VMware Aria Operations Reviews

Being able to pinpoint performance issues, or just general troubleshooting for the environment, and consolidating everything into one central pane of glass.

We can find problems before they start becoming bigger issues. We have all the info in one area. It's already finding all kind of things we need to do to fix the issues.

Maybe more dashboards or an easier configuration of the dashboards,

Recommendation to anyone implementing and deploying this solution: Review the sizing guidelines, then deploy from that using the best practice guides provided.

Stability is good.

The scalability, for what we have, it's pretty good so far.

For vROps, they are usually pretty good. We usually reach the right person and they are knowledgeable.

We were just using vSphere like built-in monitor before vROps.

We got vROps because we didn't have anything to consolidate all the stats, etc.

When we researched a new solution, these were the features most important to us:

• The interface
• Ease of upgrades
• The value that it adds.

We had an existing setup, but we have upgraded it. The latest version upgrades have been pretty straightforward. Some of the earlier upgrades were a bit more involved.

We did the upgrades.

I don't know if we really considered anything else. I think the first choice was vROps.

If you are considering vROps, do some demos of vROps before considering something else, just because the latest versions are pretty good.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Support
• Ease of use
• Ease of upgrade setup
• Actual value from the actual product.

The ability to look into our environment to see what is going on is the most valuable feature. The ability of the dashboard to drill down and see all the way down to the process as to what is going on, In case if we have troubles.

We're just rolling it out now, so it hasn't really done much for us.

We have implemented it, probably, a month or two ago.

We work in a fairly big office. It cut out on us once, so we had to remove the connector and redeploy it. But, we didn't lose any data, so that was good.

I didn't choose this solution, it was pre-chosen for me. We're not investing in a new solution.

Whilst selecting a vendor, we look at how helpful their service help desks are. I've had experiences where they only do break/fix, so that's of no value to me. So, if we're trying to deploy another solution then I look for factors such as completeness of their solution and timeliness of their updates.

We have our own team which is quite knowledgeable. So, I'll be probably upgrading to the latest version soon.

This solution seems to be good. I've used vCOPS in the past, so it's certainly better than that.

Before investing in this product, you should talk to a lot of people and get a demo.

The capacity planning: Purchasing hardware takes a long time for us. This way you can get where you're actually going to be at six months down the road.

We are on an older version. It hasn't improved any mission critical systems.

Lack of documentation.

I wish the documentation was better for the solution. When we first deployed it, there were very few resources online. That's why we don't use it that much.

It's fine. It's stable.

We have a contact, but we have never used him/her.

We weren't using a different solution.

It was easy to set up.

Use the community. I find it helpful.

I would tell others to avoid version 6.0.2 and go for 6.6. It seems a lot nicer.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: reputation.

It integrates extremely well with the rest of our products. It ties in with everything that we need to do. It ensures everything that we need to see.

We are solely a VMware house.

It's freed up a lot of our time because we don't have to manually build all of the information that it ensures. For example, with scalability, there are parts in the world which we are going to hold, and there parts of the world which we going to call and it provides you all that information. Therefore, I know exactly where I need to add X, and where I need to take away Y, etc.

Support.

Consolidate features: It's got so many features. I don't think that I want another one in there. It makes it just too hard to use if they added anything else into the solution.

It's a fairly stable product. Other than setup difficulties we've never had any issues with it when it's running its operation.

We don't really scale it at all, because we operate a public cloud. We are a cloud service provider. We have got five or six different deployments all over the world. They all operate individually, so we don't really scale one much.

It's not very good, because it's such a difficult product. I think some of their guys don't even know how use a lot of it because they have to hold a week training for us, so they must have to go through one, two, or three months worth of training just to even know how to use it.

The last technical support couldn't handle our questions any better. I never got really an answer for our last questions and raised it to our Account Manager to get one of the ACs to do it and that was two months ago. I'm still waiting on the answers to the questions.

Another guy and I pretty much set up the solution over here in North America. We have other guys in the UK who set it up there.

The install is extremely easy. The VMware products are designed pretty well to do installs. The actual configuration to ensure you show what you need to show; that's where the difficulties lie.

