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reviewer1123368 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Real User
A scalable and stable product that provides good alerting features and a reasonable return on investment
Pros and Cons
  • "Heat maps are valuable."
  • "The solution must provide better training options to help us make the most of the tool."

What is our primary use case?

Our customers use the solution to monitor the health of the cloud platform and ensure everything is okay.

What is most valuable?

Heat maps are valuable. The alerting feature has been the most beneficial in managing virtualized environments.

What needs improvement?

The solution must provide better training options to help us make the most of the tool. The learning curve is fairly high. It's a deceptively easy product when we first look at it, but it has tremendous depth. There's a lot to it.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for five years.

Buyer's Guide
VMware Aria Operations
March 2025
Learn what your peers think about VMware Aria Operations. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The tool is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The tool is scalable. We use a lot of different installations of the product. Our customers are small, medium, and large enterprises.

How are customer service and support?

The support is good. We often wonder whether the support team will meet the SLAs. I'm very reluctant to make all of our support issues P1. VMware is reasonably good at fixing problems. They probably don't have enough qualified engineers in Aria Operations’ support. When you get them on the phone, they are very knowledgeable.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used Turbonomic. We do not use it anymore because it isn’t as useful. It didn't have all the features that we needed in an MSP solution.

How was the initial setup?

The solution is easy to deploy. We have a lot of configuration, so it takes a lot longer. However, the basic installation takes 20 to 30 minutes. One engineer is more than enough to deploy the tool. It is reasonably easy to maintain the product.

What was our ROI?

The return on investment is reasonable. However, the features we would most want from an MSP perspective are those we can't afford because we can't pass on the costs to the customers. We will have an issue if we need more hosts and storage. Our customers cannot afford it.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Reducing the cost would be the most beneficial. The product is too expensive to implement. We can't afford the extra features because it's simply too expensive.

What other advice do I have?

We are cloud providers. We use the solution as a part of our support for the customers. We should be able to model our requirements and purchase in advance. Modeling would be very useful if our platform is growing. If a customer has a particular amount of CPU, storage, and memory requirements, we'd like to model it and get ahead of the storage availability and CPU memory availability issues. We could also model the upgrades when there is a need for maintenance. Such modeling is very useful to an MSP. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: MSP
PeerSpot user
Kunle Oyetola - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of Business at Zeta-Web Nigeria Limited
Real User
Has good performance and makes it easy to consolidate all the servers
Pros and Cons
  • "I like the fact that the performance is good and that it makes it easy to consolidate all your servers."
  • "If the cost of the license could be cheaper, it would be good."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for data center virtualization and management.

What is most valuable?

I like the fact that the performance is good and that it makes it easy to consolidate all your servers.

What needs improvement?

If the cost of the license could be cheaper, it would be good.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been dealing with this solution for about three years now.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

VMware vRealize Operations (vROps) is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is a scalable solution. We have two clients who are using the product.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is very good. They get it sorted within the SLA.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward. It took about two weeks to deploy it.

We had a team of one or two engineers for the implementation process.

What was our ROI?

Our customers who have used it have definitely seen an ROI. Instead of using so many physical servers to achieve the same thing, they've reduced it to five physical servers, and they are able to do much more with those five servers.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The licensing model is annual. Compared to the price of other products, VMware vRealize Operations (vROps) is a bit on the high side. If it could be cheaper, it would be good.

What other advice do I have?

I would absolutely recommend the product and would give it an eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
VMware Aria Operations
March 2025
Learn what your peers think about VMware Aria Operations. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Senior System Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Video Review
Real User
Alerts you of coming failures and will give you a scalable plan to scale your storage
Pros and Cons
  • "Vmware always gives us the best support. They are friendly to talk to and they understand the real impact of what's happening. They are trying to get into the issue as one of your team. They also fit into your working hours to solve your issues."
  • "They can change the interface for the 6.7 vSphere that would make it more simple and more friendly. I think changing the interface of the operations manager would be good. It's friendly to use right now but it would simplify it more."

What is our primary use case?

We use this solution to see what we have inside of the virtual environment. We can see the compute nodes and what issues it has. We can also see the networking, data storage, all the recommendations, the issues, and the compilation as well.

How has it helped my organization?

This solution has helped to improve my organization because we use it for reporting when management wants to know what we have in the data center in our virtualization environment. We can just send the reports over the vRealize Operations and it will tell how much we consume in our environment. Also, it can alert us as to what resources we need to buy for the next financial year.

