VMware Aria Automation Reviews

We use the solution to spin up VMs. 

VMware Aria Automation supports integration with ServiceNow, Kubernetes, and other tools. It is cloud-agnostic, making it a stronger platform than Ansible. 

Broadcom has acquired the tool, which could lower its pricing. Many customers are moving away from VMware infrastructure towards enterprise systems like Azure or AWS. This shift could be due to two main reasons: pricing and uncertainty about the future, especially regarding how Broadcom will handle licenses and strategy.

I have been working with the product for five to six years. 

Initially, scaling was very difficult as deploying new appliances was completely manual. However, from the vRealize Automation 8.X onwards, it became much easier, allowing for smooth deployment of additional appliances and better scalability.

The support within VMware was really good. However, recently, due to outsourcing to various GSI partners, the core support team has been split, leading to a decline in the quality of technical support. I am not happy with the tool's current support quality. 

The initial setup from scratch is somewhat complex. However, it won't be too challenging for those with a VMware background and a good understanding of virtualized automation. 

Setting up the product itself can be done within a couple of days. However, creating all the blueprints, automation, services, and integrations requires extensive planning and can take at least a few months. Getting the change approval from the stakeholders also takes time. 

The solution is suitable mostly for medium companies. I rate it an eight out of ten. 

I am working on the architectural and design part of the product. We use it for capacity planning, reclamations of reports, infrastructure monitoring, alerts monitoring, and notifications.

There are many features in the solution. We can map all the service profiles. We can do the scripting in third-party applications. The solution provides multi-level approval features to download VMware workloads.

It also provides features like multi-tenancy. The tool seamlessly integrates with private and public clouds. There are a lot of good features in the solution. The product is very user-friendly.

The costing models in the previous version have been moved to vRO. The process is not simplified in vRO. I don't like this change in the new version.

Currently, I am using the latest version of the solution.

Once the product is customized and implemented, it is stable. We need a lot of effort during the initial stages.

It is a scalable tool. We can scale it horizontally and vertically. Our organization has plenty of users, including internal and external customers.

We use break/fix support. We don't get problems very often. Whenever there is an upgrade or customization, we use break/fix.

Setting up the primary components is easy, but sometimes scripting is complex. It is not a simple product. It is vast. Deployment, planning, mapping to the business requirement, and including the stakeholders take a lot of time. Modifying the product according to the business is challenging. Business is very dynamic, and we must tailor the features based on the business needs. We use a private cloud.

A lot of information gathering is required to deploy the product. We need to understand the business requirement, demonstrate various features, integrate many endpoints, customize the tool, integrate backup, and integrate scripting to auto-install various software. Deploying and configuring the solution takes a lot of time. It is a full-time job. It requires a dedicated team of people. There are a lot of components. It is challenging.

We need an experienced team to maintain the solution.

ROI is purely defined by how individuals define their goals to meet their business expectations. ROI can be easily achieved if we do proper planning. If we don't map the technology to the business, ROI cannot be achieved. That is the drawback. If you map the technology clearly to the business requirement, document the process, and approve the proof of concept with all the stakeholders, then deploying the solution makes sense. It would get better results in terms of ROI.

The tool is expensive since it is an enterprise product. The cost and the business requirement must be justified before deploying the solution in the cloud environment.

Before deploying the product, we must have a blueprint of how we want to use it. Then, we can plan it accordingly. We must plan the organizational needs before deployment. It will ensure minimum changes while deploying because it needs a lot of integration. A lot of third-party vendors will be involved during customization. However, having proper planning, knowledge, and technical abilities and integrating multi-skill vendors will make a perfect blend of technology for a better experience. Overall, I rate the product a seven out of ten.

We use SaltStack to configure virtual machines, ESXi hosts, or any Windows product.

The product’s most valuable feature is its ability to provide environmental security.

There could be better initial documentation for the product.

We have been using SaltStack for six months now.

It is a stable product. I rate its stability an eight out of ten.

The platform scales well. We can configure multiple systems. I rate its scalability a ten out of ten.

We can contact VMware support. But we find out the solutions ourselves. Although, its online documentation needs a lot of improvement.

Negative

We have deployed SaltStack on a hybrid cloud. It is difficult to set up and requires one executive to operate the deployment. I rate the process a six out of ten.

It is an open-source product.

The product works great for changing configurations. I recommend it for the DevSecOps environment. I rate it a seven out of ten as it is not user-friendly.

I use the solution for configuring the clusters.

The solution's most valuable feature is stability.

They should provide more explanatory reports on error messages. It would be easier for the users to understand. Also, its configuration process could be better.

I have been using the solution for a year now.

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution.

