VMware Aria Operations Reviews

Out-of-the-box integration and monitoring capabilities on vSphere are the most valuable features.

The out-of-the-box integration with vSphere platform is valuable. Upon initial configuration, you connect the vROps appliance to communicate with your vCenters. You receive a detailed view of your entire vSphere estate managed by those vCenter servers. This is automatically built up within vCenter.

This effectively uses data mining and analytics on the vCenter databases to provide you with initial health, risk, and efficiency views of your estate. This provides lots of valuable information of the operational well-being of your virtual data center for a relatively small amount of work.

I’ve designed and deployed vROps on many customer sites as a part of their core virtualized data center solution and based on their feedback. This is a dashboard providing a single pane of glass view for health, risk and efficiency views for the whole vSphere estate. This makes it easier to keep on top of reactive support requirements

Advanced customization of the product is somewhat complicated, though understandably, that’s due to its flexibility.

The UI could be redesigned to make this easier. Multi-tenancy configuration, especially when integrated with vCloud Director, definitely needs more improvement to be used effectively.

We have used this solution, including previous versions, for over two years.

The previous versions with dual appliances had some stability issues. Since the move to a single appliance, it has been pretty solid.

There have been no scalability issues. Especially with Version 6.2, scale out architecture is pretty good and has been more than sufficient for most of my customers.

We used a previous solution. We switched because vROps is naturally more integrated to vSphere and other VMware products.

It is a simple appliance deployment and a simple one-off configuration for a standalone setup. It takes slightly more effort to scale out deployment configurations.

Start small with standard/advanced or a vSOM bundle. Once you are happy, upgrade to enterprise which is where you get the true benefits of being able to monitor everything.

Always use professional services assistance from either VMware or your resellers with the configuration. It is important to get the configuration correct. Initial deployment and native vCenter/vSphere integration is straightforward enough that users are encouraged to do it themselves.

We were trying to create a virtual routing setup with a cluster of Ericsson equipment. We were setting up vApps for that and multiple NICs were used to route the traffic within the cluster. We tried for a year and there were a lot of tickets with VMware regarding that. It was an ongoing struggle, but we could not make it happen until we used vROps.

Deployment was pretty quick. Once you start up your templates, it was pretty quick to deploy. That was the biggest advantage. Otherwise, this takes many days.

I think they can look into some features that they're missing, like OpenStack. This is there, but not in the vApps. We were trying to get that from them, but we could not.

Overall, our project was kind of average, but we were trying something totally different than what our current product was able to do. So we looked at some features of vApps and what our software can do. We were trying to hook that up.

You can scale them quickly and easily. We had around 20-30 hosts containing all these vApps and they were really huge. We were trying to create a PoC for one of our departments. It's kind of an ongoing process.

We did call technical support quite a lot. They tried many solutions to resolve issues and create product updates. I think they're going to get better.

We were using VMware for a long time so we just kept going. It was easier to have one platform and one vendor.

Advice I would give depends on what you're really trying to do. If you're really scaling out the environment and vApps, this is a tool you can look into doing that.

• Quick troubleshooting: If the VMs are performing poorly or the multi-tier application has multiple hooks in multiple places, it's easy to troubleshoot that kind of thing. It shows when data stores are getting full, and we can take action based on that. People want reports as to how many VMs are in a particular cluster, for example.
• Forecasting
• Trending
• Analytics

With the VM sprawl at my company, we found a lot of overprovision. With vROps, we had a script that ran, and that would automatically, based on vROps’ recommendations, size it in properly. We gained a lot of CPUs back from that exercise.

It just helps us better use resources; better troubleshooting; quick troubleshooting. It saves time.

We also use the capacity management feature to save resources, which found a lot of VDI desktops were overprovisioned. For example, if we needed one vCPU and 2 GB RAM and they already had four vCPUs and 4 GB RAM. So that's how we saved a lot of resources.

With the performance management feature, things sped up dramatically. We freed up so much resources that could be used by other desktops as well. So that let us spread out the infrastructure a lot more.

I need some simplicity in the products. The products are great. There's a 101 million metrics that you can use, but it needs to be a little bit more simple. People need to be able to create dashboards much more easily.

