SolarWinds Virtualization Manager vs VMware vSphere comparison

The compared SolarWinds and Broadcom solutions aren't in the same category. SolarWinds is ranked #6 in VM , and holds a 9.7% mindshare in the category. Broadcom is ranked #1 in SVS , with an average rating of 8.3, and holds a 19.1% mindshare. Additionally, 71% of SolarWinds users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

SolarWinds Virtualization M...

Read 7 SolarWinds Virtualization Manager reviews

1,403 Views
1,193 Comparison Views

71% willing to recommend

VMware vSphere

Read 460 VMware vSphere reviews

28,661 Views
25,508 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Virtualization M...

VMware vSphere

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between SolarWinds Virtualization Manager and VMware vSphere based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Broadcom, Nutanix, IBM and others in Virtualization Management Tools.

To learn more, read our detailed Virtualization Management Tools Report (Updated: May 2026).

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Virtualization Management Tools

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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

SolarWinds Virtualization M...

Average Rating

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Virtualization Management Tools (6th)

VMware vSphere

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

460

Ranking in other categories

Server Virtualization Software (1st)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Virtualization solutions, they serve different purposes. SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is designed for Virtualization Management Tools and holds a mindshare of 9.7%, up 9.6% compared to last year.
VMware vSphere, on the other hand, focuses on Server Virtualization Software, holds 19.1% mindshare, up 16.2% since last year.

Virtualization Management Tools Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
SolarWinds Virtualization Manager	9.7%
VMware Aria Operations	23.7%
IBM Turbonomic	17.0%
Other	49.6%

Virtualization Management Tools

Server Virtualization Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
VMware vSphere	19.1%
Hyper-V	19.8%
Proxmox VE	10.4%
Other	50.699999999999996%

Server Virtualization Software

Featured Reviews

Ravi Khanchandani

Founder Director at Techsa Services

Optimizing virtual environments by reclaiming and allocating resources efficiently

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager optimizes VM performance and virtualization. It provides me with recommendations for resource allocation, indicating if a virtual machine is under-provisioned or over-provisioned. This allows me to reclaim resources, such as reducing the number of CPU cores or RAM, which is beneficial. Its capacity planning feature is also very useful for me. The GUI is highly simplified, cutting across various virtualization platforms, including VMware, Hyper-V, and Nutanix environments.

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RajeshK10

Information Technology Architect at Central Bank of India

Reliable virtualization has supported smooth DR drills and efficient resource allocation

VMware vSphere has proven to be robust in nature, and the new features are quite acceptable. The new features in NSX network switching make it more useful in the reliability management of data centers. vMotion has helped my organization's business continuity strategies during our planned DR drill activity. The migration of VMs from DC to DR is quite smooth with respect to the network link. I assess the impact of VMware vSphere's High Availability feature on my infrastructure resilience as effective during DR drill activities and firmware upgrades, which we perform every six months. During those times, we rely on maintenance mode of several servers, and HA works properly. I have nothing to complain about. We have utilized VMware vSphere's Distributed Resource Scheduler effectively. Even though we have over-provisioned the vCPUs, it efficiently manages the CPU cores and memory of the servers intelligently, so I am not experiencing any bottleneck in resource utilization. Distributed Resource Scheduler has affected my resource allocation performance positively, providing a 20 percent advantage over my old hardware.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"SolarWinds Virtualization Manager optimizes VM performance and virtualization."

"If you’re looking to get a lot more insight into your virtualization environment and more than just basic information, SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is the choice you should make."

"The most valuable features of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager are the non-Windows servers' monitoring and capacity planning."

"Alerting expands, and makes, our monitoring and management much more efficient."

"Virtualization manager’s cost analysis comparison report identified areas in which specific customers were being grossly undercharged for their resource consumption levels, as compared to rates available through AWS."

"SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is a great tool that is easy to use...It is a stable solution."

"This product is so helpful out-of-the-box."

"The speed of the solution is excellent."

"The most valuable features for us are DRS, VMotion, and, of course, some of the analytics that we were able to define to quantify our workloads and tell us how we are able to make our data center more efficient."

"VMware vSphere is a very stable product."

"As soon as we switched over from Workstation to ESXi and vCenter, the downtime was very minimized, and growth and flexibility are now there."

