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Morpheus 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

Morpheus
Ranking in Cloud Management
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Aria Automation
Ranking in Cloud Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
171
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (7th), Network Automation (6th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (19th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Morpheus is 5.5%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 7.1%, down from 10.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
VMware Aria Automation7.1%
Morpheus5.5%
Other87.4%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

MarkWittling - PeerSpot reviewer
NFV Cloud Architect at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Seamless upgrades, stable, and easy to deploy
We've been facing some challenges with Morpheus due to its design for public cloud usage. Their main focus is on allowing customers to deploy virtual machines to Azure, Google Cloud, AWS (and other private or public clouds they support). They provide features such as guidance and cost optimization. However, we're using Morpheus for on-prem v center clouds, which is probably not the user base norm. We are very pleased with the dashboard and multi-tenancy capabilities, but there are some challenges when deploying and configuring the more complex Telco workloads that have advanced networking. The integration of the NSX-T needs to be refactored. As I have been working on the API, there are some issues with the workflow engine in the automation that need to be addressed. For example, I need to be able to flag a task as fail or continue on fail if something goes wrong in the workflow. Currently, if one of the tasks in a twenty-task workflow fails, the remaining nineteen are not run, which can be a problem if one of those tasks is critical, such as when patching or doing security tasks. Thus, workflow enhancements and improvements are necessary. Morpheus desires the ability to control the full life cycle of a virtual machine from beginning to end. We have many vendors who want to establish virtual machines, but we want users to access them through Morpheus. We want the VMs to be provisioned from an external system and then be managed in Morpheus so users can only perform limited activities without being able to delete or provision them. We are currently working on resolving this issue, which I refer to as reconciliation. I have asked the developers to implement multi-tenancy, where each tenant has their own landing page at a unique URL. However, we are using groups, not tenants, so there are features we can do with tenants that we cannot do with groups. Specifically, I am trying to get the developers to add notifications support so that when a group member logs in to the Morpheus portal, they can be informed of their VMs' maintenance schedule at a specific time. This is a feature I have requested them to add. We are generally pleased with Morpheus, however, due to some restraints and restrictions, we are utilizing it differently than the majority of its users. This creates some difficulty.
Le Quang Long - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Engineer at BIDV - Ngân hàng TMCP Đầu tư & Phát triển Việt Nam
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

"Morpheus is an intuitive solution that is very easy to use."
"In my organization, Morpheus is a very useful tool to automate processes—for example, provisioning new virtual machines reduces the time required, and every action is very fast using Morpheus, allowing me to prepare new environments for testing or proof-of-concept projects."
"The most valuable feature of Morpheus is its strong integration with vSphere Cloud."
"It supports many features, and it also supports some of the automation that Cloudify supports. So, in addition to just giving you basic platform management—such as the ability to deploy virtual machines and have multitenancy to log in and perform all of your basic platform management tasks—it also supports automation. You can, for example, spin up three virtual machines, and you can have each virtual machine configure each other. You can do service chaining with it. You can run scripts in Dash and Python, or you can use tools like Ansible, Puppet, or Chef. All of this is just built into the tool. It is a very powerful tool."
"The most valuable feature for me was cost optimization."
"Provides a good automation platform."
"The most beneficial features for us were the API integrations with various cloud vendors like Nutanix, VMware, AWS, Azure, and GCP. It saved us the effort of doing that work ourselves."
"Morpheus provides a very easy and one-click solution to scaling up and down."
"The most valuable feature is, instead of doing the VMotion manually, we have automated everything with a script, using vRealize. That means I don't need to think about things like compatibility. The system will do everything for me and just give me a report."
"The product’s most valuable feature is its ability to provide environmental security."
"It's much more stable than the highest available variant."
"The solution has helped us to increase infrastructure agility, mostly because, in addition to it being able to do its thing on its own, it has tie-ins to other parts of our CICD pipeline. We use Jenkins for our build process which, of course, vRA has plugins for, to be able to integrate with it. We use Chef and there is the Chef build as part of our image that we standardized to deploy, and that can tie in with our section of the pipeline that it does for applications."
"usability; Ease of use, the GUI, is probably the best feature, so that really anybody can use it. You don't have to be technical to be able to deploy a VM. I find it to be intuitive and user-friendly. Regarding some of the files that you feed it, you don't have to do a ton of development. You can feed it pretty standard configuration files. You don't have to be a developer, you don't have to know C# or Java or the like to get it going."
"The solution is intuitive and user-friendly. E.g., you have less number of logins."
"The automation function itself and how to group and publish those groupings is quite easy for customers to learn with Aria."
"The setup is getting better with each version."
 

