Cisco CloudCenter [EOL] vs VMware Aria Operations comparison

Cisco and VMware are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. Additionally, 87% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of VMware users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco CloudCenter [EOL] and VMware Aria Operations based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about VMware, Nutanix, IBM and others in Cloud Management.

To learn more, read our detailed Cloud Management Report (Updated: September 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Management

September 2024

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Categories and Ranking

IBM Turbonomic

Featured Reviews

Todd Winkler

Principal Engineer at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees

Dec 2, 2020

Lets us take a good look at our environment and decide how we will size our workloads into new areas

There are a few things that we did notice. It does kind of seem to run away from itself a little bit. It does seem to have a mind of its own sometimes. It goes out there and just kind of goes crazy. There needs to be something that kind of throttles things back a little bit. I have personally seen where we've been working on things, then pulled servers out of the VMware cluster and found that Turbonomic was still trying to ship resources to and from that node. So, there has to be some kind of throttling or ability for it to not be so buggy in that area. Because we've pulled nodes out of a cluster into maintenance mode, then brought it back up, and it tried to put workloads on that outside of a cluster. There may be something that is available for this, but it seems very kludgy to me. I would like an easier to use interface for somebody like me, who just goes in there and needs to run simple things. Maybe that exists, but I don't know about it. Also, maybe I should be a bit more trained on it instead of depending on someone else to do it on my behalf. There are some things that probably could be made a little easier. I know that there is a lot of terminology in the application. Sometimes applications come up with their own weird terminology for things, and it seems to me that is what Turbonomic did.

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reviewer2095668

Director Of Technology at a religious institution with 11-50 employees

Feb 23, 2023

Useful features for configuring down to ports but extremely expensive

Our company uses the solution's GUI interface to configure and monitor ports. We look at usage and determine if there are any issues. Cisco is a very qualified company and has been in business for many, many years. The solution is useful because you can configure all the way down to ports. You…

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Micah Plourd

Senior Tech Engineer at McKinsey & Company

Dec 19, 2018

We've had a demonstrable increase in value directly related to the actions of the product

We initially rolled vROps out for environment health and for the ability to look at the abilities to stabilize the environment. We've actually been able to take advantage of it also with resource reclamation which was a big selling point for leadership. The sandbox is a good example of how this…

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The recommendation of the family types is a huge help because it has saved us a lot of money. We use it primarily for that. Another thing that Turbonomic provides us with is a single platform that manages the full application stack and that's something I really like."

"The automated memory balancing, where it looks at whether it's being used in the most efficient way and adds or takes away memory, is the best part. If it didn't do that, it would be something that I would have to do. We have too many machines for one person to do that. The automation helps me in that it is done in a really efficient way and a balanced way because of the policies. It really helps."

"Turbonomic helps us right-size virtual machines to utilize the available infrastructure components available and suggest where resources should exist. We also use the predictive tool to forecast what will happen when we add additional compute-demanding virtual machines or something to the environment. It shows us how that would impact existing resources. All of that frees up time that would otherwise be spent on manual calculation."

"We've saved hundreds of hours. Most of the time those hours would have to be after hours as well, which are more valuable to me as that's my personal time."

"On-premises, one advantage I find particularly appealing is the ability to create policies for automatic CPU and memory scaling based on demand."

"It has automated a lot of things. We have saved 30 to 35 percent in human resource time and cost, which is pretty substantial. We don't have a big workforce here, so we have to use all the automation we can get."

"The ability to monitor and automate both the right-sizing of VMs as well as to automate the vMotion of VMs across ESXi hosts."

"We have a system where our developers automate machine builds, and that is constantly running out of resources. Turbonomic helps us with that, so I don't have to keep buying hardware. The developers always say, "They don't have enough. They don't have enough. They don't have enough," when they just configured it improperly. Therefore, Turbonomic helps us identify configuration issues on their side so it doesn't cost me money on the other end to buy resources that I don't really need."

More IBM Turbonomic pros

"The initial setup process is straightforward."

"Upgrades are very simple as well because they've allowed us to get updates directly in the CloudCenter Suite manager. If you need to do an upgrade to your setup afterward, you just push a button and it rolls out the parts and retires the old ones. It's seamless and very simple compared to what we've done before."

"Cisco has a lot of published information and documentation that helps users understand the product and its offering very well."

"The solution is agile and it has APIs for integration."

"You can scale it easily."

"The initial setup is fairly straightforward if you have a basic setup."

"Cisco CloudCenter's scalability is good."