When you open the vRealize Operations, usually it will alert you what the misconfiguration is in your environment and that misconfiguration can cause failures in your environment. It alerts you with more than one type of alert like, blue, red, critical, just a warning, and with a daily solving for issues that prevent a lot of downtime. For example, it will alert you if you have thin provisioning and what's overcommitment in your storage. It will alert you that you are consuming most of the storage and that you will have a coming failure. This helps you to move forward before the downtime happens. 

For the cost saving, it has a feature that will tell if you can provide computer resources to a better machine that isn't being used so you can retrieve back those resources and provide it to another department. It will enable you to efficiently use the resources that you have, more than just wasting the resources of the department. You can retrieve it back, and you will get all of the suggestions from reports in the Operations manager. You will save a lot with it.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the feature that alerts you when you have any issues or when you may face any upcoming issues. It can alert you within the day or two days before. It can also help you if you want to scale your environment. It will give you a scalable plan to scale your storage or the compute nodes. You can give it the percentage you want to scale it and it will guide you to have the resources for that.

Usually, we use it for reporting when the management's asking us, without any technical output, they want to know what we have in the data center in our virtualization environment. We can just send the reports over the vRealize Operations, and it will tell how much we consume in our environment.

It is user-friendly. As it's a management product, you usually don't have downtime. It will not impact anything.

What needs improvement?

They can change the interface for the 6.7 vSphere that would make it more simple and more friendly. I think changing the interface of the operations manager would be good. It's friendly to use right now but it would simplify it more.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's stable. We don't have any bugs or any issues with it.

How are customer service and technical support?

VMware always gives us the best support. They are friendly to talk to and they understand the real impact of what's happening. They try to get into the issue as one of your team. They also fit into your working hours to solve your issues. 

What about the implementation team?

We installed it with a partner, Epsilon ITs. It was a very simple installation. We did not request an advanced team. 

What was our ROI?

We measure ROI by seeing the graph of our investment in the data center for the computer resources, as well on the storage. We see the graph starting to lower because we start reusing the resources that we provide to the other departments. If we have a scale of 30% for every three years, it becomes twenty or fifteen.

What other advice do I have?

I would give this solution a nine. One for the future improvement. 

I would recommend it, and especially if you have a huge environment, it will easily give you a complete view of what's inside and what configuration is in it. 

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Omar Radwan, BSc, PSP, SP, PE, PQS, CCE - PeerSpot reviewer
Omar Radwan, BSc, PSP, SP, PE, PQS, CCESr. Project Planner/Scheduler And Sr. Quantity Surveyor/Cost Engineer for Health Care Projects at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Real User

Good job brother, your review met almost the quality management cycle. Congrats

Senior Technical Specialist at Softcat plc
Video Review
Real User
Stable, intuitive, and user-friendly with no downtime
Pros and Cons
  • "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 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."

What is our primary use case?

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.

How has it helped my organization?

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. 

What is most valuable?

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.

What needs improvement?

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. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

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

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

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

How was the initial setup?

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. 

What other advice do I have?

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. 

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
SystemEn3d6f - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Complex to configure but their technical support is knowledgeable and helps us get where we need to go
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature would be the capacity planning. I can see where we're at as far as usage on our data stores, our CPU and memory. It lets us know where we need to grow."
  • "We haven't found it to be intuitive or user-friendly. We're on version 6.0, it's gotten better since but there's a lot of things we have to do under the hood to make it work how we want it to work. It doesn't work out of the box very well until it's been fine-tuned."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case of this solution is to monitor our systems and capacity planning. It has been performing great. It's a little bit of a beast to run sometimes, a lot of knobs and dials, but it runs well.

How has it helped my organization?

The biggest benefit to us is that it shows us where our pain points are; where we need more storage, where we need more network or bandwidth, where we need more CPU or more memory. We know where our problems are before they happen.

It has helped reduce the time it takes to troubleshoot issues and has improved the quality of service to our users. 

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature would be the capacity planning. I can see where we're at as far as usage on our data stores, our CPU and memory. It lets us know where we need to grow. 

We haven't found it to be intuitive or user-friendly. We're on version 6.0, it's gotten better since but there's a lot of things we have to do under the hood to make it work how we want it to work. It doesn't work out of the box very well until it's been fine-tuned.

What needs improvement?

I would like to see a better interface, something that's more intuitive, one dashboard that shows everything I want to see on. The dashboards that come with it are focused on certain things that aren't the big picture. I'd like a dashboard that does everything faster and also a faster web interface.

For how long have I used the solution?

