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Deputy Manager at PacECloud
Real User
Visibility helps with cost optimization and performance tuning in a large infrastructure
Pros and Cons
  • "One of the most valuable features is the ability to compare between AWS/Azure and the local cloud. When customers deploy something on the local cloud, with the same configuration that would apply to AWS or Azure, we can calculate the estimated cost difference between the local cloud and the public cloud. We do this kind of analysis for optimization and it is one of the best features of vROps."
  • "They need to improve the capacity and infrastructure planning side of things. Also, I would like to see them integrate more stuff, with more detailed monitoring and different cloud providers."

What is our primary use case?

I am working for a company that provides a cloud computing solution in Bangladesh. We are like an AWS or Azure in Bangladesh. We have a huge infrastructure with different data centers and different availability zones. We need to monitor our customers' VMs and their workloads. Many of them are financial companies and big corporations. We use vROps as a visibility tool to do all this. We also use it for planning and for performance monitoring.

In our country, whenever people are using virtual machines or cloud computing, they want reports, every day or week or month, about how VM instances are working. They want to know about the CPU, memory, and data usage. That's especially true for FinTech companies. We generate those reports from vROps. It provides them with relevant information and helps them to better understand things.

How has it helped my organization?

The most challenging part of a data center is the monitoring. You have to see how things work, such as particular instances and workloads, what the ideal VMs are, et cetera. It's important to understand cost optimization and performance tuning. If you have that kind of visibility, when you have a large infrastructure with 10,000 or 20,000 VMs, a product like vROps is great for doing all these things in one place.

The solution has helped us to decrease overall downtime. We have segregated things. We have a master replica in a different segment, and it has helped us to do so. In two years, we have had one hour of downtime, in total. vROps helped achieve that.

It has also enabled us to be more proactive in anticipating and solving problems and that has helped to decrease our mean time to resolution by about one hour.

For efficient workload placement, it's great. It's a multi-purpose solution. If you have multi-purpose workloads in your infrastructure you must use this kind of product.

In terms of cost savings, it's about optimization. When you have lots of hardware in your data center you need to optimize it. If you have lots of workloads running, you need to optimize them. With this kind of solution, you optimize your data center. It has helped to optimize our operations by 15 to 20 percent.

In addition, the solution has replaced multiple monitoring tools. It combines a lot of tools. We are still using SolarWinds and Grafana, but our infrastructure is totally built on VMware, so we are planning to use vRealize Operations Manager with everything because it's a VMware product.

What is most valuable?

One of the most valuable features is the ability to compare between AWS/Azure and the local cloud. When customers deploy something on the local cloud, with the same configuration that would apply to AWS or Azure, we can calculate the estimated cost difference between the local cloud and the public cloud. We do this kind of analysis for optimization and it is one of the best features of vROps. It is an advanced feature that came out in version 7.5.

The most commonly-used functions are easy to access.

When it comes to the visibility the solution provides, from apps to infrastructure across multiple clouds, it is a great product. If you have a VMware infrastructure, or a multi-cloud infrastructure—including AWS or Azure or Hyper-V—you need visibility and dashboards to monitor everything. vRealize Operations Manager, for managed service providers, makes it easier to understand all the scenarios. It's a good product, providing visibility into everything in a single dashboard. It is an amazing product.

What needs improvement?

They need to improve the capacity and infrastructure planning side of things. Also, I would like to see them integrate more stuff, with more detailed monitoring and different cloud providers.

Buyer's Guide
VMware Aria Operations
December 2024
Learn what your peers think about VMware Aria Operations. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using VMware vRealize Operations for two years. Initially, I was using version 7, then we upgraded to 7.5, and now it's 8.0.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Out of five, the stability of the solution is 4.5.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is 4.6 out of five.

How are customer service and support?

Initially, the tech support was not that good, but now it is very good. They've improved.

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

We were only using vCenter and ESXi initially and then we started using vRealize Operations Manager.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup of vROps was pretty straightforward, but I have been working on VMware stuff for the last six or seven years. Deployment takes about 30 minutes.

In our data center, we have a NOC monitoring team and we have a system team. Those are the two departments that are using the solution. And it doesn't require much staff for deployment and maintenance.

What was our ROI?

The value we get from the solution is worth the cost because it enables us to optimize things.