"The solution includes a lot of features and is useful because you can configure all the way down to ports."

More Cisco CloudCenter [EOL] pros

"In the process of doing benchmark performance analysis, instead of going into PowerShell or the VMware or CLI, we're able to have vRealize provide that GUI that gives us that information up front, without the delay of scripting it."

"I can go back a little bit, a week or a month, look at the history, to troubleshoot."

"It has allowed us to identify problems sooner and helps us with problems and issues."

"The vRO (using Functional Programming of Javascript) is a hand-down of the favorite component of this suite."

"It has enhanced our ability to troubleshoot and effectively manage our solutions to understand what clusters are having issues and diagnose those programs right away, so we can be proactive."

"For project management and new clients, the What-If Analysis is very good. You can use it for workloads. When you are adding new workloads to your platform, it helps you avoid impacting your production."

"Through the trending analysis that we can do, it allowed us to quickly and easily right-size the capacity from a cluster."

"It allows for a bit more transparency regarding consumption and it also helps us plan ahead."

More VMware Aria Operations pros

Cons

"The automation area could be improved, and the generic reports are poor. We want more details in the analysis report from the application layer. The reports from the infrastructure layer are satisfactory, but Turbonomic won't provide much information if we dig down further than the application layer."

"While the product is fairly intuitive and easy to use once you learn it, it can be quite daunting until you have undergone a bit of training."

"There are a few things that we did notice. It does kind of seem to run away from itself a little bit. It does seem to have a mind of its own sometimes. It goes out there and just kind of goes crazy. There needs to be something that kind of throttles things back a little bit. I have personally seen where we've been working on things, then pulled servers out of the VMware cluster and found that Turbonomic was still trying to ship resources to and from that node. So, there has to be some kind of throttling or ability for it to not be so buggy in that area. Because we've pulled nodes out of a cluster into maintenance mode, then brought it back up, and it tried to put workloads on that outside of a cluster. There may be something that is available for this, but it seems very kludgy to me."

"Remove the need for special in-house knowledge and development."

"There is room for improvement [with] upgrades. We have deployed the newer version, version 8 of Turbonomic. The problem is that there is no way to upgrade between major Turbonomic versions. You can upgrade minor versions without a problem, but when you go from version 6 to version 7, or version 7 to version 8, you basically have to deploy it new and let it start gathering data again. That is a problem because all of the data, all of the savings calculations that had been done on the old version, are gone. There's no way to keep track of your lifetime savings across versions."

"It would be good for Turbonomic, on their side, to integrate with other companies like AppDynamics or SolarWinds or other monitoring softwares. I feel that the actual monitoring of applications, mixed in with their abilities, would help. That would be the case wherever Turbonomic lacks the ability to monitor an application or in cases where applications are so customized that it's not going to be able to handle them. There is monitoring that you can do with scripting that you may not be able to do with Turbonomic."

"There is an opportunity for improvement with some of Turbonomic's permissions internally for role-based access control. We would like the ability to come up with some customized permissions or scope permissions a bit differently than the product provides."

"It would be nice for them to have a way to do something with physical machines, but I know that is not their strength Thankfully, the majority of our environment is virtual, but it would be nice to see this type of technology across some other platforms. It would be nice to have capacity planning across physical machines."

More IBM Turbonomic cons

"The solution needs to be more simple."

"The tool should improve its security on the XDR part."

"They can add some of those features to make the platform more usable for different backgrounds and developer skills."

"The improvement I would like to see is not one thing particular to CloudCenter. I'd say it's more of a message that the system is still using a lot of the different products and if they would all just fit better together, they all could be faster together."

"Improvements are needed in UI and multi-tenancy for this solution."

"You don't get all the solution's benefits if you have older switches."

"They should provide an entire cloud offering, from architecture to network security features."

"For many clients, the main problem with the solution is the price. Cisco is very expensive. If they could somehow make the pricing more competitive, that would be a big draw."

More Cisco CloudCenter [EOL] cons

"In terms of user-friendliness, there are a lot of areas that take a lot of time to research and figure out what the information is actually telling me, so that I know how to better use the product and troubleshoot issues that I see. It would be nice if they could fine-tune the user-interface a little bit."

"We integrated vROps with vRealize Log Insight, but it was not helpful to me. It was not giving me any good data."

"I would like to see them get a holistic view of the organization, not just focusing on the server and the state that it's running on but to widen that out from the end user all the way through. It's a key critical part but actually, it needs to bring outside of that, then to the networking elements and the inter-dependencies that are in hospital solutions."

