CTO at Moca Financial
Real User
Automated deployment for developers, saving time on their release cycles
Pros and Cons
  • "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."
  • "With the workflow aspect, which has manual intervention, a policy needs to be approved by somebody. There could be better management of that piece with better templates. It is like a workflow engine, but does not have enough example templates to do certain things. A lot of people waste a lot of time trying to figure out the same thing, and everybody is trying to figure out the same thing, e.g., how to make a MySQL cluster in a Windows environment?"

What is our primary use case?

I was part of the VMware team, doing a double role at VMware:

  1. Leading a sales team for the large financial institutions, the top 50.
  2. Defining what the roadmap for vRealize suite should be.

I worked for a consulting company. We helped a lot of customers with many things for vRA from provisioning workflows automation to approvals and policies management.

The solution provides a multi-cloud, self-service, infrastructure-as-a-service cloud consumption and delivery layer. vRA 7 was mostly focused on VMware-based internal clouds with a little bit of external clouds. vRA 8 is multi-cloud, which you can host on-prem too. Everybody is moving away to use the cloud, so it is pretty much a done deal that you need to have it.

How has it helped my organization?

If you want to start a VM database as a service, then you start a VM, but your customers don't know what size CPU or memories that they want. So, you can also scale it as needed. They can use vRA integration to monitor and scale up or down using the ESXi Server, then VRa works as an integration point.

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.

When you start integrating vRA with the other VMware products, like vRealize Network Insight (vRNI). That is when it starts giving you the capabilities of extending your templates and networks across multiple hybrids and clouds.

If an organization has the capability of being able to use it in their application deployment lifecycle, then they can use the automated infrastructure deployment, but not many companies do. Not many companies say, "When I am going to deploy, I am also going to create 20 virtual machines and deploy on them." They normally start out by saying that there will be a separate team with managers in infrastructure and a separate team that does this in deployment. I have seen only one place that has done this, out of hundreds.

What is most valuable?

Two things help out a lot: 

  1. Policy management.
  2. Integration with other VMware feeds, like ESXi Server. They have a pretty tight integration with those.

If you are trying to automate your capacity management tasks, moving VMs and resizing them, then you need to integrate down to the policy level by reconfiguring the use of servers. That is where these kinds of integration points help you.

vRA's multi-cloud self-service cloud consumption and delivery layer comes with centralized policy control and governance.

VMware cloud templates: These are predefined templates that work across multiple cloud, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments. You can use the same templates across various clouds, even clouds that have AWS, Azure, and Google. So, you can have a blueprint and templates running across all of them.

vRA is most helpful in managing the whole lifecycle, taking out the server, bringing them back in, handling outages, and managing clusters, networks, and the entire infrastructure security out there as well as putting identity management all in one place. It creates a control point with its single pane of glass. You can control all the networks as well as their configuration and installation from one place, which is a strength of vRA.

What needs improvement?

Interoperability is more of an industry problem. There are multiple cloud provisioning tools out there, and vRA is just one of them. There are a lot of components out there, which all do certain things. There are some hard drives, particular types of servers, particular types of routers, load balancers, and firewalls, where some are stronger in one area and some in another. Interoperability between them would be a good thing.

With the workflow aspect, which has manual intervention, a policy needs to be approved by somebody. There could be better management of that piece with better templates. It is like a workflow engine, but does not have enough example templates to do certain things. A lot of people waste a lot of time trying to figure out the same thing, and everybody is trying to figure out the same thing, e.g., how to make a MySQL cluster in a Windows environment?

Buyer's Guide
VMware Aria Automation
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about VMware Aria Automation. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

I used vRA for seven to eight years, then I moved out of the VMware world last year in January.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

vRA 8 onwards is very stable. vRA 7 has some clunkiness, but version 8 is very stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Hardware depends upon the volumes. I had small customers who had two to three clusters of eight servers each to an enterprise customer with 80,000 servers.

How are customer service and support?

They have a very big community with a lot of support. 

VMware has its own support, but it depends upon what level of customer you are. Bigger customers obviously get better support than smaller customers. However, bigger customers also try funky things. Smaller customers tend to do things based on the standard, so they normally don't run into problems. The technical support is pretty good.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is relatively straightforward. 

From the time that a customer enters into an agreement to using the service, it takes two to three weeks minimum because it takes time to design the whole network.

You need to have a basic cloud infrastructure in place. With an existing cloud infrastructure, the initial setup takes a couple of days. Most of the time, it is a deployment where you are also building the cloud with it, then all kinds of things are required, like the network topology, routers, security, etc. That takes time.

