VMware Aria Automation Reviews

Our primary use case is production IT, VM provisioning workloads. It performs pretty well most of the time.

It's the backbone for VM deployments for our main production data center.

The most valuable features are the Catalog View and the access control business group. Access provisioning is probably the main use case for us, so we can separate access to different Catalog items among the different business groups and have that tied back to our AD LDAP systems.

Early on, we had a lot of troubles. Most of those were short-knit runs. And we do have difficulties trying to upgrade.

I also don't find it to be entirely user-friendly. There are a lot of complicated menus within menus within menus. Things move around from version to version

We're looking forward to some of the Catalog enhancements that I know are coming in the upcoming versions.

Earlier on there were some problems and with upgrades, and there were some other problems as well. But in between, it tends to run pretty well. We leave it alone.

It has met our needs scale-wise, in that environment.

The setup was complex. Even with the Professional Services, it took days and days to try and get it installed and working right.

We have had the opportunity to upgrade and it failed. We're having troubles with that. We're still working on it.

If you have the validated designs or PSO guidance for setup, go with that now. Try to keep it as out-of-the-box as possible, in a supported configuration.

I rate this solution at seven out of ten. By now, it does the job we need it to do most of the time. There are definitely areas where it could use some improvements.

Without it in our data center, we would have to have a different solution. It's what we thought was the best architecture for our company.

What I like about the software are the performance and the optimization, based on the unit pricing.

It's very stable. And due to the software contracts - we have a subscription membership - we get the newer versions. It's going be around and, from what I heard at one of the sessions today at VMworld 2018, it's going to be around for a while.

It's scalable. We're such a large company, we would never even consider using it if we didn't think it had a lot of room to grow, for the capacity that we utilize.

Technical support is okay, VMware is fine. I work with both Dell EMC and VMware and, of the two, VMware has more of a commitment to us and makes sure that the products are working in the way that they intended and sold to us.

In addition to production-level support, we buy mission-critical support. Mission-critical support makes sure that we get responses quickly. They actually know who we are when we call.

I rely on the Technical Account Manager from VMware to give us the solution for our network or data center. I'm not an SE, so we also rely on our internal SEs to provide us the right version and capabilities. It's customized for us.

We've been with VMware for such a long time, in excess of a decade, and because of that, I wasn't working here when they had an earlier solution.

We upgrade it anytime we do a technical refresh. It's just like anything else. We're in a complex environment, so to upgrade it, it's almost like you have to migrate the data that is utilized underneath. It's not simple, but it is done periodically.

You should look at the complexity and size of your environment, and when utilizing that background for your requirements, I personally would recommend VMware. You should look at what your deliverables are in this solution. If you do that, you have something you can measure it by, to determine if it's a good fit for you. But I do suggest that you look at VMware as a potential vendor.

I rate the solution at seven out of ten because I don't believe it's a perfect solution. It fits in our data center and it works for our organization, so it's a good solution for us. Yet, at the same time, technology changes so quickly today that a solution you bought three years ago, even if it's upgraded, isn't the solution that's going to fit. For example, we're all going to the cloud or on-prem/off-prem, and because of that, that solution may be in the cloud tomorrow, so I won't be buying it anymore, I'll be buying the cloud version of it because it's utilized through a different service provider.

My most important criteria when working with a vendor are really easy. I evaluate the vendor based on these things: 

• What is their reliability? 
• What is their pricing model?
• Is it a partnership versus our just being a customer that they want to make large margins from?

We mainly use it for deploying SAP machines, SAP-type systems.

It allows some of the tenants to self-provision their machines, so they don't have to wait for us to create the machine for them. They can just do it themselves. It has helped improve our infrastructure agility.

All you do is just press a button, it cranks it out and everything is consistent, so that's one nice thing about it. The speed is also a valuable feature.

I don't find it to be user-friendly or intuitive because, in my case, when I have to deploy SAP systems, I need to jump between the vRA, the vRO, and the actual vCenter itself. I need to go back and forth to do different things. For example, with the vRA I'll deploy the base machine. With vRO, that's where I may have to get an IP address. If somebody's SAP machine has a secondary, virtual name, I need to get the next available IP address from vRO. And then, inside the vCenter, I need to do some firewall stuff, NXS. So it's not that user-friendly.

