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Red Hat CloudForms vs VMware Aria Operations comparison

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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

IBM Turbonomic
Sponsored
Ranking in Cloud Management
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
205
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (5th), Virtualization Management Tools (4th), IT Financial Management (1st), IT Operations Analytics (4th), Cloud Analytics (1st), Cloud Cost Management (1st), AIOps (5th)
Red Hat CloudForms
Ranking in Cloud Management
31st
Average Rating
6.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Aria Operations
Ranking in Cloud Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
373
Ranking in other categories
Virtualization Management Tools (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of IBM Turbonomic is 6.0%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat CloudForms is 1.7%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations is 8.8%, down from 9.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Keldric Emery - PeerSpot reviewer
Saves time and costs while reducing performance degradation
It's been a very good solution. The reporting has been very, very valuable as, with a very large environment, it's very hard to get your hands on the environment. Turbonomic does that work for you and really shows you where some of the cost savings can be done. It also helps you with the reporting side. Me being able to see that this machine hasn't been used for a very long time, or seeing that a machine is overused and that it might need more RAM or CPU, et cetera, helps me understand my infrastructure. The cost savings are drastic in the cloud feature in Azure and in AWS. In some of those other areas, I'm able to see what we're using, what we're not using, and how we can change to better fit what we have. It gives us the ability for applications and teams to see the hardware and how it's being used versus how they've been told it's being used. The reporting really helps with that. It shows which application is really using how many resources or the least amount of resources. Some of the gaps between an infrastructure person like myself and an application are filled. It allows us to come to terms by seeing the raw data. This aspect is very important. In the past, it was me saying "I don't think that this application is using that many resources" or "I think this needs more resources." I now have concrete evidence as well as reporting and some different analytics that I can show. It gives me the evidence that I would need to show my application owners proof of what I'm talking about. In terms of the downtime, meantime, and resolution that Turbonomic has been able to show in reports, it has given me an idea of things before things happen. That is important as I would really like to see a machine that needs resources, and get resources to it before we have a problem where we have contention and aspects of that nature. It's been helpful in that regard. Turbonomic has helped us understand where performance risks exist. Turbonomic looks at my environment and at the servers and even at the different hosts and how they're handling traffic and the number of machines that are on them. I can analyze it and it can show me which server or which host needs resources, CPU, or RAM. Even in Azure, in the cloud, I'm able to see which resources are not being used to full capacity and understand where I could scale down some in order to save cost. It is very, very helpful in assessing performance risk by navigating underlying causes and actions. The reason why it's helpful is because if there's a machine that's overrunning the CPU, I can run reports every week to get an idea of machines that would need CPU, RAM, or additional resources. Those resources could be added by Turbonomic - not so much by me - on a scheduled basis. I personally don't have to do it. It actually gives me a little bit of my life back. It helps me to get resources added without me physically having to touch each and every resource myself. Turbonomic has helped to reduce performance degradation in the same way as it's able to see the resources and see what it needs and add them before a problem occurs. It follows the trends. It sees the trends of what's happening and it's able to add or take away those resources. For example, we discuss when we need to do certain disaster recovery tests. Over the years, Turbo will be able to see, for example, around this time of year that certain people ramp up certain resources in an environment, and then it will add the resources as required. Another time of year, it will realize these resources are not being used as much, and it takes those resources away. In this way, it saves money and time while letting us know where we are. We've saved a great deal of time using this product when I consider how I'd have to multiply myself and people like me who would have to add resources to devices or take resources away. We've saved hundreds of hours. Most of the time those hours would have to be after hours as well, which are more valuable to me as that's my personal time. Those saved hours are across months, not years. I would consider the number of resources that Turbonomic is adding and taking away and the placement (if I had to do it all myself) would end up being hundreds of hours monthly that would be added without the help of Turbonomic. It helps us to meet SLAs mainly due to the fact that we're able to keep the servers going and to keep the servers in an environment, to keep them to where (if we need to add resources) we can add them at any given time. It will keep our SLAs where they need to be. If we were to have downtime due to the fact that we had to add resources or take resources away and it was an emergency, then that would prevent us from meeting our SLAs. We also use it to monitor Azure and to monitor our machines in terms of the resources that are out there and the cost involved. In a lot of cases, it does a better job of giving us cost information than Azure itself does. We're able to see the cost per machine. We're able to see the unattached volume and storage that we are paying for. It gives us a great level of insight. Turbonomic gives us the time to be able to focus on innovation and ongoing modernization. Some of the tasks that it does are