VMware Aria Automation Reviews

My customers use it to build their private cloud infrastructure.

VMware Aria Automation improves the IT service delivery process. It can automate manual operations, but you need a development team with coding or programming skills to develop blueprints and automation workflows. 

While Aria Automation is a good product for that purpose, we haven't had many customers use it due to its cost and the development skills required. That's a challenge to consider.

Aria Automation can manage some aspects of public clouds, but I have no experience with that. We only use it for private cloud development.

The Blueprints feature is a good one. This feature supports the installation and improvement of automation processes. 

It includes a user-friendly, drag-and-drop interface that assists customers in automating routine tasks without the need for coding. These are simple routines, though.

The self-service functionality allows customers to provision VMs with a single click. They don't need to submit a request to the IT team and wait for them to create the VM. This reduces waiting time for the automation process.

I would like to see better integration capabilities. Maybe if they could develop libraries within Aria Automation for simpler integration with other third-party solutions, instead of just basic integration.

So, integration with backup solutions would be helpful. 

We have been working with this solution for five years. We used to work with the vRealize Automation version, but the name changed earlier.

It was also called VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite.

I would rate the stability a seven out of ten.

We have medium-sized businesses as our clients for this solution. 

The customer service and support are okay because the quality of the support varies from case to case. 

Neutral

The initial setup is difficult. I would rate my experience with the initial setup a six out of ten, with ten being easy. 

It is difficult because of load balancing and we need to prepare information and certificates, and there's a learning curve involved. In the past, this product didn't require any load balancers to deploy or certificates for deployment, but now it does.

For the setup only, we need two or three days. But for configuration to edit a routine or test a routine, it can take anywhere from maybe one to two weeks.

So, two to three days for setup and then one to two weeks for deployment.

I would rate the pricing a ten out of ten, with ten being very expensive. 

I recommend the solution because we've worked with it for many years, but we only have two or three customers because of the price. So, we can't start many projects.

However, I would recommend this solution for the automation function itself, and how to group and publish those groupings is quite easy for customers to learn with Aria.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

We have used it for infrastructure management between our hybrid cloud, provisioning and patching, using automation.

The automation functionality has been most valuable. With a click of a button, we are able to automate provisioning, the build of new hardware and apply patches. These are all extremely important and differentiated tasks that can be automated in SaltStack. 

The solution is very easy to code and to set up. It works on a YAML language which is very simple and does not require someone with programming experience to start using it. 

This solution could be integrated with more hardware for an improved offering. 

We have used this solution for five years. 

This is a stable solution. 

This solution is easy to scale.

The support from the customer service team is good. 

The pricing for this solution is roughly 20% lower than the competitive products in the market.

I would advise those considering this solution to ensure they have the necessary in-house talent or access to an external vendor who knows this solution well. It is not a widely used technology so it is important to ensure you can support it. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. 

I was part of the VMware team, doing a double role at VMware:

1. Leading a sales team for the large financial institutions, the top 50.
2. Defining what the roadmap for vRealize suite should be.

I worked for a consulting company. We helped a lot of customers with many things for vRA from provisioning workflows automation to approvals and policies management.

The solution provides a multi-cloud, self-service, infrastructure-as-a-service cloud consumption and delivery layer. vRA 7 was mostly focused on VMware-based internal clouds with a little bit of external clouds. vRA 8 is multi-cloud, which you can host on-prem too. Everybody is moving away to use the cloud, so it is pretty much a done deal that you need to have it.

If you want to start a VM database as a service, then you start a VM, but your customers don't know what size CPU or memories that they want. So, you can also scale it as needed. They can use vRA integration to monitor and scale up or down using the ESXi Server, then VRa works as an integration point.

A lot of its DevOps for infrastructure capabilities improve reliability. Much effort was put in by some customers, like a large automobile manufacturer, a large telecom, and two large banks, to achieve a certain level of capabilities in this space. These DevOps for infrastructure capabilities have saved time for developers. In one use case for a large marketplace, a typical release cycle took about 80 hours and was brought down to three hours by automating deployment for developers. The quicker that deployments happen, the faster that they can do their product release cycles.

