VMware Aria Operations Reviews

Capacity planning is the most valuable feature, as far as the storage is concerned, your servers are concerned, your ESX environment is concerned; when you need to add more ESX hosts.

It tells you if you have oversubscribed any of the VMs, if you're giving them more memory than they actually need, which is bad for the VM. You have to run that report and it shows you what the VM is actually using. If you have oversubscribed it, you can bring that number down; you can reduce the memory or the CPU.

Another good thing is when a customer asks you about an application running slow, you can go in and give them a snapshot that might show that the application is using only 20% of the memory, only 10% of the space; there's no issue with the resources as far as the server's concerned.

Clean up the dashboard; I need all the information right there, a high-level overview of everything. In the newer version, it's better. In the previous version, it wasn't.

I'm in the process of getting the latest version deployed. Right now, it's just gathering all the data. I still have to learn the product. I am not fully aware of the features that have been added in version 6. We’ve already purchased and deployed it; we’re waiting on professional services to come in and help us.

It has been stable

It offers flexibility; you can scale your environment any time.

It has not gotten slow at all. We have enough capacity on our ESX hosts to accommodate our workloads.

We use technical support a lot. It's good but they don't offer critical support for certain products. For example, we are using a product called VDP, vSphere Data Protection, to back up our VMs. We’re moving away from that; it's not reliable at all. It's like a free product.

For our operations manager, initial setup is complex, so you can't just have someone who just deploys ESX hosts. You have to research it and then move forward. Or, it has to be configured properly upfront before you move forward.

If you're running a VM, it's necessary that you get the Operations Manager. You can use third-party tools, but the data won't be that accurate, as far as monitoring using a native tool versus a third party.

The most valuable feature is the reporting, being able to give accurate reports to our management on what's going on in our VMware environment, for example, if they want to know what capacity is remaining on certain systems. We also like the fact that we can get ahead of a problem. They like the fact that we can go ahead and get ahead of a problem with vROps. Pretty much on a daily basis, we can see in a single pane of glass what our environment looks like, looking at the heat maps and so on. That's what makes it valuable to us.

For example, most of the problems on a daily basis are related to disk space utilization on VMs.

It also helps whenever there are anomalies with systems; if there's a lot of CPU contention or a problem with the host.

There haven’t yet been any other side benefits that specifically help us as an organization function, but we're actually looking to start utilizing it more for the enterprise edition that lets us delve into applications. We're not quite sure we're going to go with VMware for that.

It is somewhat not as user friendly as I think it could be. With configuring custom reports, custom dashboards, sometimes there can be a lot involved, where I wish it would be a little easier.

Also, I’d like more canned reports. Some of the reports are nice in some of the features, but I’d like more customizable reports. For example, if we have a group of VMs and we want to just get a simple report or a more complex report, to me, there are too many steps to get that done.

It's pretty stable to us. It doesn’t become slow down any more than expected; we have a pretty big environment, we have 3000 VMs, with over 300 hosts.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

We previously did not have a solution for monitoring our VMware infrastructure. We went with vROps because we were a VMware workshop and they provided us with a solution that we thought fit with us.

I was involved in the initial setup; it was not that complex. To get it all up and running, stood it up for all our systems, with the assistance of an outside vendor, it took three days.

Make sure you understand the difference between the standard, advanced and enterprise editions, what you can and cannot do with each edition. Make sure what you're going to get and what you're not going to get. For example, they present the enterprise edition to you, but the only thing you might be able to get is the standard edition, which doesn't let you customize dashboards and doesn’t have other functionality.

For our clients, vROps is used for managing their environments, having a single pane of glass, so they can go in and have a view of what's actually going on in their environments. That's especially true when it comes to TCO perspectives. When it comes to the TCO, they get to realize how they can start trimming down VMs that are not working, or cutting down on the resources that those VMs are using. That helps them do better in their environment and to lower their operational costs at the end of the day.

We do have the big enterprises; we've got quite an extensive team that looks after clients. But my clients are SMB clients and are where we see a need for vRealize Operations.