I wish they could make it just one application, just vRA, that does all that. There might be a way to do it but I haven't figured out how to do it yet.

Also, vCenter and vRA, I believe they share two different databases so sometimes you have to somehow sync them up. I wish there was only one database between the two or, somehow, one database would rule over the other one, so if you have both products, the vCenter might use the vRA database. Otherwise, when you do stuff in vCenter, you have to write a command on vRA to update the databases.

It's pretty stable. Once in a while we'll have a problem, but it will be something that's inside the vRA database that got corrupted somehow and they have to clear something out. For example, sometimes, when I deploy a machine, it'll be in the request queue and it'll stay there for a while. Then someone will have to go in there and do something to clear that queue.

It's scalable, in terms of adding Blueprints.

When looking for a vendor I look for a quick response to problems, and reliability. When there is a problem, VMware will help you chase it down. They'll follow up. I like their response times to our issues. They will also escalate.

My advice is: Get training.

I give vRA a seven out of ten, for now. In addition to the database issue I mentioned, it's not quite clear how to do certain things. I have not been given training on it. The learning curve is steep. For me, a lot of it is on-the-job training. There might be a better way to do things, a quicker way, but I don't know what it is right now. For now, I don't find it that intuitive to use.

Everything that takes away from my having to do my own tasks is a very big plus. With Automation and a lot of the components we are looking at right now, I will be able to template everything out and streamline the process, which is going to save me a lot of time. My main focus is COOP sites and disaster recovery, so automating those makes my job easy.

It decreases a lot of manual labor involved in the initial deployment of systems. Instead of my having to go deploy a template and join it to the domain and add software to it, all that is pre-staged once and never done again.

It has also increased the infrastructure agility a lot. A perfect example is that I use Veeam Backup, so I deploy additional proxies whenever our network changes. I don't have to go out and sign in to the vSphere host because I have a different location. I can add additional resources from one location to my disaster recovery management console.

I find the system to be intuitive and user-friendly. In general, I'm quite happy with the entire setup. Once you configure the system, navigating the portal is pretty simple. They use a lot of the vSphere UI interface structure so it's intuitive, especially if you have used anything vSphere-related before.

I don't know if it can integrate with vRealize or vROps in order to already manage what has been done. Right now I'm very big into vROps to pull reports on all my VMs. I don't know if that capability is there already, but if I could integrate it more, if they went hand-in-hand, it would be easy. Not only could I deploy everything in one place, but I could go to another place just to pull my reports on what has been done.

I'm happy so far, I haven't had any stability issues.

I'm extremely happy with the scalability.

I have used technical support, but not for vRA. I used it to help with reverse-engineering my vSphere vCSA because it completely crashed and both sectors were corrupted and I needed to get it back. They were helpful.

We didn't have a solution that does exactly the same. For other systems, we use Chef, but I know that that is more for the application side of things. We haven't used anything like this.

What's important when looking for a vendor, for me, is that they take their time to actually see what we have and what we are trying to do, before pushing an agenda. If they could see what we have and create a design out of that, before suggesting anything else, that would make me want to work with that vendor more because then I would know that they are not pushing something, that they are giving me what is better for me.

Once I understood what it was trying to do, and what it was requesting of me, it was simple. But originally, it took me by surprise. I was not used to the setup yet. One of my main issues was having multiple SSL domains. It took me a while to see how those play a part.

Make sure that you know what your infrastructure looks like before you start.

I rate this solution at eight out of ten, with potential to grow. I still have to learn a lot more about it. Once I learn some of the additional features and add-ons that  I can implement, I think it will increase.

Automation and operations.

So far we haven't really implemented it on our own organization as far as using it with IT in the workplace internally. But vRA has helped us bring in a lot of customers because they use things like Chef and Puppet, and this works in that same kind of realm. So it has drawn those customers to us. We are, as part of our VMware venture, working on our expertise in that realm.

Where it is implemented, in the little bits that we've labbed it out, internally, it has, obviously, increased our infrastructure agility. Otherwise, we wouldn't be continuing to implement it. Once you get all the pieces together, it improves delivery times for internal labs for our internal teams.