"Unlike VMware Workstation where we have to log in to the desktop to run VMs, with VMware Server we can run VMs in the background and it also has a web-based management interface so you don't have to install software on your desktop to manage VMware Server."

"I use customization to prevent any network and DNS collisions to the router."

"The most valuable feature is the reliability for our own servers, the backup of the information on our servers."

"It is one easy to install and manage virtualization technique and it is pretty fast also, compared to some other virtualization techniques, because it has a very small amount of resource overhead."

More VMware vSphere pros

Cons

"I had some stability issues. I lost my environment."

"Adhoc reporting takes time to get used to – due mainly to the fact that the team I am on are all admins, and not necessarily accustomed to query reporting in the manner utilized by Solarwinds Virtualization Manager."

"The problem or issue with the product is related to its pricing."

"Out of the box support for a wider array of hardware vendor/device-specific SNMP mibs could be improved upon."

"The SolarWinds Virtualization Manager platform in general can have a better response time in the performance."

"SolarWinds needs to support integration with other virtualization platforms like KVM or Linux-based systems."

"The UI is a little cumbersome at first, but the more you use it and get accustomed to it, the simpler it becomes."

"It is very expensive as compared to other competitive hypervisor solutions in the market today."

"I think the product licensing is very confusing still and should be simplified on a sliding scale."

"The monitoring is not good in vSphere, many times you have latency or you cannot find what you want. The events should be improved."

"The only thing that’s prohibiting the switching is cost, as it definitely is expensive."

"In the last couple of years, the breaking apart of specific added benefits and charging license upcharges for them. That would be the only negative thing that I have to say: As a large consumer of the Hypervisor, we have a hard time justifying the cost of utilizing the extra products, especially when it's a couple of grand here and there, a couple of hundred dollars here and there. It's hard for an IT administrator or an architect to sell to upper management. When they're seeing so much ROI from the Hypervisor, it's hard to show them that there is extra value in the additional products that can be tied on top."

"The initial setup is not really straightforward or simple to execute. I needed an integrator to do it."

"I am not satisfied with their performance or speed for anything below P1 or production-down status."

"We still have problems with memory in virtualization environments, and some cases can present problems of throughput with virtual disks, too."

More VMware vSphere cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The is an annual subscription needed to use this solution."

"The maintenance and support are a part of the package, meaning it is included in the product's price."

"The product is very expensive."

"Pricing can still be improved for this solution."

"vSphere is an expensive solution."

"The licensing price is fair compared to other similar solutions."

"VMware is costly versus other competitors but is still one of the market leaders and expanding now with partners like AWS."

"The licensing should be more competitive based on its price. There should be more features for the licensing that you own. Money is a factor, because our management is looking right now at its money. The most annoying thing is to tell people that I would like to continue using VMware, and have them argue the other solutions are free."

"We pay for the license of VMware vSphere yearly."

"Our customers typically use permanent licenses, not subscription-based. However, there are subscript-based licenses."

More VMware vSphere pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user234735

Technology Consultant, ASEAN at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

May 10, 2015

Hyper-V 2012 R2 vs. VMware vSphere 5.5

I was won with Hyper-V 2012R2 recently and the table below based on customer RFP (edited). This articles all about technical, there is not related with TCO/ROI, licensing cost, “political”, etc. Another to noted is the Windows Server 2012 licenses is based on 2 socket CPU, meanwhile…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Healthcare Company

Government

Energy/Utilities Company

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	3

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	177
Midsize Enterprise	138
Large Enterprise	260

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?

This solution delivers significant cost savings, especially from a capacity perspective. Consistent monitoring is essential in a virtualization environment, and Virtualization Manager, or VMAN as i...

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What needs improvement with SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?

SolarWinds needs to support integration with other virtualization platforms like KVM or Linux-based systems.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?

We predominantly work with financial organizations such as large banks, stock exchanges, and insurance companies, as well as IT-enabled services (ITES). I use SolarWinds Virtualization Manager at o...

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What is IOMMU?

DEEPEN DHULLA did explain well IOMMU. IOMMU has to be activated at the bios level. It exists on Intel and AMD platforms. It is used a lot inside virtualization platforms like VMware VSphere. It pr...

See all answers

Why KVM??? Help please!

We use VMware and KVM. We find that KVM is a lot simpler to use and it provides the virtualization we need for Linux and Windows. For us, VMware does not offer any advantage. Moreover, KVM is free.