What about the implementation team?

vRA 8 is normally managed by a single guy.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Customers say this solution is costlier compared to its competitors.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

The open source solutions are cheaper, but they lack documentation. They also have trouble keeping the documentation, drivers, etc. up-to-date.

What other advice do I have?

For any cloud-related thing, you have to think it through. Things get sticky, like external firewalls. Distribute, network, and plan because you are not going to get it right the first few times.

vRA is an orchestration engine, like a workflow engine. What it comes down to, because it is more of a generic tool, what are you using it for? I have seen in places that it has helped people in ITOps.

VMware's goal is to build a long-standing partnership.

I would rate it as a nine (out of 10).

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Technical Manager at Gilead Sciences, Inc.
Real User
Significantly reduces the staff required to manage our environment
Pros and Cons
  • "Today, if I want to provision one VM, it takes me five minutes. Earlier, it would take a minimum of 30 minutes to go and choose everything. Now, I can just do one click and it can provision my whole VM. We also integrated with our Alexa, so even through voice functionality, I can create a VM. One of the guys at VMware, along with our partner, deployed that in our environment. If I say, "Hey, Alexa, I need a VM with four gigs of RAM," it will go and start creating it."
  • "The most valuable feature is, instead of doing the VMotion manually, we have automated everything with a script, using vRealize. That means I don't need to think about things like compatibility. The system will do everything for me and just give me a report."
  • "usability; It's very user-friendly. It is not hard to go and find things. There is a one-click Help that you can use to find all the documentation you need to manage it."
  • "compare-to-competition; Citrix was on our short list. But over the last ten years, we have been a big VMware shop. We wanted to continue with VMware because we are confident that VMware can address any kind of problem situation, any challenges. But with Citrix, we didn't find that kind of credibility when we did solution testing, a PoC."

    What is our primary use case?

    We use vRealize Automation for monitoring and for some administration tasks. Anytime we do upgrades or patching, we just read the reports and it makes our lives easier.

    How has it helped my organization?

    Earlier we used to spend a whole day to collect all the information regarding upgrades or patches. When we introduced vRealize, it reduced the time to between 30 minutes and one hour to finish the whole job.

    It has also improved provisioning a lot. Today, if I want to provision one VM, it takes me five minutes. Earlier, it would take a minimum of 30 minutes to go and choose everything. Now, I can just click once and it can provision my whole VM. We also integrated with our Alexa, so even through voice functionality I can create a VM. One of the guys at VMware, along with our partner, deployed that in our environment. If I say, "Hey, Alexa, I need a VM with four gigs of RAM," it will go and start creating it.

    In addition, it has reduced our CapEx and OpEx, especially the OpEx values. Initially, we had 25 people to manage it. After going with vRealize, 15 people can do all the jobs and they can concentrate on other improvements as well. It's good for our company.

    What is most valuable?

    The most valuable feature is that, instead of doing the VMotion manually, we have automated everything with a script, using vRealize. That means I don't need to think about things like compatibility. The system will do everything for me and just give me a report.

    It's very user-friendly. It is not hard to go and find things. There is a one-click Help that you can use to find all the documentation you need to manage it.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    From a stability perspective, VMware is number one compared to other products that are available in the market. We have never had any major downtime, after going to vSphere 6.5 and afterward. Earlier, yes, there were challenges, but nowadays it's very smooth and very straightforward.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    VMware products are meant for scalability. For example, today my environment is 1500 VDS's. We acquired a company with 300 users. To merge them, I didn't need to worry about anything like hardware because it was already there. I was able to do it on the fly in one shot.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    What we like about VMware, especially if I compare it with other vendors, is the support. When we call directly, the technical people jump in and start supporting us. Deploying the solution is, maybe. a three-month process. After that, managing it can be painful. So when a vendor is ready to offer that kind of support, a customer is ready to adopt their solutions. That's why we like VMware support.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    We are a VMware shop. We also have Citrix and Microsoft hypervisors but, compared to both of them, VMware is the best for us, for our environment.

    When selecting a vendor, price is not the only criterion. The product availability and how much better their support is, are also important.

    How was the initial setup?

    In the initial setup, I took care of the hardware part, but the software layer and other things were taken care of by my engineers. It was straightforward.

    Currently, we are upgrading the environment. Compared to the earlier versions, from my experience, the upgrade process is easier; for example, the compatibility checks. I also don't need to go and find out the resources that are required. It tells me in one report what the current environment is like and, if I want to go to the next level, what things I need to take care of. Based on that I can make things happen.

    What was our ROI?