"It could be a little bit quicker to drill into."

"For me, the technical support is the biggest problem. I've been working with them since 2016 and in the first years their response was faster than it is today. That is a problem. Also, I need to put together and send them a lot of information. And then I wait one day, two days. The support has been getting worse over the last few years. They need to improve it."

"The solution must provide better training options to help us make the most of the tool."

"VMware vRealize Operations (vROps) can improve the Layer 3 hypervisor VM infrastructure because we do not manage other applications. We need a package, which is too expensive. We would like to manage native VMware applications, VMware native components, hypervisor, and storage, such as vSAN."

"The automation piece could be done simpler."

More VMware Aria Operations cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Contact the Turbonomic sales team, explain your needs and what you're looking to monitor. They will get a pre-sales SE on the phone and together work up a very accurate quote."

"The product is fairly priced right now. Given its capabilities, it is excellently priced. We think that the product will become self-funding because we will be able to maximize our resources, which will help us from a capacity perspective. That should save us money in the long run."

"It's worth the time and money investment if you can afford it."

"It is an endpoint type license, which is fine. It is not overly expensive."

"I'm not involved in any of the billing, but my understanding is that is fairly expensive."

"The pricing and licensing are fair. We purchase based on benchmark pricing, which we have been able to get. There are no surprise charges nor hidden fees."

"When we have expanded our licensing, it has always been easy to make an ROI-based decision. So, it's reasonably priced. We would like to have it cheaper, but we get more benefit from it than we pay for it. At the end of the day, that's all you can hope for."

"I consider the pricing to be high."

More IBM Turbonomic pricing and cost advice

"The tool's pricing is expensive."

"The solution is extremely expensive and has additional fees for things like monitoring."

"The tool's pricing is balanced with the market."

"The billing is complicated because every country has a different option. Here in Chile, we don't pay for this kind of service with the Chilean pesos. We use another currency. In the future, I think vROps needs to work with governments for a native solution."

"The solution is slightly expensive."

"The optimization is a huge return on investment alone."

"Pricing is good for us. We're non-profit so we get a break on that."

"We have definitely seen ROI by removing unnecessary servers and VMs. By having vROps as an assistant when it comes to monitoring and managing resources, it has helped us a lot with cost savings and managing expenses."

"The license is a one time cost, and you pay for support on a yearly basis. It is a bit expensive, but if you consider the product support and its reliability, it's justifiable."

"As we continue to implement it across multiple environments, it reduces costs as well."

"Most small users don't adopt VMware Aria Operations until it's necessary. Small businesses are looking for it, too. We need more monitoring and insights, so we're analyzing solutions to help us out here. I rate the solution’s pricing a five out of ten."

More VMware Aria Operations pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

39%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Comms Service Provider

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Turbonomic?

It offers different scenarios. It provides more capabilities than many other tools available. Typically, its price is...

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What needs improvement with Turbonomic?

The implementation could be enhanced.

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What is your primary use case for Turbonomic?

We use IBM Turbonomic to automate our cloud operations, including monitoring, consolidating dashboards, and reporting...

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What do you like most about Cisco CloudCenter?

The initial setup process is straightforward.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco CloudCenter?

They should provide an entire cloud offering, from architecture to network security features.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Cisco CloudCenter?

We use the product for demonstration, device provisioning, and data management.

See all answers

What's the difference between VMware vRA (automation) and vROps (operations)?

vROP is a virtualization management solution from VMWare. It is efficient and easy to manage. You can find anything y...

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Is VMware Aria Operations a user friendly solution?

In terms of user-friendliness, VMware Aria Operations is one of the best solutions out there. It is not overly compl...

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What is the most useful new feature of VMware Aria Operations?

For me, the alerts features are the most unique part of this product, no matter the current name it uses. When they i...