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

If you have a big infrastructure, you should calculate the cost for those systems. But if you have a small workload, a small environment, don't go for vROps.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We are using Veeam and SolarWinds, but they are not that efficient.

What other advice do I have?

My advice is to take a good look at vROps. When you have a big infrastructure with a large volume of instances, monitoring everything in a single dashboard is very difficult, but with this solution, it's pretty easy. It's like a Swiss Army knife. You can troubleshoot and monitor in a single place. It's pretty convenient.

Overall, this is a very good product. We are using lots of VMware technologies, including Log Insights, VMware ESXi, vCenter, and NSX. There were a lot of improvements with version 8. They integrated AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. It is improving day by day. If some of your instances are situated in AWS and some are on Azure, and you have to monitor all the systems in a single place, that's where they're improving on things. Now, they are providing the cloud-provider stuff.

We are planning to deploy Kubernetes in our data centers, because Kubernetes is a very new technology, but in our country it is not that popular yet. We will look at integrating that kind of offering later.

Previously we integrated this solution with vRealize Log Insight as a trial. But later on, we stopped using vRealize Log Insight because we were using Splunk for analytics. vRealize Log Insight is a different product. When you have a lot of stuff in your data center and you need to archive and manipulate things, you need to use different tools. vRealize Log Insight is not useful for our use case.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Tech Lead VMware Support Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Easy to use, stable, and support is always available
Pros and Cons
  • "If the network goes down between our office and one of our data centers then it is able to detect that. It will provide you ways to get a deeper understanding of the issues, and it will suggest resolutions."
  • "In the past, when we have raised priority one tickets and they have sent us level one engineers. This wasted time because the L1 was only able to perform the troubleshooting steps that we had already completed."

What is our primary use case?

I am working for a public cloud provider and am supporting their infrastructure. The company's cloud is deployed on VMware products. Essentially, it is VMware virtualization infrastructure and they are selling public cloud space.

Customers use the service to have access to a public cloud that is local, in their country. If, for example, they don't want to use AWS or Azure, then they can opt to use this service. In return, they have full control of their data and infrastructure.

We use several products in the VMware suite including ESXi, vCloud Director, NSX, vRealize Operations Manager, vRealize Operation Log Insight, vRealize For Business, and vSAN. The company runs 80% of VMware products.

How has it helped my organization?

In terms of user-friendliness, it is very good. The features are good and the interface is easy to understand. All of the commonly used functions are easy to access.

This solution has helped improve our organization because we are a successful local cloud provider and the number of customers that have joined our cloud is increasing. Our customers know that we're running on VMware and we haven't faced any issues yet. Moreover, most of our customers' businesses are doing well. Overall, we have done well with VMware.

We do our daily proactive monitoring using vRealize Operations Manager. It provides us full insight in terms of what is happening in our operations, including the details contained in the logs. VMware vCenter also helps us with proactive monitoring.

Proactive monitoring has helped us to avoid downtime, especially because we follow the best practices described by VMware. When you follow best practices, you won't face many problems. The overall downtime depends more on your support and handling of the product, rather than the software. We are running on a cluster to help avoid downtime.

vROps has helped us to place workloads efficiently, although our users do not have very large workloads. We are running two environments and we are able to handle the users and workloads that we have. 

Using vROps has helped to increase our VM density within our clusters. VMware provides a solution where you can create a cluster, whether for storage or compute, and nodes within the cluster are monitored. If there is a node that goes down then it is automatically kicked out of the cluster. Before the host goes down, vRealize creates a replacement. It has three copies of each disk in different host nodes, and it will automatically trigger one of the copies. This makes sure that the system is fault-tolerant and the VMs won't have any problems. Also, if the Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) is turned on, the VMs will balance the resources and try to avoid downtime.

We have been able to replace other apps with vROps because it is, pretty much, doing everything. For example, we had another monitoring tool that was running on each of our nodes. Its job was to trigger alerts and display information. vROps replaced it and is even more powerful. If the network goes down between our office and one of our data centers then it is able to detect that. It will provide you ways to get a deeper understanding of the issues, and it will suggest resolutions. There are other products that vROps has replaced, including solutions for resource planning and load management.

All of our products are integrated with vRealize Log Insight. It integrates with the other components including vCenter and NSX and retrieves all of the logs. From there, logs are stored in the system and when you have problems, you can deep dive and perform a log analysis. You just have to know the keywords you are looking for, which components, and the hostname, or the host IP address. It will report all of the information in the log that is related to it.