tasks that I would not necessarily have to do. It's very helpful in that I know that the resources are there where they need to be and it gives me an idea of what changes need to be made or what suggestions it's making. Even if I don't take them, I'm able to get a good idea of some best practices through Turbonomic. One of the ways that Turbonomic does to help bring new resources to market is that we are now able to see the resources (or at least monitor the resources) before they get out to the general public within our environment. We saw immediate value from the product in the test environment. We set it up in a small test environment and we started with just placement and we could tell that the placement was being handled more efficiently than what VMware was doing. There was value for us in placement alone. Then, after we left the placement, we began to look at the resources and there were resources. We immediately began to see a change in the environment. It has made the application and performance better, mainly due to the fact that we are able to give resources and take resources away based on what the need is. Our expenses, definitely, have been in a better place based on the savings that we've been able to make in the cloud and on-prem. Turbonomic has been very helpful in that regard. We've been able to see the savings easily based on the reports in Turbonomic. That, and just seeing the machines that are not being used to capacity allows us to set everything up so it runs a bit more efficiently.
Ilhami Arikan - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable solution that helps to provision servers
We use the solution to provision servers.  I am impressed with the product's ability to create dynamic catalogs.   The solution's provisioning engine needs to be improved.  I would rate the solution's stability an eight out of ten.  I would rate the product's scalability a seven out of ten and…
Gaurav Amar - PeerSpot reviewer
Enabled us to cut the cost of resources and manage our infrastructure with a smaller team
There's a feature known as Smart Alerts in vRealize Operations, which I have found to be useful if there's anything going wrong in the infrastructure. What usually happens is that you get so many alerts that you become confused. Smart Alerts give you visibility into your infrastructure and also recommend how to fix the situation. That's a feature which I'm really a fan of. Control, from the compliance perspective, is also helpful because we are a PCI DSS-certified company. It keeps us in compliance so that all of our servers and other things are not breaching any of the baseline protocols and baseline policies which we have laid down for the company. That's another thing which I like about the VMware vROps.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The automated memory balancing, where it looks at whether it's being used in the most efficient way and adds or takes away memory, is the best part. If it didn't do that, it would be something that I would have to do. We have too many machines for one person to do that. The automation helps me in that it is done in a really efficient way and a balanced way because of the policies. It really helps."
"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 notifications saying, "This is a corrective action," even though some of them can be automated, are always welcome to see. They summarize your entire infrastructure and how you can better utilize it. That is the biggest feature."
"I like Turbonomic's built-in reporting. It provides a ton of information out of the box, so I don't have to build panels for the monthly summaries and other reports I need to present to management. We get better performance and bottleneck reporting from this than we do from our older EMC software."
"We have VM placement in Automated mode and currently have all other metrics in Recommend mode."
"It helps us get a consolidated view of all customer spending into a single dashboard, allowing us to identify opportunities to improve their current spending."
"Turbonomic can show us if we're not using some of our storage volumes efficiently in AWS. For example, if we've over-provisioned one of our virtual machines to have dedicated IOPs that it doesn't need, Turbonomic will detect that and tell us."
"It became obvious to us that there was a lot more being offered in the product that we could leverage to ensure our VMware environment was running efficiently."
"The multi-tenancy feature has been very helpful for our clients. It has been working fine and seamlessly for them. Its interface is also very simplified, and it is also an open and easy-to-scale solution."
"Red Hat CloudForms is a stable product. There is no issue with the stability."
"They are a very mature product."
"The stability of the solution is very good. We haven't had any issues with it."
"I am impressed with the product's reports."
"I am impressed with the product's ability to create dynamic catalogs."
"Red Hat CloudForms is stable once it is up and running."
"The most valuable features of Red Hat CloudForms are the benefit of the collective functionality."
"The most valuable feature is the seamless integration with the vSphere Client and being able to go quickly back and forth between an incident within the vSphere interface and the actual drilling into it within vROps, to identify problems."
"On a scale of one to ten, I would rate its scalability as an eight out of ten."
"From a troubleshooting standpoint, beforehand it took us a lot of time to actually go into esxtop, pull the actual raw data that was actually happening from a storage level, a network level, a CPU/VCPU and memory level. But having all of these resources at our fingertips, from a graphical user interface, we can pinpoint the pitfall very easily"
"The vRO (using Functional Programming of Javascript) is a hand-down of the favorite component of this suite."
"The main point of installing, deploying, and troubleshooting with vRealize Operations is to provide visual dashboards to ensure that the entire workload is functioning properly."
"It gives us a better look into performance, a better look into right-sizing, a better look at possible issues or, more so, trends."
"The monitoring and verification functionalities were the most useful features."
"The initial setup process is fairly simple, especially if you are only setting up a standalone instance."
 

