Prometheus vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

Prometheus and VMware are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Prometheus is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.3, while VMware is ranked #48 with an average rating of 7.0. Prometheus holds a 3.3% mindshare in APM, compared to VMware’s 0.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Prometheus users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Prometheus

Read 34 Prometheus reviews

6,588 Views
5,858 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Read 9 VMware Aria Operations for Applications reviews

1,797 Views
1,610 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Prometheus

VMware Aria Operations for ...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

VMware Aria Operations for Applications and Prometheus are advanced monitoring solutions excelling in different areas based on user reviews. Prometheus holds the upper hand for its flexibility and customization, while VMware Aria Operations for Applications is favored for ease of deployment and customer support.

Features: VMware Aria Operations for Applications is known for detailed analytics, comprehensive support, and seamless integration capabilities. Prometheus is preferred for powerful alerting features, open-source flexibility, and extensive customization options.

Room for Improvement: VMware Aria Operations for Applications needs better scalability, more straightforward configuration, and enhanced documentation. Prometheus would benefit from improved user support, better documentation, and a more user-friendly onboarding process.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Aria Operations for Applications is favored for its straightforward deployment process and reliable customer support. Prometheus, although powerful, has a steeper learning curve and lacks dedicated support services.

Pricing and ROI: VMware Aria Operations for Applications is more costly but justified by its comprehensive features and strong customer support. Prometheus, being open-source, offers lower initial setup costs and good ROI due to its extensive capabilities and flexibility.

To learn more, read our detailed Prometheus vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Prometheus vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

January 2025

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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

Prometheus

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

8th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

48th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (46th), Container Monitoring (9th), Cloud Monitoring Software (31st)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Prometheus is 3.3%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 0.8%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

MuhammadAzhar Khan

Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group

Free to use and provides valuable monitoring capabilities

Prometheus is a scalable and flexible tool that I can deploy on any cloud platform. It is free to use and provides valuable monitoring capabilities. It allows me to save money by avoiding costs associated with AWS native services like CloudWatch or Amazon Prometheus. The ability to deploy on any cloud platform or environment, including Kubernetes, is a major advantage.

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Yves Sandfort

CEO & Majority Shareholder at Comdivision Consulting GmbH

Easy to deploy, worth the money, and helpful for uptime monitoring and performance insights

Its billing model is consumption-based. I understand the consumption-based model, but it is not necessarily easy to estimate and guess how many points or how much we are going to consume on a specific application up until we get to that point. So, for us, it would be helpful to have more insights or predictability into what we can expect from a cost perspective if we are starting to use specific features. This can potentially also drive our consumption a bit more. The other thing for us is that while it is great that we have all these standard metrics, it would be good if we can also more easily define standard metrics to be consumed for our own application. At the moment, for a lot of applications, we have to reinvent the wheel every time. If there was something so that we can build our own packaging of metrics, it would be helpful. In the future, we might be deploying our software to other customers as well. So, they should make it easier to redeploy that. There should be more customizable dashboards. The Wavefront dashboards are very technical and a more business-oriented dashboard design would definitely help.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The feature I found most valuable is the number of integrations. It is the industry standard for metrics."

"Prometheus is a scalable and flexible tool that I can deploy on any cloud platform."

"It lets me proactively identify and resolve system issues. This, in terms of, most of the time, really reduces downtime. Because when there are notifications on time when we engage it quickly on time, our downtime is highly reduced. So basically, Prometheus is for monitoring and alerting."

"The most valuable features of Prometheus for metrics collection and monitoring are its stability, robustness, and rich set of features."

"I like its lightweight configuration functions."

"The solution helps us to scale our products and services, and it helps me by gathering those metrics."

"The product's initial setup phase is very easy."

"It is highly valuable as it serves as the foundation for our infrastructure monitoring tools."

More Prometheus pros

"For us, the ease of deployment in combination with TMZ was the most important part because we don't have to manually deploy a complex monitoring solution. We can more or less do that with the click of a button, and we are not dependent on the developers to provide us with all the necessary features and functions to make that work. We can just deploy it on a workload cluster and monitor at least a good part of the workload. If we want to go into detail, we clearly need to make changes, but for a good part of application monitoring, it gives us good insights."

"Tanzu itself, integrated with multiple solutions, bestows support and security upon a container platform, especially when it comes to managing open-source container platforms such as Kubernetes."

"The most valuable aspects of the solution are its ease of use and its ease of implementation."

"VMware comes with a support team, and if you have trouble, you can easily create a ticket, and VMware will help you. Therefore, the best aspect is the support."

"The features I find most valuable is the querying and alerting capabilities."

"The solution is great for virtualization and preparing the infrastructure in Tanzu to test products. It's very fast and has good visibility."

"This solution allows me to have true visibility for any metrics when it comes to my cloud, and private."

"People are very pleased with the implementation."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications pros

Cons

"The alert functionality is kind of lackluster."

"The DSL could be improved."

"The product must improve its documentation."

"When it comes to deployment, if you have no experience with something like a CI/CD pipeline, it might be a challenge."

"There isn’t much clarity regarding the issues that happen at the server end. It is a push model and from the client’s point of view, it needs to look better and solve remote issues."

"There is a need for a more comprehensive overview of exporters, especially when dealing with many of them."

"Prometheus has a learning curve when setting it up. It definitely requires a little bit more hands-on than other solutions. It is an open source solution which means you do need to go through and read the literature that they have online for setting it up. The setup could be made easier."

"The query language in Prometheus is an area of concern where improvements are required."

More Prometheus cons

"I would like to see integration with Kubernetes cluster and APIs so that you can manage the entire stack."

"The documentation and integration with Kubernetes could be improved."

"The initial setup should be easier and more seamless."