Troubleshooting works well with vRealize Log Insight, provided that all of the component drivers are updated and the service packs are all installed and running. When we configure the integration, we have to verify where the logs are coming from. As long as it is set up correctly, troubleshooting will not be a problem.

What is most valuable?

There are four main components that we use. The first is the hypervisor, EXSi. It is the most important part because this is the virtualization medium. Without it, you cannot set up or deploy your virtualization environment.

The next component is NSX, which allows network virtualizations to provide your tenants with the ability to manage their own network.

We have vSAN for storage virtualization, to create clusters.

We also have a tenant portal, vCloud Director, for self-management, including payment. Tenants are able to control and manage their virtual data center by themselves without the involvement of the service provider.

What needs improvement?

We have faced one problem when integrating with vRealize Log Insight, where the logs are not collected because the component drivers are not updated. Rather than give us the updated logs, the old ones are retrieved. The integration with vRealize should be more seamless.

One area that needs to be improved is vCloud Director, as it has very weird behavior sometimes. All of the other components are stable and you can predict their behavior. However, with vCloud Director, you can't always predict what it's going to do. For example, there are times when we thought that it was collecting information about the network, compute, and storage resources from vCenter, as well as information about the nodes, but it doesn't always work as expected.

The last time we had a problem with vCloud Director, we were unable to get the snapshot of the VM. From the backend, everything appeared to be running fine. This is an instance when we had to contact VMware support in our time zone, and they were able to help us.

You can find information about some of the problems with vCloud Director in the Knowledge Base articles that include various workarounds. VMware advises that when you face these kinds of problems, contact them to raise a ticket and they will come and fix it. The component is very sensitive.

In the past, when we have raised priority one tickets and they have sent us level one engineers. This wasted time because the L1 was only able to perform the troubleshooting steps that we had already completed.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using VMware for two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The agility of the software components is fine and there are no complaints so far from us, so far. In general, the stability is good.

The problem that we faced recently was that we were running out of time for support. We were still running on ESXi 6.5, and support was ending at the beginning of this year. We had to upgrade our infrastructure and we had our hands tied. We could not move forward until the upgrade was complete, so it was a marathon of activity. This included adding two different sites and it required that all of our regular activities were interrupted. Ultimately, however, it worked and everything is now good.

Sometimes, there are issues with stability that arise from the hardware. We are located in Kuala Lumpur and our data center is based in Bangkok, Thailand. Although it has been okay, we have encountered a few power interruptions. We are using HP machines, which are good, but there have been troubles with some of the SSDs. When that happens, because I install the operating systems using a USB, sometimes the drive is misplaced. These are the types of issues that we face more often.

In the case of any downtime with a node, the data center operator is there to quickly overcome and resolve the issue. Once we realize that a node is down, a replacement is automatically started and communicates with the other hosts. This allows us to avoid interruptions in the operation and in the business. Once things are repaired, and the original node is put back into the cluster, everything goes back to normal.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

So far, the product has been good and we haven't faced much in terms of complications. Our environment is new and we don't have millions of users, yet. We are still growing. I'm not sure if we'll face multiple problems when we reach one million users or even 500,000 users, but so far, everything is okay. We've managed to handle the workloads, and we've managed to satisfy our customers.

We have more than 100 customers using it and at this point, everything is running smoothly and the number of workloads is okay for our resources. As more customers come, we will increase our resources and expand our usage.

Overall, scalability is very good and it's one of the reasons that I like VMware products.

How are customer service and technical support?

Our experience has been okay because we have received support for any problems that we have had. Also, we were able to get support from anywhere. It is not only available in our time zone, but we can get support from elsewhere if, for example, we need it overnight. Global support is available from anywhere in the world.

I can say that we have had a few bad experiences, but overall, you cannot take two out of 100 and say it's bad. On the contrary, overall it is good.

I don't know how it works in other time zones, but our time zone is supported by India. I have found that sometimes, you have to push them hard. For example, we have raised a P1 ticket and in response, they sent us an L1 engineer. When a ticket is priority one, it means that the situation is critical and the business is impacted. If you send a Level One engineer in a case like that, it will waste time because they will perform the troubleshooting steps that we have already completed. This has happened to us a couple of times.