Cons

"They have a long road map when we ask for certain things that will make the product better. It takes time, but that's understandable because there are other things that are higher on the priority list."
"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."
"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."
"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 management interface seems to be designed for high-resolution screens. Somebody with a smaller-resolution screen might not like the web interface. I run a 4K monitor on it, so everything fits on the screen. With a lower resolution like 1080, you need to scroll a lot. Everything is in smaller windows. It doesn't seem to be designed for smaller screens."
"The deployment process is a little tricky. It wasn't hard for me because I have pretty in-depth knowledge of Kubernetes, and their software runs on Kubernetes. To deploy it or upgrade it, you have to be able to follow steps and use the Kubernetes command line, or you'll need someone to come in and do it for you."
"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."
"Because the solution needs to integrate with other products that surround it, there is a lot of configuration required, and this can be quite complex. It's not as easy as it is with, for example, VMware."
"The solution's provisioning engine needs to be improved."
"I have issues with the solution's permissions. Unlike VMware, the product doesn't allow folder-type permissions."
"It is difficult to create a complete dashboard that includes all the needed features or catalogs."
"Our clients had challenges or issues with the updates. Its updates should be better managed. They should provide quicker and more stable updates. Its stability can also be better. We initially faced ease-of-use and compatibility issues while integrating it. We had a lot of compatibility issues with other products. Our clients are concerned about whether it is under IBM or it is still Red Hat. Clients are not very clear about the support, and they're not really happy with it. Currently, they're getting support from Red Hat, but going forward, they're not really clear about what would be the life cycle of the product, which is a concern for them."
"All of the areas of Red Hat CloudForms could improve. It doesn't do half of the things that it says it can do out of the box. It takes configuration to make any of it work, which is not uncommon for solutions similar to this. However, it is frustrating."
"The solution is still quite immature."
"Red Hat CloudForms could improve by allowing more customization of reports. We have to do a lot of coding to accomplish what we want. Additionally, the compatibility with the multi-cloud could improve. The latter versions of the solution removed Google support and the cost comparison between other clouds was high."
"There are some distribution issues, and there is not enough information on the portal."
"Every product has room for improvement, no matter how good it is. For VMware Aria Operations, I think the main area for improvement is its integration with other cloud vendors, like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. The integration process is quite complex and often requires VMware personnel's involvement, which isn't always a great experience. So, integration with hyper scalers would be a key improvement."
"I haven't had to use technical support for this version but I have had to use them in the past with other versions. There have been some challenges with them. It's hard to get through to the right person and resolving issues in previous versions was hard."
"They can change the interface for the 6.7 vSphere that would make it more simple and more friendly. I think changing the interface of the operations manager would be good. It's friendly to use right now but it would simplify it more."
"They should make it easier to find those granular things that you're always looking for. You're always running into a situation where you want to use the tool to figure out a problem, but the amount of effort needed to delve into vROps and find the exact metric you're looking for is always so difficult."
"We would like better integration with the cloud because we use a multi-vendor cloud. We use AWS, which is fine, but we also use Azure and Google. We would like better plugins to those other two providers."
"One of the most valuable features was the cluster modeling, but they took that away... They keep saying that it's going to be back in the next release and that's what we're looking for. We really want that back."
"It's complex to manage because there are a lot of options and metrics. It's complex when you want to do something very specific."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I consider the pricing to be high."
"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."