There are too many metrics to choose from, and the people don't know what to choose. It's very difficult to accurately pick the right thing. If someone asks for a report right away, you can't do it because you have to know exactly which metric you want to use.

I'm experienced with this part of the product, so I know a little bit more but, for example, the BAU teams and the help desk teams don't know as much as I do. Hence, the problem.

I think it's pretty stable. I like it.

We had a little bit of slowness; just the size of the deployment. It hooks into about 30,000 VMs under the hosts. It was running on shared discs and then, after that, we deployed some all-flash arrays, and then we moved it everything to all-flash. And then the problems were a lot better.

Technical support is okay; it could have been better. When I contacted them, they initially assigned a lower-level technician. The problem was not simple and it had be dealt with by someone more technical.

I did not previously use a different solution. This was the only thing. We needed something that could help us troubleshoot quicker, help us focus a lot better. We find that vROps exactly fit the bill.

Initial setup was straightforward, and I found that the upgrades were quite simple. They took a couple of days, maybe three days.

I recommend it. I highly recommend that you check it out. It's just amazing. VMware is an amazing product. It gives you great insight into how your infrastructure's doing. There are thousands of reports that you can run. It gives you data inside of how your infrastructure is doing. So I highly recommend it.

The most valuable feature is mainly having a single point where you can see all of the performance of the whole cluster; see the CPU bottlenecks, the memory bottlenecks, apps on the storage side, on the network side.

Right now, we use it mainly for performance management, so we know what's happening, although we use it more reactively; we're not in a proactive mode. Meaning, every day, or every hour, we look at the backend to see what has happened, but it's not like a predictive DRS.

I have heard that vROps 6.3 will be able to integrate with DRS, and I think that will help us automate the DRS from vROps, and make the configuration change from vROps.

Before vROps, we didn't have any view into what's happening inside VMware. We had some monitoring on the OS level. Meaning, we had Zenoss, Hobbit, and other things that monitor the operating system on Windows or Linux, but we didn't have anything on the ESX side.

I do not have any specific cases where it helped us avoid an outage or reduce outage time, but it does provide a good view of root cause analysis, after the fact. It has helped me a lot with root cause analysis. When something happens and I go back and I want to see what exactly went on, I can really clearly get it from vROps.

There have been cases when the capacity management has helped me, but again it's all reactive, not predictive. Meaning, when I get an alert, I then look at vROps and see what it says. From there, I can figure out I have an issue. If I don't address it in a week, it could become a disaster.

The same thing with performance management. For us, everything is in more of a reactive mode; we know after the fact and it helps us with investigation.

I think that user interface needs to change a little bit. It's too technical. You need to be a really technical person who has worked with VMware a lot to really be able to navigate your way through. If you are, say, a junior sys admin, you might get lost. You have to really know your stuff. The user interface needs to be intuitive.

I wasn't impressed with the stability in 5.5. But 6.2 is much better.

We have 1600 VMs, and scalability is good. We used to run two instances in 5.5. With 6.2, I'm running one instance; I'm fine. It does not slow down at all.

I occasionally use VMware technical support, and it is bad, to be honest. Sometimes when I create a ticket sometimes, it takes them 12 hours, 24 hours, to get back to me. I have clearly said that production is down, and they didn’t get back to me. We have to engage the team to get a resource to work on it.

We were previously using Foglight. At some point, we realized that Foglight is too slow; it doesn't give us what we're looking for and we started looking for another solution. The time came to renew VMware licenses, so we just added it. The main reason was to get away from Foglight because it wasn't good.

I am the one that set it up. I followed the documentation that came with it and it was straightforward.

We looked at VMTurbo, and we loved their product, but it's more expensive. The VMTurbo user interface is phenomenal; very easy to move. It gives you everything you're looking for. Plus, whoever did the user interface testing at VMTurbo was the sys admin; for vROps, it might have been a programmer. You need to have a sys admin as one of the guys who tests the product and its suitability. With vROps, I need to know what I'm looking for.

It's one of the best products that does the job. It hooks into the VMware suites. From that angle, I believe it's more preferable than the others.

We use this product for troubleshooting and capacity planning.