When you start integrating vRA with the other VMware products, like vRealize Network Insight (vRNI). That is when it starts giving you the capabilities of extending your templates and networks across multiple hybrids and clouds.

If an organization has the capability of being able to use it in their application deployment lifecycle, then they can use the automated infrastructure deployment, but not many companies do. Not many companies say, "When I am going to deploy, I am also going to create 20 virtual machines and deploy on them." They normally start out by saying that there will be a separate team with managers in infrastructure and a separate team that does this in deployment. I have seen only one place that has done this, out of hundreds.

Two things help out a lot: 

1. Policy management.
2. Integration with other VMware feeds, like ESXi Server. They have a pretty tight integration with those.

If you are trying to automate your capacity management tasks, moving VMs and resizing them, then you need to integrate down to the policy level by reconfiguring the use of servers. That is where these kinds of integration points help you.

vRA's multi-cloud self-service cloud consumption and delivery layer comes with centralized policy control and governance.

VMware cloud templates: These are predefined templates that work across multiple cloud, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments. You can use the same templates across various clouds, even clouds that have AWS, Azure, and Google. So, you can have a blueprint and templates running across all of them.

vRA is most helpful in managing the whole lifecycle, taking out the server, bringing them back in, handling outages, and managing clusters, networks, and the entire infrastructure security out there as well as putting identity management all in one place. It creates a control point with its single pane of glass. You can control all the networks as well as their configuration and installation from one place, which is a strength of vRA.

Interoperability is more of an industry problem. There are multiple cloud provisioning tools out there, and vRA is just one of them. There are a lot of components out there, which all do certain things. There are some hard drives, particular types of servers, particular types of routers, load balancers, and firewalls, where some are stronger in one area and some in another. Interoperability between them would be a good thing.

With the workflow aspect, which has manual intervention, a policy needs to be approved by somebody. There could be better management of that piece with better templates. It is like a workflow engine, but does not have enough example templates to do certain things. A lot of people waste a lot of time trying to figure out the same thing, and everybody is trying to figure out the same thing, e.g., how to make a MySQL cluster in a Windows environment?

I used vRA for seven to eight years, then I moved out of the VMware world last year in January.

vRA 8 onwards is very stable. vRA 7 has some clunkiness, but version 8 is very stable.

Hardware depends upon the volumes. I had small customers who had two to three clusters of eight servers each to an enterprise customer with 80,000 servers.

They have a very big community with a lot of support. 

VMware has its own support, but it depends upon what level of customer you are. Bigger customers obviously get better support than smaller customers. However, bigger customers also try funky things. Smaller customers tend to do things based on the standard, so they normally don't run into problems. The technical support is pretty good.

The initial setup is relatively straightforward. 

From the time that a customer enters into an agreement to using the service, it takes two to three weeks minimum because it takes time to design the whole network.

You need to have a basic cloud infrastructure in place. With an existing cloud infrastructure, the initial setup takes a couple of days. Most of the time, it is a deployment where you are also building the cloud with it, then all kinds of things are required, like the network topology, routers, security, etc. That takes time.

vRA 8 is normally managed by a single guy.

Customers say this solution is costlier compared to its competitors.

The open source solutions are cheaper, but they lack documentation. They also have trouble keeping the documentation, drivers, etc. up-to-date.

For any cloud-related thing, you have to think it through. Things get sticky, like external firewalls. Distribute, network, and plan because you are not going to get it right the first few times.

vRA is an orchestration engine, like a workflow engine. What it comes down to, because it is more of a generic tool, what are you using it for? I have seen in places that it has helped people in ITOps.

VMware's goal is to build a long-standing partnership.

I would rate it as a nine (out of 10).

