VMware Aria Operations Reviews

Our primary use case is for the developers to test code. Our customer care uses it to troubleshoot customers' issues. We also have a training business unit and they use it to deploy classes for customers to train. We've been using it for four years and it has been performing well. It does the functions that we need it to. We do have some issues from time to time. We're looking for more maturity out of the product but it's getting better with every release.

It has increased the speed of VM deployment. A normal server request would come in, it could take anywhere from three to four days to deploy and now within 15 minutes they can click and have something up and running. IT support for developers is nice as well because they are able to manage the environment themselves.

The self-service feature is one of the most valuable features for us. It gives the end-users the ability to deploy their own machines and so the administrators are hands off at that point.

We have found it to be intuitive and user-friendly. It requires minimal training to get them up and running to start deploying and accessing machines. 

I would like to see them update the format of the catalog in a different way. There's no option in a lot of the contents for the virtual machine blueprints to change the view.

Stability does go down from time to time. We have had some issues with the appliances sometimes and we have to do reboots in the middle of the day which affects the ability for them to deploy. Now, there's no downtime for existing stuff that already deployed, but it does keep them from deploying at that time.

Scalability is nice. We have it deployed in a highly available environment and scalability is nice because we just add another ESX host and we are able to increase the capacity there.

Their technical support is helpful. Sometimes they can take a little while to get back to us. 

We were using a lab manager before that and that was decommissioned so this was the next solution for what we needed. We needed to have a self-service environment for our developers, customer care, the ability to deploy machines, destroy machines, complete the entire VM life cycle and it does.

The initial setup was very complex. We've been using it for a while now and realized that it's pretty logical. Upgrades are pretty straightforward. We had a lot of problems originally deploying it, between some certificate issues, but we had an engagement with VMware so they were able to help us get a poof of concept environment set up as well which was helpful.

The deployment can be complex so I would advise someone looking into this solution to engage professional services to set up a proof of concept environment and to evaluate it. 

I rated this solution an eight because we've had issues with the stability and the appliances. Other than that, it's a solid product. It does exactly what we need it to do and we're happy with it. 

We primarily use this solution to look at our workloads and determine where there's an additional need for space or capacity needed as well as how to optimize it. We've been using it for a few months. 

It has improved the way my company functions in the way that it quickly identifies problems and addresses them. We're still relatively new to it so we haven't used it to the right size. It addresses problems that we see and then we're going to eventually get to the point where reducing capacity where needed will help.

Troubleshooting is one of the most valuable features for us. It identifies problems that other monitoring solutions give us, offers insight into the problem and then digs into it and finds out what the actual problems are and addresses them.

We have found this solution to be intuitive and user-friendly. The dashboards on the home page are easy to navigate. Once we log in, it's easy to find what we're looking for and to see immediate problems.

Stability is good, we haven't had any issues with it. 

The solution is intuitive so I haven't had the need to use their technical support.

I rated this solution a nine because I haven't had any issues with it and it has been intuitive and easy to use. I don't know it well enough to give it a ten.

If you're considering this solution, I would advise you to consider it and to look at your environment to see how it can assist with troubleshooting. 

The primary use case is that we are transforming our customer's physical and virtual infrastructure, who are afraid of anything that can happen in a virtual environment. Our job is to make a sort of private cloud, not to sell virtual machines, but to host the workload.

The main point of installing, deploying, and troubleshooting with vRealize Operations is to provide visual dashboards to ensure that the entire workload is functioning properly. Because we sell our infrastructure to clients, they need to be able to operate it. Therefore, they must have the visibility, even if they don't know how the system works from the inside.

We have to be stable to provide high availability because it's a high value market. Therefore, we have to ensure everything works all the time.

It is intuitive and user-friendly.

We are looking to optimize all the parts. For example, vCenter can be fully deployed automatically, which is not the case with vROps. We can click some next buttons to integrate vCenter and would like these type of features for vROps, if possible.

It is stable.

The technical support is good and helpful. 