Our troubleshooting steps include checking for performance issues, and that is the main concern. Apart from that, the capacity analysis features allow us to forecast capacity planning. We also use it for performance monitoring.

This product is what we use for all of our L1 and L2 tasks, such as increasing the amount of RAM or upgrading the CPU when configuring our VMs. Each and every task is clearly summarized.

If there is an event, such as a spike in disk activity, we are able to use vROps to clearly explain to the DB team what happened. We can look at a particular disk in the storage and determine what happened. Being able to properly explain it will help the DB team to check it on their end.

As a VMware engineer, the visibility of the infrastructure that it provides is something that I am really impressed with. When we are having performance issues, or problems with capacity, or the network, it clearly, easily, and in the quickest way, will show the cause of the problem and how to resolve it. Everything is crystal clear. vCenter is also useful for troubleshooting but I prefer vROps and think that it's the best option.

This product provides us with proactive monitoring. The dashboard gives us a clear picture of everything that is going on. From an operations perspective, we can view how many hosts there are, and whether anything is critical, all in a single view.

It allows us to monitor the entire environment. For example, we can see how many data centers we have and how many clusters are being hosted. The single dashboard shows us other details, as well, including the cumulative uptime for each cluster. Proactive monitoring really helps from a capacity-planning perspective. When we conduct a capacity analysis, we can forecast the future based on how things performed over the previous six months. It allows us to effectively predict capacity.

The capacity analysis will show us details like how many VMs were powered off over a period of time. Knowing this helps us to optimize and reclaim or release those resources.

vROps has helped us to decrease our overall downtime. This is in part because of the visibility with regards to what patches are needed. If any of the hosts need a critical update, we can view it from the dashboard and perform the patch proactively. The issue will be fixed on our schedule ahead of any problems.

With respect to workload placement, proactive monitoring and good integration make this system efficient. Based on the CPU and memory that is available, it will best decide how and where to place workloads. Efficiently also comes from the fact that we can log into vROps and view everything.

Another advantage is that because it covers L1 and L2 tasks completely, we do not have to give L1s or L2s access to vCenter. Instead, we can give them access to vROps. They can perform activities from there. For example, they can configure and generate reports, and forecast capacity based on them. From a VMware perspective, the troubleshooting is quite quick and easy to do.

The most valuable feature is that everything is integrated for monitoring, performance, and troubleshooting.

The interface is quite user-friendly. Regardless of what you are doing, everything is available on the dashboard. There is nothing that is too complicated.

We have integrated with other VMware products including vCenter, VRA, and Log Insight. Normally, we rely on vCenter for alerts, and based on those, we know what to monitor.

I have not used the Kubernetes integration but the feature is good.

Technical support is normally good but there is sometimes a delay in their response.

We have been using VMware vRealize Operations for approximately six years.

We are using version 8.1, which is both stable and efficient.

We provide support to our clients but for critical things that we are not able to resolve, or if they have an RCA, then we contact the VMware technical team. The support is good and I would rate them an eight out of ten.

That said, the support could use some improvement because sometimes, there is a delay before we get a response. If it is a P1 or P2 issue then it will be considered a high priority. Also, if the issue heavily impacts our business then they work quickly and well to resolve it.

They have different support teams to work on different issues. For example, vCenter was down and we didn't know why. After we checked the logs, we discovered that it was an issue related to storage. The network team was involved, as well as a VM team and a storage team. Bringing all of these teams together, they need a single point of contact to fix the issue. We would be grateful for this because when it comes to critical issues, this is L4 support, and we need to fix them.

We have it deployed on-premises but I have also deployed it in a hybrid cloud environment. I was not personally involved in the initial setup.

My advice for anybody who is implementing vROps is to first learn how to troubleshoot. If any issue should arise, the first point of contact is L1 and L2. From there, instead of going to vCenter and checking the logs, use vROps. It will allow you to easily find problems and monitor them.