    In a year, I used to spend, say, $10 per user. Now it's $5 per user. That is our approximate return on investment, 

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    Citrix was on our short list. But over the last ten years, we have been a big VMware shop. We wanted to continue with VMware because we are confident that VMware can address any kind of problem situation, any challenges. But with Citrix, we didn't find that kind of credibility when we did solution testing, a PoC.

    What other advice do I have?

    I rate VMware a nine out of ten. To get to a ten there are a few areas they could improve, especially vSAN. Performance-wise, there are no challenges, but from a product perspective, it is not that flexible. What we have in vSphere today is very flexible, but vSAN is not.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Buyer's Guide
    VMware Aria Automation
    March 2024
    Learn what your peers think about VMware Aria Automation. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    Simranjit Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
    Solutions Architect at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
    Real User
    Top 5Leaderboard
    Provides granular visibility of resources for day-to-day operations and enables automation with a single click
    Pros and Cons
    • "VMware Aria Automation has made a lot of things easier. It has really helped the operations team to spin up the virtual machines."
    • "The setup needs coding. It's not easy. It's not straightforward."

    What is our primary use case?

    VMware Aria Automation is mainly used with vRealize Orchestration to orchestrate provisioning. It segregates resource usage among different teams. If there are various tenants utilizing resources, vRA is essential for efficiently managing resource allocation. Whether it's provisioning machines in our data center, supporting customer infrastructure in AWS, Azure, or different vCenters, vRA streamlines the process. 

    Instead of navigating through various console endpoints for provisioning workloads, vRA allows automation with a single click. This means we can automate the provisioning of not just a plain VM or OS but also include applications and databases in a single click. 

    So, we can initiate the process, go about our tasks, and, within 30 to 40 minutes, depending on integrations, our VMs will be built. It significantly reduces manual efforts, and that's why it's called automation. 

    With one click, we can get not just one but as many VMs as needed, with databases installed, all at the click of a button. It's a crucial and necessary product that people have been increasingly adopting.

    What is most valuable?

    VMware Aria Automation is important for day-to-day operations. It provides more granular visibility of our resources. 

    Another valuable thing is the cost. We can easily get to know our IT gives us a cost of data as well, suppose we're going to provision any VM, if a customer or if a user is going to provision one VM, it depends on, again, it depends on the integration that one has done of config already. 

    One of its features is, that once we're deploying a VM, we will get to know how much we'll pay for that. How much will be the GB storage per GB cost, how it will be the RAM cost, memory cost, everything would be there. 

    And it gives us in-depth visibility into how many resources we are paying for. And suppose we just were purchasing memory GB and if we want to delete particular VMs, we can delete it and we can get the resources back. 

    So for the customers, it's pretty convenient to see where they are putting their money into.

    What needs improvement?

    It's not open source as of now. The licensing costs and the operations support costs of the VRAs are higher. It's a VMware-based license. 

    If I see the other competitors, they are open-source alternatives to VRA, like OpenStack and others. So I can use it on the flow. But in order to get VLS automation, it's an enterprise license that costs more, and hence, VMware support cost is also more.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have experience with this solution. 

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    It is stable. But one of the drawbacks that Aria Automation had whenever there used to be an upgrade was that it never used to be very easy. It takes effort to upgrade from the current version to the new version. There used to be some challenges and changes that had to be done. 

    The most recent release is based on the Kubernetes nodes now. So, it is easy now but it is not that easy because, with every new release, VMware comes up with something new. 

    And how to adapt to new things and how to configure those things. And what all from the previous version will still get supported in a new version is always a new thing for us as well.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    It is scalable. However, you cannot increase the number of VMware nodes on the fly. For instance, if you deployed it to a three-node cluster, you cannot simply expand that cluster. Instead, you have to deploy a new cluster with a new set of nodes.

    I work in a product-based company, so we have customers for this solution in a service-based company, where we have a direct understanding of the number of customers we're supporting, whereas, in a product company, we only have access to customer usage data.

    How was the initial setup?

    We can automate your workloads both on-premises or any software data center where you want that to be in. If we want that to be in the cloud, it's fine. If we want to provision it on-premises, it is fine. The installation is mostly done on devices. But as with AWS, if we want to use Google, if you want to use Azure, we can use those as endpoints to the VLS automation. And from the same console, we can automate workloads to be provisioned either on VMware Center, that is our own premises or onto our public cloud. So, VMware Aria Automation is there to automate your provisioning or any day one and day two operations. We can do it from one pane of glass to any endpoint, let it be cloud, or let it be our own premises.

    So it doesn't have to be specific on AWS cloud or Azure cloud.