For me and my clients there's a very big benefit from a monitoring perspective. It provides proactive monitoring and helps instantly. It gives you this one dashboard with an overview of everything that you're busy with, within the environment. You can get notifications, on time, to deal with a situation and it also gives you references to what you can do and what you can't do, or what is recommended by VMware. It has links for you to find the resolution to the problem. From that perspective, it's brilliant. I don't think anybody could ever ask for anything over and above that. It's very proactive.

vROps has also enabled us to replace tools. SolarWinds is one.

The capacity planning is one of the most valuable features. That is brilliant. A lot of clients, especially now due to COVID-19, are in a situation where they don't have a lot of money to spend. They're looking at what the best way is to start cutting costs, especially from an IT perspective. A lot of companies look at it from an IT perspective rather than anything else when it comes to business. That's key. 

Also, the integration with Blue Medora is brilliant, especially the way it can let you know if there is a problem in the environment, and various ways to fix the issue.

In addition, for me, it is seamless and easy to get to know. It's quite straightforward and it's a nice product. The user-friendliness is brilliant. At some point you need to just keep kicking and kicking until you get what you really want. But from a user perspective, it's quite straightforward in terms of being able to understand as to what is going on and how to get to specific pages. The first page gives you everything. It highlights everything: your risk, your health, and that kind of stuff, with the dashboard. It is quite easy to use, especially once you've kicked around a little. From there, I don't think you should even encounter an issue.

The integration with vRealize Log Insight is amazing for me. I don't think there's any other monitoring software that I'd choose or sell to a customer. That's especially true now from a vSAN perspective and getting the logging side integrated into the solution. The correspondence and the communication between the two products is great. I would always recommend going down that route.

I've used vROps for about a year.

I have used it a handful of times when it comes to client deployment. But there's time required to get my head in the game with it, because there is a lot when it comes to the product itself. We are going to be installing it in our lab as well, to get more clarity around how it works, especially when it comes to the integration with Blue Medora and those kinds of things.

On a scale of one to 10, I'd say I'm probably a four when it comes to vROps, but I hope that I'll actually get to 10, to be the best in it. It's a very brilliant product. I love it, the way it works, all the functionality. Everything about it is just amazing.

The stability is great. On a scale of one to 10 I would put it at 10.

The scalability is also great. I haven't played with it that extensively but, from my understanding and from what I know, you can scale as much as you need to. As long as you understand the dashboards and how to create them, you should be okay. From that perspective I think it rates quite well.

The initial setup is straightforward. You just download the OBA and—"Bob's your uncle." The installation guide is also very helpful. They give you a step-by-step guide for how to deploy it. If you read the document, you'll be okay from the beginning until the end. You shouldn't have a problem.

If it's just a basic deployment, and if you've already got the OBA, it should only take a good 30 minutes, and that would be a lot. I'm just covering my bases, in case there is anything that may not have been taken into consideration. But plus/minus 30 minutes should be enough to do a basic deployment.

Currently there are five of us in the company who are using the product or who are familiar with the product. From a maintenance perspective, the dashboard does most of the job. One person can have a look at it and there are the rest of the guys on the back-end for support. I don't think it needs 10,000 people looking after the product. The product is an automated, driven process. You just need to look at the dashboard and understand what it says and it should make the job a lot easier. You shouldn't need more than one or two people looking at the product every day.

Overall, the value you get from a vRealize is definitely worth the cost.

vROps is a bit expensive and that's a reason that small clients say, "No, I don't think we need this." From a pricing perspective, it is quite steep. But "expensive" is relative, depending on what you need. Others might say, "It is expensive, but I think we can use it to better our environment." It is quite an expensive product. But if you really require something, you'll do it anyway.

The main difference between vROps and the SolarWinds solution is the integration to the VMware stack in its entirety, and the opportunity to integrate it with different product sets, like Blue Medora. That makes it quite a different solution compared to SolarWinds which, as far as I know, doesn't have that type of integration. Maybe there is something new along those lines with SolarWinds and I just haven't looked at it, but I've never seen those types of integrations when it comes to SolarWinds.

When we speak to clients about it they often say, "I'll think about it." I think the best thing for them to do would be to actually use it, with the 60-day trial. They should play around with the tool and then come back and say, "This is what I can do in the product." That way, they would see what the product is about. I'd rather they experience something than somebody else telling them about it. Clients have access to VMware. They can download the solution from wherever they are and then start playing with it. They need to see what it can do and realize, "Wow, what an amazing tool." They need to see the benefits of the tool. It's the best monitoring tool. It is expensive, but expensive is relative. It's a matter of the client having a play with the tool and realizing what an amazing tool we have.

