VMware Aria Operations Reviews

Metrics and telemetry across our many environments, which allows us to be able to have transparency in capacity and performance management across a large enterprise infrastructure. The analytics that vROps provides related to things like oversized virtual machines, waste, and so on.

Capacity and performance management take five minutes, instead of five days.

There's room for improvement in the upgrade process. It always becomes a bit of a challenge, and the one big thing for us is we have no means of creating a CICD upgrade process for it. Somebody's got to download bits, click buttons, etc. until you get to the final stage. I'd like to see it fully-automated so that we don't have to mess around with manual tasks. It can take anywhere from two days to a week to complete the upgrade.

Also, the interface is very busy. It's complicated. It's tough for people. I can't tell my management to go log in and find something. You really have to drill in and click deep, so a lot of what we do is pull metrics out and put them in other dashboards, just so they're meaningful for us. If there was a means of doing that, it would be a better solution. Though it's definitely getting better over time.

It was all over the place. I think VMware and our Technical Account Manager (TAM) were a big help.

The initial issue was we downloaded it, then installed it ourselves. We didn't really talk to anybody. We probably should have kept tabs with the people who know the product from VMware.

It's gotten better over time. We had some challenges at first. It took a while to get things going right for us.

It's getting much better. The latest version is much better.

We have approximately 80,000 virtual machines. It works pretty well overall.

We have a good impression so far. We usually go through our TAM and get through to somebody who maybe is at a higher level when we need help. Though I don't really call them.

We switched because we needed a streamlined solution. Before, we had people logging in to do a lots of different things, like creating spreadsheets, charts, and graphs.

My team was involved in the initial setup. It was straightforward, but again, it didn't work at first because of some decisions we made with the architecture. So after talking to VMware, they kind of led us in the right direction. We made some changes and things started working really well after that.

vROps and vSphere integrate well together.

The community is huge. We're really big into open source. We rely on the community for just about anything and everything.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Reputation
• Brand
• Accessibility.

Being able to use the automation side of it is the most valuable feature of this solution that we have found so far.

We're using it for our cloud solution, which we didn't have before. So, it has enabled us to do more than we could in our enterprise environment.

Right now, we're evaluating vROPS version 6., i.e, on the VSAN side, so hopefully, the solution/features that we are looking for are being offered in the future releases that were done this week.

We are looking for more features from the dashboard point of view, i.e., being able to have a little more visibility as to what's going on at the back-end. I think based on what I saw in the conference, there are dashboard capabilities being available, and a lot of the other modules are tied better together. From our point of view, that will be a better improvement.

The solution is fairly stable. I haven't seen many issues yet, but we're still in the beginning stage of utilizing it, so we have not expanded it as a global solution.

The scalability aspect is yet to be seen because as I have mentioned, we haven't scaled it to the global level yet and we're a global company.

I am really satisfied with the technical support. We were always reaching the right person and they were knowledgeable; if not they tend to get us the right person.

Due to the demand of the business, we invested in this solution.

Mainly, the most important criteria while selecting a vendor is that if the product is fitting the requirements. Of course, the budget comes in to play and the relationship with the vendors that we've had are also important factors while selecting a vendor. We've been using VMware for as far as I've been with the company, so we have a really good relationship them.

Right now, my team is involved in the upgrade process. It is in the middle, i.e., neither simple nor complex. From the process point of view of the workflows, we found it a little complex. At the same time, we don't have the expertise, so we are really dependent on VMware to do a lot of the operation, provide their expertise on the technical side of it, so that's why we find it a little complex at the moment.

VMware sent an in-house team.

We looked at other solutions namely Microsoft, IBM and then, VMware. The reason why we ended up choosing this solution as it offered us a better overall solution to what we were looking for.

We're still learning about this solution.

You should really have a detailed definition of what you're looking for, from the requirements point of view and match that up with how/what vROPS is offering. Overall, VM Solutions are tying to your requirements better.

We use it for for monitoring VMs.

With the vRealize Operations Manager, it gives an idea of what the VMs are using: storage, compute, etc.

It helps us save money by having less computers, less to manage, and less to worry about if we know exactly what the application is using.

