VMware Aria Operations Reviews

We use it to monitor our system utilization, in terms of disk I/O, in terms of CPU, in terms of memory.

The benefit that we've seen from this tool would be having a GUI that is able to provide us with a quick reference, a quick analysis, interpreting performance, and being able to monitor and measure that performance.

In the process of doing benchmark performance analysis, instead of going into PowerShell or the VMware or CLI, we're able to have vRealize provide that GUI that gives us that information up front, without the delay of scripting it.

The things that we find valuable are being able to have a GUI that provides us with an overview of the performance metrics that we need.

I find the solution to be intuitive and easy to use. The tools are color-coded and provide a clear, legible, English.

Regarding the tool itself, in terms of vRealize, there are a lot of different functions. So that is definitely a learning curve within itself. Out of all of the tools that VMware provides, I think vRealize is probably one of the more challenging tools.

Also, with VxRail 6.0 that we've been using, and working with vCenter or vSphere 6.5, we have seen bugs that are a challenge to working within the environment. We've seen issues with things within the graphical user interface. There are browser compatibility issues that can make it difficult to manage the system itself. We're still learning whether this an issue related to the browser or an issue related to vCenter.

The stability that we've seen is that it works for our needs for right now.

We haven't seen any problems with scalability, but we're still in a proof-of-concept phase. We have not scaled it to production.

Beforehand, we were using ESXi and we were going in and logging our benchmarks. In terms of switching to vROps, again, right now, it's still a proof of concept, it's not in production. But we're exploring the functionality and we're exploring the capacity and the potential.

Our most important criteria when selecting or working with a vendor include a couple of factors that are critical for us, within our organization: Factors related to cost and performance. But in addition, there are things related to security: NIST 800-53, NIAP Common Criteria at a high level.

When we first started the process of learning about VMware and the virtual infrastructure, there was definitely a learning curve associated with it. The documentation that was available online presented challenges in terms of confusing of terminology. So ESXi: is it vSphere, is it vCenter? There's a lot of technical jargon that's used to refer to specific components of the architecture. The more we work with it, and the more we're using it, the more we are able to connect the dots.

My recommendation would be to look at your use case and look at what exactly your requirements are and, from there, if your use case fits the model then you can reduce the amount of administrative overhead that's associated with managing the hyperconverged system.

I would give it about an eight out of ten. The reason is that we still see challenges with bugs. But we're also looking at the long-term feasibility of the product and looking at long-term changes within our architecture to reduce our administrative overhead.

We use it for looking at the resources on our hosts and for looking at the resources on VM as well.

It allows us to see the VM, our cluster utilization - the cluster level is what I work on the most. We're able to see how much is being utilized, the rate of resource utilization, and when it will actually run out.

The solution is intuitive and user-friendly. The UI is nice, it's really simple to use. Building out reports is very simple.

One of the most valuable features was the cluster modeling, but they took that away. That's why I rated it a seven out of 10. They keep saying that it's going to be back in the next release and that's what we're looking for. We really want that back.

It works great. No problems whatsoever.

Scalability is pretty good too. They keep coming out with new releases. My vROps guy just put in v6.7 about two months ago, now they're coming out with v7.0. They keep coming out pretty fast. That's good, there are new features. But we just put v6.7 in and now we have to do all that same work over again.

I haven't used technical support for vROps. I'm mostly on the core: vCenter and ESXi. I don't open up tickets for vROps.

Overall, it's a great solution. It's really easy to use, really easy to set up, and especially for reporting, it's really good.

We use it for capacity management and optimization. We are just now really getting into using it.

It helps us maintain optimal workloads.

One of the most valuable features is the ability to see "before" and "after". It will show you the current state, and then show you what it looks like after it does the optimization.

It needs dashboards that we can present at the executive level. The GUI, overall, could be better.

Stability is fine.

No issues with scalability.

I have not had to contact technical support.

Make sure it does what you want it to do. For me, when selecting a vendor, the most important criterion is, does the product do what it's supposed to do?

I would rate vROps at seven out of 10, mostly because it needs a better user interface.

The ability to monitor our trending and growth in our environment. It gives us an idea of when we're running out of capacity, how quick our growth is occurring, where it's occurring.

Knowing our environment, being able to properly size and prepare for what the future holds.

Maybe to get a little bit more granular with storage and i-apps.

Also, some of the configuration settings are a little bit overwhelming to try and understand all of the implications and ramifications of what they do, so something not quite too intense to configure initially.

We have no problems with it.

So far it's met our environment very well.

So far I've only had to use it one time and they were very helpful. We did have some storage issues with it. They resolved it within probably one or two phone calls, so I was very happy.

We didn't have very good visibility in our environment at all. The standard C# and web client just wasn't giving us the visibility we needed. vROps did that very well.

Very straightforward.

In choosing a vendor, obviously we have to look at their ability to answer all of our questions, make sure that their solution is in fact going to meet our needs and their tech support later on.

It was real simple, and once you get involved with it, it's just a matter of getting some hands on time and playing with it.

The historical data: It allows us to go back, look at the VM past historical data, CPU memory usage, and disk latency. Therefore, it helps us troubleshoot a lot of issues.

It allows us to quickly resolve issues. There's some other capabilities in there, some dashboards that allow us to look at environments as a whole, and to identify many issues.

The newer versions currently streamline the process for us.