The initial setup is easy.

We bought the server from a third-party. 

The first thing that we did was ask VMware what type of hardware we should buy. They helped us by providing insight in which type of server to buy, then they helped us by providing the support to integrate the solution.

We chose VMware and its solution because it was the most easily supportable. We know some of their consultants and our people know the products.

Use VMware to support the solution. Don't go at it alone.

We use it to monitor our private cloud.

It has improved our organization with respect to allowing us to size our environments correctly. We get metrics about what our stuff is actually using, how we can scope for future projects, where can we save some resources.

It gives us a better look into performance, a better look into right-sizing, a better look at possible issues or, more so, trends.

It can be user-friendly once you get the dashboard set up but it can be complicated to get the information you want, the way you want it.

When you're running reports or trying to gather trends of data it can be slow. Sometimes the translation of what you're thinking of in your head versus the metrics it's presenting might be a little different. For example, you're thinking "time," but it wants to show "percentage" or something of that nature.

Also, if there were an easier way to share dashboards, that would be a big one.

It's pretty solid. We haven't really had any issues; a little slow, but other than that, pretty solid.

It's a small environment, so we really haven't seen scalability with it.

We went with this solution because it was already included in our licensing.

When selecting a vendor one of the biggest things is cost.

I rate this solution at eight out of ten. It would become a ten if it were easier to scale out licensing and easier to use dashboards. Those are is my two top points.

I use it on a daily basis to make sure that the VMs are up and running and that there aren't any issues with any of them. If there are, then it tells me exactly where to go to fix them.

It gives me more insight on issues like: Do we need to add more hardware to the clusters; when disks are low, to add more disk space. It's a preventive type of maintenance.

It has also immensely reduced the time to troubleshoot issues. It has improved the quality of service to users because it prevents downtime. And it lets me know how many VMs I can actually run on each individual host, which helps with cost savings through higher capacity utilization.

The most valuable feature is knowing whether or not you have issues with your hosts and VMs. There are other features where you can have it automatically adjusts things. I don't have it set to that level because I like to control things myself. That's a nice option but I'm just not at that point yet to let it control things.

It points out all kinds of issues that you might be having, whether or not your environment is actually running smoothly, too.

In terms of user-friendliness, there are a lot of areas that take a lot of time to research and figure out what the information is actually telling me, so that I know how to better use the product and troubleshoot issues that I see. It would be nice if they could fine-tune the user interface a little bit.

I haven't had any issues with stability at all. It works as expected.

I don't have a whole lot of hosts running that vROps actually monitors. I think we're up to 40 now but that's not a whole lot compared to what other people tell me what they run. It's working as expected.

I have not used technical support for vRealize Operations Manager yet. But I use it for the hosts. I need help with some of the things that Operations Manager identifies.

vROps actually came with the license package that we bought. Once I knew we owned it I just downloaded it and installed it.

The setup was pretty easy. It was an appliance, you just follow the bouncing ball, get it installed.

Because it helps me troubleshoot issues quickly, it saves a lot of time. If I didn't have it, it would probably take me a few days to troubleshoot the issues, versus a single pane telling me I've got an issue with this VM and pointing directly to what the problem is. It saves a lot of staff time.

My advice would be to purchase the product because it definitely helps troubleshoot issues in probably one-tenth of the time that it would take without it. It's something I wouldn't live without, at this point.

We have heavily invested in VMware technology. We're running vSphere, we're running other products, and obviously, we need visibility into our environment.

VMWare is quite good at following customer needs. We are working closely with our TAM so whenever we've had something that we want out of the product, around capacity planning, for example, they tend to be a good conduit getting our needs into VMware.

Sometimes what a customer sees as a need for improvement could be incorrect sizing or a result of a specific deployment. So usually, the things we want are a more frequent sampling of the various metrics and the like.

In terms of VMware support, VMware has been, to some extent, a victim of its own success. But in general, they've been always very helpful. It's always good to have the TAMs to get the support, even when they're overwhelmed with requests.