We like the seamless, non-vendor-specific application that we can provide with it. We're a service provider, so we have all kinds of different clients and they have different applications. Automation works with all of them, pretty much across the industries. The ability for it to be compatible across many different products is really what's important to me because that's what's selling: being able to go cross-platform and be hybrid. That's the most important feature.

After that, ease of use would be up there too. We also like the GUI display which ties in the non-devs with the devs and helps them work together.

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.

Also, I expect it's going to come with time, but there is not too much documentation out there because it's fairly new, and not very many people use the little niche product. So more documentation.

So far, VRA seems stable to me. I don't have any complaints.

We haven't had any scalability issues yet, but we are approaching that potential, whenever we get larger customers. The customers that we do have on, if they do use it, they're just testing the waters with it.

They're very helpful. We have Premier Support with them, so we're always working with them. Our TAM is always on top of things. It's good.

Before vRA, we were using a combination of Chef and Ansible. We moved to vRA because I'm on the VMware side of the house, so naturally, that was part of it. Also, we switched because we foresaw the need for hybrid cloud and wanted to be relatable to VMware, so we could have an answer to compete with business units. We wanted to say, "We have vendor-supported vRA that does the same as your third-party or your open-source." We wanted that name brand with it because that's the department I'm in.

Compared to the previous solutions, while I don't have too much experience with them, from what I understand, from what I have heard from the people I work with that helped me on that side, it is a lot quicker. In the small test bed that we have, it is performing better as far as being able to deliver, and being consistent in its delivery.

The setup is straightforward. There are plenty of hands-on labs and guides. It's more the, "What can I do with this?" As a project engineer, I try to translate from the vendor to the customer, according to whatever they're doing at their end.

We haven't really had any bumps in the road deploying it.

My advice would be to go to hands-on labs to see if it's exactly what you're looking for because, as far as the reality versus the expectation goes, it might be a little bit of a shock, especially for the non-technical person. If they're going to say you, "It's going to be great. You're going to know everything," there are some things you might have to take into consideration. They might have to do a little tutorial for you. I would just try to set your expectations.

I rate it at eight out of ten. I believe it's intuitive and user-friendly. Could it improve? Yes. Could it be worse? It could've been a lot worse. So it's okay.

The extra two points are because one of the first issues, on one of the first versions that I took training on, was around the idea that, yes, here's your dashboard so people can deploy resources without having to know too much, but it seemed kind of bare as far as presenting it to those people. That's the only gap that I see and it's just going to be filled in with user experience and people like me saying, "I'd like a little bubble to pop up," or something to hover with information when someone has to give approval. I'd like for them to be able to see why they are approving this, without having to go dig into why we set up that limit. 

It would be nice to have a tooltip that says, "This was agreed upon..." or whatever comment I want to display. For example, if I want to reference a ticket number internally: "Approved, XYZ," or "Related to mass ticket maintenance ABC," so they can say, "Yes, that's right, this is the DFW migration," or the like. They're non-technical and those are the kind of terms they use. I find the UI is missing that part. I have to explain it to them. And then, of course, they're going to forget, or they're going to get a new guy in, and he's going to say, "Why do I keep having to approve these things?" It would be really nice if it just told him right there. This is why you're approving it because of mandate such-and-such, or memo number 123.

From other products that we work with - I came from the troubleshooting operation side of the house before I started working in Product, so I worked with VMware on ESXi and vSAN - they have always been good at taking our opinions. For vRA, I'm starting that process with them, so I'm not expecting them to have a turnaround yet, but I'm expecting them to take our feedback, for sure.

As a VMware partner, we use it to help us automate the deployment of VMs.

It has helped IT to support development. For example, one of our customers has a development team and, before this solution, it would take ten days to develop and test their solution. Now, it is down to one day.

The user interface is not that intuitive. If it is for technical people like me, it is intuitive, but not for the common man. It's intuitive for me because I know what the technology is behind it. For me, because I use it repeatedly, the same type of use case, it's okay, but for our customers, it would be very difficult.

I would also like to see a test environment, testing before implementing, to see how it will relate to existing things. That would make it feature-rich.

If you don't make any technical changes, it works. You need a test scenario before implementing changes.

It's scalable. It's very good in scaling.

Technical support is good.

The implementation for vRealize is straightforward. The upgrade experience is pretty good, satisfactory.