"If you're a super-small business, it may be a little bit pricey for you... But in large, enterprise companies where money is, maybe, less of an issue, Turbonomic is not that expensive. I can't imagine why any big company would not buy it, for what it does."
"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."
"IBM Turbonomic is an investment that we believe will deliver positive returns."
"What I can advise is to trial the product, taking advantage of the Turbonomic pre-sales implemention support and kickstart training."
"I know there have been some issues with the billing, when the numbers were first proposed, as to how much we would save. There was a huge miscommunication on our part. Turbonomic was led to believe that we could optimize our AWS footprint, because we didn't know we couldn't. So, we were promised savings of $750,000. Then, when we came to implement Turbonomic, the developers in AWS said, "Absolutely not. You're not putting that in our environment. We can't scale down anything because they coded it." Our AWS environment is a legacy environment. It has all these old applications, where all the developers who have made it are no longer with the company. Those applications generate a ton of money for us. So, if one breaks, we are really in trouble and they didn't want to have to deal with an environment that was changing and couldn't be supported. That number went from $750,000 to about $450,000. However, that wasn't Turbonomic's fault."
"We see ROI in extended support agreements (ESA) for old software. Migration activities seem to be where Turbonomic has really benefited us the most. It's one click and done. We have new machines ready to go with Turbonomic, which are properly sized instead of somebody sitting there with a spreadsheet and guessing. So, my return on investment would certainly be on currency, from a software and hardware perspective."
"The price of Red Hat CloudForms was not competitive, it was expensive."
"Red Hat CloudForms is a bit expensive."
"The product's licensing is based on the number of servers."
"Red Hat CloudForms has a subscript-based pricing model. The cost is approximately $20,000 annually which allows you to use as many users as you want."
"It is definitely cheaper than VMware. Everything is included. There is no challenge there."
"Every VMware product is a licensing challenge. It's always costly. It's based on processors. From a technical side, the product is very good. The challenging part is always the licensing. They should have some kind of alternate pricing models."
"The licensing is quite expensive for our company."
"It has reduced time to troubleshoot issues. With our customized dashboards, we can target issues and attribute them to the correct team."
"The licensing model is annual. Compared to the price of other products, VMware vRealize Operations (vROps) is a bit on the high side. If it could be cheaper, it would be good."
"The initial costs are a bit on the higher side but the licensing is flexible."
"This is an enterprise-level product and everything is included in the VMware Suite license."
"VMware support is very costly compared to other organizations' support. When you purchase a VMware product, such as vSphere or vROps, the license is perpetual, but you also have to purchase the support service for a number of years. The support service pricing is very high compared to the license, and compared to competitive vendors."
"Pricing could always be cheaper, but it's acceptable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Insurance Company
8%
Computer Software Company
29%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
11%
University
7%
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...
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...
What do you like most about Red Hat CloudForms?
I am impressed with the product's reports.
What needs improvement with Red Hat CloudForms?
I have issues with the solution's permissions. Unlike VMware, the product doesn't allow folder-type permissions.
What advice do you have for others considering Red Hat CloudForms?
I would rate the product a four out of ten since its implementation is not as good as it sounds.
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 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 compl...
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 i...
 

Also Known As

Turbonomic, VMTurbo Operations Manager
No data available
VMware vRealize Operations (vROps), vCenter Operations Manager, VCOPS, vRealize Operations
 

Learn More

Video not available
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

IBM, J.B. Hunt, BBC, The Capita Group, SulAmérica, Rabobank, PROS, ThinkON, O.C. Tanner Co.
Cox Automotive, Penn State, FICO, G-ABLE, Seneca College, ITandTEL, The Paris Lodron University of Salzburg (PLUS), MyRepublic, Macquarie, The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, CBTS, Network Data Solutions (NDS)
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 Red Hat CloudForms vs. VMware Aria Operations and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.