VMware Aria Operations Reviews

Dashboards, then the troubleshooting parts of it. For example, the dashboards that troubleshoot issues with VMs.

It can create a list of operational tasks that need to be addressed. This way we can give a list to operational people of what they need to do on a day-to-day basis.

Needs simpler dashboards; executive level dashboards.

Get all of your access roles enabled so that you can use them in both places.

It's a large product, but it's very stable after you get all the pieces and enough low balance involved.

Great. We have six main nodes and a bunch of external nodes (remote connectors).

Good. They know the product very well.

We were previously using eg operational intelligence. We got a new system because we needed more integration and wanted more insight into what's going on in our environment.

It's complex, but as long as you follow all the steps and don't miss anything, it's fine.

When selecting a better alternative, look at scalability and support.

Test it out. Make sure you get the dashboards you want.

The reporting feature is most valuable to me for capacity management. For example, I can produce a report that tells me how much data store I have or how much compute I have. This is critical system information that tells me what’s going on.

Also, vROps can estimate how long the current environment will be sufficient before expansion is necessary. For example, vROps can indicate that the current setup will suffice for six more months or two more months. If it’s two more months, I know I need to start provisioning new resources now.

I can monitor performance with vROps as well. One thing I like is that I can group resources together, like tier-one apps and put them in a group. Then, I can easily monitor their performance. I couldn't do that in vCenter unless I created a folder.

Storage is very hard to keep track of, so the reporting has really benefitted us.

The troubleshooting features have also been very beneficial. When I see a problem, I can drill down to the network level to see what is happening on that machine.

I would like to see the automation perform a bit smoother. For example, if the data store usage is high, you must move the VMs on that data store to another data store. But, I have to program that common action myself. I would like to see common actions come pre-configured.

Also, I would like to see the login site reintegrated with vROps. It used to be a free portal, but now we have to pay for it.

We have not had any problems with stability. Although we did have one crash, it was easy to rebuild.

I did not use technical support, because the one error we had was an unusual appliance error.

We didn’t use any previous solutions because we have been using VMware and wanted the benefit of using a single vendor.

We didn't evaluate any other products.

I suggest using VMware with vROps.

The most valuable feature is being able to drill down and look at the health of my VMs when we're having issues with them. Lately, it's been our CPU ready time problems; getting ready times and CPU demand.

The dashboards are nice, because I can have one pane and have everything that I want to see and not have to drill into new things every time.

It has improved how my organization functions. It's not easy to do, but they are nice to have. It is fairly complex to get specific data in a dashboard.

Easier-to-create dashboards would be nice. Right now, it is complex because you have to know exactly the piece of data you're looking for. When you're looking through all the different levels, if you don't know exactly what you're looking for, then it takes a lot of time and research to get that data.

The upgrade process has been painful in the past.

With about 7,000 VMs, I have not encountered any scalability issues thus far.

I did not previously use a different solution.

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options.

Get some training. Get trained on it and make sure that you build it out correctly in the beginning. Size it correctly.

For me, the most valuable feature is the efficiency area because vROps helps us to recover undersized infrastructure.

The other feature we use is the management packs for our storage, for our SQL servers. Even though it is very slow with the SQL servers, it works fine.

My company is small; we have around 600 VMs. Before vROps, we had a lot of problems with performance. The full vROps reports showed me which VMs were overstressed. We don't have customized reports, yet.

The capacity management has saved us more than 30% on storage. We are trying to be an efficient data center. After vROps, we work better.

Make it easier to get customized reports; right now, it's very difficult.

I’d also like to see more integration with the storage servers we have.

Stability is better in this version than it was with vCOPS, which we came from.

We have only one vROps. We don't have a cluster. We know about the cluster, but we don't need it yet.

We have used their support page. They’re knowledgeable.

Initial setup was pretty easy. It took couple of hours.

Before we chose vROps, we also looked at EMC. All of our infrastructure is based on EMC and their servers. We liked the integration between vROPs, Dell, and EMC.

The most valuable feature is its ability to drill down into the very specifics. We're using it for a VDI environment, so to be able to actually look at the conversation and how it's progressing between the client and the server is really valuable for us.

It's a really big product, so it gets really complicated really quick. Therefore, maybe more simplicity in pre-configured dashboards and some of those kind of things would be nice, especially around VDI. VMware actually does not have a class in the education about vROps with VDI specifically. They just have a vROps class. When you add the VDI environment, it changes thing around, so that'd be another thing.

I have been using it for about a year now.

It has been consistently stable over the last year. We haven't had any problems with it. It's never gone down; never had any glitches. So far, it's been really good.

We're actually looking at deploying it to our production server environment as well, and we run about 24 different hosts. We haven't had any problems with scalability at all.

Technical support is good. We really haven't needed to call on this specific product, but whenever we needed to call, they're always there.

Initial setup is easy. It deploys as an appliance; wasn't hard at all. Configuring the agents was a little complicated, but once we figured that out, it wasn't bad at all.

We looked at several different options and it seemed to be the most complete package.

I definitely recommend vROps. I think it's a complete package, as I’ve mentioned. It integrates well. It gives us a single pane of glass. We can add on different agents for different applications, SQL or whatever we need. It really gives us a lot of insight into what's going on in the environment.

When selecting a vendor, we go on Gartner a lot, and see what quadrant the vendor is in. We're always looking for the best in breed and those kind of things. We also look at somebody that we're going to build a long-term relationship with, and we know that they're going to be stable as a company. Those are probably our biggest factors.

Our primary use case of this solution is to gather analytics. We don't use it very often but it's working and collecting data. 

It has helped my organization by running analytics on use cases, performance, and by running clusters. It has also helped reduce the time it takes to troubleshoot issues for the VDIs. 

I find this solution to be intuitive and user-friendly, for the most part. It's the type of thing where if you don't use it, you lose it.

I have found this solution to be stable. We have never had any downtime. 

I've never had an issue with scalability. 

We've had to use their technical support and we've found them to be great. 

I would rate this solution a seven. We don't use it enough for me to give it a ten. There's a lot of value to it but we don't fully exercise it. It's a great product depending on what everyone's needs are. 

Being able to monitor teams underneath the enterprise.

• Being able to monitor things like CPU usage, memory, and storage.
• Being able to set up alerts which will be forwarded to your whole team. This can tell you what's going on, and which VM it's happening on.
• It allows you to forward the issue out to whichever team owns the VM.

I'd like to see more integration with other applications.

It's good on VMware products. It's tough to incorporate it into other things, like our logging. We use things like Splunk and other applications. It's pointless to log into vROps to get a portion of what you're looking for, then have to go into other solutions.

It just doesn't work well with other solutions.

It's very stable. We have not had issues.

No, we have not any issues.

We have not used it, though we do have a direct contact at VM's technical support if we ever need to contact them. We feel contacting if we needed to and that are knowledgeable.

I was not involved in the initial setup. It was seven or eight years ago.

Upgrading the solution has been simple, though.

We have guys who work for VMware in our building (in-house). We only reach out to them for upgrades. If we ever have any issues, we'll go to them, but we usually don't run into vROps issues.

I would recommend the product. I would tell anyone looking to purchase the product to utilize it as much as possible.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Technical support would be our number one reason. If anything does go wrong, it's nice to have a someone who's helping you out.
• Onsite staff is definitely the best.
• It has to be able to work with other applications. It definitely has to be a standalone because most of our machines aren't connected to the internet.