VMware Aria Automation Reviews

We use it for the automation of VMs. It is performing okay.

We use it to deploy databases and testing environments. It spins up quickly and breaks down fast.

The automation is consistent.

The front-end is user-friendly and intuitive.

It is very difficult to make the automation work well. This is not product specific, but more due to environment and procedures that we have in our company.

The back-end has a steep learning curve.

The stability is good.

I used the technical support during upgrades. They came onsite and are very technical. They are very good

I am not aware of a previous solution. We moved to vRA because the business wanted quick, repetitive deployments.

It was a complex setup. We had to use the consultant from VMware to make the solution work well.

The upgrade was a very difficult task. We had to break everything down and build it up new in a new version.

We used a consultant from VMware for the deployment.

We use it for server virtualization.

It's scalable. As the needs of the university grow, it's growing with us.

There is room for improvement but, hopefully, everything is being been addressed already. For example, integrations. VMware is going crazy with M&A and integrations take time, so I can't complain.

It's a stable product.

I'm very happy to see the partnership with AWS.

Technical support is fantastic. They're responsive with tickets.

We used a little bit of everything.

The initial setup was complex. It's improving now.

I'm happy with the product. I would absolutely recommend it to a colleague.

When you compare it to other products in the market, it depends on what you're trying to do.

One of the valuable features is controlling VM standards and server sprawl while at the same time providing the ability for end users to self-provision VMs. This is enabled by the blueprint and resource reclamation features.

We no longer need to waste cycles manually building VMs and experience delays associated with service requests attached to those build functions.

More detailed documentation on implementing feature sets and more examples of real world processes would help.

We have used this solution for less than three months.

We have not encountered any issues with stability yet.

We have not yet looked into scaling out the solution.

I have not needed to use technical support yet.

I did not previously use a different solution. This is the first automation tool that I have used.

The initial setup was straightforward. However, the more advanced capabilities of the tool are more difficult to understand and implement.

Be informed and reach out to your VMware sales rep to answer questions.

Take as much training as you can before trying to deploy and use the product.

• Simple and flexible YAML/JSON configuration management framework which allows simultaneous configuration of thousands of systems
• “Reactor" for event-driven infrastructure which must be present in any cloud based solutions and in CloudOps itself
• Powerful and flexible DevOps orchestration solution

• We decreased deployment CD times from hours to minutes across different cloud providers on several hundred systems.
• We used a SaltStack agent as a “Convergence” agent which provided us with management, monitoring, and backup capabilities.

• Backward compatibility
• The speed of fixing bugs

We have used this solution for under three years.

With the correct infrastructure design, stability issues probably won’t occur. SaltStack supports several features for high availability and fault tolerance.

In terms of SaltStack code/bug issues, it is a very stable product after four years of development from 12,000 developers.

I did not encounter any issues with scalability.

SaltStack is a very straightforward system with very good documentation. There are different solutions for deployments. Many scenarios and best practices are available publicly on the SaltStack site.

We evaluated Ansible and Puppet. SaltStack provided a much more robust solution.

• Minion-less deployment of SaltStack. Minion is the client-side tool for SaltStack.

It’s a configuration management tool. We are using it for system deployment with AWS, patching of OS and applications. Deploying a patch on 200 systems is now just a click.

Minion-based deployment is not very smooth. Most of the time, many minions were in a stale state and didn't respond to the salt-master.

I have used it for two years.

I encountered stability issues. Minions didn’t work well as they moved to the stall state. In that situation, the salt-master can’t connect to the client servers.

I encountered scalability issues.

Community-based technical support is good. I never took it directly from SaltStack.

I previously used Puppet and found SaltStack to be better in terms of configuration. It’s written in Python, which means easy integration, and the structure is YAML, which is very simple.

Initial setup is straightforward.

Before choosing this product, I evaluated Puppet & Chef, but found SaltStack to be better.

I have no advice; it depends on infrastructure & application.

We are part of a Cloud team and vRA self-service portal helps our customers worldwide to provision machines and Day 2 operations automatically without logging tickets and wasting time.

We are part of a Cloud service provider. It has helped our business to grow and scale.

Implementation should not be so complex. Certificate replacement should be easier.

Three years.

Performance of the service portal seems to be slow at times. Requires a reboot once a month.

We faced no issues with scalability.

Technical support is good through Ireland and the US.

No, we have been using vRA for three years.

It was complex; the certificate was the worst part.

As an engineer, I didn’t look at the pricing model.

No, we are a partner with VMware so that was our choice.

Read the knowledge base articles from VMware.

The most valuable features are the EBS (Event Broker Subscription) and NSX integration with BP designer.

Multiple BPs can be deployed with EBS and PG (Property Group) in a lot less time.

IaaS components: I have an assumption that all the IaaS components will be migrated to a Linux appliance, then I think the communication between the Linux appliance and the IaaS components will happen faster and smoother.

We have used this version for almost 1.5 years. We previously used version 7.0.

Sometimes, we encountered stability issues, but they were negligible.

Sometimes, we encountered scalability issues but they were negligible.

Very Good.

Technical support was good.

This is the first product we used.

Installation was straightforward and simple .

It’s very helpful for us to have this product. We already gained the benefits after installation and configuration.

We did not look at alternatives; this is the ultimate product.

Use it for automation in order to achieve Agility, Efficiency and Control over the IT Service Delivery..

We use it to deploy virtual machines and integrate them into our structured environment.

The quick provisioning: We get a lot of things done automatically within hours. These things lasts days or weeks in further situations.

The solution is intuitive and user-friendly. E.g., you have less number of logins.

The stability is okay, but could be improved. We sometimes receive strange errors, which can only be solved with specialists.

We don't use the scalability.

The technical support will handle our requests quickly if understood. However, there are often misunderstandings depending on the information that we provide and they request.

We had another product before this, but we moved away from it to use vRealize Automation. The UI, administration possibilities, and the integration of the overall system were better than the former system, which was not up-to-date.

It improves the work, making it better. It also makes daily work much easier.