We've been more efficient, so we don't have to spend as much time doing operations and maintenance type work.

If it was cheaper, we wouldn't be sad! We'd prefer if it cost less money to maintain or purchase.

I haven't had any issues yet. It's pretty stable.

Very scalable. Very easy to setup. It's what do we want to do with it because it's so capable, we're just scratching the surface with it right now.

Very good and knowledgeable. When we call and have an issue, they resolve it pretty quickly. We always reach the right person.

We weren't using anything. We had the native Windows monitoring tools, which were in each individual Virtual Machine. We didn't have anything to monitor virtual infrastructure. It made sense since we ran VMware that we would look to use a VMware product.

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

We didn't really look at others. We just went with this because it made sense.

Plan ahead. Know exactly what it is you want to monitor. There's a lot of things you can report on. It can be a little overwhelming. So, have a plan.

It makes sense to go with VMware. They know better than probably any other vendor what exactly goes on with their Virtual Machines.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: If we already have solutions by that same vendor in-house. That's usually a better way to go, because we don't have to do as much research, then there's the cost. We usually get a better cost if it's just adding onto a part of what we already have instead of buying a new solution outright.

It's all about the push-pull configurations. Before, we were using home-brewed apps. We were also using a lot of open source products, and those are great. But if the guy that's managing the open source product leaves, then you're kind of up the creek without a paddle, so vROps fills this void. It's a packaged offer from VMware, therefore it plays well with the entire suite. We're running the entire suite with vRealize, vROps, and we've got our entire VMware infrastructure running our NSX platform in Amazon's private cloud, because of this vROps is able to monitor and examine stuff. We're able to push-pull configs from that, and the biggest thing I like is to be able to push-pull configurations.

The biggest benefit is because it's an app developed by VMware and we are a VMware shop, they play well together. There aren't any plugins that I have to download. There's no modification of code. You install it and away you go.

I'd like the GUI to be flashier. It's the one thing that's missing. It's very clunky, which is fine. It's functional. You don't need it to be flashy. The backend problems have been resolved for the most part. At least, I feel that they have.

There needs to be more training. Once I build this and hand it off to somebody else, there is a lack of training available.

I don't know if it's the environment. I have been having issues in the field. One of them was with vROps. We're trying to use containers with Docker, but we're having issues when we try to run these in containers. Outside of the containers, they run great. In a clustered form, we have three availability zones and vROps is running processes fine. We start a container, then it becomes an issue. I don't know if it's just the way we configured it. I don't know what it is, but that's my issue. When I try to make it run in containers, it doesn't work.

It scales really nice. Just like most VMware products, they all scale really nice.

I haven't used it.

We were using all open source products, yet I was having issues monitoring my environment. I was using stuff like ELK (we're still using ELK), but I was trying to do everything with ELK, Cisco Tetration, and other products. It just wasn't doing it, so the sales guy said, "I'll give you a 30-day PoC of vROps. If you don't like it, cancel it. If you like it, then pay for it."

It wasn't complex, but I've spoken to other people who thought it. So for me, personally no, it was pretty straightforward, but I've been working in the VMware world for a while. I would say, it was very straightforward.

A lot of open-source stuff. What vROps does today, I've done it with open source products. In fact, I logged stashed stuff like that. I've done all those functions there and I've written scripts in a box that push and pull from places where I need it. I know there are other competitors out there, but I've just never been able to see those guys.

It's a good product, but it's gotta be a partnership.

We made them switch our sales guys.

Because I really didn't like our last sales guy, he was really about pushing the product, not about relationship. He didn't care what business we're in. He didn't really care about me as a customer. Our current salesperson is fantastic. She's great. She cares about us. She's invested in what we do. She's local and familiar with that area. I love that. It creates a personal touch. It means a lot.

The reporting is the product’s most valuable feature. It's for customers; they want to show some sort of reporting to their superior, and you can have those easy-to-read meters. You can find out easily where the problem is.

Also, you don't have to be an expert, you can just read the meters. If they're red, you have some problems; if they're yellow, you have to pay some attention; and if they're green, you're good. It’s user friendly.

I also like the indicators.