My clients are quite small so when they do use it, it's when I'm with them. They don't understand what the product does. For me it's a big thing, but for them, it's neither here nor there. They say, "We'll deal with it when we can. We'll look into it whenever we've got the time." It's never the situation where I've come back and my client is saying "Wow, that is brilliant!" They say it's brilliant when I do it but they don't go back and start utilizing the tool. So I don't really always get the feedback that I desire.

One of my colleagues is busy with a deployment at one of our clients and he's also doing the Blue Medora integration. I talk to him on a daily basis just to get an update, and he's amazed at what vRealize can do. From that perspective I think that we're quite happy with the product.

Our primary use case of this solution is to use it as an operations tool.

It hasn't improved our organization, we have monitoring in place already, too much overlapping monitoring because wasteful operationally.  Also, the learned behavior thing at first sounds like a great benefit, but when an alert is triggered just because a VMs behavior changes, like for example it uses more network than usual and crosses a threshold but isn't really taxing the underlying infrastructure, well it essentially creates a scenario where admins are logging in to address the alert, but its there really isn't anything wrong.  This stuff should be simple and not overly complicated, and in my opinion the product has become overly complicated over the years. 

Reporting is a fantastic tool. It's a great tool for generating reports on different things, and for historically looking at performance metrics to help solve performance problems in an application stack. There are some great uses for it, but I think that VMware needs to take a step back and simplify it a little bit more, without trying to bombard us with everything they can possibly think of. Some of the stuff isn't important, and it's not operationally useful.

I used to use the old version, and I liked the old version before it was rebranded. The interface was more intuitive, it was more familiar with traditional vSphere client type interfaces. When I deployed the most recent version, I logged in and I was shocked that I didn't know where to go to do what I wanted to do. The whole interface is an information overload, it just bombards me with messages, warnings, and alerts. When I follow through on the majority of these messages, I realize that I'm really just wasting time because they're not real problems.

There's a time to live metric that keeps flashing all the time saying things like "Your cluster is only going to have 45 days left before this resource is going to run out." It's not true. It simply doesn't happen. We could run our clusters with these warnings for another two years. I'm not happy with that. I don't want to be warned just because one VM deviates a little bit from what it would be doing on a normal basis. I'll only want to be alerted when that specific VM causes a genuine problem within the physical infrastructure, where it's going to create some sort of bottleneck of performance for a larger number of VMs collectively. There's x amount of bandwidth on a physical network interface card as the traffic flows over it. It's not really ever gonna be a bottleneck until that card itself becomes saturated. I don't want to see an alert about a VM that's running over a network card when the card itself isn't saturated. 

These are things that bother me about the product: information overload, too many warnings that are false alerts. After a while, when I see these things all the time I don't want to act on anything anymore. I don't want to log into the product because I know that when I log into it I'm going to see too much stuff that's just going to waste my time.

It is stable. 

We don't scale very quickly in our environment and we only have fixed licensing to a specific product. Even as we add new hosts and classes, we only use that particular product against the assets we are licensed to use it against. We acquired the VRealize operations bundle in a large purchase, as part of a solution for our SAP environment. It actually monitors all the hosts and VMs associated with our SAP infrastructure.

OK

We use foglight, and I have to admit vrealize is way better, but we really don't spend much time in either product.  We haven't switched we use both to manage different assets

The initial setup was very simple. We have a relatively small environment we were running it against and we didn't have to plug multiple components. We just employed everything all at one server VM stack.

in house

Cant' really say there is one, you buy it, you spend money on it, but it doesn't really allow for a return on your investment, it only burns more of your operation teams cycles just to learn it and use it, and respond to the alerts it creates.  Bottom line, if you size your infrastructure correctly you don't need this.  If you want to stack VMs on the host to its tipping point, good luck no matter what you monitor with.   

The pricing and licensing structure of this solution weren't so bad. Although the larger scales become more expensive because it's a per-socket model and that's the way VMware prices its stuff out. This particular product could benefit from a different model like a per-VM count rather than a per-socket count. We bought it as part of a bundle and we got a good deal on it. 