We use vRealize Automation for monitoring and for some administration tasks. Anytime we do upgrades or patching, we just read the reports and it makes our lives easier.

Earlier we used to spend a whole day to collect all the information regarding upgrades or patches. When we introduced vRealize, it reduced the time to between 30 minutes and one hour to finish the whole job.

It has also improved provisioning a lot. Today, if I want to provision one VM, it takes me five minutes. Earlier, it would take a minimum of 30 minutes to go and choose everything. Now, I can just click once and it can provision my whole VM. We also integrated with our Alexa, so even through voice functionality I can create a VM. One of the guys at VMware, along with our partner, deployed that in our environment. If I say, "Hey, Alexa, I need a VM with four gigs of RAM," it will go and start creating it.

In addition, it has reduced our CapEx and OpEx, especially the OpEx values. Initially, we had 25 people to manage it. After going with vRealize, 15 people can do all the jobs and they can concentrate on other improvements as well. It's good for our company.

The most valuable feature is that, instead of doing the VMotion manually, we have automated everything with a script, using vRealize. That means I don't need to think about things like compatibility. The system will do everything for me and just give me a report.

It's very user-friendly. It is not hard to go and find things. There is a one-click Help that you can use to find all the documentation you need to manage it.

From a stability perspective, VMware is number one compared to other products that are available in the market. We have never had any major downtime, after going to vSphere 6.5 and afterward. Earlier, yes, there were challenges, but nowadays it's very smooth and very straightforward.

VMware products are meant for scalability. For example, today my environment is 1500 VDS's. We acquired a company with 300 users. To merge them, I didn't need to worry about anything like hardware because it was already there. I was able to do it on the fly in one shot.

What we like about VMware, especially if I compare it with other vendors, is the support. When we call directly, the technical people jump in and start supporting us. Deploying the solution is, maybe. a three-month process. After that, managing it can be painful. So when a vendor is ready to offer that kind of support, a customer is ready to adopt their solutions. That's why we like VMware support.

We are a VMware shop. We also have Citrix and Microsoft hypervisors but, compared to both of them, VMware is the best for us, for our environment.

When selecting a vendor, price is not the only criterion. The product availability and how much better their support is, are also important.

In the initial setup, I took care of the hardware part, but the software layer and other things were taken care of by my engineers. It was straightforward.

Currently, we are upgrading the environment. Compared to the earlier versions, from my experience, the upgrade process is easier; for example, the compatibility checks. I also don't need to go and find out the resources that are required. It tells me in one report what the current environment is like and, if I want to go to the next level, what things I need to take care of. Based on that I can make things happen.

In a year, I used to spend, say, $10 per user. Now it's $5 per user. That is our approximate return on investment, 

Citrix was on our short list. But over the last ten years, we have been a big VMware shop. We wanted to continue with VMware because we are confident that VMware can address any kind of problem situation, any challenges. But with Citrix, we didn't find that kind of credibility when we did solution testing, a PoC.

I rate VMware a nine out of ten. To get to a ten there are a few areas they could improve, especially vSAN. Performance-wise, there are no challenges, but from a product perspective, it is not that flexible. What we have in vSphere today is very flexible, but vSAN is not.

I use the solution to provision virtual machines. 

We automated many tool deployments with the help of the product, cutting short manual deployments and eliminating the need for human interaction. Its most valuable features include integrating various tools and working with different products using plugins. 

The tool's automation performance is excellent, and I rate it four point five out of ten. 

Maintaining the product requires effort and a good understanding of the environment, including how to set up the codes and other configurations. Pricing needs to be improved to improve the customer penetration. 

I have been using the product for four years. 

The tool is stable, but you will encounter issues when it hits the upper limit. 

VMware Aria Automation is easily scalable. My company has 15-20 users. 

I have used Red Hat before, and VMware Aria Automation is better. It is considered better due to its extensive experience in the field. The tool has acquired an existing product in the domain for several years.