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

VMware is the first solution that I used for virtualization.

How was the initial setup?

VMware has introduced the Server Appliance, which allows you to deploy very quickly. We just need to import the appliance VM and deploy it. Traditionally, we had to create a Windows machine, and there were several things to configure, but they now have their own operating system called Photon OS. It shortens the length of time required for deployment.

The initial setup of vCloud Director is a bit complex. Sometimes when we have a problem with it, we can't fix it. VMware themselves suggest raising a ticket when an issue arises, and they will come in to fix it.

When we first implemented this product, we came up with a plan and submitted it to VMware. The VMware team reviewed it and advised us of the best practices. We developed a set of instructions that includes deployment and updating the solution and re-submitted it to them for review. It was finalized and we follow this plan whenever we deploy it. Whenever we encounter problems, we raise a priority one ticket and they come to help us with the problem.

What about the implementation team?

The first time we deployed this solution, the local VMware team assisted us.

What was our ROI?

This service has been running for approximately four years and they are making a profit. Otherwise, they would discontinue it. They are planning to expand so there has been a return on investment, although I don't have the exact figures.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We did not evaluate other options before choosing VMware.

What other advice do I have?

We offer a variety of services for our customers including Kubernetes monitoring and management. However, at this time, we do not have any customers who opt for it. What we provide depends on the customer's requirements. If they want to include VMware with their machines, we deploy the tenants. We promote all of the products, including that for Kubernetes monitoring and management, but nobody has yet requested Kubernetes. I expect that because we are promoting them, our users will understand the utility and plan to use them in the future.

VMware updates their product every one or two years, and I think that they are ahead of us in terms of what features are needed. Overall, I think that the product is very good. In the future, we'll have experience with the functionality of all of the new features that VMware is coming out with.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using this product is that if you want to have a private cloud, VMware is the best option. It is the most stable and the best choice for a private cloud investment.

I am planning to open my own cloud in my country, which will help the local community because many government agencies will not use the public cloud. For this, I'm thinking that I will be using VMware.

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Public Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Other
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
VMware Aria Operations
December 2024
Learn what your peers think about VMware Aria Operations. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Gaurav Amar - PeerSpot reviewer
Deputy Vice present at PVR Ltd
Real User
As we continue to implement it across multiple environments, it reduces costs
Pros and Cons
  • "We receive an overview from the dashboard of what is happening in our environment."
  • "With this solution, we are able to see where problems are happening quickly and improve turnaround time, which matters to us."
  • "While the initial setup was somewhat straightforward, there is some complexity. Going forward, I would like there to be more clarity in the process. Because to complete the setup process, our team had to open up a case with the technical support, and they had to guide us through the process."

What is our primary use case?

Its primary use case has been to give us a proper view of what is happening at an infrastructure level. This is why we opted for the product.

We have more than 137 locations across India. We started using it at a central location where our data center is located and it expanding it to locations. 

How has it helped my organization?

There is a lot of manual effort involved when drilling down into problems and determining where they are coming from. With this solution, we are able to see where problems are happening quickly and improve turnaround time, which matters to us.

What is most valuable?

The dashboard: I like that we receive an overview from it of what is happening in our environment.

The solution is somewhat intuitive and very user-friendly. It has interactive sessions which can then be built into reports.

For how long have I used the solution?

One to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is quite stable. If you are putting up an infrastructure, it takes about a week to analyze it, then it starts giving you a results.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is quite scalable. We have started using it in one location, then sending to another and another. Right now, we have 11 locations.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support is great. 

For example, we opened a case because we were not sure on the best practices on how to put this up this solution, and the tech support helped us.

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

We did not previously use another solution. This is the first solution that we have used of its kind.

How was the initial setup?

While the initial setup was somewhat straightforward, there is some complexity. Going forward, I would like there to be more clarity in the process. Because to complete the setup process, our team had to open up a case with the technical support, and they had to guide us through the process.

What was our ROI?

The solution helped us to reduce time to troubleshoot issues, improved our quality of service to our users, and it provides cost savings for high capacity utilization. Our manpower costs have been reduced due to the automation in conjunction with the usage of the dashboard.

As we continue to implement it across multiple environments, it reduces costs as well.

What other advice do I have?