"They could make it more easy to plug-in data so that a nontechnical person will be able to use it, like accountants or finance people. That way they don't have to ask us."

"In the new version, I would love to see more prediction capabilities. It would be great if one could see the alerts get a little more enriched with information and become more human-friendly instead of the technical stuff that they put in there. I think those would be really awesome outcomes to get."

"The implementation is a long process that should be improved."

"It could use a URL document server. Everything in the market is moving towards automation and everybody's looking for the single click operations as well relational data locality."

"Its billing model is consumption-based. I understand the consumption-based model, but it is not necessarily easy to estimate and guess how many points or how much we are going to consume on a specific application up until we get to that point. So, for us, it would be helpful to have more insights or predictability into what we can expect from a cost perspective if we are starting to use specific features. This can potentially also drive our consumption a bit more."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an open-source solution."

"We have the open-source version, so we don't pay for it."

"The product is free."

"The solution is free of cost."

"The tool is open-sourced."

"We use the solution's open-source version."

"Prometheus is an open-source solution."

"Prometheus is available as an open-source product."

More Prometheus pricing and cost advice

"The licensing costs are very high, particularly when you consider that we have to purchase a level 1 license for every integration, such as the load balancer, HAProxy, and the MSSP. And if you want to use vSAN, that's another license. Then, of course, Tanzu Observability has its own separate license."

"I don't have the details. In our case, there is a mixture in place. We have production usage, and we are also doing training for VMware. So, we also have a training instance. It is worth the money you would spend on it. That's because if you were to build all of this yourself by using some of the open source tools, then you would need a lot of time."

"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."

"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

26%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Prometheus?

The most valuable feature of Prometheus is its ability to collect metrics.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Prometheus?

Prometheus is cost-effective for me as it is free. Using cloud-native alternatives like Amazon Prometheus would incur charges.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Prometheus?

I use Prometheus for monitoring purposes in IT infrastructure. It is particularly useful for environments using Kubernetes, as it monitors ports, containers, instances, and applications effectively.

See all answers

What do you like most about VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

VMware comes with a support team, and if you have trouble, you can easily create a ticket, and VMware will help you. Therefore, the best aspect is the support.

See all answers

What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

It's hard to set up Tanzu clusters. It's hard to do a POC. Once you set up a customer's environment, you easily see the problems. The initial setup should be easier and more seamless.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

I primarily use the solution for consulting. I help company DevOps teams.

See all answers

Comparisons

Azure Monitor vs Prometheus

Compared 16% of the time

Zabbix vs Prometheus

Compared 12% of the time

Dynatrace vs Prometheus

Compared 9% of the time

New Relic vs Prometheus

Compared 8% of the time

More Prometheus Competitors

Grafana vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 13% of the time

Dynatrace vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 10% of the time

Zabbix vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 7% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 6% of the time

Datadog vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 6% of the time

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Prometheus

January 2025

Download Prometheus product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations for Applications

December 2024

VMware Aria Operations for Applications report

Download VMware Aria Operations for Applications product report

Also Known As

No data available

Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability

Learn More

Prometheus

VMware

Overview

Prometheus specializes in gathering, monitoring, and analyzing logs and metrics. Utilized for data visualization in Grafana, cloud deployments, Kubernetes monitoring, and financial transactions, it provides a comprehensive view of application performance.

Prometheus is widely adopted for its robust metrics collection and scraping capabilities. It integrates seamlessly with Grafana for detailed visualizations and supports installations in cloud environments like Azure and Amazon. Prometheus is especially valued for monitoring Kubernetes deployments and ensuring efficient operation of servers, databases, and microservices. Its open-source nature provides reliability, flexibility, and scalability. Users appreciate its extensive integrations, APIs, and libraries, supporting multiple languages. Prometheus also offers remote writing, dynamic conflict resolution, high availability, and lightweight configuration with detailed documentation.

What are the key features of Prometheus?

Extensive Integrations: Supports APIs and libraries across multiple languages
Metrics Collection: Efficiently handles large amounts of metrics
Scraping Capabilities: Effective data gathering from applications
HTTP Monitoring: Reliable and detailed tracking
Grafana Integration: Seamless dashboards and visualizations
High Availability: Ensures system reliability
Lightweight Configuration: User-friendly setup process
Robust Querying: Advanced data querying and long-term storage integration

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Holistic Application Performance: Provides a comprehensive view
Scalability: Handles growing amounts of metrics
Flexibility: Adapts to various cloud and on-premises environments
Reliability: Ensures consistent performance
Detailed Documentation: Offers clear guidance for users

Prometheus is extensively used in industries requiring robust monitoring and alerting systems. Financial services leverage it for tracking transactions, while tech companies deploy it for Kubernetes and microservices monitoring. Its scalable and flexible nature makes it a preferred choice for cloud environments, supporting the efficient operation of infrastructure and applications.

VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront is a powerful tool for monitoring and analyzing the performance and availability of applications and infrastructure in real-time.

With its comprehensive monitoring capabilities, visualizing and analyzing data becomes effortless. The real-time alerting system ensures timely issue resolution, while scalability and a user-friendly interface provide a seamless experience for smooth operations.

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

1. Atlassian 2. Cisco 3. Databricks 4. DigitalOcean 5. Equinix 6. Fidelity Investments 7. Google 8. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 9. Honeywell 10. IBM 11. Intel 12. JetBlue Airways 13. LinkedIn 14. Lyft 15. Mastercard 16. Microsoft 17. MongoDB 18. Netflix 19. Nvidia 20. Oracle 21. PayPal 22. Pinterest 23. Qualcomm 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. SAP 27. Spotify 28. Square 29. TMobile 30. Twitter 31. Uber 32. VMware

Buyer's Guide

Prometheus vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

January 2025

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