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VMware Aria Operations for Applications vs Zabbix comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 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 Operations for ...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
16th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
17th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Container Monitoring (5th)
Zabbix
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
8th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
1st
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
109
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (1st), Server Monitoring (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 1.4%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zabbix is 2.2%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Zabbix2.2%
VMware Aria Operations for Applications1.4%
Other96.4%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

AS
Consultant at HCLTech
Automation and insightful diagnostics elevate operations while improvements are welcome
The new version 8.18 has brought significant improvements. The main purpose of using this tool is having a single console to manage all entities. The cloud integration capabilities, including private, public, and hybrid, are already well-implemented. The ability to manage multiple vCenters across different geographical locations is very effective. The new Skyline health feature and certificate and licensing management are particularly useful improvements. The dashboard's overview tab provides comprehensive information about current vCenter status, resizable amounts, reclamation opportunities, anomalies, diagnostics, licensing, and certificates. However, there is room for improvement in application analysis. The current functionality lacks detailed monitoring at the kernel level, focusing mainly on CPU, memory, and storage matrices. Enhanced application monitoring capabilities, including tracking downtime for specific types of applications such as transactional or e-commerce applications, would be beneficial.
KamranBhatti - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
Helps reduce response time but has room to improve customization complexity
We are not working on simple standalone solutions like Kaspersky DDoS Protection or Hybrid Cloud Security. Once you understand Zabbix, then it is easy to customize those web pages and graphs for our customer use. It is fully automated to your requirements. Zabbix is working fine with no issues, and I am satisfied with it. We have combined Zabbix and SolarWinds. The integration works fine, and it is easy to integrate Zabbix with the IT environment. We were trying to purchase MDR (Managed Detection and Response), but we are not working on that. I don't have real experience with MDR. We are using Falcon software for that. We are working with Falcon Complete, not with Sandbox. We are not using Kaspersky for business or cloud protection. For that, we are using Zabbix CrowdStrike Falcon Complete solution. I have given this review an overall rating of 8.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"People are very pleased with the implementation."
"I gladly recommend VMware Aria Operations for Applications because it is cost effective and has commendable AI response capabilities."
"Using Wavefront, we have been able to reduce the complexity of our pipeline."
"Scalability for VMware Aria Operations for Applications is easy to implement and manage."
"For us, the ease of deployment in combination with TMZ was the most important part because we don't have to manually deploy a complex monitoring solution. We can more or less do that with the click of a button, and we are not dependent on the developers to provide us with all the necessary features and functions to make that work. We can just deploy it on a workload cluster and monitor at least a good part of the workload. If we want to go into detail, we clearly need to make changes, but for a good part of application monitoring, it gives us good insights."
"This solution will give you a single pane of glass for everything, and centralized monitoring."
"The most valuable aspects of the solution are its ease of use and its ease of implementation."
"The features I find most valuable is the querying and alerting capabilities."
"For internal monitoring and network monitoring the solution is really good."
"Zabbix is good for discovery."
"We value the auto-host discovery, template import, bulk import/export features. Newer versions also add nice features, such as multi-IP per host."
"During my testing, the features that I like the most are that it can be integrated with my system, and it provides me with reports of all of my servers."
"I use the solution to provide a perfect environment for remote connectivity with my clients."
"If you are serious about your infrastructure then you have to know what is going on, and with Zabbix we know when servers are using too much CPU, memory, disk IO, etc., and besides getting notified when something goes wrong, we are also now aware of how well our infrastructure scales, something that can save us money and frustrations."
"The most valuable feature is network traffic monitoring."
"It is a great product; the SNMP protocol tracking feature is good, I really like how it tracks SNMP, and the alerts are also great."
 