I always recommend this solution.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

  • Brand name
  • The vendor's skill set
  • The technical support.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Systems Engineer at First Rand Bank Ltd.
Real User
Top 10
Unlocks cost savings and efficiency with real-time insights and comprehensive resource monitoring
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable features of VMware Aria Operations include monitoring CPU, memory, and storage."
  • "If Aria could send alerts when a specific system or VM is using excessive resources, we could consult the storage team to address the problem proactively."

What is our primary use case?

We use VMware Aria Operations to give the business reports on performance statistics whenever there are issues with latency, or CPU, or memory high utilization. We also use it to interrogate the vCenter space to identify how many VMs have been offline for more than sixty days, as well as the ones that are heavy hitters on the storage side.

How has it helped my organization?

VMware Aria Operations helps us to make decisions by comparing workload versus what we are consuming, allowing us to save costs and make recommendations to the business. We use it to ensure that we do not unnecessarily increase CPU, which can have negative impacts, and instead, identify root causes like application performance issues.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features of VMware Aria Operations include monitoring CPU, memory, and storage.

What needs improvement?

Improvement is needed in alerting. If Aria could send alerts when a specific system or VM is using excessive resources, we could consult the storage team to address the problem proactively.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have implemented VMware Operations Manager for about five years, and we have recently upgraded to VMware Aria Operations.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I would rate the stability of VMware Aria Operations a ten. It is a very stable solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I find it to be a scalable solution, and I would rate it a ten.

How are customer service and support?

The customer service and support rates a nine. Since the migration from Dell to Broadcom, we have faced some challenges, but overall, the support is good.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We did not use any other product similar to VMware Aria Operations.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was managed by our team, with one individual primarily responsible for the upgrade and installation.

What about the implementation team?

The implementation was done by our in-house team. A specific individual, Kevin Spacey, took the lead on this project.

What was our ROI?

VMware Aria Operations helps us manage and save on costs across our various departments, providing a return on investment by allowing us to avoid unnecessary upgrades and ensure resource efficiency.

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

From my perspective, the pricing is fair. I would rate the licensing cost an eight out of ten, indicating it is somewhat affordable for business.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We conducted a POC with Microsoft virtualization in the past, but ultimately chose VMware.

What other advice do I have?

I would recommend VMware Aria Operations to other organizations and banks. It provides real-time insights and is beneficial for troubleshooting, especially for those operating in a virtual space.

I would rate it a ten out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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PeerSpot user
Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Dynamic interface with interactive dashboards, easy to use, helps with proper sizing
Pros and Cons
  • "The dashboards and the interface are very easy to understand, very lively, and very dynamic."
  • "The what-if analysis section is not very advanced and there is a lot of room for improvement."

What is our primary use case?

My primary use case is infrastructure monitoring. This is a very in-depth monitoring tool and the use cases have been to monitor multiple hardware platforms like Dell and UCS. This includes network hardware as well as the storage solutions like Unity boxes. We've also monitored the entire SDDC stack by leveraging the different management packs.

How has it helped my organization?

vROps provides us with visibility from apps to infrastructure and across multiple clouds. It has immense monitoring capabilities when we talk about the vCenter, which includes clusters that host virtual machines and data stores. Not only that, but with vROps version 8, you have in-built management packs for AWS and Azure. This means that you can monitor these public clouds from the same solution and you do not have to purchase any other management packs.

With vROps emerging into the application field, we can now deploy the Telegraf agent and have the application monitoring done in vROps as well. From infrastructure to application monitoring, vROps has a wide range of visibility into the monitoring spectrum.

One of the most useful features that this product provides is proactive monitoring with the help of alert optimization. It detects anomalies and I know when something is about to go wrong in my inflow, or even that something could already be happening. The alerts are available by default and this helps with early detection. Other than the alerting, the capacity planning functionality is also a proactive measure that is very useful.

Proactive monitoring is something that takes time to stabilize because once you download vROps, it will take three months for the tool to stabilize and create a baseline. Once that is complete, it can perform proactive monitoring and will help to analyze the underlying issues.

It has absolutely helped us to reduce downtime. When we talk about the infrastructure and detecting problems, the notifications and alerts provided by vROps have allowed us to avoid application failures resulting from the infrastructure not working correctly. It is difficult to estimate how much time it saves because different customers have different environments and different timelines.