    What about the implementation team?

    The setup needs coding. It's not easy. It's not straightforward. With the newest releases that we have ahead, we need someone who is good with the YAML codes. 

    Now, there has been improvement. Previously, we should have a person who really knows Java, Python, and other codes that are being used. 

    But for the recent release, we want one who should understand codes, one who should know how to, and one who should have knowledge about how to do REST API calls if we want to integrate different components with VRA. 

    So, programming knowledge is a must when you're using VRA. The most tedious task will be to configure the VRA. Installation is easy; you can do it. 

    However, configuring VRA with the whole of your setup within the data center is not easy. It will take some effort, and it has to be done right.

    The deployment process is not fast. It will be time-consuming. A few of the modules are already there, but it is time-consuming. Moreover, it depends on the sort of integrations we want to do. If we want to integrate 15 components, different components with vRA for end-to-end provisioning, it will be consuming.

    What other advice do I have?

    I strongly recommend gaining a thorough understanding of Aria before diving into it. Aria is not as straightforward as it initially appears. There are numerous aspects to consider, such as integrations, VRA usage, VRO, and so on. 

    It's crucial to comprehend how Visualized Orchestration, Sensor Automation, and Sensor Orchestration work together harmoniously when orchestrating workflows. You really need to get proper VRA training before effectively utilizing it. It's not something you can pick up easily just by having coding knowledge. Some level of experience and training is essential for thorough usage.

    Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. VMware Aria Automation has made a lot of things easier. It has really helped the operations team to spin up the virtual machines. Previously, if setting up infrastructure for the customer took weeks, now it can be done in a couple of days. It has reduced the time for the customers to get the infrastructure ready. So, I would definitely rate it nine. This solution has done a fabulous job over time. 

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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    PeerSpot user
    Awadhesh KumarMishra - PeerSpot reviewer
    Information Technology Architect at Kyndryl
    Real User
    Top 20
    Provisions virtual machines but improvement is needed in pricing for better customer penetration
    Pros and Cons
    • "We automated many tool deployments with the help of the product, cutting short manual deployments and eliminating the need for human interaction. Its most valuable features include integrating various tools and working with different products using plugins."
    • "Maintaining the product requires effort and a good understanding of the environment, including how to set up the codes and other configurations. Pricing needs to be improved to improve the customer penetration."

    What is our primary use case?

    I use the solution to provision virtual machines. 

    What is most valuable?

    We automated many tool deployments with the help of the product, cutting short manual deployments and eliminating the need for human interaction. Its most valuable features include integrating various tools and working with different products using plugins. 

    The tool's automation performance is excellent, and I rate it four point five out of ten. 

    What needs improvement?

    Maintaining the product requires effort and a good understanding of the environment, including how to set up the codes and other configurations. Pricing needs to be improved to improve the customer penetration. 

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using the product for four years. 

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    The tool is stable, but you will encounter issues when it hits the upper limit. 

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    VMware Aria Automation is easily scalable. My company has 15-20 users. 

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    I have used Red Hat before, and VMware Aria Automation is better. It is considered better due to its extensive experience in the field. The tool has acquired an existing product in the domain for several years.

    How was the initial setup?

    The product's deployment process is much simpler than it used to be, especially with the latest version. While previous versions had multiple components and pillars, the latest version has significantly reduced complexity, improving the deployment process. It took a few weeks to complete. You would need two to four resources to complete the deployment. 

    The tool's integration with the existing VMware infrastructure is easy due to product similarity. 

    What was our ROI?

    The solution's ROI is good. It can be enhanced with improvement in prices. 

    What other advice do I have?

    I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten. 

    If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

    IBM
    Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
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    PeerSpot user
    Tarek Nader - PeerSpot reviewer
    Sr. vRA Consultant at VMware
    Real User
    Top 5Leaderboard
    It allows you to deploy your blueprint on-prem or on a public cloud, so you have a consistent, unified service catalog
    Pros and Cons
    • "Aria Automation gives you the flexibility to deploy tenants with customized blueprints for permissions and policies. Version 7.8 consisted of multiple products, so you had to deploy a lot of virtual machines on one of the servers. Starting from 8.6, VMware consolidated all the components into one Linux appliance. This allows the option to use vRA or DevOps capabilities."
    • "They could extend the ability to use vRealize Orchestrator Automation for organizations with multiple tenants. It should be easier to operate and extend different capabilities from vRealize Orchestrator. Currently, it's difficult to build advanced services in Aria Automation because you need to use the vRealize Orchestrator."

    What is our primary use case?

