VMware Aria Operations Reviews

The most valuable feature is being able to see what's going on in the environment, to identify where problems might be or where we could potentially have problems in the future.

I'm pretty pleased with the product. Right now, I can't really say anything negative about it.

We probably used the older version for the last couple of years. We're actually in the process of rolling out the new vRealize Operations, so we don't have it fully implemented yet; that's where we're at. We changed our licensing model to buy the vCloud Standard, which included it. Right now, we're in the process of getting it spun up.

It seems very stable. I know the previous version was stable. No downtime at all.

It seems to be very scalable for the environment that I'm dealing with, which is a fairly large environment. It's not the biggest environment in the world, but it's definitely scalable for my environment.

I think their support has some challenges. I've had better support from other vendors, to be honest. Some of my biggest complaints are delays in getting problems resolved and getting responses. I can say that is pretty much the same for my colleagues as well.

Initial setup is straightforward. We set it up in-house.

I recommend it. I think it's a great solution. I think it's a great product as far as vSphere environments, because it is geared towards vSphere; made by the people who created vSphere.

When I decide to work with a vendor, I think longevity is an important criteria. I like to make sure that I'm partnering with a vendor that's going to be around tomorrow. I like to see a large footprint. That way I know there's widespread adoption for their product. I like responsiveness, when I have a demand, or a need.

The detailed metrics of the virtual servers/machines and the graphing capabilities. It's amazing to use this product.

If any server has high CPU utilization, we can get its usage patterns along with the time frame, which helps our team to analyze the system and to take action more appropriately.

They should show the processes that are consuming the CPU/memory usage rather than taking the RDP of the server.

I've used it for one and a half years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

10/10.

Apart from vROps, we do use SCOM but the main reason for switching to vROps is because of it shows real-time server statistics and it updates after every 5 minutes in vROps automatically.

It's straightforward and I find easy to use it.

It was done in-house.

• SCOM
• HPOM

I would say that it will be easier for any team to investigate patterns of CPU/memory use of any VM and the drive utilization.

In addition, you can add many options like memory ballooning, ESX memory utilization, etc. in your own way.

My primary use case is for monitoring mostly.

The most effective feature is the reporting tool, especially for PMS reporting at the end of the month, focusing on underutilized or overutilized resources.

It could be more proactive. Even though it's not originally designed as a monitoring tool, it could be adapted to provide monitoring functionalities.

I have been using the solution for more than five years.

I don't have major issues with stability. Occasionally it fills up the logs. Otherwise, it's fine.

The solution is quite scalable.

My experience with VMware Aria Operations support is always good.

Positive

I used to use Avamar, but it's been quite a time. I'm not using packaged systems at the moment.

The setup is quite easy. I would rate it a seven out of ten.

If a company has a business case and use for it, they should definitely go for it.

I'd rate the solution ten out often.

We can manage the virtual environment of our organization with the help of the solution.

They keep improving and updating their apps over time. In each new version, we get lots of good features; thus, I don't have any concerns.

They should include an integration feature through which we can connect to different vendors by installing a small plugin.

We have been using the solution for more than five years. Also, I have been using it for 16-17 years, personally.

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable product. We have a couple of 100 users using the solution in our organization. 

We are using VMware as it is a known product that helps to manage companies' virtual environments. Consumers are accustomed to using VMware, and it's a very old product as well. That's the main reason we are using it.

I recommend others use the solution and rate it as a nine.

We use this solution solely for reporting purposes.

We appreciate that this solution gives accurate reporting.

We would like the default views on the reports for this solution to be improved; at present we have to customize the view before use.

We would also like the option for this solution to be cloud operated.

We have been using this solution for just over one year.

We have found this to be a stable solution.

To our knowledge, this is a scalable product.

The initial setup of this solution was easy.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

This year, we introduced the vROps feature to our platform, as part of our infrastructure.

The main use is to provide us with visibility of our environment. It helps with proactively detecting and dealing with issues that may arise, such as problems with our hardware. It provides us with alerts when there are things that we need to perform. For example, it may say that I need to expand my disk space.

From my perspective, the visibility that it provides into our apps and infrastructure is fine. There are no concerns or issues because we only use VMware.

We are currently integrating it with different VMware products including vCenter and Cloud Director. 

This product contains features for proactive monitoring but we do not use it because we have our own monitoring solution. It can do things such as sending an email in response to an event.

The most valuable feature for me is the pre-implemented, existing dashboards. The fact that I don't need to create a dashboard myself is helpful. You have the option to create them but most of the dashboards and reports that we need have already been created.

I have not compared the vROps interface against other similar technology, but with respect to it being user-friendly, I haven't had any issues with it. The most commonly used functions are easy to access.