With respect to workload placement, it is a feature we use and it's incredibly useful. That said, there are a few things that can still be enhanced because certain customizations are missing. If we are referring only to VMware workload placement then the functionality works great. It works well on-premises but not for the public cloud.

Using vROps has led to improved data center efficiency, which has, in turn, reduced the cost of our infrastructure. Specifically, the VMs were on different ESXi hosts and now we've consolidated some and distributed others. The cost savings come from a reduction in hardware requirements as well as licenses.

We have integrated vROps with vRealize Log Insight and it's a great thing, firstly, because the integration is very easy. The best part is that you can easily create alerts within Log Insight, and then push them to vROps. Unfortunately, we do have a problem with getting the triggered object when we send alerts from Log Insight to vROps but other than that, the integration works seamlessly. The system is best utilized if whatever integrations you have with vROps are integrated into Log Insight as well. That is when it starts giving you value.

The integration with Log Insight has improved our troubleshooting capabilities. For example, there are certain events like a disk consolidation failure where there was an alert, but we weren't able to capture it with vROps because it isn't able to capture everything. However, we were able to find it using Log Insight, which then allowed us to capture the event that triggered the alert. This helped us to save the application that was running on the virtual machine.

Implementing vROps and the right sizing has really helped the customers to save a lot of resources with respect to CPU and memory. We were able to identify what resources and VMs were idle versus what was powered up and in use. The reports helped to highlight where it was oversized and we were able to downsize accordingly, ultimately saving money.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are capacity planning and predictive analysis. These are some of the most outstanding features that vROps has as a monitoring tool.

The ease of usability, interactive dashboards, and graphs are features that are different when we talk about the other monitoring tools. The dashboards and the interface are very easy to understand, very lively, and very dynamic.

This product is very user-friendly. It is also very easy to deploy and because it's a VMware product, we always have access to VMware support.

What needs improvement?

The workload placement can be improved. It can be more diversified because it does not provide many options with respect to segregating the workload.

The what-if analysis section is not very advanced and there is a lot of room for improvement. For example, it should include a wider spectrum when we talk about the data center cost assessments and the data center workload assessments. It should be able to consider a use case and predict what the capacity will be after a specified period of time.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with VMware vRealize Operations for more than five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This product is really stable when we talk about monitoring. The only condition is that it has to be sized well. If vROps is sized properly, it will give you a value with respect to monitoring. If it is not sized well, where it has too few nodes and the number of objects is really large, or the workload is not placed properly across all nodes, we might face issues. It happens because the workload is not correctly distributed. Importantly, we do have options for properly sizing everything.

Other than this single issue, it works fine.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scaling is easy to do. For example, adding an extra node is easy and can be done in 30 to 40 minutes. All you need to do is add a data node and the vROps internal architecture will automatically replicate and share the data across nodes.

There are between 50 and 60 people on my team. The roles vary from engineers to consultants to architects, all of whom work on the product. We have implemented this product for more than 50 clients, some of which had huge environments. For example, we have worked to implement environments with more than 40,000 virtual machines.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is pretty good. Most of the time, I've been able to get solutions to my problems. There have been times when we had trouble that they were not able to find a solution for but other than that, the support is okay.

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

I have knowledge of other products that are similar but I'm biased toward vROps because that is the only one that I have been working on.

How was the initial setup?

This solution is very easy to deploy.

It is deployed on-premises but with the latest version, they introduced vROps on the cloud as well. This means that they now have a SaaS offering in addition to the on-premises solution.

When deploying in a production environment, it will take between one and two hours to complete. The implementation plan depends on the SMEs that are working on the project and how stable your insight is. The timeline is very personal and it can really vary.

When we talk about deployment, there is no fixed plan when we talk about vROps. The reason is that it's a very customizable tool and the entire sizing depends upon the sizing chart that is provided by VMware. Essentially, whatever the requirements of customers are, we plan according to that, and then we follow the deployment rules or the deployment process that is given by VMware to deploy the tool.

What was our ROI?

Our clients have seen a return on investment by way of cost savings through both proper sizing and efficient workload placement. What they get from this solution is absolutely worth the cost. It's a monitoring tool, so return on investment doesn't happen on day one.

When you deploy the tool, it takes three months before you start monitoring the data. Then, you start getting into the metrics, and then after that, maybe after a year or so, you will start realizing how useful it is. This will be the case with all of the monitoring tools.

