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Densify vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Densify
Ranking in Cloud Management
35th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (16th), Virtualization Management Tools (11th), Cloud Analytics (4th), Cloud Cost Management (13th)
VMware Aria Automation
Ranking in Cloud Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
170
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (7th), Network Automation (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (17th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Densify is 1.0%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 11.1%, down from 11.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Amit Kantia - PeerSpot reviewer
Its most valuable feature is the ability to capture attributes in the console, but it is not a stable solution
I recommend others to use Densify. They can not only use it for reporting but for automation as well. They can implement the policies on the console easily during the build-out procedure. Stability is the primary concern to us as it is causing lots of problems. We can only make significant decisions if Densify allows us, and it takes lots of time. Thus, I rate the tool as a six out of ten.
Le Quang Long - PeerSpot reviewer
Significantly streamlined operations with good automation that helps with simplifying workflows
It helps me build a big catalog and provide it to my end users. It helps us automate the workflow of creating many VMs and the TensorFlow key method. I do not meet many people to operate it live beforehand. It operates for both of my products, but as a product, it is complicated to integrate and automate with other products.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One would be the automatic rebalancing of the environment. That was one feature which helped. With that, we could improve our efficiency of our VMware infrastructure."
"The solution's tech support is excellent."
"The ability to increase server density inside of my environment, which has helped me drive reduction in costs."
"Densify's ability to aggregate multiple on-premise vCenters and multiple cloud accounts, gives it a level of visibility not found in many places."
"The Control Console is an incredible way to give a quick view of current capacity utilization allowing technical people to drill down quickly and allowing business/management people to get a quick overview of the environment."
"The tool will come back and tell us that we can operate with 1,000 minutes as an example, save 90% on the contractual rate and not run into any issues."
"The Control Console provides a very easy to read dashboard of "too little/just right/too much" resources both for current data and on a historical or predictive basis."
"I would say that the initial thing is that it provides us with a technological basis to expand capacity management beyond Excel."
"The operations manager does a fantastic job on the front end because it includes on-premises and cloud use cases."
"The repetitive tasks which took provisioning storage, network, and compute two to three weeks, now takes five minutes."
"VMware Aria Automation supports integration with ServiceNow, Kubernetes, and other tools. It is cloud-agnostic, making it a stronger platform than Ansible."
"Scalability is probably the best part about it. You can take things that you've already defined, that you've already built once, and build them again multiple times, without significant effort."
"The setup was straightforward. We upgraded to a newer version seamlessly. It worked really well."
"Our customers don't have to manage HVAC and space and cooling and all of those things that they used to have to do. Today, all they have to do is provision a server and manage their users."
"We monitor the configurations against CIS standards. We run CIS benchmarks and maintain configurations with higher CIS values for each server."
"We have it deployed in a highly-available environment and scalability is nice because we just had another ESX host and then we are able to increase the capacity."
 

Cons

"The solution's stability is the primary concern for me."
"Initially we talked about some custom reporting, wherein our customer expected certain reports on a few areas, like how the storage is allocated, how the network performance is doing, and how the network utilization is happening for a virtual machine."
"It seems that the mechanism for integration is, it goes so far but I think there could be some standard integration to normal remedy service now etc. I think that should be out of the box."
"Unfortunately the tools and mechanisms which really came to maturity in the cloud, and were not mainstream on-premise, are still not implemented."
"In terms of integration, the tool has great data. However, it's not always meaningful because the true business attributes of how most Fortune 500 companies operate are not maintaining in one tool, they're in a school of many tools."
"Normalization of CPU utilization is required. At present, the data is available based on entitlement level."
"A closer integration to the service management processes."
"Some parts of the interface are rather complex and require a bit of time to navigate, but this has never stopped us as a Densify advisor is readily available to help with our "how to" queries."
"I would also like to see them streamline the install. It's split between Windows and Linux appliances, and it would be easier if it was all appliances. I think they're going that way."
"The back-end has a steep learning curve."
"It was a complex setup. We had to use the consultant from VMware to make the solution work well."
"My impression of its stability is "middle of the road." We've had some issues where it seems to be a little bit sensitive, where deployments fail and we don't really know a specific reason why. We'll dig through logs and try and figure out what's going on, but it's not always apparent as to why it failed. And you can kick it off again and it'll succeed. So stability could be better."
"They should concentrate on navigation and service improvements."
"I think they could probably do more if they created more actions and more use cases to automate things."
"The deployment mechanisms for the initial deployment of the product line lacks the appropriate documentation to give someone who's never used it before... There might be cases where someone wants to go to the website, go to the doc section, and do a step-by-step on how to deploy it. That's really not as brushed-up as other documents I've seen that they have. That would definitely be an improvement on their end."
"The stability is okay, but could be improved. We sometimes receive strange errors, which can only be solved with specialists."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Densify has licensing setup so you can collect data without licensing. It gives you the ability to collect on everything, then choose later what you would like to license."
"Cost is always involved, but then I feel that this solution is better than other products that we have."
"Setup cost is negligible, as it scales fairly well."
"There was some sticker shock, as this is not just another software product to spit out graphs."
"It is an open-source product."
"The solution has helped to increase infrastructure, agility, speed, and provisioning in the time to market."
"I'm very interested in the integration with Puppet. However, my organization doesn't have the funding for something like Puppet right now. If VMware would integrate that feature set (Puppet) into vRA. That would be very awesome."
"From the customer perspective, the value was worth it."
"Customers say this solution is costlier compared to its competitors."
"It is an expensive product. After VMware's acquisition by Broadcom, there was a rise in the price of VMware Aria Automation."
"This is an expensive product and the high price is starting to become an issue for us."
"There is confusion between licensing levels. There are three different licensed versions of vRealize Automation, and there are different things which can happen in each of them."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
24%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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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 you need from the software interface. It provides complete visibility over applic...
Is there any way to try VMware Aria Automation for free?
When it comes to VMware Aria Automation, you have three choices for free runs: Hands-on Lab (HOL) Advanced lab A free trial I cannot describe in detail the second and third options as my company ...
Which sectors can benefit the most from VMware Aria Automation?
I was looking at VMware Aria Automation case studies recently and I got the impression that three main kinds of companies were using it most often: Social organizations Financial institutions and ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AIG, Bank of America, Cigna, Citi
Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Find out what your peers are saying about Densify vs. VMware Aria Automation and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.