One to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's very stable. It's a beast to get configured but once it's been configured it's easy to use. We don't have any downtime from the product itself. The initial configuration is quite painful. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It scales very well. It's designed for huge operations, so when it's used for a small company, it's not quite suited for their needs. It takes a lot of time to figure out and to make it work for your needs which is why it's precarious.

How are customer service and technical support?

Their technical support has been very good to work with. They help us get to where we need to go pretty fast. They're very knowledgeable. 

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We bought some tools from vCenter. We had to go through all the logs yourself, all the metrics ourselves. It tied into our UCS system that we had attached to our UCS, Hitachi system, and vCenter system. We could all the stuff in one pane of glass, which is nice, but it was one of those things that we had to do a lot under the covers to make things work for us.

The criteria that we look for when we evaluate a solution are functionality, price, and feature set. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was complex. There's no wizard to install it. We have to read a lot of documents then there's a whole other guideline to install the next part. There are a lot of steps. The documentation was great but there's a lot of pages, around three to four hundred pages of documentation. 

What about the implementation team?

I did most of the installation myself but called support when I needed help. 

What was our ROI?

We have seen ROI with this solution but it's hard to monitor. 

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at ManageEngine and SolarWinds. We chose vROps because we're a large company and they gave us a good price cut. Also because the feature set looked good from the demos. 

What other advice do I have?

I would rate this solution a seven because it's complex. The new versions are a lot better.

If you're considering vROps I would tell you do first do your homework. Make sure that you're ready and that it's going to fit your needs. Make sure there are full-time employees to manage it because it's not something that you just set up and go. It's got to have someone to babysit it and maintain it. Somebody needs to take care of the many different dashboards and functionalities. 

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Technicaafc9 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Expert at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Real User
The installation process takes you through in a simple, easy to deploy manner
Pros and Cons
  • "Like most organizations, our training budgets are tight. Without an intuitive product like vROps, we wouldn't be able to get the insight that we do into our environment on a day-to-day basis."

    What is our primary use case?

    We use it to gain more insight into our environment, with a simple, easy-to-use interface. We are a small team looking after a very large environment and without it we would be lost on a day-to-day basis.

    The insight that we get from all our vSAN clusters is probably our biggest use case, and where we get the most use out of it.

    How has it helped my organization?

    We're a pretty lean team. Like most organizations, our training budgets are tight. Without an intuitive product like vROps, we wouldn't be able to get the insight that we do into our environment on a day-to-day basis.

    What is most valuable?

    The integration with the rest of the vSphere product suite is the most valuable feature, as we are a big vSAN user. It is fully back integrated into the vSphere Web Client, and we're getting all vSAN analytics that we need.

    What do I think about the stability of the solution?

    Stability has been bombproof, as far as we are concerned. We have never had any issues with it.

    What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

    We have in excess of about 2000 hosts and had no issues from a scale point of view.

    How are customer service and technical support?

    We have not used the technical support.

    Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

    We weren't using anything else previously. It was the case that we were missing a monitoring solution, and this solution was the obvious fit because of the integration with everything that we already had in place.

    How was the initial setup?

    The initial setup is straightforward. The installation process takes you through in a simple, easy to deploy manner. We were had everything up and running within the space of a day. Then, we have just evoled the product ever since.

    What about the implementation team?

    We deployed it ourselves.

    What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

    Our budgets are always tight. We would like to have more features at lower licensing levels for easier access to them.

    Which other solutions did I evaluate?

    From a hardware point of view, we looked at SolarWinds. They have a good offering, but the integration is lacking from our point of view. We needed something that would just work without having to put time and effort into it.

    I personally have used some of the other solutions in this space. I've found that you tend to have to put more manpower into getting them up and running. This is what drew us to vROps.

    What other advice do I have?

    Don't knock it because it's a vendor-specific solution. It does do what it says on the tin and helps us on a day-to-day basis.

    Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
    PeerSpot user
    Product Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
    Real User
    Helps an organization quickly create test and dev environments for developers to come up with new software and patch tests
    Pros and Cons
    • "It helps an organization quickly create test and dev environments for developers to come up with new software and patch tests."

      What is our primary use case?

      The primary use case is operations management for our customers, who are looking for more insight into their environments.

      How has it helped my organization?

      Our customer was able to tell their environment was overprovisioning VMs. So, they decommissioned some VMs, which had been created, and also wrote a policy around the creation of VMs. Now, people don't just randomly create VMs and use up all the company's resources.

      It helps an organization quickly create test and dev environments for developers to come up with new software and patch tests.