The solution's configuration process needs improvement. They should provide better documentation for easier understanding.

The solution is free of cost.

I rate the solution as an eight out of ten.

When I started working with VMware Aria Automation, I used it mostly to automate the server build process. We completely automated the entire VM-build and post-build processes. I then used the tool at another organization in relation to CICD pipelines.

We now see more hybrid cloud scenarios and enrollment of network automation as well.

VMware Aria Automation reduces the time to market when it comes to deploying new solutions. Usually, it takes three to six weeks to deploy a new solution. Now, with VMware Aria Automation and the automated blueprint, the overall time to market is an hour, depending on approval.

The solutions can be deployed across any cloud, which is a huge advantage when a customer requires machines to be deployed rapidly.

The extensibility of the solution when it comes to writing your own ABX actions is a valuable feature. You can write it in PowerShell, JavaScript, or Python, which is great.

I also like the fact that you can pause a build process, do other tasks, come back to it, and continue with the build process.

The ability to customize the entire user frontend experience with the design canvas is great as well.

When it comes to the orchestration workflow, you're on your own. The documentation and resources are very limited, and you have to learn everything on your own.

Though the product is very powerful by itself, many who work with it struggle to get up to speed. As a result, they view VMware Aria Automation as the icing on the cake and hold on to their PowerShell scripts on the backend.

I would also like to see more integration with third-party solutions. The documentation regarding integration with third-party tools such as ServiceNow needs to be improved.

I've been working with this solution for 10 years. My first deployment was back when it was called vCloud Automation Center or vCAC.

The stability of the vRA platform itself is very good, but because of Workspace ONE, I would rate the overall stability at seven out of ten.

In terms of scalability, I would rate this solution at eight out of ten.

The technical support team in Ireland is excellent, and they resolve issues on the same day. However, if your ticket ends up at another location, it may take a few days to receive a resolution. Overall, I would rate technical support at eight out of ten.

Positive

An experienced person will find the on-premises deployment easy to do. I would rate the initial deployment at nine out of ten for an experienced person. For one who is new to the solution, I would rate it at seven out of ten.

The initial setup may take anywhere between 40 minutes to one hour.

As is the case with any other automation product, VMware Aria Automation also requires a journey. You will need to start slow, build the platform, and make sure you have good out-of-the-gate use cases. You can start with automating basic server requests. If you already have CICD tools in your environment, then you can integrate them and try a few playbooks.

You will definitely need to train your staff so that they can keep moving forward with the tool. It is a complex product, and you will need at least one full-time employee who has experience with scripting and an interest in automation who can be dedicated to this solution.

Overall, VMware Aria Automation is flexible, reliable, and scalable. With VMware Aria Automation as a cloud service, it is even easier to deploy and manage. Therefore, I would give this solution an overall rating of eight out of ten.

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. 

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. 

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. 

I have been using the solution for seven years. 

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

The solution is absolutely scalable. 

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. 

Positive

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. 

We implemented the solution in-house. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

We primarily use it to automate workloads.

The most valuable features are the multimachine blueprint and advanced designer configuration.

Automation or scripting should be simplified so that administrators who are not experts can have a better grasp of automation.

My organization has been working with this solution for about six years.

We have had no issues with stability.

VMware Aria Automation is a very scalable solution because it integrates well with a couple of leading products in the industry. For products that are not already integrated, there are plugins or adapters that can be used with customization. 

Because we are a large organization, we probably have more than 30 people who use the solution.

The basic installation is quite easy. If you have all of the prerequisites ready, then within two to three working days the basic foundation can be created.

Two people could probably deploy and maintain one foundation of the solution.

We deployed the solution ourselves.

We have definitely seen an ROI because automation is directly related to productivity.

Try to use the maximum level of automation possible within VMware Aria Automation. It will help you to achieve the maximum results. This solution has a lot of other features other than provisioning, like tighter integration with third-party products, ISVs, backup software, and open APIs. To fully utilize the product, you would need to get into these areas along with normal provisioning.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate VMware Aria Automation at nine.

Mostly, vRA is for automating deployment. We use it with templates to deploy and maintain compliance based on the certifications we have. It's a way to maintain consistency across cloud and data center environments. 

We have about 30 to 40 engineers. They are primarily support engineers what we call platform hybrid teams. They create templates and help customers deploy VMs.

The main benefit of vRA is a faster deployment for our customers. Before implementing vRA, we were building VMs from scratch, but vRA allows us to create images, so we can deploy a VM in just a few minutes.

Obviously, it depends on the hardware installed and everything, but the time has been significantly reduced. Time is money. We want to provide as much flexibility in the private cloud and bring our customers as close to the private cloud as possible.

