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VMware Aria Automation vs VMware Tanzu Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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

VMware Aria Automation
Ranking in Cloud Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
172
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (8th), Network Automation (6th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (20th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (5th)
VMware Tanzu Platform
Ranking in Cloud Management
31st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (16th), PaaS Clouds (13th), Development Platforms (3rd), Container Management (9th), Service Mesh (8th), Agile and DevOps Services (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 5.8%, down from 11.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Tanzu Platform is 1.2%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Aria Automation5.8%
VMware Tanzu Platform1.2%
Other93.0%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

VasilisGiannitsiotis - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT at ITSolutions
Automation has streamlined complex financial workflows but still needs more intuitive orchestration
Something to improve in VMware Aria Automation would be related to VCF 9, as I do not know what it is trying to bring because they exposed it as the solution of everything. So VCF 9 will bring VCF Automation and VCF Operations, the new product line of VMware. I have not seen what this brings or what else it includes. Maybe in the area of vRealize Orchestrator, this would be beneficial because VRO can do everything. Perhaps a more user-friendly way to use that tool would be helpful because the possibilities there are endless. I am looking for more user-friendly navigation in VMware Aria Automation.
ErmiasGirma - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at Safaricom Ethiopia plc
Has supported container-based deployments and improved infrastructure visibility through monitoring tools
Aria Operations, formerly known as VMware vRealize Operations, has been renamed to vROps. We are currently using this for monitoring purposes. For orchestration, we are using VCD to automate Telco Cloud. VCD is an automation tool, and we are also using VMware Tanzu Platform for the Kubernetes environment, alongside TKG, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid. These are also other solutions for the Tanzu Kubernetes environment. For Telco Cloud, we are using it to automate our company's operations, which is for a telecom company. We are familiar with these products, especially vCenter, ESXi, VCD, vCF, and vROps. It is very easy to integrate applications when we deploy vCenter and ESXi since we can enable vSphere with Tanzu feature. We can build namespaces and provide application developers the platform to deploy their applications on pods within containerization. We can easily manage, pull results, and create containers efficiently, making it a simple way to handle applications. We provide namespace labels for application developers, and we can manage their resources along with other aspects easily. Regarding security, we use many tools such as CDX and LDAP, AD for integrating our Kubernetes cluster with the developer teams. We can manage roles and permissions simply. It is very straightforward to integrate with EDX and other third-party tools, Active Directory, to the Kubernetes cluster, allowing easy access and management.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One of the valuable features is controlling VM standards and server sprawl while at the same time providing the ability for end users to self-provision VMs."
"Preparation of Hybris Commerce HY300 training laboratory environments and Hybris Expert Services demo infrastructure went from days of effort down to hours."
"It's extremely convenient to be able to spin something up and be able to work on other things, because it's already done it, making my workload lighter."
"It is probably 90 percent quicker to get something out the door than it was before. For developers, depending on who is building VMs for them, sometimes they request anywhere from 20 to 100. Now, we can deploy them in a matter of an hour, where previously it might have taken me three days to deploy out 100 VMs."
"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."
"The ROI that we see is that people don't have to work too hard to have something done and therefore they have more time to market."
"In terms of scalability, vRA has connections to a lot of different systems. It's very flexible and an impressive product."
"Our speed of provisioning has improved. We used to build systems manually, which would take four hours or a day. Nowadays we're able to spin something up off a template... and it takes about 20 minutes."
"The Tanzu platform is highly available, scalable, and flexible."
"Tanzu Mission Control has quite a set of rich features when compared to OpenShift."
"The most popular feature of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is its graphical user interface for describing network policies on the Service Mesh, which is highly integrable with other tools commonly used in supply chains such as security."
"The most important thing about the solution is its flexibility."
"There are a lot of services available in VMware Tanzu Application Service, such as databases and application servers, so you have everything you need in one application and do not need to search outside of the solution."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the ability to check the flow of all the different variants within our applications."
"Defining security metrics has proven beneficial for customers in maintaining a safe environment."
"The solution is integrated very well with a lot of other systems. Also, its GUI is very good."
 

