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HashiCorp Terraform vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Intune
Sponsored
Ranking in Configuration Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
233
Ranking in other categories
Remote Access (1st), Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) (1st), Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) (1st), Microsoft Security Suite (1st)
HashiCorp Terraform
Ranking in Configuration Management
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Aria Automation
Ranking in Configuration Management
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
169
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (1st), Network Automation (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (17th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (5th)
 

Featured Reviews

Gaurav Chandola - PeerSpot reviewer
We can manage all aspects of our devices from a single console, easy to scale, and quick to deploy
Intune has many benefits from the Microsoft perspective. This solution can manage Windows 10 devices, app management, and provide security solutions. We don't need to worry about our network connection, and we'll be more secure with regular security patches and compliance. Since everything will be deployed through the internet and users will log in using the internet only, the risks have been mitigated. Security updates, security patching, and the application will be targeted from Intune. The location tracker will be available to track where the device is and the user's location. The user will be restricted from accessing certain applications using compliance policies. Conditional access policies will be based on the reason why the user needs access to the application. Microsoft Intune is one of the best products in the industry for managing Windows devices. The solution has more feature restrictions. The conditional access policies also eliminate the dependency on the on-prem network for the devices. The solution also manages our security settings and a lot of other beneficial features such as Microsoft Purview which gives us the compliance portion. We can manage all aspects of our device from a single console, including M365 services. This allows us to configure data classification types, such as public, private, internal, confidential, and highly confidential.
Marek Kubovic - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to use, technically strong, and great for multi-provider or multi-cloud environments
The setup for one laptop is quite easy technically. If you are sharing the environment among staff, then the setup is a bit more complicated. You need knowledge to setup under this specific condition. Once you study it, you will be able to implement correctly. The setup is rated a five out of ten.
NiteshKumar1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Good stability, supports a hybrid model and easy to use
There is an area of improvement. For example, you are migrating from a customer's existing data center to a new target data center. To facilitate this transition, you'll initially need to evaluate the customer's aging hardware hosting VMware, which is nearing the end of its operational life. The customer expresses the intention to upgrade to a newer version, necessitating an overhaul of everything in the new data center. As a Systems Integrator (SI), consultant, or architect, your recommendation would be to acquire the latest hardware with a specified configuration and then install VMware on top of it. However, there's a crucial aspect related to the infrastructure requirements for VMware to run seamlessly on that hardware. If there's an opportunity to potentially reduce these infrastructure prerequisites, it would be highly beneficial. This is because a higher number of VMware licenses requires more infrastructure capacity from Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) or Colocation partners. Consequently, when discussing the operation of this virtualized environment from VMware over a contractual period of five years, the overall cost to the customer is influenced by the infrastructure requirements. If there's a feasible way to decrease these prerequisites for the infrastructure supporting the virtualization layer, it would be advantageous in terms of cost for the customer. Any customer in today's world exists or wants to exist in a hybrid model, so in future releases, we would like to see this. So, going forward, if this virtualized environment would exist, it has to be a combination of on-premise plus public cloud Azure/AWS. It should be more seamless when your interface or when you are interacting with workloads running on-premise VMware/AWS VMware. So it is only there in some capacity and space, and I'm aware of it. And Azure and VMware already have a tie-up on the same lines, but at the same time, if it is more seamless, if it is more interchangeable, if you could move your workloads, or if you can access your workloads or your virtual machines irrespective of whatever platform it is running, whether it is on-premises, or cloud or public cloud, it'll be a lot more comfortable for a user than the user to consume that infrastructure. Firstly, it needs to have a combination of deployment and be more seamless for the customers. Secondly, more software-defined features, more in terms of managing the infrastructure pool in a software-defined way. Managing the infrastructure pool in a more optimized fashion is going to be the key in the upcoming times. It's not just on-premise, but at the same time, it should also be the public cloud as well. Probably because when I meet my customers, this is one thing that I always tell them. I have seen people moving from on-premise public cloud only to realize at the end of the month that they end up paying a higher bill compared to what they were paying when they were running their business on-premise. The reason is that they do not understand or do not realize the full potential of the public cloud, and the way it should be consumed, the way it should be used, and the way it should be scheduled to ensure that the billing at the end of the month is very optimal. You pay for what exactly you need, not everything that you have from the cloud. That's not a way to use the cloud, whether it is on-premise or from the cloud. For example, an enterprise has over 100 applications. Out of that 100 applications, only 25 applications are running the production instances, and the remaining 75 are running non-production instances. It can be a development environment, a test environment, a sandbox, etc. In this case, you need to run only the 25 applications on the public cloud 24/7. You do not need to run your remaining 75 applications 24/7. Because, eventually, your developers, testers, quality managers, and whoever will use the non-production environment only when they're in the office and working on those applications. Then why do we need to have those applications, which are non-production in nature, lower environments? So we're running on the public cloud all the time because, for a cloud provider, it is a virtual machine; whether you are consuming it for production work or non-production work, it is going to charge you the same bill. And if you are not optimizing, if you're not scheduling workloads, you are actually wasting money. You're wasting your money, and your bills, which you are going to pay with the public cloud provider provided, are going to be bad. It's going to be crazy. And then customers do not know what to do in this situation. And you cannot fight with the public cloud provider because they would say, "I had given you all the possibilities, all the opportunities to learn about it, the way you should be functioning it, the way you should be utilizing it. If you are not using it the way it should be used, That's not my problem."

