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VMware Aria Automation vs Zesty comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 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

VMware Aria Automation
Ranking in Cloud Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
170
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (7th), Network Automation (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (17th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (5th)
Zesty
Ranking in Cloud Management
23rd
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Cost Management (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 10.6%, down from 11.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zesty is 0.3%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Jeffery Smith - PeerSpot reviewer
Effortless cost management with automated instance adjustment and helpful support
There are different resource types that we would like to leverage and get reserved instances for, such as RDS instances. Currently, no mechanism within Zesty allows this, but this may be due to AWS limitations. Another point is that Zesty needs to react to any changes AWS makes, but they have been proactive in their communication regarding material impacts.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The automation of the redundant tasks and the implementation of ServiceNow are huge for us..."
"A lot of its DevOps for infrastructure capabilities improve reliability. Much effort was put in by some customers, like a large automobile manufacturer, a large telecom, and two large banks, to achieve a certain level of capabilities in this space. These DevOps for infrastructure capabilities have saved time for developers. In one use case for a large marketplace, a typical release cycle took about 80 hours and was brought down to three hours by automating deployment for developers. The quicker that deployments happen, the faster that they can do their product release cycles."
"The IT support for developers is nice as well because they are able to manage the environment themselves."
"VMware Aria Automation is a very scalable solution because it integrates well with a couple of leading products in the industry. For products that are not already integrated, there are plugins or adapters that can be used with customization."
"We've seen that typically, the people who are provisioning VDIs and server VMs can now utilize most of their time towards other projects and moving the environment forward, instead of just hammering out virtual machines all day."
"The infrastructure has helped us to greatly increase our agility."
"The DevOps for infrastructure capabilities has saved time for our developers by automating processes and reducing provisioning time. Task time has been reduced by 40 percent."
"I like its capacity, the self-service portal, and operational automation. The most beneficial feature is that it saves time when creating new virtual machines, deploying security measures, and writing infrastructure code, making things easier and faster. We have a standard we follow, reducing the time spent repeatedly rewriting everything."
"The turnkey aspect of Zesty is very valuable."
"One of the reasons we decided to onboard Zesty was that it started supporting Windows instances."
 

Cons

"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."
"SaltStack's features are minimal."
"Its configuration process could be better."
"I don't think it's intuitive or user-friendly. I think it's a good tool. Any automation tool, these days, the learning curve is kind of high. You're teaching sysadmins who never developed stuff. Maybe they modified a little bit of code and now you tell them, "Hey, here's the tool, use it." But you have to know a little bit of DevOps. So you have to train them how to do the scripting."
"The initial setup was complex from beginning to delivery. The current version is a bit more complex than version 7 to deploy."
"The upgrade experience is horrible. It's not straightforward, there are a lot of failures, a lot of support interactions. It's not something that we are able to pull off ourselves. I've been with vRA since it was termed vCSA. We've gone through multiple rounds, and it has never been easy."
"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."
"They can improve on the dashboard representations and the options for non-technical people. I would like to see the ability to customize that and maybe provide them with helpful guides to what subscriptions they have. Sometimes, I find that I have to do more explanation to people who do approvals. I would really like to customize the display to the terms they use in their particular business unit. So a little bit more of a nod to the customization of the UI for non-technical users would be helpful."
"I would like to get RDS-reserved instances that I could buy and sell, but that's a limitation on AWS."
"There are different resource types that we would like to leverage and get reserved instances for, such as RDS instances."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"VMware Aria Automation is expensive."
"The cost of the solution is reasonable for us. Although it is relatively high, we prioritize stability and integration over cost."
"From the customer perspective, the value was worth it."
"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."
"It made the provisioning of the virtual machines easier and faster. We can react more quickly to customers' demands."
"The solution has helped to increase infrastructure, agility, speed, and provisioning in the time to market."
"We do plan to see ROI with any new implementation of new technologies being implemented within our environment."
"From a budget point of view, the pricing is a bit on the higher side."
"The solution’s pricing is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zesty?
Their pricing is brilliant. It is a percentage of what they save us by using reserved instances. If they save us $25,000, they might charge five percent of that, which is work we wouldn't do on our...
What needs improvement with Zesty?
There are different resource types that we would like to leverage and get reserved instances for, such as RDS instances. Currently, no mechanism within Zesty allows this, but this may be due to AWS...
What is your primary use case for Zesty?
We predominantly use Zesty to manage our spend in AWS, specifically around reserving instances for our compute workload. Our workload is dynamic, and it would be cumbersome and difficult for us to ...
 

Also Known As

VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Walkme, Wiz, Gong, Grubhub, Singular
Find out what your peers are saying about VMware Aria Automation vs. Zesty and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.