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VMware Aria Operations vs vCenter Orchestrator comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 Operations
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
373
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (2nd), Virtualization Management Tools (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

vCenter Orchestrator and VMware Aria Operations 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 0.6% compared to last year.
VMware Aria Operations, on the other hand, focuses on Virtualization Management Tools, holds 33.6% mindshare, down 34.2% since last year.
Process Automation
Virtualization Management Tools
 

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.
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

"What I like best about vCenter Orchestrator is that it makes life easier through automation. People can request to automate all processes with vCenter Orchestrator, such as adding storage, creating VMs, removing VMs, and extending VMs."
"We can manage and relocate resources easily."
"Technical support is helpful."
"Because of the central management, the scripting engine and workflow engine are integrated with VMware without any burden to integrate different products."
"It is the most cost-effective method for moving data between machines."
"I like the tool's DNS feature."
"The stability of the product is very good."
"The open, flexible architecture has brought in the agile computing environment along with better Dr capabilities. Automation management and operational tasks across VMware and third-party applications, like our HMIS and other business productivity applications, have delivered peace of mind."
"The valuable features of VMware Aria Operations include the single pane of glass for all my environments, which allows a deep dive into the metrics."
"The reporting is a fantastic tool. It's a great tool for generating reports on different things, and for historically looking at performance metrics to help solve performance problems in an application stack."
"It has been helpful around capacity planning, which we traditionally did on a yearly basis. However, since last year, I started using vROps to reclaim and save more resources. It has been helpful along those lines."
"It's valuable because it helps us look at our performance statistics for our environment."
"The solution's technical support is responsive."
"vRealize has products created especially for virtualized infrastructure by VMware. Its main features are great."
"There are many valuable features. The top feature is historical trending analysis and future workload predictions. There's a workload forecaster/predictor model in there and it's very helpful for capacity planning."
"It has helped us reduce the time it takes to troubleshoot issues."
 

Cons

"It is too expensive. One of the main issues is the price."
"The cost of the solution is high."
"I liked the previous client better than the current web client of vCenter Orchestrator, though my colleagues like the client now. The technical support for vCenter Orchestrator needs improvement."
"The product’s cost needs improvement."
"The scalability option provided by the solution is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"The only point for improvement is the price, which has increased by 135%, making it very expensive."
"I would like to see, from within the Web Console, being able to define the project and custom templates per user; almost like how CloudSpec has approached the solution."
"The response time of vCenter Orchestrator's support could be improved."
"The automation piece could be done simpler."
"A lot of feedback that we're getting from some of our engineers who are actually using Operations today is that the graphics are very low-key. When it comes to red, yellow, green, yes, "Skittles Theory," but when it actually comes down to what's optimized and what's not optimized, it's very rudimentary. If they could actually make nicer pie charts or graphics involved in it, it would make it a lot easier to read the data on a higher level, rather than actually having to dive down and know specifically what you're looking at."
"One of the features I would like them to bring in is more application monitoring and more visibly into applications. Instead of the actual hardware and the environment, they need to go one step further and bring in application availability and application performance. I don't really care if the hardware's overloaded, as long as the application is performing correctly. That's all the users care about and that's all I really care about."
"I'd like to see the streamlining of more wizards, more tasks that are canned. And it would also be good to see some more features around building the Blueprints, just to make it a little easier."
"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."
"It's a little bit scattered. I have to go through a lot of steps to get everything in one place. I would like it that if you click on one cluster, you get all the information from the host, VMs, whatever is there. Sometimes I have to go to different places to get the information."
"We are looking to optimize all the parts. For example, vCenter can be fully deployed automatically, which is not the case with vROps. We can click some next buttons to integrate vCenter and would like these type of features for vROps, if possible."
"It wasn't exactly proactive. It was supposed to, but there were a lot of delays. It could also be because of our infrastructure and the way our network was set up. If vROps could be more proactive, that would be nice. It is nice to have the information beforehand, but when there is downtime, it takes a lot of time for us to be able to see an issue in real-time, which becomes a bit challenging. If there is a way to improve the data collection for the whole vCenter that would be nice because data collection takes a lot of time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."
"The solution is a bit expensive."
"The price is reasonable, and one of the reasons that this product was selected."
"vCenter Orchestrator could be more affordable."
"My organization didn't have to pay extra for vCenter Orchestrator. It was already included, so it's basically free. Even VMware regular support is included."
"vCenter Orchestrator is an expensive solution."
"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."
"Our licensing is on a yearly basis. We pay for the license and then we pay the support every year."
"Get the right licensing and increase your licensing as you upgrade and grow. If you get the wrong licensing, it will be expensive, especially if you plan improperly."
"We have licenses on a three year basis. Licensing costs are much higher, but given the stability of the solution, it is a reasonable price."
"Most small users don't adopt VMware Aria Operations until it's necessary. Small businesses are looking for it, too. We need more monitoring and insights, so we're analyzing solutions to help us out here. I rate the solution’s pricing a five out of ten."
"The licensing is not clear at the moment if the on-premises pricing is the same as on the cloud. I am checking on the pricing. However, you can save a lot of money with the cloud solution because you need to spend time installing, upgrading, and connecting with the on-premises solution. Also, you don't need to spend time scheduling the maintenance and maintaining the solution when using the cloud version."
"Our manpower costs have been reduced due to the automation in conjunction with the usage of the dashboard."
"If the VMs were trimmed, then we wouldn't have to buy as much software/hardware, and this means less licenses. While most of it is VMware licenses, which are relatively cheap, there are SQL licenses for Microsoft, and this is where we could start saving a lot of money."
"Pricing could always be cheaper, but it's acceptable."
"The predictive analysis of the infrastructure helps our customers to reduce downtime and improve capacity planning. Issues are fixed faster with vROps."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
25%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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 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 complex to set up and you can rely on the technical support to provide you with assis...
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 introduced the new version of VMware Aria Operations, they also introduced more a...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Beiersdorf Shared Services
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 Camunda, BMC, Pega and others in Process Automation. Updated: February 2025.
841,004 professionals have used our research since 2012.