We have another solution from Dell EMC called Foglight, and it's way worse. vRealize is ten times better than that product. Although they both leave us with too much nonsense to bother with.

I would rate this solution a six.

We use vRealize Operations to monitor and do capacity planning for our clients. We integrate into our architecture's environments. Mission-critical on IBM clouds was announced and so we use vROps quite extensively in all of this architecture.

This solution is intuitive and user-friendly. They improved a lot with the latest release to vRealize Operations, like the dashboards, for example, and the way it works. Now it feels much more user-friendly than it was before.

vRealize Operations offers a clustering feature so you can have a cluster for multiple appliances. It is a master in replica. For example, in case your master goes offline your replica will take over so you will not lose your data, dashboard, reports, and everything you have set up.

vRealize Operations is a really cool tool. It can give you a real and deep overview of your infrastructure, capacity, mutualization, forecasting future, and what you need to plan for. It also has monitoring alerts. It's a pretty good tool, I personally really like it.

This product, of course, has room for improvement. A feature that I would like to see is one that allows you to deploy clusters within multiple geo-locations. At this point, this is not supported and I think it would be really nice to have clusters across two data centers in scenarios when you have storage vSAN.

It's really scalable. You can scale all of the vROps if you have NSX in your infrastructure and you want to deploy something as agents in your segmentation, you can deploy this agent and then you can still get the specific network segment.

Their technical support is great. Of course, they can be better but they're great.

The initial setup can be straightforward depending on what you want to achieve. Overall the deployment of the vROps cluster is pretty straightforward. You set DNS records, set the IP address, then just click deploy and go through the wizard.

I would rate this solution somewhere between a seven and eight. Not a ten because there's always room for improvement.

Our primary use is to go back and review CPU utilization over a time period, and to reclaim resources from VMs that have been deployed.

It has improved our organization by going back and looking at, say, how cores have been allocated. For instance, if we have a web system that is only licensed for two cores or four cores, going back and reviewing, seeing if somebody made a change to that system, and what date and time they made that change, is helpful.

The most valuable feature is being able to go back and pull resources from people who have over-allocated resources, on their request for service.

I also like being able to hand out the link to hit that web GUI. I can give it to my web guys, the security guys, and let them look at what their actual servers are doing.

I would like to see improvements in managing within a single cluster - managing DRS a lot better as far as utilization of each host goes, within a single cluster. That would make it comparable to VMTurbo (Turbonomic). That has that feature where you can also manage it within a single cluster, move workloads around to balance out the hosts.

It's very stable. I haven't had any issues whatsoever with it.

It's pretty scalable. For our environment, it's able to handle everything we have.

We had VMTurbo (Turbonomic) at first. Then vRealize Ops came out and we decide to give it a try. Since it was VMware product, it had more insight into the VMs. It was easy to upgrade to it. vROps was something we were able to roll in when we did our upgrades on contracts.

The initial setup was very straightforward.

Being able to gather up the different application servers into groups and then I can give access by application types, and they can see the same things we can see.

Being able to tie in the other packages with storage and networking and being able to see, across the board, some of the analytics we can pull out.

There may be some features I haven't found yet; there are a lot of things in there. Perhaps some tighter integration with the upgrade manager would be helpful.

I also have some questions about the storage utilization and the expenses with that.

It is pretty stable but I do have some questions about the storage.

Ours is a pretty small installation, but I do have some colleagues in larger installations, so I think it has good scalability.

Not on vROps. I did ask some questions of TAM about storage utilization but I haven't had answers yet.

No, we weren't using something for this. We just used what came through our system.

Straightforward, I did it myself.

The most important thing when looking at vendors is long term support, that they don't just drop the product.

I would advise you put it in, try it out, put it through its paces.

The dashboard gives me good insight on what's going on in my infrastructure.

Before vROps, we were just stripping everything.

Now, we have:

• Data storage
• Virtual machines

I would like to see improvements in reporting. I would like it to be more customized. More templates would also be beneficial.

It's an easy appliance to deploy.

The stability is great.

It scales really well. We have two of them.

I haven't used technical support.

I was involved in the initial setup. It was straightforward.

It's better than the moderating features built-in for vSphere.

Again, it gives you good insight on your environment.

The most important thing when selecting a vendor: stability.