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Comparisons

Azure Cost Management vs IBM Turbonomic

Compared 11% of the time

Cisco Intersight vs IBM Turbonomic

Compared 9% of the time

VMware vSphere vs IBM Turbonomic

Compared 8% of the time

VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth vs IBM Turbonomic

Compared 6% of the time

Cloudability vs IBM Turbonomic

Compared 6% of the time

More IBM Turbonomic Competitors

Cisco Intersight vs Cisco CloudCenter [EOL]

Compared 100% of the time

More Cisco CloudCenter [EOL] Competitors

VMware Aria Automation vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 17% of the time

VMware vSphere vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 13% of the time

Nutanix Prism vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 10% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 7% of the time

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 6% of the time

More VMware Aria Operations Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Turbonomic

September 2024

Download IBM Turbonomic product report

Buyer's Guide

Cisco CloudCenter [EOL]

September 2024

Download Cisco CloudCenter [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations

August 2024

Download VMware Aria Operations product report

Also Known As

Turbonomic, VMTurbo Operations Manager

CliQr, CliQr CloudCenter

VMware vRealize Operations (vROps), vCenter Operations Manager, VCOPS, vRealize Operations

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Cisco

VMware

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IBM

Demo not available

Cisco

Demo not available

VMware

Overview

IBM Turbonomic is a performance and cost optimization platform for public, private, and hybrid clouds used by companies to assure application performance while eliminating inefficiencies by dynamically resourcing applications through automated actions.

IBM Turbonomic leverages AI to continuously analyze application resource consumption, deliver insights and dashboards, and make real-time adjustments. Common use cases include cloud cost optimization, cloud migration planning, data center modernization, FinOps acceleration, Kubernetes optimization, sustainable IT, and application resource management. By integrating with various cloud platforms, on-premise infrastructures, and containers, IBM Turbonomic provides a holistic view of the environment, ensuring that resources are allocated efficiently.

The solution is designed to support complex IT environments, offering actionable insights and automated actions that help IT teams proactively manage application performance and infrastructure resources. Turbonomic customers report an average 33% reduction in cloud and infrastructure waste without impacting application performance, and return-on-investment of 471% over three years.

IBM Turbonomic manages resources across hybrid and on-premises data centers to ensure efficiency and financial impact awareness. It automates resource allocation, balances memory dynamically, and provides robust performance metrics. Users benefit from its ability to prevent resource starvation and offer cost-saving recommendations through continuous management. Executive Dashboards provide insights for cost justification and resource management, making IT operations simpler with AI-driven automation and actionable recommendations.

What are the most important features of IBM Turbonomic?

Automated Resource Allocation: Dynamically allocates resources for optimal performance.
Dynamic Memory Balancing: Adjusts memory allocation to prevent resource shortages.
Right-Sizing: Sizes VMs accurately for Azure and on-prem environments.
Single Platform Management: Manages resources across hybrid and on-premises data centers.
Proactive Performance Optimization: Continuously optimizes performance to prevent issues.
Kubernetes Support: Enhances container management with robust support.
Cost-Saving Recommendations: Provides actionable tips for reducing expenses.

What benefits should users look for in IBM Turbonomic reviews?

Cost Reduction: Helps minimize expenses through efficient resource management.
Performance Improvement: Enhances application performance by preventing resource starvation.
Detailed Insights: Offers comprehensive analytics to justify costs and resource utilization.
Simplified IT Processes: Uses AI automation to streamline operations.

IBM Turbonomic is implemented across multiple industries, including finance for optimizing peak payroll processing, IT for enhanced virtual server management, and healthcare for reliable performance monitoring. Organizations benefit from its robust automation, ensuring maximum efficiency and cost savings.

Cisco CloudCenter [EOL] is utilized for tenant creation, VM management, hybrid deployment, cloud management, and port configuration.

Primary users include DevOps teams, telecom companies, and service providers. It integrates well with ACI and ASX-T, offering stability, initial setup ease, and extensive documentation. Known for high trust in Latin America, it excels in workflow automation through Action Orchestrator and supports detailed configuration down to ports. However, improvements are required in DevOps alignment, upgrades, automation, and cost management.

What are the most important features of Cisco CloudCenter [EOL]?

Stability: Provides a robust platform with minimal downtime.
Ease of Setup: Simplifies the initial setup process to get users started quickly.
Documentation: Extensive guides and resources available for user support.
Workflow Automation: Action Orchestrator enables cross-infrastructure automation.
Blueprint Pattern: Defines middleware and dependencies effectively.
API Integration: Offers agility and flexibility with API support.

What benefits or ROI should users look for in reviews?

High Trust Level: Recognized reliability, especially in Latin America.
Configuration Support: Capability to configure down to individual ports.
Integration: Seamless integration with ACI and ASX-T.
Agility: Enhanced flexibility and adaptability to changes.

Among its features, Cisco CloudCenter [EOL] serves industries like telecom and service providers needing hybrid deployment and cloud management. DevOps teams utilize it for tenant creation and VM management. Known for stability and initial setup ease, it supports Latin American regions highly. Action Orchestrator aids in workflow automation, benefitting user workflows. Improvements in DevOps alignment, UI, multi-tenancy, YAML abstraction, and cost management are desirable. It requires better security for XDR and comprehensive cloud offerings, including architecture and network security features.