If you are looking to implement this solution, definitely go to your training course. It's a week long, that's how difficult it is! They've got vSphere, which is VMware's core product and that's a week course. This is just a tiny section compared to that and it's also a week. It just shows you how complex the solution is. You have to do the training. You just have to.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• From my perspective as a tech guy, it's always about support. You need good support from the people that you get it from. It needs to meet all of your functionality.
• You've got your functionality requirements. You need to make sure it meets all of those.
• From the business side of it, price is always a thing. You have to get it signed off by the big boss, but because we are a VMware Partner, it's included in our licensing fees. We don't have to pay a penny for it.

The historical data: It allows us to go back, look at the VM past historical data, CPU memory usage, and disk latency. Therefore, it helps us troubleshoot a lot of issues.

It allows us to quickly resolve issues. There's some other capabilities in there, some dashboards that allow us to look at environments as a whole, and to identify many issues.

The newer versions currently streamline the process for us.

The password changes: One of the drawbacks I hear from the portability side is the number of passwords it takes to keep it up and running. Limit the number of passwords to keep it up and running.

The GUI could be improved. There's a lot of clicking around to get to stuff at times, but it's pretty good.

Also, make it easier to upgrade.

The newer versions are much better than our experience has been in the past. We're at the latest version 6.6. It's much better than the previous five versions that we were running.

We haven't had any issues with scalability. We have a large environment, but it's been able to handle it.

The VMware staff is usually pretty knowledgeable. We have been pretty satisfied with the support we have received.

We had our previous tools, which were SCOM monitoring stuff. It was brought to our attention from VMware that they had this solution. At the time, we were a small VMware user. So, it sort of developed from that.

While I was not involved in the initial setup, upgrades have been pretty straightforward.

In-house.

I would recommend the solution.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Brand reputation
• Brand name
• Support.

Being able to monitor teams underneath the enterprise.

• Being able to monitor things like CPU usage, memory, and storage.
• Being able to set up alerts which will be forwarded to your whole team. This can tell you what's going on, and which VM it's happening on.
• It allows you to forward the issue out to whichever team owns the VM.

I'd like to see more integration with other applications.

It's good on VMware products. It's tough to incorporate it into other things, like our logging. We use things like Splunk and other applications. It's pointless to log into vROps to get a portion of what you're looking for, then have to go into other solutions.

It just doesn't work well with other solutions.

It's very stable. We have not had issues.

No, we have not any issues.

We have not used it, though we do have a direct contact at VM's technical support if we ever need to contact them. We feel contacting if we needed to and that are knowledgeable.

I was not involved in the initial setup. It was seven or eight years ago.

Upgrading the solution has been simple, though.

We have guys who work for VMware in our building (in-house). We only reach out to them for upgrades. If we ever have any issues, we'll go to them, but we usually don't run into vROps issues.

I would recommend the product. I would tell anyone looking to purchase the product to utilize it as much as possible.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Technical support would be our number one reason. If anything does go wrong, it's nice to have a someone who's helping you out.
• Onsite staff is definitely the best.
• It has to be able to work with other applications. It definitely has to be a standalone because most of our machines aren't connected to the internet.

• Ability to predict the need for harder resources.
• An alerting system for ongoing things not caught by other monitoring tools, which we have in place.

It needs more than the current attention it receives from management, then it will have more value, but it's good even now. It gives us good visibility on what we have.

Adding and configuring add-ons is not straightforward.

Additional features that I would like to see for the next release: Simplify the PAC files. When you download something for your vendor, for your particular solution outside of VMware, or even with the view client, the view PAC file is quite a pain to configure right.

It is stable.

It is scalable. We haven't needed to scale up. It's working great for us so far.

They are great. We have used them a few times to clarify how their update process works. But now that we know the process, it is very easy.

When we need them, we just dial the queue.

The initial setup is straightforward.

Just follow the documentation.

The cost is a major factor here. The VMware solution is much more expensive than all others.

Turbonomic.

We chose VMware because we have all the other VMware products.

If you are looking at this solution, research its ease of use and integration with other products. These days, also look at the login side.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: a good relationship at the beginning.

The blueprint catalog. It's easy to use the interface when you login.

For doing automation.

I would like to see the UI improved.

For the next release, I would like to see:

• Easier setup
• Easy installation
• Easier configuration.

The stability is good.

The scalability is good.

The technical support is good.

We had a central cloud platform and also the old vCenter cloud.

We moved to vROps because of the technology trend. Everybody was going to private cloud and public cloud. We wanted to have a private cloud and public cloud that we could hook with a public cloud.

I was involved in the initial setup. It wasn't straightforward. They need to make it more user-friendly.

Citrix.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: initial cost.