I would say our clients see an ROI of 30 percent.

I recommend this solution, though it is not that great. It is okay for what it is for. When it works it's great. For me, personally, I don't want a call from a customer that it failed. Most of the time it works. If it doesn't, then we do troubleshooting.

I rate it a seven out of ten because it needs improvement in stability, performance, and quality.

We use it to automate redundant tasks. We're limited to two guys, so automation is beneficial and we'll probably implement it with ServiceNow, down the road.

In terms of benefits, we haven't gotten there yet, but increasing our infrastructure agility, speed of provisioning, time to market, application agility, and making it easier for IT to support developers, are all reasons we have it and are looking to get it working. We have had it set up for six months or so.

The automation of the redundant tasks and the implementation of ServiceNow are huge for us, as we are a cloud provider to the campus. It will allow us to automate a lot of tasks that constituents need done, which is very important to us.

In terms of it being user-friendly and intuitive, from what I've used, the little bit I've done in hands-on labs, it's been pretty easy.

That ServiceNow implementation is a little rough, but those guys in Ohio are doing a great job on it. Seeing things like that, things that integrate would be great. Anything that has REST APIs should have a plugin, that's really what makes it powerful.

So far, so good, in terms of the stability.

The scalability is very good. That's one of the reasons we like it. Is scales great.

Understand your business processes before working with it. That's what we're doing right now: getting a better grasp of our business processes and how the lifecycle of these VMs work, so we can better utilize vRealize Automation.

I rate it at eight out of ten because of its intuitiveness, its ease of use, and the features that it will bring to us - a two-man team - will be like having a couple of extra guys on hand. And that's really great. I know PowerCLI is there and we can always script it out. But automation is really a powerful tool that we're looking forward to using, that will make it a lot easier. It covers a lot more. So we're happy about that.

We are looking at doing automation at the enterprise-class level.

The product is really excellent. VMWare provides a complete ecosystem. And it covers multi-cloud, which is where the market is going. We are able to cover compute, network, storage, etc. We have been able to take it to the next level where VMWare is providing the validated designs, VVD. 

Let's take compute, for example. At compute we have seen, in a session here at VMworld 2018, with AWS or Azure or GCP, you are able to create an abstract layer on top of it and manage it. That's what automation at the cloud level is.

Similarly, when we are talking about hypervisors, whether it is Linux or Windows, we have been able to create hypervisors and to deploy the solutions on the same server. That's the kind of automation which we are bringing in. It's a complete solution.

Looking at the desktop level, desktop virtualization, VDI-related solutions are there.

A lot of automation issues are coming up in the market. Customers are looking at containers, among the new technologies which are coming up. How we can integrate with the multi-cloud? I can see, in the sessions happening here at VMworld 2018, that all these things are getting addressed, but the container-related solutions are something I am looking forward to.

We are thinking about containers. PKS is one of the issues. We would like to do a container service. In addition, the VMware Kubernetes Engine is something which we are focusing on.

From the storage perspective, we will bring in vSAN; NSX-T from the networking perspective. But what is the is the overall solution? How would this compare with what the Cloud Native Computing Foundation is providing? That is something which we have to look at it. 

VMware has something called VVD, VMWare validated design. How far the container solutions are going to be a part of that is also something which we'll be looking at.

It is absolutely stable, at this stage. We are able to meet our customers' expectations. VMware is a company which has already grown up. That's the reason we're opting for these new technologies, even though it's taking some time. Even if it is going to be a little bit slower, it's going to be stable. We trust VMware.

I have not used technical support but I have heard it is good. My engineers say that it's good.

Our customers feel it's very costly. But when VMware is providing so many things, the cost is on par with what they're offering.

It's really about whether you want to buy the full solution today and utilize it, or if you want to bring in a lot of people, integrate, and spend on that. Overall, if you look at five to ten years of time, either you buy the full solution or you will bring in the people and try save some costs, but it is going to be almost the same.

If your requirements are on par with what VMware is providing, we would recommend it.

I would rate VMware solutions, overall, at eight out of ten. Whenever we talk about VMWare, people only think about the hypervisors, virtualization. But it's not only about the virtualization at the compute level, it's also at the storage level, at the network level, at all levels. It's about a complete solution. It creates an abstract layer on top of all these things.