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's easy to deploy a configuration or policy to a system, especially when you don't have Azure AD. Now we are talking to all these small and medium-sized customers who don't necessarily have an on-premise Windows Active Directory. If they have invested in Office 365 Premium, this functionality becomes available to them."
"Intune's feature that I have found most valuable is its auto-pilot feature."
"The Microsoft Windows Autopilot and Defender policies are the most valuable features of this solution."
"Intune provides full visibility into all active mobile device users. If their devices are noncompliant with our security policies, I have the flexibility to update them remotely."
"What I like most about Intune is its seamless enrollment process, particularly the Autopilot method."
"I particularly appreciate the administration and security features, which can be deployed easily."
"We are using the mobile feature, and we are also using MDM to lock the devices, to push restrictions, et cetera"
"The policy and compliance monitoring of devices and the software deployment are most valuable."
"Terraform is that it is an open-source tool that gives us great flexibility. Using the Terraform HCL, we are not restricted to a single cloud provider. If my client asks me to deploy the same infrastructure on Azure or GCP, I can use the same code with minor modifications to account for the different providers. This means we are not limited to a specific cloud."
"Modules can be reused extremely easily."
"It is the customization of Terraform's modules that I find most valuable."
"Provides automation which has increased our efficiency."
"It is one of the best things because now we have everything automated with Terraform. We didn't have an outage for the last three years because everything is written in a code, and every change we have made is recorded. If we didn't have a tool like Terraform, it would be extremely complex to achieve this level of maturity with infrastructure."
"One of the most valuable features is that it offers the ability to create a VPC, Virtual Private Cloud and VPN connectivity to the VPC can be automated without having to do it manually."
"HashiCorp Terraform is highly stable."
"The most valuable feature of HashiCorp Terraform is the custom modules."
"The most valuable features are that it's multi-tenant and the ability for scale."
"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."
"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."
"If you do a deployment for a proof of concept, it is simple."
"It is very stable, especially for high availability features."
"The setup was complex in many ways. The first reason is that we have many teams who work on it so it gets complicated gathering all of the people. The second reason is that it can be complicated to install it quickly, within a reasonable amount of time."
"The product's most valuable features are ease of automation."
"The most valuable feature is the way that it plugs into our monitoring systems, and Infoblox and Puppet."
 