The preset policies and templates are useful. I would say that vRA is one of the best solutions we have. The CI/CD features also look helpful even though we aren't using them at the moment. We plan to get more involved and train our customers as much as possible.

The solution could be lighter. As an administrator, I would like to simplify the number of services I need to deploy. They took a significant step in that direction by removing all the Windows dependencies that we had in the past, but there are still a lot of services consuming resources. 

I would also like to see a richer API. This is true of all VMware solutions because the REST API is not the best.

I have been using vRA for the last three years. We've gone through different versions of the solution.

We haven't had major issues with vRA so far. Generally speaking, all the VMware infrastructure does work. I wouldn't say it's rock-solid, but we haven't experienced significant stability problems on the platform.

Our most significant deployment is two clusters working with a single instance, and it's running perfectly fine. It comprises two clusters of 15 ESXI servers each, so it's a massive deployment.

We do plan to increase usage and deploy vRA for other customers, but we currently have a small number of customers actively using it. Then we have our internal segment of vRA that we connect to a few small customers. But the idea is to expand it and add as many customers as possible.

I rate VMware support eight out of 10. We have a VMware service agreement, and we've used support a few times. It was helpful, but they needed to research some of our questions because our implementations tend to be a bit complex. That's why I don't give it a perfect 10.  

Positive

We had a home-grown solution before, but we changed to vRA because of it's simplicity and compatibility with all the tools we use.

I rate vRA eight out of 10 for ease of setup. The previous version of vRA was harder to deploy, but they have simplified it considerably. 

After the deployment, daily maintenance doesn't take more than one day a month. There is nothing much to be done once it's set up. The upgrading is sometimes a headache, and it takes longer. For deployment and maintenance, we need at least one network engineer, one platform engineer, and three storage people. That's because our team is split into three different tiers.

I would rate vRA six out of 10 for ROI. It's in the middle. We haven't quite broken it even yet, but we are close.

We pay a license based on volume. I rate VMware vRealize Automation four out of 10. The license is quite expensive. 

The engineering team evaluated a few solutions, but we went with vRA because it is the fastest and easiest.

I rate VMware vRealize Automation seven out of 10. I recommend it for any company that constantly deploys VMs. This tool will help you a lot. 

We have used it for infrastructure management between our hybrid cloud, provisioning and patching, using automation.

The automation functionality has been most valuable. With a click of a button, we are able to automate provisioning, the build of new hardware and apply patches. These are all extremely important and differentiated tasks that can be automated in SaltStack. 

The solution is very easy to code and to set up. It works on a YAML language which is very simple and does not require someone with programming experience to start using it. 

This solution could be integrated with more hardware for an improved offering. 

We have used this solution for five years. 

This is a stable solution. 

This solution is easy to scale.

The support from the customer service team is good. 

The pricing for this solution is roughly 20% lower than the competitive products in the market.

I would advise those considering this solution to ensure they have the necessary in-house talent or access to an external vendor who knows this solution well. It is not a widely used technology so it is important to ensure you can support it. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. 

We are using it for infrastructure service, automating things in Active Directory, and deploying Microsoft SQL and Oracle databases. We are also using it to automate some scenarios within our infrastructure.

Having a one-stop-shop for our IT services is one of our goals. Exporting and democratizing the tools helps our end users to do their work efficiently and to be more agile. It helps to minimize the time to market for our product.

Using the solution we are able to automate database refreshment. This process used to consume a number of working days. With vRA fully automating this process, it is now down to five or 10 minutes. As a result, we're able to refresh our testing and development environments frequently. When we go with a new deployment in production, the deployment is based on a fresh copy of production. We're able to have multiple environments so that we can test more product concurrently.

We use VMware Cloud Templates and having a standard template to be deployed gives us a standard across our environment and minimizes the time it takes to provide services. Despite having 20 machines, we just do the configuration once and then we can deploy it across the whole infrastructure for all environments: production, testing, and development. And this reduces the time to market for our services. They improve reliability. They give us consistency. Having things assembled and having everything in one image helps us provide reliable services. And they have saved time for our developers.

Having an enterprise service catalog and being able to automate various parts of our infrastructure are among the most important components.

It needs to be more dynamic with variable customization to make new workloads more reliable. It also needs to be faster. We are exploring vRA version 8 right now and maybe what I'm requesting is available in the new version, but we haven't explored it fully yet.

We have been using VMware vRealize Automation for seven or eight years.

VMware's customer support for vRealize Automation is good. They are knowledgeable about the product and have improved their response time. The support is fine.

We did have a previous solution but I am not able to disclose its name. vRA is an end-to-end solution with all the capabilities.

The pricing is very high.