As somebody who works in operations, the capacity management features are very important. It's a very good product in that regard.

I would like to have more documentation, in the form of knowledge bases, that better explain the technology, related products, and what the capabilities are.

Having an installation guide that assists with installation and integration would be helpful.

I have been using VMware vRealize Operations for approximately six months. We are still in the beginning phase.

To this point, I haven't encountered any issues or had any alerts with this product. As we grow, maybe later it could happen, or we could experience instability in the product, but for now, it's okay.

Scalability-wise, it is good because you can create your own reports. There is no default report, but you can create your own templates or your own reports. You always have the choice of creating a new one or using an existing one.

The infrastructure team is the one that works directly with this solution. As part of that team, we provide VMware features and virtualization for our customers. There are five or six of us on the team.

We have not been in contact with technical support.

Prior to vROps, we did not use another similar solution. We implemented it in order to have as much visibility as possible for resource management. Previously, we only knew about the CPU consumption. Now, we can use the reports to better check the resources.

The initial setup is straightforward. It is just a matter of installing the appliance, setting the IPs, etc, and then performing the integrations between other VMware components. The configuration took approximately two hours.

I completed the deployment on my own.

We did not evaluate other similar solutions prior to implementing vROps.

As we are still in the beginning phase, we have not yet worked with all of the features. For example, I know that it can connect with vROps Log Insight, but we have not integrated it.

Given my experience, I'm not sure at this point whether this solution is applicable to other technologies such as AWS or Azure. However, if the support exists, it is very good because future environments and implementations will rely on multiple technologies. It will not be VMware alone, but rather, it will include AWS, Azure, and others. Support for all of these options is very nice. It appears that VMware has this vision because they already have support for the NSX and NSX-T network technology.

I expect that it will save us money in the future, but still being in the implementation phase, we have not yet had this experience.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this product is to plan for integration with your entire platform and VMware products, such as Cloud Director.

Overall, this is a good product that is easy to install and use, and integration with other products is smooth. Although we have not used all of the features, it does provide us with good visibility.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

I work for a Post Office service and we use this solution to monitor business core assets which help to deliver packages. There are many applications we need to monitor as part of our service and to see their availability. We also use it to analyze and to forecast. Finally, we use it for business reports for sharing the status of memory, CPU, and data storage. The solution is very big in terms of how many variables you can extract.

There are many clusters that are displayed, each solution and its specific application. For example, for our front-end website I can specifically monitor the resources, the memory, the storage it consumes. I can extract this information to create a report for a specific cluster.

Each group of employees has access to reports about specific clusters. You choose the information to add to the forecast from various KPIs. It helps the company understand capacity and to see the information it needs to see regarding the future.

In the country where we operate, we have something called a PDI, a development and innovation program or plan, for looking toward the future and delivering new applications. vROps gave me the information I needed to build a new PDI. It gave me excellent data for that.

Every four years, we have a plan to replace hardware. In our last replacement, vROps helped me to reduce the hardware we needed because we could optimize our solution. We have also saved on power and other data center costs. In that area it has saved us 30 percent.

It has also helped to decrease our overall downtime a lot, because I can see the distribution of memory and the CPUs. I can see if there are issues with storage or the network or CPU. It helps me to plan so that the system is more available.

We have integrated vROps with vRealize Log Insight. With this we can correlate logs between vROps and the ESXi. I have shared this dashboard with a group of people. They can see this information day by day and look for issues and problems in the production area. We can see the relationship between the tracing and the logs from the ESXi and the server, in the same dashboard. We can see what actions are needed to solve problems. That is a very important capability for our company.

For me, the most valuable feature of vROps is its reporting. We use the reports to send information to certain groups within our company to help forecast the use of resources.

It provides a focus on the VMs. At a glance, it shows the applications inside of each VM. The next step would be to use the plug-in, the APM.

The ITIL is very important for helping resolve capacity issues. It helps deliver a lot of information about issues faster.

I've been using vROps for six or seven years.

The solution is very stable. I don't have any problems keeping it running. The maintenance is easy and it's easy to upgrade.

When it comes to maintenance, usually there is a ticket, and the person within our company who is responsible will analyze it. It may be a new upgrade, a new feature, a patch. A person is assigned to it to decide if it's necessary to upgrade or apply the patch. Once it's approved we set aside time to take care of it, but it's generally not difficult.

The scalability is excellent, no problem. In the time we have used it, our environment has grown. We can add more servers, more data. Scaling it is easy.

We have two sites and together there are 276 servers. But thanks to the use of vROps, with each new purchase I buy fewer servers. When we started with it we had more than 300 servers. Now we purchase fewer of them.