The password changes: One of the drawbacks I hear from the portability side is the number of passwords it takes to keep it up and running. Limit the number of passwords to keep it up and running.

The GUI could be improved. There's a lot of clicking around to get to stuff at times, but it's pretty good.

Also, make it easier to upgrade.

The newer versions are much better than our experience has been in the past. We're at the latest version 6.6. It's much better than the previous five versions that we were running.

We haven't had any issues with scalability. We have a large environment, but it's been able to handle it.

The VMware staff is usually pretty knowledgeable. We have been pretty satisfied with the support we have received.

We had our previous tools, which were SCOM monitoring stuff. It was brought to our attention from VMware that they had this solution. At the time, we were a small VMware user. So, it sort of developed from that.

While I was not involved in the initial setup, upgrades have been pretty straightforward.

In-house.

I would recommend the solution.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Brand reputation
• Brand name
• Support.

We just starting using it in the last month. We've been able to use it to diagnose several performance problems with our environment, and being able to tie it into login site has been incredibly useful.

We've also solved several challenges that have been ongoing for the last several months, within a couple of days, after having vROps in the environment.

I don't think I have enough experience to be able to answer this question fully. Maybe some easier ways of getting some of the NSX monitoring products. It wasn't obvious how it was tied into NSX, and how it was usable at first. It took a couple days of looking at it, and configuring it, and toying with it to get it. I'd be in favor of that being a little easier.

It seems fairly stable. I'm always a little concerned about version changes and things that change when you go up or down a version. So far, it hasn't gone down, so I'd say that's pretty stable for the month it's been up. It's been great.

I see no problems with the DM itself. With that said, it's collecting a lot of diagnostics at this point and it doesn't seem to have any issues at all with latency. It seems it should be able to scale up and out if we needed to.

I haven't used it yet.

We messed that one up. We decided to ask for logins to vROps, for the last two years, and then finally our accounts team said, "Hey, you know you already have one, right?" Turns out we had them but the licensing hadn't been activated and we didn't realize it. Once we realized that, it was awesome. We already made the investment and it was some previous person's decision who is no longer at our company, so I cannot speak to that.

I knew that I wanted it because we have a full 100% virtualization and we're using SolarWinds. SolarWinds is built to monitor everything possible, and we don't need everything possible. I needed VMware monitoring. vROps was the obvious solution there. Once I realized that we already had the licensing for it, being able to install it and configure it within a few days was incredible.

Absolutely straightforward. As I said, we have a full SolarWinds environment and we're trying to move away from it. And then we finally realized we have licensing for the login site and vROps. So I went ahead and installed and configured it and got it running and rolling. Because of it being straightforward, plus the setup, we're probably going to get rid of most of our investment in SolarWinds products, which is a big bonus for our company.

What's important when looking at vendors is

• Ease of talking to them
• Ease of working with their sales team
• Availability

Also their presentation of the products. Having trial versions available to be able to try it out before so you know if it's like, "Oh yeah. I want to use it more." That's the most important.

I would definitely be looking at long term solution, at a way to get better insight into your controlled environment. I don't have too much experience with the different monitoring tools but vROps has been, hands down, the best thing I've reviewed so far.

I can get insights into my infrastructure. Along with the VMware software, it offers me infrastructure consolidation. And I can get a predictive input on what is going where and how my infrastructure is working.

It enables to me to do a deep dive and get insights into my infrastructure. When I have predictive input on what is going on in my datacenter, it saves me lots of time and lots of cost as well.

The dashboard which provides the information; if it could be like Salesforce, that kind of dashboard. Because what I end up having to do a lot of drill downs into each and every inventory to detect the issues. So if I could have all the issues on one dashboard and the rest in another one it would make my life easier.

I've used as vROps now for the last five years.

It is absolutely stable. I haven't had any issues to date.

The scalability is also good because nowadays datacenters are not that simple. It's always scalable up and down and sideways.

I have not used it to date.

No we did not. We went with it because it would give me the insight into the datacenter. It was the ultimate solution. And since we are using the VMware environment, it was a must have.

It was straightforward.

We did it ourselves.

Dell, EMC, and one other. Among the most important criteria in choosing a vendor are their technology roadmap as well as the productivity.

When you look at the VMware infrastructure and software piece, they're more or less offering what vROps is offering you right now. It is comparable to any other third-party solution for the VMware. So it's always better to go with the best one.

To prepare for implementation, first and foremost you need to make sure that you inventory all the hardware and the stakes. And it's important that everything is on the same version. Multiple versions will make your life more complex because all the versions are in additional dashboards. It's not like a motherboard version and then a dashboard. Each version has different dashboards.

We can check the capacity management, then tell customers their usage on the machine compared to what they're asking for and right-size the VM's based off that information. This is valuable because we are overcapacity in their environments, by far.

This improves organizations through monitoring, and showing customers the data that their BEAM is not actually using what it is saying that it is.

The UI needs to be made more user-friendly.

It's been pretty stable.

Scale is pretty low. We're a big environment.

I have not used technical support for vROps.

If you are looking at vROps, take your time researching it. Make sure you get with vROps. Make sure you do all the recommended settings and don't rush it.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor (for our company):

• Discount prices
• If they can handle the scale of our business, because we are a large scale.
• The support behind it. That we can access it 24/7.

Big things. Scale is the biggest, usually because handling our scale is hard.