It kind of limits the finger pointing. If you have some problems in the virtualized environment, and it's not clear which area has the problem. We might have said something like, "Okay, network guys take a look, and then server guys, and storage guys." The individual departments would then say something like, "I don't have any problem, it's probably another department."

The product is really quite solid. For example, I think the UI is okay. It is easy to read. It's intuitive; you don't have to know all the technical stuff. When you drill down, you have to really know some stuff. I’d like it to be easier to drill down.

I also would like to see integration with BMC.

Actually, I don't think we had any problem with stability, ever. If you set it up correctly, you likely won't have any problem.

I think scalability is quite good. We have a couple hundred of VMs.

We have not really used technical support in terms of vROps, but more on the other things, such as ESX. They were very helpful.

Initial setup is quite straightforward, but you do have to find out some things. There is the step-by-step process, but it’s not just clicking Next and OK. You have to set-up some things. If you’re using virtual appliances, you have to know what to do in those appliances.

For virtual environments, I have not compared it with products from other vendors. I think it's better to go with vROps because they have some bundles. Who knows virtual infrastructure with VMware vSphere better than vROps?

Go with vROops, because it's easy to use.

Our primary use case of this solution is for monitoring our VMware infrastructure, vCloud Director, and NSX Manager. 

vRealize has products created especially for virtualized infrastructure by VMware. Its main features are great.

I don't find this solution to be intuitive and user-friendly. It's a large and difficult product to learn. We need to search for more information.

I would like to see them add customizable dashboards and customized views. 

I find this solution to be stable. 

It's very scalable. It's fast and fast is easy.

The initial setup was complex. 

I would rate this solution a nine. 

Our primary use case is to see what's going on with the complete infrastructure and to be able to see if there are any issues. Although it's not in real-time, we still use it effectively. We can see what the state of our environment is.

It has improved our organization by saving us time that it takes to look things up. We have everything on one dashboard.

It has helped reduce the time it takes to troubleshoot. We're using the vRealize Operation Manager, and when there's an alarm we can have a look, drill down, and see exactly what the issue is. They will usually have a suggestion from a knowledge-based article that will suggest how we should handle the issue. It saves quite a lot of time. Rather than having to go and have a look on Google or somewhere, we can find a solution in the Operations Manager. 

I like that we can see what amount of the CPU has been used and what's been handed out. We can see how we can bring the virtual machines in line with what actually has been used which has saved us cost.

It is user-friendly although there's always room for improvement. In the beginning, it was about figuring out where you can find what, but once you know it, it becomes easier to navigate. 

Stability is good. I haven't had to restart it at any point. 

It's scalable. We can add a new host and they immediately become available. 

Their technical support is excellent. 

We chose this solution because we are using VMware, and the rest of the suite, so it was just a logical decision to go with Operations Manager.

The initial setup was a bit complex but not really complex. If you take the time to look through the documentation you can figure it out. 

We deployed in-house. We just had to look at the documentation. We tried it in our test environment, found that it was doing what we expected it to do and we deployed it in production.

Our ROI is that I can spend less time looking at issues, it's all there in the dashboard. I can see them immediately, I don't need to go into vCenter and go through all the different data stores. I can just have a look at the dashboard, see if there are issues, see where the issues are, and save time.

I would rate this solution a ten. I was looking for a solution that would help me do my work and this does exactly that. 

I would tell someone looking into this solution to go for it. 

We use it to monitor applications, infrastructures, and operating systems.

The real-time notifications are the most valuable feature.

I would like to have external add-ons and third-party support added to the solution.

It was not intuitive and user-friendly in the versions leading up to 6.5. After version 6.5, it improved and has been user-friendly.

It has issues that require manual handling, such as the server allows metrics. However, this is difficult to set up.

I have never had stability issues with this platform.

I haven't tested scalability.

I have never needed to use technical support.

I was holding the license, so I decided to give it a try. The solution proved itself.

The initial setup is very straightforward. The platform and add-on solutions are straightforward.

I implemented it on my own.

I have evaluated SolarWind and Microsoft SCOM. 

vROps's key value is its ability to have a hypervisor metrics of monitoring, which other products do not have.

If your infrastructure is VMware-based, you will get the most value out of the solution.