    VMware Automation allows you to deploy your blueprint on-prem or on a public cloud, so you have a consistent, unified service catalog.  Users can request revisions to our infrastructure, applications, and resources from one portal on the private or public cloud. We only have one or two people with the knowledge and experience to use vRA and the vRA Orchestrator.

    What is most valuable?

    Aria Automation gives you the flexibility to deploy tenants with customized blueprints for permissions and policies. Version 7.8 consisted of multiple products, so you had to deploy a lot of virtual machines on one of the servers.  Starting from 8.6, VMware consolidated all the components into one Linux appliance. This allows the option to use vRA or DevOps capabilities.

    What needs improvement?

    They could extend the ability to use vRealize Orchestrator Automation for organizations with multiple tenants. It should be easier to operate and extend different capabilities from vRealize Orchestrator. Currently, it's difficult to build advanced services in Aria Automation because you need to use the vRealize Orchestrator. 

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using Aria Automation for about three or four years

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    Aria Automation is stable.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    You can deploy a single node or an enterprise cluster consisting of three nodes. 

    How are customer service and support?

    I rate VMware support six out of 10. 

    How was the initial setup?

    Setting up Aria Automation is difficult. The complexity varies depending on the environment size and infrastructure. It has a lot of prerequisites. For example, it has to have a firewall prepared before installation. Aria Automation is deployed through an installer called vRealize that integrates VMware identity manager, Aria Automation, and the vRealize Lifecycle Manager. The deployment takes about three days.

    What other advice do I have?

    I rate VMware Aria Automation seven out of 10. Aria Automation needs products like vRealize Orchestrator to extend its capabilities and accessibility. If you are using Aria Automation by itself, you won't get the features you want, and the license cost is high. It needs to be cheaper, easier to use, and have more native capabilities. 

    Before deploying Aria Automation, you need to know the prerequisites for the nodes. Each appliance consists of multiple components, and each has its own log. You need to understand your use case and what you want to use so you can customize the services you need to provide. For simple services, you can use only Aria Automation. If you need to customize advanced services, you will have to purchase vRealize Orchestrator and also CI/CD DevOps tools.

    Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: customer/reseller
    PeerSpot user
    Tarek Nader - PeerSpot reviewer
    Tarek NaderSr. vRA Consultant at VMware
    Top 5LeaderboardReal User

    Pros:
    - VMwared Aria Automation (vRA) give flexability to create & manage a multivendor cloud infrastructure.


    - End users can self-provision VMs, applications & IT services according to policies defined by administrators.


    - Can use Code Stream to automate your entire DevOps release life cycle, while you continue to use your existing development tools, such as Git and Jenkins.


    - With Code Stream, We create pipelines that automate our entire DevOps life cycle while using existing development tools, such as Git and Jenkins. We create a pipeline that runs actions to build, deploy, test, and release our software.


    -------------------------------


    - Integrate vRO with other 3rd parties’ products (like; Blue Cat, InfoBlox, Ansible, Power Broker…etc.) to provide customized services that following company security policies for daily operations.


    - Can integrate with vCloud Director to provide vRA blueprints, Day-2 services,...so to vCD customer tenants; which extend the functionality of vRA.


    - Ability to consume on-prem services on public cloud for the same customer without need other solutions.

    Cons:
    - VMware suffers from bad support for Aria Automation "vRA & NSX-T"

    - From different real cases with VMware; they took months to figure out issue & couldn't provide expected level of customer satisfaction.

    - Multi-tenancy is possible but within a “Project”. It is not currently
    possible to provide two users with different catalog views.

    - Reservations have been removed, but Cloud Zones provide limits.

    - Upgrade from previous versions to 8 can be significantly complex; so VMware only provide Green-environment deployment due to migration limitation

    Sr Virtualization Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
    Real User
    Enables us to flex up or flex down the environment quickly; makes our DevOps processes more consistent
    Pros and Cons
    • "The most valuable feature is the consistency it delivers, at the end of the day. We know that we have consistent images based off consistent Blueprints, check-pointed or QA'ed in a consistent manner."
    • "With the advent of the automation, we've been able to give DevOps the ability to spin up environments, give them lease times, and then have it automatically reclaim the environment."
    • "It is not super-intuitive. It does require some skills to understand how to use it. I had no problem, but I had spent a lot of time already learning this product ahead of moving it to an operational status. But as we did so, we had a hard time bringing some people from other groups into the fold, to script and work against this environment. So, the ability to build workflows within that automation needs to be streamlined."
    • "In terms of additional features, I would like it to be able to poll my vCenter infrastructure more rapidly and adapt to changes quickly. It should alert me and let me know when there are broken components, as a result of underlying infrastructure changes. It needs to be more stringent."

