspective, is also helpful because we are a PCI DSS-certified company. It keeps us in compliance so that all of our servers and other things are not breaching any of the baseline protocols and baseline policies which we have laid down for the company. That's another thing which I like about the VMware vROps.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We can manage and relocate resources easily."
"Because of the central management, the scripting engine and workflow engine are integrated with VMware without any burden to integrate different products."
"The implementation phase for vCenter Orchestrator was easy."
"It is very stable. I have been using vCenter Orchestrator from version three now to six plus."
"We can scale the solution."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy."
"It has the best workflow feature."
"The most valuable features are the graphical UI for designing the workflows and the interfaces that come out of the box."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to get a view of our entire environment in a single pane of glass. We're a very large company, so going from one interface to another to troubleshoot an issue, or even just to get capacity information, is time-consuming and not efficient. Being able to go to one place and get that information is very helpful."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to right-size a workload, based on historical data for that workload. It also allows us to "sanity-check" the entire infrastructure by getting monthly reports on how everything is performing and where we can make improvements. That's all done automatically, without any administrator involvement."
"It gives us visibility into the virtual infrastructure, and even the physical infrastructure, and into the workloads running. We have visibility even at the level of the appliance services. We can monitor everything. We can also create dependency reports, so if a service is down, it will not impact things. It gives us those dependencies brilliantly."
"It's a great tool for monitoring and tracking data of our entire environment."
"In the process of doing benchmark performance analysis, instead of going into PowerShell or the VMware or CLI, we're able to have vRealize provide that GUI that gives us that information up front, without the delay of scripting it."
"The most valuable features of VMware Aria Operations are its stability, ease of use, and extensive range of features."
"What I find most valuable is its simplicity, which allows us to seamlessly migrate views from one physical server to another, be it due to resource overloads or transitioning from one set of disks to another."
"vROps' best feature is the easy integration with the environment."
 

Cons

"Mainly VMware integrates with other products, but there is no easy way to link with other products from a different vendor. We can integrate with other products from the same vendors fairly well, but if they could make it so integration is easier with other vendors, that would really help."
"There can be compatibility issues."
"The custom workflows are very difficult and confusing."
"We encounter challenges related to the renewal of support subscriptions."
"Using this solution requires a lot of experience."
"The licensing is expensive and should be improved."
"There are some update-related issues with the product."
"After the change from perpetual licensing to subscriptions, the cost model changed."
"Where the product could improve would be the UI."
"We haven't found it to be intuitive or user-friendly. We're on version 6.0, it's gotten better since but there's a lot of things we have to do under the hood to make it work how we want it to work. It doesn't work out of the box very well until it's been fine-tuned."
"If I had to think of one thing that could be improved, I would probably lean towards making it easier to pull dashboards from vRealize Operations into other products, like a company-branded dashboard that would display in a NOC."
"There were early kinks in the some of the virtual appliances as we rolled them out."
"The one thing that I am always missing is training specific to Horizon. There is no training class you can go to for the Horizon add-on for vROps. I'd like to see specific training for Horizon admins, as opposed to general vSphere admins."
"There are some distribution issues, and there is not enough information on the portal."
"In vROps, I would like to have both automation and monitoring together, not two separate things you have to buy. I want them included in one package, one installation."
"You can troubleshoot, you can do all kinds of deep-dives into the issue and find out what the root cause is and everything, but in order to get it fixed, whatever it is (doesn't matter what it is), you need to log into another tool in order to fix it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This solution is expensive and the licensing is more attractive for Haveri."
"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."
"The product is expensive."
"The licensing cost is manageable because they have different versions available, standard, essential, and advanced."
"The price is reasonable, and one of the reasons that this product was selected."
"vCenter Orchestrator could be more affordable."
"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."
"My organization didn't have to pay extra for vCenter Orchestrator. It was already included, so it's basically free. Even VMware regular support is included."
"Don't overallocate! This means that you don't have to buy many hosts. You can save money that way."
"Five or six years ago, when we took it, it was a very good option. Now, I think I have to reevaluate, to be honest."
"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."
"This is an enterprise-level product and everything is included in the VMware Suite license."
"There's a smaller category that stands out due to its affordability, especially for recent versions, which I rate as four or five in terms of value. However, if you're looking for a vCenter with older, more advanced features, it comes at a significantly higher cost, and I would rate it around ten. They provide us with a choice between a recent version and one integrated, and I lean towards the former."
"The solution requires an annual license which is very expensive."
"The licensing is quite expensive for our company."
"The pricing: It's expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Government
12%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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.
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.
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.
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

No data available
VMware vRealize Operations (vROps), vCenter Operations Manager (VCOPS)
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Beiersdorf Shared Services
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
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849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.