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

This is an enterprise-level product and everything is included in the VMware Suite license. 

What other advice do I have?

My advice for anybody who is implementing this product is to size the environment very well. This is the first analysis that we do; we look at how big the environment is that we want to monitor and how many objects will be there, and compare this to the VMware sizing guide. You really have to analyze that and size your environment well because if it is done properly then it will give you a lot of value in monitoring.

Overall, this is a good monitoring tool and I think it's the best one for me. That said, there is always room for improvement.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
KunalSaoji - PeerSpot reviewer
System Manager at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Top 5
Needs to improve the dashboard but offers help in the area of capacity planning
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution's technical support is responsive."
  • "It would be good if the tool gives more monitoring features like the ones offered by the other monitoring solutions, especially in areas like dashboards."

What is our primary use case?

I use VMware Aria Operations in my company for monitoring the virtualized environment along with vRealize Operations (vROps).

We are using the tool for monitoring purposes, creating reports, storage utilization, CPU utilization, and RAM utilization. We use the tool for capacity planning in our infrastructure.

What is most valuable?

For capacity planning, we have to create a view, and then we have to create some particular VMs. The tool is beneficial for capacity planning, such as in the area of CPU utilization.

What needs improvement?

If, on a particular VM, we have more computing resources, then we can monitor IT operations for a particular fifteen days. With the tool, we can reduce the computing resources on particular VMs, and it is the type of monitoring we have done using the tool.

It would be good if the tool gives more monitoring features like the ones offered by the other monitoring solutions, especially in areas like dashboards. Using critical alerts on the email also gives the same information on the dashboard for particular data to L1 team members so that they can continuously monitor particular VMs with VMware Aria Operations, but if the host goes down, it just goes down. If the host goes down, such information is not sent to the user via email. We have just been notified about such incidents via VMware vCenter, but when we are off duty, the issues should be sent via email to us.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using VMware Aria Operations for six months. I use the solution for my data center. I use VMware Aria Operations 8.6.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

How are customer service and support?

The solution's technical support is responsive. I rate the technical support an eight to nine out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

What was our ROI?

For cost savings, we use the tool to create a three-month capacity planning plan. For capacity planning, we can manage our storage or compute resources for our VMs. The tool is a cost-effective product in my company.

What other advice do I have?

The analytics capabilities have improved the analytics operations. In my company, the analytics is managed by L3 and L4 teams. The L3 and L4 teams in my company asked me to create a particular view for the VMs. The L4 team manages the analytics part.

For operational productivity, we don't we don't have to go with another open-source tool or another product like SolarWinds for monitoring purposes. We are in the banking sector. I mostly use the tool in the banking sector. In the banking sector, banks do not use open-source products. They just have some license of the product. The tool is cost-effective, particularly from a licensing perspective for monitoring purposes.

My company is not going with the AI part for now.

I recommend the tool to others.

I would not recommend the tool to those working on open-source products like Zabbix. Open-source products give you a report, but it is not accurate. Other companies offer features like dashboards and alerts, but we do not go with such tools. We use VMWare Aria Operations. We are mostly given the banking sectors or companies that do not use open-source products.

I rate the tool a five to six out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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PeerSpot user
Bhojraj Rao - PeerSpot reviewer
Executive Senior-VP- Corporate Commercial at Reliance Communications
Real User
Top 10
A stable streamline of the operations with ability for better resource management
Pros and Cons
  • "Its job automation features and reporting capabilities are unique and valuable."
  • "Enhancing automation features without interruption would be beneficial."

What is our primary use case?

I use two key features of VMware Aria Operations. The first one is job automation, which helps me to automate tasks and streamline operations. The second feature is capacity utilization analysis. It provides reports and insight into the real capacity utilization of VMs over the past six months.

What is most valuable?

Its job automation features and reporting capabilities are unique and valuable.

What needs improvement?

After the automation, the code changes are implemented as well as CPU changes in VMs, which require a reboot. Enhancing automation features without interruption would be beneficial.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this product for six months now.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is almost perfect. I would rate it nine out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It offers excellent scalability capabilities. I would rate it nine out of ten.

How are customer service and support?

We experienced a delay in their assistance, which was ultimately attributed to the unavailability of an engineer. Consequently, the troubleshooting process was prolonged and took approximately fourteen days to resolve. I would rate it eight out ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

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

We previously used Microsoft Hyper-V, but it doesn't provide the stability nor as many valuable features as VMware Aria Operations.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was easy. I would rate it nine out of ten.

