VMware Aria Automation Reviews

vRA's Orchestrator allows you to connect to a huge ecosystem with a huge number of third-party systems to automate any and every IT process that you can think of. It makes it very flexible. Makes it really adaptable as opposed to some other systems.

It allows people to move into orchestration and automation, and most customers want to get into that but they don't really know how. vRO and vRA gives them a step through the door to allow them to start building upon. It gives you a framework, it gives you a baseline to let you build from there.

They are doing well as far as iterating quickly, iterating by often adding small things. I think there should be even more integrations with third-party systems. You have Infoblox and Puppet which great. Let's add Chef to the mix and just keep them coming.

So far so good.

Everything is much improved, especially with vRA's automation 7 and newer, as they move more things into virtual appliances and out of Windows. That's a win for everybody. It's a win for the customers. It's a win for us deploying it. It's a win for manageability, scalability, everything.

Tech support is usually great. As soon as you get a live person you're good. It just depends on the level of support that the customer is paying for. Sometimes that's nothing that we can control, it's just what they have.

It's much more straightforward now that it was in version 6.x., to the Nth degree. They have made it so that you can do either a proof of concept or fully distributed version of vRA with a wizard-driven GUI, which is amazing. Now, there are still some little quirks with that wizard, but it being there makes it much simpler than going it manually and installing each component and linking them all together after the fact.

For me, being a consultant, vendor selection isn't what matters. I want to use whatever is best for the customer. So whatever fits their business use case best is what I'm going to go with, what I'm going to recommend.

vRA does most things really well. There are still some issues such that, if you are going to go 100% cloud, if you don't want anything on-premise, there are some other solutions that might have a leg up.

Use vRA, but it's more about the process than it is about the product. You have to make sure that the users, who are going to be internal IT most of the time, that their expectations are set appropriately. Make sure that you have buy-in from the higher-ups as far as automating processes. You have to make sure you have by-in at all levels.

The most valuable features are:

• How it takes what we used to do in the same process as manual steps, and automates them, such as creating servers.
• It's self-service for creating your own virtual machine.

It's shortened down our SLA's for VMs. When vendors request an application for various VM's, we used to take a two week process (approximately) from building a VM, QAing, and building it. Now, it can be done in a matter of two days, at max, thus, shortening the process.

Implementation directly with our SRM product, because we know what the other products are out there that VM is offering, such as Site Recovery Manager (SRM). There are ties which you can customize to put them into that, but it would be nice if it came as an out-of-the-box feature.

It's very stable. Just like any other project, it does have its quirks and kinks, but like anything else you work through it. You have to customize it to get it used to your environment. There are growing pains.

We recently went through two or three upgrades, and now we're doing an upgrade for the most recent version. In that regard, it's pretty scalable. The way we can actually manage our virtual machines directly through the interface is somewhat of a gain as well.

They are very knowledgeable of their product. This all goes back to customizing our kind of needs, because everybody's needs are not a one size fits all. You kind of have to customize it to fit to your environment. They have been helpful with this. Also, when we run into any issues, which have not been many, they've been very helpful with resolving them.

We actually have an onsite resident, which helps as well.

Because the way technology was going, such a physical footprint, people are now going virtual. When we realized that, we started getting a lot more virtual questions as opposed to physical, which is a good thing. We realized we needed to start pumping out these VMs at a much faster rate to meet with our demands. That's what steered us toward this product.

It was a pretty straightforward implementation, but it was just mostly customizing it. We house somewhere around 3000+ virtual machines in our environment. It's hard to customize for that large of a footprint. We have a team who handles the automation piece, since we have such a large virtual footprint.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Look at the support they provide, the backing of their product, and so on.
• Have a big company name, like VM, where they have stability.
• Fitting the your needs - nobody wants a product that they are never gonna use.

If you get a lot of virtual machine requests, this is the product to get.

• Web front-ends
• Orchestrator scripting engine

We're automating a lot of OS builds. The front-end gives us a way for users to go and request those services and the orchestrator pirate lets us automate a lot of the functions involved in them.

It's like a streamline deposit made more available.

I want to see them get rid of the IS component and make it a VMware appliance. There are a lot of requirements for Windows servers, which is not good for our environment. This makes configuration and installation tough.

It's cumbersome to set up. It requires a lot of Window servers, which we don't like and the external load balancer configurations, which we also don't like. But overall it does have an HA solution, so that's better than no HA solution.

We got VMware resources to guide us and help us with the deployment.

It has an HA configuration, which is pretty good. It could be better.

You can scale out deployment so that's good as well. You can just tack on more Windows servers. That's good for scale out.

I'd give them a seven out of 10.

We get a lot of run around in terms of technical support. Usually, first tech we get can't help us. We end up going down the pipeline to get someone that can.

We're pretty heavily invested in VMware, so there was no competition.

We built an SDDC environment and we needed a way for customers to consume services out of it.

I was involved in the initial setup. It was a complex product.

vRA requires a lot of development work. It's not something you just set up, then it works. You have to tailor it to your environment and develop stuff to do with it. There is a lot of development effort with the product.

If you are looking at implementing the product, hire a Dev team.