As we are technical people, we need to develop a solution as soon as possible, instead of delaying. My preference is to log in to vROps and monitor everything. Once we locate exactly where the problem is, we can give a solution for it. Only if we do not find the cause here then we go to the logs.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case is for monitoring as a service for cloud clients, which generates early metrics that can be detected on time and corrected, the added value that this service has delivered a feature in the form of the cloud of the corporation. The administration is very intuitive, however, you must have high knowledge of management of virtualization components. Additionally, service components and licensing topics must be kept up-to-date by verifying the cost-benefit to deliver as a service aggregated that have this service we deliver as a feature in the form of the Cloud of the Corporation.

The tool helped the organization in all monitoring tasks when being delivered as a service for customers helps them to generate early alarm templates, being a cloud service provider is delivered as part of the IaaS to generate memory consumptions processing and storage additionally can be configured parameters such as networking and services that are configured on virtual machines. The counter you have is the license that must be configured in order to have all the games you have, cloud computing.

The tool has many benefits in the monitoring and template functions to integrate with various virtual machine operating systems in the cloud service. Integrations with operating systems are intuitive and easy to install. The most important value is the value it delivers in a cloud service to generate early alerts in cloud services. In short, this is the most granular value that this service delivers to customers, in the administration part you have facilities for the ease of documentation on the web

The database services in the tool as backup services are friendly and can be deployed in the release to production. However, in the new features, I would like to include more online documentation that can help service generate early alerts. A service provider must be generated and coupled to new technologies, as a service provider we have advanced and generated as the advancement of technology, with the help of Nutanix we have learned to identify several tools and compare them. l can help service administrators generate early alerts, for a service provider should be generated and coupled to new technologies. As a service provider we have advanced and generated with the advancement of technology, with the help of Nutanix we have learned to identify several tools and compare

I have been using vROps for five years.

Technical support is excellent.

We did evaluate other solutions. 

Our primary use case of this solution is that it enables us to show value to our customer. We show them how they can get the most out of their state. It also shows us our investment and what we can do better to enhance our environment to get the most out of it.

This solution has improved my organization because we work with several other companies and we've seen them automate more of their workloads, get better visibility of their workloads, and get further insights into how their databases are operating. 

It has reduced the time it takes to troubleshoot issues. We have customers trying to pinpoint and isolate issues using vROps. The information it provides helps them to pinpoint the issue a lot faster and resolve anything a lot quicker as well. They have a lot less downtime. 

The most valuable feature would be that it can show us how to get the most out of our infrastructure, how we can scale, and what will happen in the future, over the next twelve months. 

This solution is intuitive and user-friendly. It's pretty easy, just plug and play.

The integration points can use improvement. We currently use a lot of third-party management packs to get insights for SQL, HP, or Dell EMC. If we could have more integration built in as a standard feature that would make it slightly better. 

It's very stable. I haven't seen any downtime. Usually, it's deployed using a redundant pair. It works really well. 

In terms of scalability, I haven't yet hit the max instances and I don't think I ever will. 

The initial setup was pretty easy. It's like setting up any other VM. It's a few clicks and you're ready to go. 

This solution offers a sixty-day free trial so I would advise someone considering this solution to give it a go. At the end of the day, you won't lose anything, you get to play with the product. Make sure to get your technical guy in early to help support you.  

I would rate this solution a solid nine because there's always room for improvement. It's a very good product, very easy to use and it has great integration points with other VMware products. 

We use vROps to gather all of the information about the infrastructure. We have a huge infrastructure which means that we need a central location where we can find anything and any kind of data. We also massively use it for reporting. 

This solution has improved my organization because it's much easier to keep track of installed software versions. 

The most valuable feature would be the reporting function and the central location for everything. We need reporting for all of the components.

This solution is intuitive and user-friendly. It has evolved pretty well. It wasn't that simple in the beginning but now it's getting better.

The speed of the user interface and the upgrade process of the components are features that I would like to see included in the next release. 

This solution is stable. It has improved a lot. 

We use one of the largest installations of vROps and it is scalable. 

VMware provides good support. We are a GSS customer which means that we have global support with a dedicated engineer from VMware's side so we have no issues with support. 

We use a large installation of this solution with multiple nodes and so the setup was pretty complex. 

We haven't seen ROI yet. It might come later.  

I would rate this solution a seven because it's not the best it can be yet. It has room for improvement but it has definitely evolved to become above average.