See all answers

Proxmox vs ESXi/vSphere: What is your experience?

For me the biggest impact is the cost of licensing in the case of VMware despite its overall intuitiveness and ease of handling and management. However, KVM-based Open Source solutions are becoming...

See all answers

Comparisons

VMware Aria Operations vs SolarWinds Virtualization Manager

Compared 43% of the time

Veeam Data Platform vs SolarWinds Virtualization Manager

Compared 12% of the time

Savision Cloud Reporter vs SolarWinds Virtualization Manager

Compared 10% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs SolarWinds Virtualization Manager

Compared 10% of the time

Dell OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter vs SolarWinds Virtualization Manager

Compared 10% of the time

More SolarWinds Virtualization Manager Competitors

Hyper-V vs VMware vSphere

Compared 53% of the time

Oracle VM vs VMware vSphere

Compared 11% of the time

Proxmox VE vs VMware vSphere

Compared 6% of the time

KVM vs VMware vSphere

Compared 4% of the time

Citrix XenServer vs VMware vSphere

Compared 3% of the time

More VMware vSphere Competitors

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Virtualization Management Tools

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SolarWinds Virtualization Manager report

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VMware vSphere

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Also Known As

SolarWinds VMAN

No data available

Overview

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager streamlines the monitoring and management of virtual environments by offering comprehensive visibility and actionable insights for IT professionals.

Designed to handle complex virtual systems, SolarWinds Virtualization Manager aids IT teams in tracking application performance, optimizing resource utilization, and identifying potential issues before they impact operations. The robust features ensure efficient operation and continuous system health, fostering an environment where virtual infrastructures can be effectively monitored and managed without significant manual intervention.

What are the key features of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?

Performance Monitoring: Tracks system health and alerts users to potential bottlenecks.
Capacity Planning: Analyzes trends to predict future resource needs.
Sprawl Control: Identifies and manages VM sprawl to optimize resources.
Storage Monitoring: Provides insight into storage utilization and performance.
Customizable Dashboards: Allows personalized views of critical data.

What benefits and ROI should users look for?

Increased Efficiency: Streamlines virtual environment management.
Cost Savings: Reduces resource wastage and prevents overspending.
Improved Uptime: Proactive identification of issues minimizes downtime.
Enhanced Planning: Data-driven insights support effective resource allocation.

In industries such as healthcare, finance, and manufacturing, SolarWinds Virtualization Manager supports infrastructure maintenance by ensuring reliable performance and aiding compliance management through detailed monitoring capabilities. It adapts to specific industry requirements, facilitating seamless integration and operational excellence.

SolarWinds

VMware vSphere offers robust virtualization capabilities with features that enhance data center performance and optimize workloads. Centralized management and ease of deployment make it a cost-effective choice for many industries.

VMware vSphere is recognized for its high availability, vMotion, and Distributed Resource Scheduler, essential for efficient server infrastructure management. Users value its virtual machine management, seamless live migration, and strong resource allocation across data centers. Though the web client can be slow, and individual management of multiple ESXi hosts is challenging without central management, vSphere remains popular due to its flexibility and integration capabilities. While fault tolerance and free version features have their limitations, the product supports private clouds and hybrid cloud deployments effectively.

What are the key features of VMware vSphere?

High Availability: Ensures uptime through automatic failover and load balancing.
vMotion: Facilitates live migration without downtime.
Distributed Resource Scheduler: Optimizes workload distribution across servers.
Centralized Management: Simplifies administration tasks through single-pane control.
Resource Allocation: Allocates computing power and memory efficiently.

What benefits and ROI does VMware vSphere offer?

Cost Efficiency: Reduces hardware requirements and energy usage.
Scalability: Easily scales to meet growing business requirements.
Improved Performance: Enhances application performance and reliability.
Flexibility: Supports integration with other technologies for operational agility.
Ease of Management: Simplifies monitoring and administrative efforts.

VMware vSphere is widely used in industries to manage server infrastructure effectively, hosting mission-critical applications like ERP and SQL servers. It supports development, testing, and backup environments, contributing to data center consolidation and cost reduction while enabling private and hybrid cloud setups.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

Elliot Health System

Abu Dhabi Ports Company, ACS, AIA New Zealand, Consona, Corporate Express, CS Energy, and Digiweb.

Buyer's Guide

Virtualization Management Tools

May 2026

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