Cons

"Intune should improve the management of non-Microsoft devices. It would be better to manage Mac, Android, and other non-Microsoft operating system devices within the same Intune interface."
"The reporting and cost have room for improvement."
"Regarding mobile devices, Intune is good, but there are other services that I would say are ahead of Intune from an administration and reporting point of view."
"The initial setup is a little bit complex."
"Sometimes the syncing is inconsistent. I'm confident that the devices are checking in every eight hours, but sometimes the devices aren't picking up the settings as quickly as I would expect. Some features haven't been updated in a while, and Microsoft doesn't seem interested in developing them. Unless you talk to an engineer, you don't know whether there will be an update."
"We would like to see support for Chrome and/or devices for Chromebooks."
"The solution could improve its flexibility."
"Intune is not the most user-friendly mobile device management platform available."
"The state locking functionality can be improved. In certain situations, we have to force-unlock the state, which sometimes does not work. When that happens, we have to manually go to the state backend and remove that particular state, which is kind of a cumbersome process. It should also have more functions, more expressions, and support for more products."
"There is always room for improvement somewhere. I don't know everything about the product."
"Terraform should monitor the backend storage more closely. You can handle it within Azure, but HashiCorp should release a dedicated tool to protect those secrets and ensure they're fully encrypted."
"I initially found the initial HashiCorp Terraform difficult to comprehend. It's complex and not straightforward, requiring proper training to grasp it. Even someone with a background in networking or cybersecurity would need guidance from someone knowledgeable."
"Some responses are very long, and some needed features take a lot of time."
"HashiCorp Terraform is an open-source tool that relies on external developers to create plugins to expand its capabilities. However, this approach can be problematic as not all plugins are created by professionals and some may have security vulnerabilities. In the case of GKE, Google has created a solid plugin, but for other services, one must search for plugins on the HashiCorp Terraform registry, which can be hit or miss, as many plugins are created by students or hobbyists, who may not continue to maintain or update them. This model of open-sourced plugins may not be the most reliable or secure way of expanding the tool's capabilities."
"It should have a more object-oriented approach like different coding languages."
"From a user's perspective, it would be great if a UI tool is made available in the open source version as well, but I don't think it may be introduced because of the high costs for it announced by HashiCorp in its licensed version...HashiCorp Terraform can improve backward compatibility."
"We still struggle a little bit with the configuration as far as making sure that we have all the endpoints where they need to be, because that's not as agile as we'd like in the back-end. We're working towards that with our DevOps teams to make sure that we're touching the right endpoints and getting the right data."
"It is too broad scale and complicated. It takes too many clicks to do things."
"I would like to see better integration capabilities. Maybe if they could develop libraries within Aria Automation for simpler integration with other third-party solutions, instead of just basic integration."
"I have not found this solution to be user-friendly. It's really complicated. The demo shows that you can automate anything but they only show basic scenarios. If you want to do anything more complicated than that, it becomes very complicated to set up."
"Deploying and configuring the solution takes a lot of time."
"The integration is a bit tight. I need the right package to use it properly. The new automation processes for VMware are messy, and support could be better."
"We are migrating from vRA version 7 to 8, but the migration is really hectic and time-consuming. There are no straightforward paths to migrate. We are doing an entirely new deployment to go to vRA version 8.0, then somehow get all of the VMs to vRA 8.0. Therefore, it would have been great if VMware had some solutions to upgrade from vRA 7 to 8 seamlessly. This includes the management of all the objects or VMs from the older version. Unfortunately, it is not there."
"The most important thing that we missed in vRanger was the possibility to mount several images instantaneously and present it so we can run it immediately."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft Intune is reasonably priced for large organizations that already have Microsoft Enterprise licenses, but it is less affordable for smaller businesses."
"If you're subscribing to Premium or E3, there are no additional costs for Intune, it's included."
"It comes as a bundle, so you do not really know what the prices are. Microsoft does not break it down to the user cost for us. It is just bundled with our E5 license."
"I rate Intune five out of 10 for pricing. It's expensive."
"It's affordable. It's cheaper if you have an Office 365, E5, or E3 subscription because everything is there."
"No one can compete with Microsoft when it comes to price, and the features it is offering."
"Consider the Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite rather than choosing specific sub-components, e.g. only Microsoft Intune."
"The price for Intune is fair."
"HashiCorp Terraform is a cost-effective solution."
"You can do everything with the free license of this solution."
"Terraform is a little expensive."
"We use the solution's free version."
"They have given it to us at a monthly cost, but it is on a yearly basis."
"I rate the price of HashiCorp Terraform a seven out of ten."
"The setup for Terraform is quite easy and currently, we are using their community version along with Jenkins."
"There are free and paid versions of the solution. We use the free version."
"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."
"I would rate the pricing a ten out of ten, with ten being very expensive."
"This is an expensive product and the high price is starting to become an issue for us."
"It is an open-source product."
"The pricing is very high."
"The solution is pretty expensive but provides good workload management."
"We have seen significant ROI. We used to have physical servers, it took 90 days to get a server, order it, buy it, and get it in. We have it down to 10 minutes, building a server with virtualization, and now that's too slow. So, we let the customer do it at their speed. Therefore, it is pretty much up in a couple of minutes and they have a server."
"vRealize automation really should be a front door to the whole VMware suite of products."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
26%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does Microsoft Intune compare with VMware Workspace One?
Microsoft Intune is a great tool for managing a mobile device fleet while keeping access control. The solution makes ...
What are the pros and cons of Microsoft Intune?
Microsoft Intune is a great configuration management tool and has a lot of good things going for it. Here are some of...
How does Google Cloud Identity compare with Microsoft Intune?
Microsoft Intune offers not only an easy-to-deploy data protection and productivity management solution, but also ...
What do you like most about HashiCorp Terraform?
The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the modules it offers.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HashiCorp Terraform?
The product can be cost-effective, especially if you use the CLI and do not require the cloud solutions provided by H...
What needs improvement with HashiCorp Terraform?
One area for improvement is real-time syncing with the actual infrastructure. Currently, you have to run CLI commands...
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...
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 fre...
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 compa...
 

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager
Terraform
VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
 

Learn More

Video not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway
Information Not Available
Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Find out what your peers are saying about HashiCorp Terraform vs. VMware Aria Automation and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.