Cons

"Improvements in the API. Make it easier because that's where we tend to struggle when we were working with other groups."
"Better training, or training modules, wouldn't hurt."
"in general, it took us a long time to get it off the ground. We had a lot of issues upfront and we determined that we just needed to scrap it. I think we scrapped it two or three times before we actually got it built the way we wanted, and we're still not where we need to be. We have had downtime. There have been some issues, but we're also two iterations behind on version."
"VMware should go the way of vROps, with everything in one machine, the ability to scale out, and a more distributed environment instead of having the usual centralized SQL database."
"For the administrator, it can be a little challenging. For the administrator, there are a lot of moving parts."
"It was a complex setup. We had to use the consultant from VMware to make the solution work well."
"There are a number of bugs and regression errors that can make it frustrating at times, but given the flexibility so far I have found adequate workarounds."
"In terms of additional features, I would like it to be able to poll my vCenter infrastructure more rapidly and adapt to changes quickly. It should alert me and let me know when there are broken components, as a result of underlying infrastructure changes. It needs to be more stringent."
"I would like to see additional support for things outside of Cloud Foundry."
"Tanzu could provide more granular control over whatever networking is being done on the containers. I would also like to see a slightly more detailed view of application-level tracing. I'm referring to the connections between different microservices. If they added a service-matching feature, that would be helpful for the customers to build or be more effective."
"Tanzu could provide more granular control over whatever networking is being done on the containers."
"The solution could improve by having better integration with other solutions such as HPE."
"The solution could improve by having better integration with other solutions such as HPE."
"This product doesn't have a GUI. In order to use it properly, I need to connect it to a new GUI or build a GUI to manage it — it's pretty difficult."
"One potential area for expansion would be leveraging AI capabilities, which my customer might be interested in exploring as they grow."
"It is not easy to build a solution with containers. It has a graphical user interface, but you need to have a lot of knowledge of Linux and how to work in the command mode."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is expensive since it is an enterprise product."
"As far as value is concerned, it has been essential to our environment. We have been able to deploy VMs quickly and the developers have their own sandbox, so they can spin up and destroy VMs at their own will."
"They should provide one license for all the sub-products."
"The pricing for this solution is roughly 20% lower than the competitive products in the market."
"VMware Aria Automation is expensive."
"From a budget point of view, the pricing is a bit on the higher side."
"SaltStack is an open-source product."
"Better pricing is always handy, but I feel it's at the right price point."
"The solution is bundled in with Cloud Foundry so the pricing is not independent."
"It is not the most expensive option, and I believe the capabilities align well with the value it provides."
"The licensing cost is expensive."
"The price of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is greater than that of Red Hat's competitor solution"
"I would recommend that businesses look into the full price for their requirements. The price is high, but there are some open-source add-ons that can be used for customization while keeping costs down, although these might not be suitable for everyone."
"Its pricing is very competitive. We get around 70% or 75%, sometimes even 80%, discount on the product. I would rate it a four out of five in terms of pricing."
"The least expensive licensing cost for VMware is around $350 per core."
"The solution is only for large or medium size enterprises because it is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise130
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

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 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 ...
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 ...
Which is better - OpenShift Container Platform or VMware Tanzu Mission Control?
Red Hat Openshift is ideal for organizations using microservices and cloud environments. I like that the platform is auto-scalable, which saves overhead time for developers. I think Openshift can b...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Mission Control?
The price of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is greater than that of Red Hat's competitor solution. I would rate the pricing of VMware Tanzu Mission Control as four out of ten.
What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Mission Control?
The product should support integration with Google Cloud Platform (GCP). The tool's flexibility in onboarding different clusters needs to improve, it's presently limited to a few clusters on the li...
 

Also Known As

VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
Tanzu Application Catalog, Application Platform, Application Service, Hub, Mission Control, Service Mesh, Build Service, Concourse for VMware Tanzu
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Verizon, Cerner, Zipcar, Avarteq
Find out what your peers are saying about VMware Aria Automation vs. VMware Tanzu Platform and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.