    What is our primary use case?

    Our primary use cases are around deployments supporting DevOps, around service provisioning of IP addresses, DNS; self-service entitlement or enablement. And then, driving some workflow processes from our service marketplace, through automation, to actually have them execute within the infrastructure.

    It's performing pretty well.

    How has it helped my organization?

    Speed to market. It helps us to improve the rate at which we deploy and the consistency in which we deploy. It has allowed us to scale up and scale down very quickly.

    As we meet our open enrollment periods and then we come off of those enrollment periods and go into a normal operational state, we now have that ability to flex down that environment or flex up the environment quickly.

    Another side of the coin is the supporting of DevOps. Now, with the advent of the automation, we've been able to give DevOps the ability to spin up environments, give them lease times, and then have it automatically reclaim the environment. So we can build workflows around DevOps processes that are more consistent. Our past configuration was that they would spin up whole DevOps environments of full, physical machines and they would run indefinitely. That was "Bob's" Dev environment and then "Joe" would come and say, "I want one." And then we'd have all these environments. Now, I can give him his environment for 48 hours and I can take it away and he can spin up another one. Or I can archive it. It allows us to be a little bit more agile.

    What is most valuable?

    The most valuable feature is the consistency it delivers, at the end of the day. We know that we have consistent images based off consistent Blueprints, check-pointed or QA'ed in a consistent manner.

    What needs improvement?

    It is not super-intuitive. It does require some skills to understand how to use it. I had no problem, but I had spent a lot of time already learning this product ahead of moving it to an operational status. But as we did so, we had a hard time bringing some people from other groups into the fold, to script and work against this environment. So, the ability to build workflows within that automation needs to be streamlined.

    In terms of additional features, I would like it to be able to poll my vCenter infrastructure more rapidly and adapt to changes quickly. It should alert me and let me know when there are broken components, as a result of underlying infrastructure changes. It needs to be more stringent.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    One to three years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    It is very stable. I've had no downtime from the vRealize Automation appliances or components. I think the biggest challenge is being communicative in the infrastructure as you change the infrastructure underneath the automation. This goes back to the naming conventions and the consistency, but you need to be cognizant, as you change your underlying infrastructure - whether that is new storage arrays you're adding, new DV switches you're creating, or new hosts that you're taking out or putting in - you have to be cognizant of your automation.

    It would be nice if this product was a little bit more intuitive regarding what's connected to it.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    We could scale horizontally with Automation but we're looking more at containers to scale some of our apps more horizontally. But yes, it does integrate very well with other vSphere products that allow us to scale horizontally as well.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    The technical support is very good. I've actually been able to turn over my operations to use technical support. They can actually walk me through the problems within the product. That has been great because I tend to focus more on infrastructure or the underlying components, so for the code components, the support is great.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    We were manually spinning up clone templates and building them.

    We recently took over and built our IT after 50 years of being under HPE. About five years ago we decided to internalize our IT and take everything back. We built a new IT organization literally, out of this solution; it is one of the tools that made us successful. Once we virtualized our infrastructure, automation is what made us be able to work with it.

    Our important criteria when looking at any vendor are support and communication.

    How was the initial setup?

    I was involved in the initial setup and the PoC. It was very complex on the initial setup because we started with the 6.x version and eventually migrated to 7. The way it was architected, with the Orchestrator being outside of the vRA appliance, was difficult to set up and configure. The next versions made it a much more straightforward configuration.

    We did not do an upgrade. We did a parallel build. Several upgrades actually blew up and failed and destroyed the environments, so we gave up attempting to upgrade a 6.x environment and built a brand new 7.x. At the time, we did not have Code Stream so we could not laterally migrate. An important component of this is Code Stream. For the ability to scale and have multiple automation instances, Code Stream is essential to be able to move that back and forth. If you already have an existing automation environment, you should look at Code Stream very heavily, rather than redevelop.

    What was our ROI?

    We have seen quite a bit of return on our investment. We've actually been able to really change the way that we're doing build and deployments of virtual machines. We've reorganized around that capability. At one time we had a dedicated build team, separate from Windows and LS teams. Now, we've integrated them together because those teams are actually spinning up and building their own VMs right out of Automation.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    We did look at some automation around the Red Hat stack itself. Our environment tends to be larger on the Linux side than it is on the Windows side, the Microsoft side. So we did give some consideration to maybe automating through Ansible and some other processes. But because of the simplicity of development, relative to the other options, we chose vRA. We also chose it because of the integration with our vCenter. We wanted to be under vRealize. We wanted to be one consistent stack, whether it's monitoring, spinning up, security, or containers. We want to try to keep everything under one platform.