Cons

"VMware technical support has declined since the Broadcom acquisition. Previously, they were more focused on issue resolution, but now they prioritize licensing verification before providing support."
"The implementation is a long process that should be improved."
"The documentation and integration with Kubernetes could be improved."
"They could make it more easy to plug-in data so that a nontechnical person will be able to use it, like accountants or finance people. That way they don't have to ask us."
"The initial setup should be easier and more seamless."
"Its billing model is consumption-based. I understand the consumption-based model, but it is not necessarily easy to estimate and guess how many points or how much we are going to consume on a specific application up until we get to that point. So, for us, it would be helpful to have more insights or predictability into what we can expect from a cost perspective if we are starting to use specific features. This can potentially also drive our consumption a bit more."
"In the new version, I would love to see more prediction capabilities. It would be great if one could see the alerts get a little more enriched with information and become more human-friendly instead of the technical stuff that they put in there. I think those would be really awesome outcomes to get."
"I would like to see integration with Kubernetes cluster and APIs so that you can manage the entire stack."
"The only issue I can note is that it's Linux-based, and Linux documentation is not the best."
"Zabbix is a great tool and fairly easy for a technical person but it could be more friendly for non-technical staff."
"The performance reporting could be improved."
"For our company, it is not scalable."
"The networking monitor is not too easy to work with."
"My company wanted to do an exercise command to access IT from Cameroon. They wanted to access an FSS to a second host with second equipment that was on another coast but it is not possible on Zabbix to do it. They want to directly access from the front-end of Zabbix to access a prompt in Zabbix to an access terminal. In the front-end, there is no way to do that. That would be an important improvement."
"Zabbix isn't a great tool for cloud-specific monitoring - its connection to public clouds needs to be improved. Other areas for improvement would be the lack of dashboards and integrations."
"We would like to monitor other touchpoints such as ATM machines. It would be great if it can provide monitoring of ATM machines. Compatibility with other products would also be great."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."
"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."
"I don't have the details. In our case, there is a mixture in place. We have production usage, and we are also doing training for VMware. So, we also have a training instance. It is worth the money you would spend on it. That's because if you were to build all of this yourself by using some of the open source tools, then you would need a lot of time."
"The licensing costs are very high, particularly when you consider that we have to purchase a level 1 license for every integration, such as the load balancer, HAProxy, and the MSSP. And if you want to use vSAN, that's another license. Then, of course, Tanzu Observability has its own separate license."
"My manager is very happy because it doesn't cost anything."
"There are no licenses."
"I use the tool's free version."
"It is free, which allows us to reduce costs."
"We pay the subscription for support by year."
"Zabbix is open-source so if one wishes to implement it in-house, they must have qualified professionals to set up and optimize databases, Linux/Unix OS, PHP, Apache, and depending on what is monitored, a full-stack network and systems administrator may be needed."
"This solution is completely open-source, so it is quite affordable."
"It is freeware. We still use the free version of Zabbix."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business56
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise35
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
The solution includes cost drivers that can be configured according to your environment. You can input server-wise, CPU-wise, storage, and memory costs per hour or day. Once cost drivers are provid...
What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
The new version 8.18 has brought significant improvements. The main purpose of using this tool is having a single console to manage all entities. The cloud integration capabilities, including priva...
What is your primary use case for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
I have been involved in several projects where I had to implement automation and monitoring alerting. I performed automation using VMware Aria Operations for Applications. There is an automation ta...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zabbix?
I think Zabbix is economical, whereas SolarWinds is expensive. SolarWinds has a lot of secure features, but Zabbix is providing everything free of cost. Zabbix is economical, and you can install it...
What needs improvement with Zabbix?
I am using only Area Operations, but I don't prefer it. I installed Zabbix for the 3000 devices. Area Operations is not good.
What is your primary use case for Zabbix?
I am still working with VMware and Area Operations, but I installed Zabbix now. I think Zabbix is better than VMware Area Operations. It's really good. I'm working with both Zabbix and VMware now.
 

Also Known As

Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. Atlassian 2. Cisco 3. Databricks 4. DigitalOcean 5. Equinix 6. Fidelity Investments 7. Google 8. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 9. Honeywell 10. IBM 11. Intel 12. JetBlue Airways 13. LinkedIn 14. Lyft 15. Mastercard 16. Microsoft 17. MongoDB 18. Netflix 19. Nvidia 20. Oracle 21. PayPal 22. Pinterest 23. Qualcomm 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. SAP 27. Spotify 28. Square 29. TMobile 30. Twitter 31. Uber 32. VMware
1. IBM 2. Dell 3. Cisco 4. HP 5. Oracle 6. Microsoft 7. Amazon 8. Google 9. Facebook 10. Twitter 11. LinkedIn 12. Netflix 13. Adobe 14. VMware 15. Salesforce 16. SAP 17. Intel 18. AT&T 19. Verizon 20. T-Mobile 21. Vodafone 22. Ericsson 23. Nokia 24. Siemens 25. General Electric 26. Honeywell 27. Philips 28. Sony 29. Samsung 30. LG 31. Panasonic 32. Toshiba
Find out what your peers are saying about VMware Aria Operations for Applications vs. Zabbix and other solutions. Updated: May 2026.
899,258 professionals have used our research since 2012.