The product's deployment process is much simpler than it used to be, especially with the latest version. While previous versions had multiple components and pillars, the latest version has significantly reduced complexity, improving the deployment process. It took a few weeks to complete. You would need two to four resources to complete the deployment. 

The tool's integration with the existing VMware infrastructure is easy due to product similarity. 

The solution's ROI is good. It can be enhanced with improvement in prices. 

I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten. 

We use it for monitoring.

The benefits include a smoother migration to cloud services and access to new features, but overall, it doesn’t seem to have a significant impact.

I like its capacity, the self-service portal, and operational automation. The most beneficial feature is that it saves time when creating new virtual machines, deploying security measures, and writing infrastructure code, making things easier and faster. We have a standard we follow, reducing the time spent repeatedly rewriting everything.

The integration is a bit tight. I need the right package to use it properly. The new automation processes for VMware are messy, and support could be better.

We’ve been using VMware Aria Automation for six months.

Overall, it’s stable.

I don’t have complaints about its scalability; it seems fine.

When we call support, responses take a long time, and urgent issues can’t wait days for a reply.This leads to operational troubles.

Negative

We evaluated four different options, including Nutanix for virtualization and Ansible for automation.

The experience was not straightforward; we used the Gradios version before, so it wasn’t a new experience, but it was typical.At first, we received direction from VMware technicians, but after the first month, we had to handle everything ourselves. It took longer than expected because of hardware issues and is not fully complete yet.

I would rate it high because, compared to other solutions, VMware’s pricing is quite expensive. VMware products have become significantly more costly in recent years, leading to higher costs.

If you can afford it, I would recommend it. Its integration with virtualization and high availability features make it valuable. I don’t see a direct integration of AI; it seems more about resource management and efficiency than advanced AI features.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We use the product for automation purposes for high CPU utilization. We can create a playbook using it.

The product saves a lot of time and cost for us. It has valuable features for creating a playbook.

VMware Aria Automation could be more user-friendly. It is complex to use for new users. It should have automated tools or drag-and-drop functionality.

We have been using VMware Aria Automation for one year.

It is a stable product.

We have three VMware Aria Automation users in our organization. It is a scalable product.

The technical support team takes time to reply to queries. 

Neutral

We have used Dell IDPA before. We switched to VMware Aria Automation for more flexibility. It integrates with many VMware products, including Nutanix and ESXI data centers and hypervisor.

The deployment is easy. It takes a day to complete. It requires two to three executives from the network, data center, reporting, and implementation department to work on it. It can be integrated on-premises and on the cloud. 

The product is easy to maintain. One executive can maintain 500 virtual machines. It needs two more executives to manage more than 500 different cloud accounts.

They should provide one license for all the sub-products. For example, if we purchase VMware Aria Automation, they should also add a license for VMware vRealize Automation. It is tricky to upgrade and manage multiple licenses together. We have to pay additional costs for support services for critical issues.

I rate VMware Aria Automation a seven out of ten. They should provide only one license and free support services until the product’s life cycle ends. Also, its support team should respond faster.

The product's most valuable features are ease of automation.

The product's features for hybrid cloud integration could be better. It should allow us to fetch reports from anywhere. Additionally, there should be better options for integration with mobile security platforms.

We have been using VMware Aria Automation for three years.

I rate the platform's stability a six out of ten. It could be better.

We have 89-90 VMware Aria Automation users in our organization. It is suitable for enterprises. I rate the platform's scalability a five out of ten. There could be automated features included for it.

We contacted the technical support team regarding migrating the workload. It is time-consuming and takes them a week to complete. The team could respond faster.

Neutral

I rate the initial setup process a seven out of ten. It takes ten days to complete. We build the platform according to the specific requirements of customers. Later, we transfer operating systems data on virtual machines.

VMware Aria Automation is expensive. They offer a bundle of products included, which we have to pay unnecessarily without a use case. I rate its pricing a ten out of ten.

I rate VMware Aria Automation a seven out of ten.