    What other advice do I have?

    I would definitely recommend vRealize Automation.

    One thing that we've had to realize about this product is, it's dependent on some back-work that you do inside your vSphere environment to prepare for it: things like tags, things like folders, things like naming conventions. We've discovered that these are very important when you're attempting to roll out this product because you already have an established vCenter environment. For instance, in our case, where we had multiple data centers, we may have had different implementation times and perhaps may not have had the same standards around things like naming conventions, DV switches, or storage. Because they map, you have to very cognizant of that.

    That's been an issue, not only on the Automation side but across the whole vRealize Suite. I also manage all of the vROps, the analytics, and the integration between the analytics, the vCenter, and the Automation.

    It can be tricky. You need to be detail-oriented on how you configure and set up your vCenter so that you're consistent in all implementations. If you have a multi-vCenter environment, you want to make sure you use the same naming conventions across them.

    We already had established standards, but as new people came on board, they may have varied something thinking, "Oh, I can just shorten this," or "I'll hyphenate this VLAN_, no, actually I'll do a VLAN-". When you go to map that, to automate that, and you go to read your available VLANs, suddenly it doesn't recognize them because you're not consistent in your conventions. That's one thing we really discovered in automation.

    The second was using naming conventions that are consistent and searchable so that you can understand different applications and environments. That's going to be very important when you're actually building automation and workflows.

    It's something that the customer needs to be cognizant of and vigilant about as they move towards automation. Automation is taking the existing infrastructure and attempting to automate it and use it and leverage it in a way that's dependable and consistent. I think that's the greatest thing we get out of Automation. It isn't speed, it's consistency; consistency in deployment, consistency in execution.

    I give the solution a nine out of 10, based on my satisfaction with the product. My experience with its growth over time - the last few versions I've looked at, 7.3 to 7.4 - is that it is going to give us some capabilities in integration that we didn't have before.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Lead Software Engineer-Cloud Development at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
    Real User
    Top 5
    Valuable auto-scaling for workloads and the ability to define your own super metrics
    Pros and Cons
    • "The operations manager does a fantastic job on the front end because it includes on-premises and cloud use cases."
    • "The solution could include more integrations and supportability around the container space."

    What is our primary use case?

    Our company uses the solution to have better insights for our on-premises infrastructure. We use some metrics to decide the placement of workloads based on available capacity. We integrate with automation and make dynamic decisions while working on workflows. 

    We are moving a lot of our infrastructure to the cloud so are reducing use of the solution. Right now, we have twenty developers who perform automation tasks. 

    What is most valuable?

    The operations manager does a fantastic job on the front end because it includes on-premises and cloud use cases that pertain to any infrastructure. The solution has made great progress in integrating all these things together. 

    The solution allow us to define our own super metrics. If we cannot an out-of-the-box metric, then we can write and start using our own super metric instead of waiting for the solution to develop something. 

    What needs improvement?

    The licensing models are a bit confusing so should be simplified. 

    The solution could include more integrations and supportability around the container space. They have already started to do this, but could expand support for Kubernetes platforms and DevOps tools used for Kubernetes clusters or cloud-native development. 

    For how long have I used the solution?

    I have been using the solution for seven years. 

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    The solution is stable so I rate stability a ten out of ten. 

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    The solution is absolutely scalable. 

    How are customer service and support?

    We have contacted technical support several times. On average, they do a pretty good job but sometimes drop support requests. There is always some amount of work we do ourselves because we customize beyond the out-of-the-box options. 

    Support is rated an eight out of ten. 

    How would you rate customer service and support?

    Positive

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup is pretty easy and deployment takes about an hour. 

    There are a lot of prerequisites to fill before attempting installation. If something is not right, the solution may not work the way it is expected. 

    I rate setup an eight out of ten. 

    What about the implementation team?

    We implemented the solution in-house. 

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    The solution is pretty expensive. If you can afford it, you should absolutely buy the solution because it provides good workload management. 

    If you have oversized or undersized workloads, then the solution catches them and gives you auto-scaling suggestions that save you a ton of money. The solution will even automate some of the work to keep performance and resources at  optimal levels. It saves you from the cost of expanding your infrastructure. 

    There are various licensing models that can be a bit confusing. 

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    The solution is the best fit if you have a VMware infrastructure because it understands the native components. 

    We do not see a similar product in the VMware infrastructure that works as good as the solution. 

    What other advice do I have?