For me, the technical support is the biggest problem. I've been working with them since 2016 and in the first years their response was faster than it is today. That is a problem. Also, I need to put together and send them a lot of information. And then I wait one day, two days. The support has been getting worse over the last few years. They need to improve it. Two days for them to respond is a big problem for me.

I realized we needed a solution to monitor our VMs. So six or seven years ago we decided to buy a solution to monitor, forecast, and give us unique dashboards with information on issues such as capacity, and to monitor applications, etc.

The setup is a simple process. In our company we have a system, BMC, which makes it possible to deliver information and to integrate BMC and vROps, using the SDT and VMware. This process, the integration between BMC and VMware took two years. 

We did the implementation ourselves with an internal team.

At the higher levels in my company, such as the CIO, they looked at what the solution delivers and they felt the ROI was faster with this solution.

When we last did a comparison of solutions, the pricing was equal or similar.

Because we are a government company there are compliance requirements. Any purchase has to go through a public process. We have to publish the information in the market. We looked at BMC and CA, and we looked at CA recently.

We tested and did a proof of concept for each of the solutions, not a big test but a simple process; enough to see how they operate. For me, the big difference was that vROps is a VMware solution and is integrated with other products such as vRealize Log Insight and vRealize Automation, and of course, vCenter. And the unique dashboard was also a great addition to our operations.

In the future I'd like to use the plug-in and the APM. In the future, using the APM, things will be better. Nowadays, applications have under-utilization of hardware.

I'm happy with the solution. There are many options for using it because of the features vROps has.

We have been able to use vROps to optimize our environment and do right-sizing for most of our VMs. vROps has also been able to help us in regards to forecasting and adware procurement. Therefore, we can see our utilization in the next six months and how we have been trending.

The company is multinational. We are still running on-premise with a plan of moving to the public cloud. At the end of the day, it will probably be a hybrid environment.

When it comes to apps and infrastructure, it provides us with valuable insights. 

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.

In the next six months, vROps will hopefully give me an accurate forecast. Also, it will be able to look at my environment and prove some vendor requirements wrong. 

The dashboards are interesting. We have been able to use the dashboard to monitor the environment. There is also a newer feature where we can share dashboards with people. We don't necessarily have to give them access to vROps. That has been great.

The optimization and performance are helpful.

If I could integrate with vCenter with vROps, then I could execute more things by managing vSphere from within vROps. That would be great.

I have been using vROps for about a year. We got the license last year, but it could not be deployed until later in the year. 

It is a stable solution.

vROps has helped decrease downtime by 80 percent because it gives me a lot of visibility into my environment. With its performance optimization, we have been able to see things happening ahead of time. It also works concurrently with some other monitoring tools. For example, I am also using VMware Skyline, which has helped to drastically reduce downtime. 

I haven't had any downtime this year.

If I see the infrastructure grow enough, then I will scale up.

I am the only one using vROps within the organization.

The VMware technical support is helpful.

Before now, we did not really have a tool for capacity planning. This is the first tool that we have used. It has been great.

The initial setup was straightforward. The documentation is online, so I was able to deploy it before the training. The deployment took me three weeks. 

We don't have a test environment, so everything that I deploy has to go straight to production. However, when deploying vROps, I knew that it would not break service nor cost me downtime, so I decided to give it a shot.

I did the deployment. Going through the documentation, I was able to get different options, picking the one that suits my environment.

If you are not that familiar with the deployment and how to do it correctly, then you may need an expert's advice or intervention at some point in time. You should be able to find your way around 75 percent of vROps. Overall, the solution has been great for someone who is technical.

Make sure you get the right advice and documentation for the deployment. So, if a person or customer is unable to deploy on vROps, then they should get the right expert to assist them with the deployment. Because if you have the wrong deployment, then that might put you in a mess and you might not get the value from vROps. If you are going to implement the solution, do it the right way.

At the moment, I am the only person managing vROps.

It is worth its cost. With VMware, you always get your value for your money. 

vROps has saved us a lot because it has reduced our procurement costs. Usually, we would have a rise in procurement costs at the beginning of the first quarter. We haven't seen that going into 2021.

The solution has a huge cost. If we could just have one license covering everything that vROps can do, that would be great. I would prefer it this way.

We need a separate license for vRealize Log Insight, which has not been integrated. However, it's something I'm looking forward to using.

We did not look at any of their competitors.

We are still running vROps in parallel with some products that we are currently using. However, I am seeing the opportunity for it to take over from our other tools in the future.

From what I have read, it is a great tool that you can use across multiple clouds.

We are planning on implementing VMware's Tanzu solution along with vROps for Kubernetes monitoring/management in Q1 2020. I am currently familiarizing myself with it because I know it's something that I will be deploying pretty soon.

I would rate this solution as a nine out of 10.