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IBM Turbonomic vs VMware Aria Operations comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Turbonomic
Ranking in Cloud Management
4th
Ranking in Virtualization Management Tools
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
205
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (5th), Cloud Analytics (1st), Cloud Cost Management (1st)
VMware Aria Operations
Ranking in Cloud Management
3rd
Ranking in Virtualization Management Tools
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
371
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Virtualization Management Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Turbonomic is 16.7%, down from 20.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations is 35.6%, down from 37.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Virtualization Management Tools
 

Featured Reviews

SubashSubbiah - PeerSpot reviewer
Dec 10, 2022
It can tell us where performance is lagging on the hardware layer, but the reporting on the application layer is lacking
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. I would like them to add some apps for physical device load resourcing and physical-to-virtual calculation. It gives excellent recommendations for the virtual layer but doesn't have the capabilities for physical-to-virtual analysis. Automated deployment is something else they could add. Some built-in automation features are helpful, but we aren't effectively using a few. We want a few more automated features, like autoscaling and automatic performance optimization testing would be useful.
Edward Hore - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 24, 2024
Effortless configuration management with cost concerns and an easy installation
We use Aria Operations for hosting our retail environment at remote locations, and for hosting our internal systems We have an established environment with VMware solutions, which has been very robust and reliable. Ease of use and the ability to do what I need to do is very easy. I know where to…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most important feature to us is an objective measurement of VM headroom per cluster. In addition, the ability to check for the right-sizing of VMs."
"The automation and orchestration components are definitely the best part, as you can tell it what it can do and when, and just let it be."
"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."
"The solution has a good optimization feature."
"It is a good holistic platform that is easy to use. It works pretty well."
"I like the analytics that help us optimize compatibility. Whereas Azure Advisor tells us what we have to do, Turbonomic has automation which actually does those things. That means we don't have to be present to get them done and simplifies our IT engineers' jobs."
"We have VM placement in Automated mode and currently have all other metrics in Recommend mode."
"I have the ability to automate things similar to the Orchestrator stuff. I do have the ability to have it do some balancing, and if it sees some different performance metrics that I've set not being met, it'll actually move some of my virtual machines from, let's say, one host to another. It is sort of an automation tool that helps me. Basically, I specify the metric, and if I get a certain host or something being over-utilized, it'll automatically move the virtual machines around for me. It basically has to snap into my vCenter and then it can make adjustments and move my virtual machines around. It also has some very nice reporting tools built around virtual machines. It tells you how much storage, memory, or CPU is being used monthly, and then it gives you a very nice way to be able to send out billing structure to your end users who use servers within your environment."
"The most valuable feature would be the ability to plug into the data feeds that we have and pull information from physical hardware as well as the virtual layer. The best feature is the visualization of what's going on, so we can take a very quick look and see if there are any issues that stand out."
"It has allowed me to give the developers insight into what's actually happening underneath the covers. They used to only be able to see their app and now, they can see underneath. We've also given them access to see into the OS and we've given them a full stack view of how their application is performing."
"Some of the forecasting features give us a picture of, let's say, in six months I know that my storage will be full, or I'll be out of resources. It gives us a little bit of forecasting."
"The most valuable feature is the metrics, the ability to deep-dive into any issue we may be having from a virtual machine to a data store. Latency is a big thing - it's able to give us that metric pretty swiftly. And with our custom dashboards, it's all readily available."
"The most valuable features are the Heat Maps, and the various graphs and reporting features it has."
"I like the fact that the performance is good and that it makes it easy to consolidate all your servers."
"I like the dashboards. We can view in our service groups before something in our service goes wrong and causes issues."
"We appreciate that this solution gives accurate reporting."
 

Cons

"The old interface was not the clearest UI in some areas, and could be quite intimidating when first using the tool."
"Before IBM bought it, the support was fantastic. After IBM bought it, the support became very disappointing."
"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."
"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."
"I would love to see Turbonomic analyze backup data. We have had people in the past put servers into daily full backups with seven-year retention and where the disk size is two terabytes. So, every single day, there is a two terabyte snapshot put into a Blob somewhere. I would love to see Turbonomic say, "Here are all your backups along with the age of them," to help us manage the savings by not having us spend so much on the storage in Azure. That would be huge."
"It can be more agnostic in terms of the solutions that it provides. It can include some other cost-saving methods for the public cloud and SaaS applications as well."
"The way it handles updates needs to be improved."
"They could add a few more reports. They could also be a bit more granular. While they have reports, sometimes it is hard to figure out what you are looking for just by looking at the date."
"The one thing that I am always missing is training specific to Horizon. There is no training class you can go to for the Horizon add-on for vROps. I'd like to see specific training for Horizon admins, as opposed to general vSphere admins."
"Lately, the chargeback site has improved, but it could be simpler. You need to create your own dashboards. It should be simple to get a virtual machine and break down the compute and storage costs."
"At first, it was not so user-friendly because there was so much information that we were lost."
"They need to improve the capacity and infrastructure planning side of things. Also, I would like to see them integrate more stuff, with more detailed monitoring and different cloud providers."
"There is room for improvement in asset management and resource usage."
"There are some metrics that are not included in the canned set, that we've created. They call them super metrics in the tool, where you create your own metric. But the super metrics are not really reliable. It might be because we didn't create them correctly, although we did have help from VMware. They also don't translate into newer versions like a canned metric would. One of them is a vCPU to pCPU ratio. That's one that is missing, which should be very simple for them to collect."
"vRLI still needs a lot of improvement to even start comparing with the market leader, Splunk, in terms of data analysis and customized charts/reports generation."
"They should have more automation features for database management."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I have not seen Turbonomic's new pricing since IBM purchased it. When we were looking at it in my previous company before IBM's purchase, it was compatible with other tools."
"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."
"You should understand the cost of your physical servers and how much time and money you are spending year over year on expanding your virtual farm."
"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."
"It was an annual buy-in. You basically purchase it based on your host type stuff. The buy-in was about 20K, and the annual maintenance is about $3,000 a year."
"I'm not involved in any of the billing, but my understanding is that is fairly expensive."
"What I can advise is to trial the product, taking advantage of the Turbonomic pre-sales implemention support and kickstart training."
"The solution has a huge cost. If we could just have one license covering everything that vROps can do, that would be great. I would prefer it this way."
"Our manpower costs have been reduced due to the automation in conjunction with the usage of the dashboard."
"Five or six years ago, when we took it, it was a very good option. Now, I think I have to reevaluate, to be honest."
"We have seen ROI in performance. It used to be our company was giving out eight CPUs to all servers. That was bad performance-wise. People were seeing slow compute times for their applications."
"We have seen huge ROI. It has certainly reduced troubleshooting."
"As we continue to implement it across multiple environments, it reduces costs as well."
"I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
"The product is too expensive to implement."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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 set as a percentage of the consumption of some of our customers' services. The ...
What needs improvement with Turbonomic?
The implementation could be enhanced.
What is your primary use case for Turbonomic?
We use IBM Turbonomic to automate our cloud operations, including monitoring, consolidating dashboards, and reporting. This helps us get a consolidated view of all customer spending into a single d...
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 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 complex to set up and you can rely on the technical support to provide you with assis...
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 introduced the new version of VMware Aria Operations, they also introduced more a...
 

Also Known As

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

Learn More

Video not available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

IBM, J.B. Hunt, BBC, The Capita Group, SulAmérica, Rabobank, PROS, ThinkON, O.C. Tanner Co.
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 IBM Turbonomic vs. VMware Aria Operations and other solutions. Updated: November 2024.
815,854 professionals have used our research since 2012.