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VMware Aria Automation vs vCenter Orchestrator comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

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

vCenter Orchestrator
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
Process Automation (10th)
VMware Aria Automation
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
170
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (1st), Configuration Management (7th), Network Automation (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (17th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

vCenter Orchestrator and VMware Aria Automation aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. vCenter Orchestrator is designed for Process Automation and holds a mindshare of 0.2%, down 0.5% compared to last year.
VMware Aria Automation, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud Management, holds 11.4% mindshare, down 11.7% since last year.
Process Automation
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

David Villota - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides automatic monitoring capabilities that save time for users
In my company's IT environment, we use the tool to deploy production environments for products, including live manufacturing systems. The product improves my company's IT automation processes since we can use fewer resources currently. In my company, we need to spend less time considering that vCenter Orchestrator monitors everything. In general, we don't have to be present in our company to do active monitoring. Automatic monitoring is available for everything with vCenter Orchestrator, so we have proactive alerts in our company. The most valuable feature of the product in streamlining our company's workflow stems from the fact that we need to spend fewer resources and less time in general. Our company can spend time on more effective tasks like working with the plans to improve processes and so on, instead of taking care of the systems. The benefits of the product's integration capabilities were useful for HPE. My company has HPE infrastructure, and we are keen to integrate everything into the host, VMware ESXi. It is really important to have an easy integration method that allows for everything to be installed easily in a matter of minutes. I was not involved in the product's setup process. My colleague took care of the product's setup process. From what I know, I can say that the product's setup phase was straightforward. Some custom setups were to be done manually in the tool, but everything was well documented. I recommend the product to those who plan to use it. One of the benefits of the product is that it is a low-cost and stable solution that offers a lot of resources. I rate the overall tool a nine out of ten.
Le Quang Long - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"The most valuable feature for us is the performance stability of vCenter Orchestrator, especially in complex situations, making it excellent for managing virtual machines."
"The most valuable feature is how easy it makes it to manage the VM."
"Because of the central management, the scripting engine and workflow engine are integrated with VMware without any burden to integrate different products."
"The solution is pretty stable and reliable."
"I like the tool's DNS feature."
"The platform integration is straightforward, especially with recent updates, making connecting with various systems and streamlining workflows easier."
"The most valuable feature is that this solution is complete, and you don't need any add-ons."
"The DRS feature from VMware is very valuable to us because it balances workloads."
"Another valuable feature is the flexible user interface. They can manage all of the servers, the full lifecycle of VMs, on one screen."
"The most valuable features are that it's multi-tenant and the ability for scale."
"The setup was straightforward. We upgraded to a newer version seamlessly. It worked really well."
"Our customers don't have to manage HVAC and space and cooling and all of those things that they used to have to do. Today, all they have to do is provision a server and manage their users."
"The feature of automated balancing which implemented between two data centers solely for the purpose of a recovery plan is valuable."
"The extensibility of it and the customization of a lot of the Blueprints, that you can customize, and the community as a whole. There's a ton of community-generated Blueprints that might be (helpful) to set up a design for your automation needs, that you can use as a base and go on from there and make changes to it."
"I used the technical support during upgrades. They came onsite and are very technical. They are very good"
"We are able to provide self-service to all of our IT/development teams to expand and decrease their environments at will."
 

Cons

"The solution has a limited count of parallel executions, which can be a bottleneck for larger environments."
"After the change from perpetual licensing to subscriptions, the cost model changed."
"Using this solution requires a lot of experience."
"The price of this product is high and could be improved."
"This solution needs to have more built-in workflows."
"Many times, customers' licenses are not used because the client is not aware of the features and the product benefits. When somebody is buying a product, they just do a default configuration."
"The product lacks GUIs. The tool should have more GUIs available, along with easier product documentation."
"Storage has room for improvement. It's a big problem for our solution. The interface also needs improvement, it should be simplified."
"It would be nice if, at the director level, the manager level, there was a pretty graphic. They don't like to see numbers and line items, they want to see graphs and scales and real world pictures. That would support better reporting."
"The basic support is not there for Google Cloud and Azure. They are unable to provision nor do cost controls. Google is still left out. It is great that they have done AWS, but we are a retailer which means nothing to us because it is a competitor. Azure is good, but Google is where a lot of our development environments are."
"VMware Aria Automation could improve reporting of the policies. They are difficult to customize. We have many policies but they are not able to be modified to what we want."
"It is not intuitive or user-friendly. It's complicated as heck. We actually hired VMware Professional Services to come in. I understand the newer version, which we're not quite on yet, is easier and that the interface is better. But the product is really a profession unto itself. The user interface could be improved on."
"We have seen some issues with upgrades or installations. This means we have to raise a call every time with VMware."
"I would also like to see them streamline the install. It's split between Windows and Linux appliances, and it would be easier if it was all appliances. I think they're going that way."
"It is complex to use for new users. It should have automated tools or drag-and-drop functionality."
"Normally, on the first call to technical support, you don't get the right person. The log analysis takes a long time. This is something which should be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"My company needs to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the product."
"vCenter Orchestrator is a very expensive solution."
"We provide the VMware solution to our clients, for which they pay a perpetual license."
"I rate the product price a seven to eight out of ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"The licensing module is somewhat complex. Calculating the cost is complicated. Many of our clients are unclear about the billing system and the traffic metering."
"The concept of hyper-convergence is smart. I don't know if it can be applied with less cost to be more affordable for small or medium-sized companies. The cost is a very important factor for it. We are currently depending on SAN storage. However, the hyper-converged solutions are depending on the storage within the hosts, such as vSAN in the VMware. It is a smart solution."
"The solution is a bit expensive."
"The price is reasonable, and one of the reasons that this product was selected."
"We have seen significant ROI. We used to have physical servers, it took 90 days to get a server, order it, buy it, and get it in. We have it down to 10 minutes, building a server with virtualization, and now that's too slow. So, we let the customer do it at their speed. Therefore, it is pretty much up in a couple of minutes and they have a server."
"It is an expensive product. After VMware's acquisition by Broadcom, there was a rise in the price of VMware Aria Automation."
"Customers say this solution is costlier compared to its competitors."
"The tool is expensive since it is an enterprise product."
"It is an open-source product."
"From the customer perspective, the value was worth it."
"SaltStack is an open-source product."
"There is confusion between licensing levels. There are three different licensed versions of vRealize Automation, and there are different things which can happen in each of them."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Government
12%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about vCenter Orchestrator?
The stability of the product is very good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for vCenter Orchestrator?
We're running a low-profile budget. This is not our main focus on investment technology, so we're trying to reduce costs due to the change from perpetual to subscription licenses.
What needs improvement with vCenter Orchestrator?
After the change from perpetual licensing to subscriptions, the cost model changed. We are considering alternatives since we lost the perpetual aspect, and support is changing.
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

No data available
VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Beiersdorf Shared Services
Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
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