      What is most valuable?

      • Its predication ability.
      • Its GUI is easy to use, which makes it user-friendly.

      What do I think about the stability of the solution?

      Stability is good right from the start. Everything works smoothly. Integration with other systems is good. 

      What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

      Scalability is very good. For example, there was one VM that we thought would not need a lot of resources, then we had to expand its resources on the fly.

      How is customer service and technical support?

      Tech support is amazing. They will walk you through the implementation.

      How was the initial setup?

      The initial setup is straightforward and intuitive. If you have all the data, networks, IPs, etc., then everything is easy.

      The customer also has a chance to migrate some of their physical infrastructure onto the virtual environment.

      What was our ROI?

      The real ROI is the amount of savings seen on the infrastructure.

      What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

      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. 

      Which other solutions did I evaluate?

      I've tried other solutions in the industry, and vROps is a good product in comparison.

      What other advice do I have?

      I would definitely recommend the solution.

      It is next, next, and next to use. You don't need to have much high tech knowledge. It is very intuitive.

      Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner.
      PeerSpot user
      SystemAd23f2 - PeerSpot reviewer
      System Administrator at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
      Real User
      Trending reporting gives us insight into memory and CPU utilization across our envirnoment
      Pros and Cons
      • "I like the monitoring aspect. One of the biggest things in our environment is being able to see what the entire vCenter environment looks like. The health status, being able to determine when we're having issues with resources, utilization, memory, or CPU."
      • "One thing I mentioned when speaking with the engineers is that we'd like to get more granular reporting. We'd like to see more real-time reporting on the application-process level. Right now, we don't get that. For example, if I have a VM that's spiking up on memory or CPU, I can't really drill down to the application level and say, "Hey, I have IE that's spiking due to the user's streaming of video and that's affecting their entire session." vROps doesn't do that."

      What is our primary use case?

      We mainly we do a lot of reporting, trending reporting, with vROps, monitoring on a day-to-day basis.

      How has it helped my organization?

      The biggest improvement it has brought to our organization is the way we do our utilization trending reporting. One of the biggest challenges we had, when we deployed to our call centers, was that we never had that visibility in terms of trending reporting. How does the environment work? How do we look at resource utilization, memory, CPU? How do we look at round-trip latency when our users are connected to our VM? It has given us more insight into how we run our entire environment.

      Also, being able to see a problem prior to the end-user experiencing it allows us to resolve it prior to it impacting the end-user.

      Finally, it has helped us to reduce our troubleshooting time and improve quality of service. We've definitely come a long way. With every new release - we just recently moved over to Horizon 7.4 - vROps has really helped us monitor the environment, troubleshoot, and see how it's performing.

      What is most valuable?

      I like the monitoring aspect. One of the biggest things in our environment is being able to see what the entire vCenter environment looks like. The health status, being able to determine when we're having issues with resources, utilization, memory, or CPU.

      It is also very user-friendly. We have gotten to the level where we're utilizing dashboards that we're able to customize for our needs, as opposed to their being out-of-the-box dashboards. So it's very intuitive.

      What needs improvement?

      One thing I mentioned when speaking with the engineers is that we'd like to get more granular reporting. We'd like to see more real-time reporting on the application-process level. Right now, we don't get that. For example, if I have a VM that's spiking up on memory or CPU, I can't really drill down to the application level and say, "Hey, I have IE that's spiking due to the user's streaming of video and that's affecting their entire session." vROps doesn't do that. The engineers tell me there are a couple of other tools that we will be able to utilize. But hopefully, that is something that could be packaged together, contained within vROps, as opposed to having us to go to a third-party.

      How is customer service and technical support?

      We use VMware support all the time. It's very good. We have a TAM who is very engaged. We typically get very good response from the support team. We can call them, we can go online, we can submit the request, and everything is done.

      How was the initial setup?

      The initial setup was really straightforward. One of the biggest things that our TAM did was make it a simple process. 

      What other advice do I have?

      The biggest piece of advice is definitely to learn your environment, know your metrics and, prior to implementing, have a baseline of where you'd like to be. That way, when you implement it, it's easier to measure based on your metrics, as opposed to trying and figure it out later on.

      I rate vROps a 10 out of 10. We've definitely seen the advantages of utilizing vROps. There's tons of stuff that we're not really utilizing through vROps that I think would help an environment.

      Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
      PeerSpot user
      Buyer's Guide
      Download our free VMware Aria Operations Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
      Updated: March 2025
      Buyer's Guide
      Download our free VMware Aria Operations Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.