What about the implementation team?

The deployment process took about two months and few people to complete. It involved migrating all components from Microsoft Hyper-V system to VMware Aria Operations. The implementation of the solution was facilitated by CRU.

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

It is an affordable solution that doesn't require any additional costs. I would rate it five out of ten.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate it eight out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Sr. System Admin at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Gives us a good look inside our infrastructure, mostly in terms of capacity and reporting
Pros and Cons
  • "It is efficient and easy to manage. We can find what we need from the software's interface."
  • "Lately, the chargeback site has improved, but it could be simpler. You need to create your own dashboards. It should be simple to get a virtual machine and break down the compute and storage costs."

What is our primary use case?

We mostly use vROps for troubleshooting and forecasting. We take some reports from previous months and years for capacity and future planning.

How has it helped my organization?

We mostly use it for infrastructure. I know there are many packages for different apps from other vendors, but we mostly use it for VMware infrastructure. It gives us a good look inside our infrastructure, mostly in terms of capacity and reporting.

We have benefited mostly from capacity planning. During some days of the month, we have huge traffic and workloads on our systems. So, we take the previous month's reports and see the month-to-month growth so we can plan next year's capacity planning.

We have integrations with other monitoring systems, so we mostly use vROps for troubleshooting.

What is most valuable?

We mostly create our own alarms and dashboards. We use the metrics in vROps with these dashboards. 

It is efficient and easy to manage. We can find what we need from the software's interface.

We did an integration with vROps and Log Insight. We use Log Insight mostly when troubleshooting and creating some alarms to send us notifications

What needs improvement?

Lately, the chargeback site has improved, but it could be simpler. You need to create your own dashboards. It should be simple to get a virtual machine and break down the compute and storage costs.

It is not real-time. It takes samples every five minutes. Therefore, we are not using it for real-time purposes.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using it for more than five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is pretty good. Besides upgrades, we don't have issues with it. There are some issues during upgrades, but I think that is normal. Sometimes, we have some errors during upgrades where we have to start over or fix some things.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scalability is easy. You can create other vROps machines and add them to the system, making it run like a cluster. It is easy to add more depending on your requirements. 

We have a couple of thousand VMs in our environment. 

About 10 to 12 people in our team are mainly managing vROps demand. From time to time, it changes but other departments also use it. They don't have administration permissions on the system, but they can create their own views, dashboards, and alerts. So, many people are using it,

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

At my last company, we changed our monitoring system from another tool to vROps because we were not getting actions from it. Therefore, we decided to change it to vROps. Because vROps is a VMware solution, it was easier to integrate and use.

I have used two other monitoring systems. However, I didn't use them for a long time. One was very simple, doing basic monitoring, and the other was a Microsoft tool. They both have many pluses and minuses.

vROps is mainly for virtual infrastructure. The other solutions are for both physical and virtual LAN infrastructure. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was not that complex. It was easy to set up and integrate.

The initial setup was just a couple of virtual machines, so it was a very basic installation. It was very fast. However, the implementation of the infrastructure takes months because we need to see how the system works, then decide what to monitor and report. This takes at least a couple of months.

What about the implementation team?

We talked with VMware to set up a straightforward installation of the vRealize suite: Log Insight and vROps.

What was our ROI?

vROps has helped to decrease overall downtime by about 10%. We have many other monitoring solutions. This solution is just a part of our underlying infrastructure.

Log Insight has had a good effect on our overall troubleshooting. We have a huge infrastructure and can't always individually monitor it. We also did some automation for alerts.

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

The value that we get from vROps is okay. It could be cheaper.

I would recommend doing a PoC before using it. You can get a trial license for 30 or 60 days, so you should test it in your environment before implementing it. You should have some hands-on practice because it may not fit with your environment.

What other advice do I have?

The solution is a little bit complicated to use at the beginning. When you get how it works, it is simple. You can easily make or use dashboards, notifications, and alarms.

vROps capacity allocation and management has helped us save on hardware costs, unneeded licenses, power, or other data center costs. It is not the only solution or system that we use for these purposes, but it helps.

I would rate this solution as an eight out of 10.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
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: December 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free VMware Aria Operations Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.