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VMware Aria Operations vs VMware vSphere comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.3
VMware Aria Operations boosts VM density per host, streamlines resource management, reduces costs, and enhances efficiency with predictive analysis.
Sentiment score
7.2
VMware vSphere reduces costs and enhances efficiency with virtualization, offering savings, agility, and improved resource utilization and scalability.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
VMware Aria Operations support is praised for expertise but criticized for initial inconsistency and slow responses post-Broadcom acquisition.
Sentiment score
7.0
VMware vSphere's customer service is efficient and knowledgeable, but response times and complex issue handling can be inconsistent.
They remain in the top 25% of vendors.
I rate the customer service and support for VMware very highly, at nine out of ten.
Priority one issues are usually addressed by engineers within one to two hours.
Recently, support has been less friendly and slower, especially after the company was acquired by Broadcom.
If we have issues, the support tends to be unreliable
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
VMware Aria Operations effectively scales across environments, supporting diverse infrastructures with recent updates enhancing performance and flexibility.
Sentiment score
7.4
VMware vSphere offers scalable, flexible environments with minimal downtime, seamless integration, and excellent performance across diverse hardware and business needs.
I consider VMware Aria Operations to be very scalable, earning a high rating of nine out of ten.
I find VMware Aria Operations to be quite scalable for my needs.
It is a highly scalable solution.
VMware vSphere is highly scalable in terms of the number of users and the number of servers it can handle.
Scaling is easy, whether it is hyperconverged or a three-tier architecture.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
VMware Aria Operations is stable and reliable, but issues like slowdowns and space problems can occur without proper setup.
Sentiment score
8.0
VMware vSphere is highly stable and reliable, with minimal outages and quick resolution of issues, ideal for critical applications.
The solution is not very stable.
It is a stable solution, which is one of the reasons people prefer it since everyone knows how to use it.
I find the stability of VMware Aria Operations to be impressive, rated as a stable nine out of ten.
While they are generally stable, if outages occur, they tend to be due to brands like HP or Dell, not VMware vSphere itself.
It is a very stable hypervisor solution.
I would rate the stability of VMware vSphere as eight out of ten.
 

Room For Improvement

VMware Aria Operations needs user-friendly enhancements, improved integration, and better documentation amid stability and pricing concerns.
VMware vSphere needs pricing, interface, compatibility, management, integration, fault tolerance, performance, and technology support improvements due to user concerns.
Customers have commented on the pricing issues, noting that doubling the price is not normal.
Stability is a significant area that needs improvement as I experience frequent disconnections and interruptions in data collection.
One area that needs improvement is the solution's connectivity and integration with other products, such as IBM and Huawei servers and storage.
The cost changed from perpetual to subscription, and there is a need for alternative solutions.
Sometimes, it is difficult to find documentation for specific tools and solutions.
Another area is the stability during upgrades from older versions to newer versions, where we face issues.
 

Setup Cost

VMware Aria Operations' perceived high costs and complex licensing challenge justifications, yet integration with VMware suites adds value.
VMware vSphere is costly but valued for advanced features and stability, especially in large-scale environments, warranting careful budgeting.
This makes the cost complex to determine individually.
VMware Aria Operations is considered overpriced.
The pricing and cost of VMware Aria Operations increased significantly after Broadcom acquired VMware.
Many customers are trying to avoid it due to its high cost.
Costs significantly increased from perpetual to subscription, with prices rising by two to three times over three to five years.
The solution is too expensive.
 

Valuable Features

VMware Aria Operations enables efficient infrastructure management with predictive analytics, resource optimization, and comprehensive virtual infrastructure monitoring.
VMware vSphere offers centralized management and flexibility, enhancing data center efficiency with strong security and fast, efficient operations.
It allows me to perform deep monitoring and logging of the entire environment, providing a quick alarm and warning system through email.
The most valuable features of VMware Aria Operations are its stability, ease of use, and extensive range of features.
The valuable features of VMware Aria Operations include the single pane of glass for all my environments, which allows a deep dive into the metrics.
The vMotion feature is beneficial for online migration of virtual machines from one host to another without downtime.
The tool is highly available, which is crucial for implementing critical applications requiring 24/7 availability.
The vSphere application is free and very useful, ensuring effective management and improvement in operations.
 

Categories and Ranking

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)
VMware vSphere
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
454
Ranking in other categories
Server Virtualization Software (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Virtualization solutions, they serve different purposes. VMware Aria Operations is designed for Virtualization Management Tools and holds a mindshare of 33.2%, down 34.4% compared to last year.
VMware vSphere, on the other hand, focuses on Server Virtualization Software, holds 16.2% mindshare, down 20.0% since last year.
Virtualization Management Tools
Server Virtualization Software
 

Featured Reviews

Amar Sorro - PeerSpot reviewer
Manage and monitor crucial banking operations with deep logging and efficient alerting
The most valuable features of VMware Aria Operations include its excellent monitoring capabilities. It allows me to perform deep monitoring and logging of the entire environment, providing a quick alarm and warning system through email. These features help me in efficiently managing virtual machines. The solution also offers easy access to VMware KB articles for problem resolution, ensuring quick access to troubleshooting information.
Neeraj Mehra - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamlines virtualization and has features like high availability and vMotion
The primary use case is for virtualization, including the implementation of vSphere, vCloud Foundation, vCloud Director, and cloud automation with vSphere My customers, particularly SMBs, mainly utilize High Availability (HA), DRS, and vMotion features. The vMotion feature is beneficial for…
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Comparison Review

it_user234735 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 10, 2015
Hyper-V 2012 R2 vs. VMware vSphere 5.5
I was won with Hyper-V 2012R2 recently and the table below based on customer RFP (edited). This articles all about technical, there is not related with TCO/ROI, licensing cost, “political”, etc. Another to noted is the Windows Server 2012 licenses is based on 2 socket CPU, meanwhile…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
19%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 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...
What is IOMMU?
DEEPEN DHULLA did explain well IOMMU. IOMMU has to be activated at the bios level. It exists on Intel and AMD platforms. It is used a lot inside virtualization platforms like VMware VSphere. It pr...
Why KVM??? Help please!
We use VMware and KVM. We find that KVM is a lot simpler to use and it provides the virtualization we need for Linux and Windows. For us, VMware does not offer any advantage. Moreover, KVM is free.
What is the biggest difference between Nutanix Acropolis and VMware vSphere?
We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface that allows you to talk directly to your VM from the present software. We fou...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
Abu Dhabi Ports Company, ACS, AIA New Zealand, Consona, Corporate Express, CS Energy, and Digiweb.
Find out what your peers are saying about VMware, IBM, Veeam Software and others in Virtualization Management Tools. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.