VMware Aria Operations is a high-ranking virtualization management and cloud management tool that automates and simplifies IT management to the applications it supports. It achieves this through full-stack visibility from physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructure. The product allows users to enable self-driving IT operations management across private, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments. This is conducted with the unified operations platform that delivers continuous performance, capacity and cost optimization, and integrated compliance through artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and predictive analytics.

VMware Aria Operations Use Cases

VMware Aria Operations has several use cases, some of which include:

Continuous performance optimization: VMware Aria Operations allows users to assure application performance at a minimal cost, facilitated by real-time predictive analytics and artificial intelligence. The product can be used to automatically balance workloads, improve consolidation rations, optimize and rightsize workloads, and avoid contention.
Capacity and cost management: VMware Aria Operations can be utilized to reduce cost and improve efficiency with real-time ML-based capacity and cost analytics. The solution uses these tools to visualize cost savings opportunities and accelerate decision-making.
Intelligent remediation: This product can also be used to predict, prevent, and troubleshoot issues with actionable insights. Through other VMware integrations, users can streamline and centralize IT operations.
Integrated compliance: The solution can be utilized to reduce risk and enforce IT regulatory standards for VMware Cloud through integrated compliance and automated drift remediation.

VMware Aria Operations Features

The product has various features which users can utilize. Several of the features that the 2022 version of VMware Aria Operations introduced include:

Management pack builder: This feature is a no-code solution that allows users to expand their operations visibility to anywhere they wish. The builder allows users to connect to a data source using an HTTP or Amazon AWS data source, as well as to make API calls, create objects, and build out relationships with other objects in the product.
Public cloud basic actions: This is a set of features that allows VMware Aria Operations users to initiate actions automatically via the product's UI for AWS, Microsoft Azure, or GCP CE instances.
Rule-based application discovery: Through this new feature of the product, users can easily discover multiple applications running in all or specific areas of infrastructure and view associated resources. This can be achieved through simple user-defined rules, including discovering applications based on tags, object names, and properties.
Aria Operations capacity management: This feature allows organizations to view the results of what-if analysis based on their allocation model and specify business hours for capacity calculations.
Alerts: This is a set of features that include components called Conditions and Symptoms, which are used to alert different types of issues on the platform.
User access management: Through this feature, users can benefit from improved ways to configure in VMware Aria Operations with the introduction of scopes.
Support for raw device mapping storage: This feature allows users to get configuration details about their raw device mapping (RDM), such as disk sharing, compatibility mode, and SCSI Bus Sharing.

VMware Aria Operations Benefits

VMware Aria Operations brings various benefits to the organizations using it. Among them are the following:

The product helps organizations reduce unplanned downtime and maximize return on investment (ROI) in hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
VMware Aria Operations simplifies management for hybrid clouds from migration assessments.
Users can benefit from an accelerated journey to VMware Cloud on AWS through this solution.
The product can be delivered on premises or as a service, providing flexibility for its users.
VMware Aria Operations can increase operational efficiency through monitoring and management features.
The solution accelerates decision-making through detailed cost analytics, which is visualized for users' convenience.
VMware Aria Operations allows users to both utilize standard compliance templates and create their own custom ones.

Reviews from Real Users

Mohamed N., a tech lead VMware support engineer at a tech services company, appreciates VMware Aria Operations because it is easy to use, stable, and support is always available.

Mojtaba K., a senior system administrator at a comms service provider, values VMware Aria Operations due to the fact that its dashboards give you a glimpse of what is really going on in your virtualized environment.

Sample Customers

IBM, J.B. Hunt, BBC, The Capita Group, SulAmérica, Rabobank, PROS, ThinkON, O.C. Tanner Co.

NTT, Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), CollabNet, Pratt & Miller, PZFlex

Science Applications International Corporation, Tribune Media, Heartland Payment Systems, Telkom Indonesia, Columbia Sportswear, iGATE, CSS Corp, Angel Broking, Adira Finance, Hipskind, Beiersdorf Shared Services, Innovate Mas Indonesia, Adobe, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi , Join Experience S.A, Borusan Holdings, Department of Transport - Abu Dhabi

Find out what your peers are saying about VMware, Nutanix, IBM and others in Cloud Management. Updated: September 2024.

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