Cons

"We had to put in much effort ourselves since Morpheus's support wasn't always available to help us."
"I faced a few problems while deploying."
"The service is limited and somewhat lacking."
"Morpheus is working hard on creating an integration framework due for release in Q2 2021 which will allow clients to create their own interfaces and integrations into any 3rd party product that has a full-function API. Morpheus is also heavily focussed on enhancing the container management side to compete head-to-head with Openshift and CloudForms in Q3 2021."
"The tool could support virtual network functions better. It is really good at doing enterprise-type of things, but one of the things on which we're working with them is loading very complex virtual machines with it, such as Juniper SRX routers. It needs to support more complex virtualized resources a little bit better. Aside from that, it is a terrific tool. We really like it."
"The solution's pricing and customization need to improve."
"We've been facing some challenges with Morpheus due to its design for public cloud usage."
"I would suggest adding integrated tools such as FinOps or other management tools as improvements to Morpheus."
"They should make it a little bit more dynamic, a little bit easier to deal with large-scale AD deployments. They need to make it a little more enterprise-ready. That is the one thing that kills us."
"I'm not wanting any particular feature; but there should be cost reductions. VMware comes at a high cost, and that's why we are in the process of transitioning to a more affordable alternative."
"In terms of usability, It has had its challenges. It requires a lot of custom code to integrate into our environment. It can take a little while to get it to do what we want, takes some code instead of having built-in functionality. Part it is how we use it. It would be a lot easier to use in a greenfield scenario versus brownfield, which is the way we using it."
"There is certainly room for improvement with some of the little things I was talking about, like either better managing of the upgrade process, or just making the infrastructure deployment a little bit easier. It feels like all of the pieces have been automated on one level or another, like with the PowerShell scripts, doing all the IS, Windows boxes preparation. They just need to get it to be more end-to-end."
"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."
"It would be nice in the next release if they added in tool tips. Whether you're putting it together, adding a blueprint, or you're making a change in the system, highlighting or selecting something and having it tell you what it does or what it will do would be nice. Because it's such a complex system, it's hard to work with unless you've been using it for years to know what everything is doing."
"The setup is difficult. You need a technical person to help you set it up."
"As a product, it is complicated to integrate and automate with other products."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is cheaper if you have less number of servers, but it becomes very expensive for a large number of servers."
"Licensing is on an annual basis, and it is upfront for the year. There is no extra cost unless you want additional support or specific deployment packs."
"Initially, the license may seem like a good deal, but as we grow, it becomes costly."
"Morpheus doesn't directly support cost optimization, but its API integration can facilitate resource optimization. It doesn't dynamically optimize resources like an aeronautic system would; it operates step by step."
"The license is based on the number of virtual machines that Morpheus is managing. So, it is a pay-as-you-grow model."
"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."
"Customers say this solution is costlier compared to its competitors."
"It is an open-source product."
"Better pricing is always handy, but I feel it's at the right price point."
"The solution is free of cost."
"The pricing for this solution is roughly 20% lower than the competitive products in the market."
"The cost of the solution is reasonable for us. Although it is relatively high, we prioritize stability and integration over cost."
"The solution is pretty expensive but provides good workload management."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
6%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise130
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Morpheus?
The most beneficial features for us were the API integrations with various cloud vendors like Nutanix, VMware, AWS, Azure, and GCP. It saved us the effort of doing that work ourselves.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Morpheus?
We've been a Morpheus customer since the early days. I know what they're trying to sell now, and you'd really need a strong use case to justify the cost.
What needs improvement with Morpheus?
I think that adding artificial intelligence or a large language model inside Morpheus would be very useful for clients. I would suggest adding integrated tools such as FinOps or other management to...
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

Morpheus Cloud Management Platform, Morpheus CMP
VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Morpheus CMP, mcdonalds, blackrock, HSBC, astrazeneca, arris, WGU, GBG, pennstate, beyondtrust
Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Find out what your peers are saying about Morpheus vs. VMware Aria Automation and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,227 professionals have used our research since 2012.