No, we're using vRA and other VMware products.

They're the pioneers of virtualization.

The vSphere stack and all their other products are integrated with our core stack, which is vSphere. That's really the big reason why we like all their other products.

It is similar to a lab system for testing our software versions. We also use it for cloning customer environments for troubleshooting.

It is mostly for our tech support to test new versions, find bugs, and troubleshoot what is happening at customer sites.

It has made it easier for IT to support developers. Our tech support people are happy with it.

I can make a blueprint with an Active Directory deployment. With everything prepared, people can start installing our products.

It is bleeding edge technology, but at times, it is buggy. 

It is too broad scale and complicated. It takes too many clicks to do things.

I would like a simplified version of the interface for small businesses. We started with Lab Manager. For us, Lab Manager was the perfect tool. It was easy and simple. It had all the screens for machines right up. vRA is too many clicks for the normal, simple user.

Stability is okay. However, this is one of the products which I have had support work on the most.

Scalability is endless. What I would like to see in vRealize Automation is an SMB version, a simplified version, but still have the advanced options. For example, we use a lot of fenced deployments. We have five virtual machines deployed to fenced environments, which is our most common scenario. 

We are a small office with only 600 people and about 16 technical support personnel.

Technical support is very good. I recently had a tech support case last week, and I got the answers that I needed.

We switched because VMware canceled the Lab Manager products. So, we were looking for something, then we started with vCloud, but VMware canceled vCloud too. Thus, it has been a very rocky road. My one message to VMware, "Stick with one direction and stop cancelling products all the time."

I have done all the version setups. For one year, we could not get the first version to work. I think this was version 6.0, but the latest version 7 is good.

I had a consultant help me a little bit. I did most of the work myself because I like owning the products.

Before, we had the vCloud suites, then suddenly we split out to NSX and had to pay two licenses extra just fenced because we don't use microsegmentation for firewall rollouts. Therefore, a simplified version for small businesses would be good.

We are embedded with VMware. We also use OpenStack, but it requires a lot more investment from IT.

It is a complicated product, but you can do anything with it.

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.

There are a lot of different benefits with this product, because there are a lot of things that we're trying to automate. There's another guy within my group, he's the administrator of vROps. He's been able to implement a lot of things, and help us script things for monitoring, for patching, and a whole lot of things. It's definitely got a value and it saves us a lot of time.

I could see improving by just knowing how to script a little better, but other than that, I think the product itself is fine.

Very stable solution. We've had very good luck with it.

It's scalable. There are a lot of different things you could do with it. Really it's whatever you want to do. Whatever you want to put your mind to, to make it scale, it'll do it.

It's good. It's excellent. We haven't had any trouble. If there is something that we have trouble with, call them, and we're on the phone with engineering. They're good about taking care of us right away.

It's pretty straightforward. You can read some of the white papers on it. It's not difficult.

It's a great product. It saves us a lot of time. It cut down a lot of late nights for us.

We have used it mostly for our internal IT. We haven't really published it for customers or other groups to be able to use it. But we've actually just hit the surface. We've used it for rebooting servers, adding applications, automating some scripts; general things like that.

It has improved our organization by automating some of our processes. Automating processes saves us time. If we are able to schedule, say, a server reboot, instead of actually having to log in at 8:00 at night, when we wouldn't normally be on our network - scheduling a reboot after, say, a patch or something. It just allows us to not have to work. It does it automatically.

The most valuable feature of vRealize Automation is being able to - as the name says -automate VMware executions, to be able to automatically reboot; servers, power them up; add applications. That's useful to us in IT.

To improve the product, possibly the interface could be more informational. There's a nice tree structure on the left, but being able to know what to do with that tree structure could possibly be improved a little bit with right-click menus or more information. I'm sure the Help menu is fine, but just more intuitive, maybe.

We haven't really had any problems with stability. Usually, for what we use it for, it has been very stable, very dependable. I feel like it's done a good job.

I feel vRA is scalable. Being able to develop it more, and get more installations, more things to use it for, will be able to help us scale it out and use it for more people.

I have not had to use tech support for vRA, so I don't really have any experience with that. But I'm sure it's wonderful.

I personally have not upgraded the program, but the people that actually manage it have not had any issues with it. That being said, it's still a fairly small installation, or a very small group of people that use the product. We haven't expanded it to be able to know, with the installation, how it has gone.

The solution is user-friendly, to a degree. I feel like you still have to know a little bit of the ins and outs of how to get into it, some of the commands to use for what, exactly, you're trying to do. But besides that, it's pretty user-friendly.

In terms of increasing infrastructure agility with it, we have, maybe to a small degree. I don't feel that, with our implementation of vRealize Automation, we have really gotten very far. We've only scratched the surface. Like I said, we only use it for our internal IT, and we're just being able to save a little bit of time by the things that we do. We haven't really dug deep into what it's capable of.

It has made it easier for IT to support developers but I don't feel like we're at that point yet where the developers are involved. We have it as a future (goal) to involve our developers and have them be able to get on a webpage, and be able to do things automatically, without them having to put in a ticket or request us to do something for them; just making it automated. As we get to that point, though, I think it will be very useful.

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.