    Often times, when I think of a missing feature I end up seeing that it is planned for an upcoming release. The solution keeps up with development so it is a great option.

    I rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    On-premises
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Solutions Architect at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
    Real User
    Saves time and improves security posture, but multitenancy management is difficult
    Pros and Cons
    • "The most valuable feature is being able to deploy a virtual machine from a low level. We can automate everything including network configuration, firewall configuration, storage, storage attachment, OS deployment, middleware, and so forth."
    • "Multitenancy management is a little bit difficult to do, so it is an area that can be improved."

    What is our primary use case?

    We primarily use this solution to deploy servers. It is run on our own private cloud that we put into place because our legacy infrastructure did not allow self-service. It was operated by administrators and other people. We have a requirement that disallows us to be open to the outside, which means that we can't interconnect with clouds like Azure.

    Whether for legacy purposes or our cloud system, we use it for automation. We automate each and every task, such as deploying servers, network configuration, operating system deployment, and others. Deploying a server has 13 tasks starting with creating the VM and allocating storage on the network, to saving a password in a secure location.

    How has it helped my organization?

    Using this solution has greatly reduced the time it takes to deploy a server. It used to take at least one month, whereas now, to deploy a server takes two hours.

    Using this product has changed the processes that the developers follow. It changed things for them but I don't know what they were doing before that.

    We have used VRA to improve our security posture, in part because we can avoid relying on administrators and other people. The solution has all of the privileges necessary to deploy what we have to deploy. This means that we have better control over our security and the fact that we have automated the process, we know if it's not working, and we know whether everything is done correctly. If you rely on people, there can be human errors, in particular with respect to the firewalling not being properly done. There are specifics such as whether we had more ports open than necessary, or perhaps not enough. By automating everything, our process, including the security, has really improved the way that we handle the communication between the new server and the rest of the infrastructure.

    Implementing VRA has enabled us to leverage other VMware products to support IT ops. We already had VMware products in our organization and adding VRA to the environment has helped make better use of those components. This was not our primary driver but it was a good plus for us later.

    VRA has allowed us to save application provisioning time, as well. I estimate that our time to provision has gone from one week to one hour.

    What is most valuable?

    The most valuable feature is being able to deploy a virtual machine from a low level. We can automate everything including network configuration, firewall configuration, storage, storage attachment, OS deployment, middleware, and so forth.

    We use some of the DevOps features for infrastructure capabilities including VMware cloud templates, infrastructure pipeline for continuous delivery, and interactive development for GitOps use cases. I am not responsible for using these features but they have given us a lot more flexibility in our development. 

    The DevOps capabilities have saved time for the developers, although I do not have the exact details. I can say that it is significant. 

    What needs improvement?

    Multitenancy management is a little bit difficult to do, so it is an area that can be improved.

    For how long have I used the solution?

    We have been using VMware vRealize Automation for more than five years.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    The stability of this product is good. We use it on a daily basis.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    Scalability-wise, this is a good solution.

    We have approximately 100 people using the cloud-based part of the solution, whereas about 10 of them use the legacy system.

    We do not currently have plans to increase our usage.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    We did not have another similar solution prior to this one. However, VMware did help us to drive value from the cloud quicker than the previous process. VRA gives us more reliability and more flexibility, allowing us to deploy faster through task automation. However, I can't explain specific ways that it may have helped our business.

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup was complex, although I wouldn't necessarily say that it is because of the solution. Rather, there is complexity because of our environment. I was not part of the implementation team so I do not know all of the details.

    It took approximately one month to deploy.

    What about the implementation team?

    Our in-house team was responsible for deployment. We have some VMware experts in the organization. Approximately five people are required for deployment and maintenance. There is a support engineer, a solution architect, and we are responsible for the level-three support.

    What was our ROI?

    This is not the type of solution we deploy with the goal of seeing a return on investment. It is mainly used to speed up server deployment and infrastructure deployment. As we are in the banking industry, the fact that we are faster to deliver infrastructure or applications is not part of a return on investment. We deployed the solution in order to provide better quality to our internal clients.

    When people out of IT were asking for infrastructure, it took a long time and they were upset. We have started to deploy some shadow IT and the driver behind deploying VRA was to show that we now have the tools to deploy things more quickly. 

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    This is an expensive product and the high price is starting to become an issue for us.

    What other advice do I have?

    We are currently using version 7 of the solution but we are transitioning to version 8.

    I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

    Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

    On-premises
    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free VMware Aria Automation Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
    Updated: March 2024
    Buyer's Guide
    Download our free VMware Aria Automation Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.