We've explored a number of products. We've used SolarWinds and their VMWare add-ons. But to be able to actually see what our infrastructure does, vRealize Operations Manager has been the closest match as part of our Enterprise agreement. We are licensed for the Blue Medora Advanced Suite which is like an add-on to vRealize Operations Manager. That gives us the visibility into our Cisco and HPE equipment. It's a natural choice.

I would recommend this solution to a colleague if they have a VMware shop and need something to provide visibility in their environment.

I would definitely give it around a nine out of 10 because sometimes, in terms of the user experience, people find stuff difficult to use. But obviously, the more dashboards you create that are relevant to you, the better it will be.

Analytics, reporting, and visibility into the expansive virtual datacenter. We get a lot of data that normally you wouldn't be able to see without it.

Gives you a single pane of glass for your virtual infrastructure, as far as capacity planning, analytics, and even custom dashboards are available.

It's helped a lot with our capacity planning and it helps a lot with our "what if" scenarios.

I would like to see a larger online library and a more expansive YouTube presence of how-to's. A lot of the stuff you have to look up, to go to multiple third-party sites on how to do it. VirtuallyGhetto.com is a really popular one but it should be one-stop shopping. If I want to know how to do something inside a VMware tool, I should be able to find that inside a VMware community on a VMware website.

It's very stable.

It scales incredibly well. At the initial installation we put "large" because we just didn't know how large it was going to be. But from all the documentation, what we did is big enough to support the most expansive enterprises.

Six out of 10.

First-call resolution is low. You have to call back a lot and get another tech agent who is a little bit more knowledgeable and, unfortunately, at the enterprise we don't have the time to be calling back.

I was using Excel. We switched because I had no idea what was going on in my data center. I couldn't get any key metrics to anyone.

It was very complex. That were a lot of the calls to tech support. A lot of the documentation wasn't accurate or it was outdated. And a lot of dead-ends, so we ended up calling support to get the installation complete.

We had a third-party on site to help us with the installation.

Turbonomic, VMTurbo, and Splunk. But I don't think Splunk does the same thing, so, the first two. We chose VMware because they gave us the best price and because of the enterprise association we already have with them.

When selecting a vendor, stability is one of the big things for us. Also, cost is another big thing. We don't do a lot of bleeding edge companies, we're more conservative so stability is important.

Regarding cost, it's especially important to look at forecasting the cost in the future. The per-socket model's okay but SNS services and solutions or maintenance is what really drives up your budget.

I would suggest going to the VMware website, downloading that 30-day key, and kick the tires on it. Check it out.

And for implementation, bring in a third-party vendor to help your internal team. But allow your internal team to actually do the implementation.

The most valuable features are:

• the metrics.
• the amount of data that it collects.
• the fact that it doesn't summarize our data over a long period of time.

It helps us to see the root-cause analysis faster when figuring out an issue. We can see some overall performance issues and rectify them at the server level as opposed to the VM level because of the visibility we get.

It gives us baselines and visibility at any given time, i.e., visibility that we just don't find with any other product. Being able to get five minutes worth of data for up to six months is a great feature.

The GUI is very confusing, but the product itself is great.

It's a very stable solution.

It seems like a very scalable solution.

I haven't used the technical support at all.

The setup was very straightforward. The wizard-based install is self-explanatory. It's probably one of the best examples of VMware product installations.

This seemed like the right product. It was integrated with VMware and had the most visibility into the VMware software and stuff that was running on it. We weren't looking at any other solutions.

It is important knowing that the vendor is committed to the product and committed to keeping it updated on the stuff that it's monitoring. It's pretty important that when VMware releases a new version of the infrastructure, vROps will be there and monitor any of those changes.

Definitely give vROps a fair shot. The other products out there aren't as deep. When you're looking for something beyond the high-level 4-5 metrics that would indicate an issue, well, you're not going to get the depth from other products like VM server or whatever. You can get past the GUI and just live in the metrics section and the charts. It's going to give you a lot of value.