VMware Aria Operations Reviews

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.

I think for me the most valuable feature is really capacity planning; knowing that I'm using our resources efficiently. We're going through a large hyperconversion project here and we really want to make sure that we are sized appropriately, so that we can build our next solution correctly. You know, save money and utilize hard work the most efficient way.

It has helped speed up performance. It's helped us size our environment appropriately, so that the servers that need the resources can get them. So we're not over-subscribing some and under-subscribing others.

I think we've used it to diagnose some things that might have caused trouble down the road, so it's helped us from there.

We haven't really looked at it from the storage standpoint, we're kind of storage strapped at the moment. As we go into hyperconversion, we're actually really going to start to utilize the tool to come up with a better sizing for that.

It's helped me and the IT department get a better idea of what's going on in the environment. Health checks make sure everything is running the most efficient way possible. It helps us plan for growth, to make sure we're getting the best return for our investment in the underlying hardware.

It’s really stable; haven't had any issues with it.

We're not a gigantic organization so, for us, there's no problem with scalability.

I’ve used technical support some; just to start to get to learn it and get it installed. It's an ongoing learning process for me. It's good. I think it's one of those things you have to take the time and learn it. We're gradually learning it over time.

We decided to invest in this solution because we were so heavily invested in virtualization, and just simply monitoring the virtual machines wasn't enough. We needed a full picture of the environment from the host all the way up through. It gives us a great complete picture.

We did not look at any other vendors at the time. This is the only one we looked at.

I was involved in the initial setup. It was very easy, straightforward to install, get running and start getting data.

I like that it's a single pane of glass with a single vendor, with a supportive VMware. It's really easy; it plugs in easy. There’s less to manage because it's all done through the center.

Support is an important criteria for us when selecting a vendor, as well as stability. That's why we like to partner with VMware, because the support is excellent and the stability is second to none.

A lot of my rating is a reflection of me not knowing the product. As I learn more and more, it becomes more valuable to me. I'd say it's not an everyday staple in our environment now, but it's becoming more and more important.

We use it to monitor performance.

It's been helpful in troubleshooting certain CPU and memory issues. In terms of uptime, it helps us to keep a better eye on our infrastructure, to be proactive before an outage occurs.

I can go back a little bit, a week or a month, look at the history to troubleshoot.

It's also intuitive and user-friendly.

It's pretty user-friendly, but it could always be better as far as the interface goes, clicking around, and having to go back to different screens. The navigation could be better.

The stability has been pretty good.

I have not had to use the technical support.

We used SCOM, Microsoft's Operations Manager, and we still use it in a supplemental way. vROps is a little easier to use, it's easier to get the information.

Figure out what you need, what your requirements are, and see if the product meets that.

Being able to pinpoint performance issues, or just general troubleshooting for the environment, and consolidating everything into one central pane of glass.

We can find problems before they start becoming bigger issues. We have all the info in one area. It's already finding all kind of things we need to do to fix the issues.

Maybe more dashboards or an easier configuration of the dashboards,

Recommendation to anyone implementing and deploying this solution: Review the sizing guidelines, then deploy from that using the best practice guides provided.

Stability is good.

The scalability, for what we have, it's pretty good so far.

For vROps, they are usually pretty good. We usually reach the right person and they are knowledgeable.

We were just using vSphere like built-in monitor before vROps.

We got vROps because we didn't have anything to consolidate all the stats, etc.

When we researched a new solution, these were the features most important to us:

• The interface
• Ease of upgrades
• The value that it adds.

We had an existing setup, but we have upgraded it. The latest version upgrades have been pretty straightforward. Some of the earlier upgrades were a bit more involved.

We did the upgrades.

I don't know if we really considered anything else. I think the first choice was vROps.

If you are considering vROps, do some demos of vROps before considering something else, just because the latest versions are pretty good.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Support
• Ease of use
• Ease of upgrade setup
• Actual value from the actual product.

Being able to get detailed analysis on different applications.

We are able to do additional detailed reports for our customers, in terms of certain spikes in the environment, different loads, etc.

Possibly additional automation.

It's pretty good. 

It's good.

We weren't using anything previously, but we're always looking at new technology, just to see if it might benefit the customer.

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

Before implementation, review best practice guides. There are a lot of them out there. It will make the process easier.

Hyper-V and Acropolis.

We went with VMware's vROps because the customer selected it.

I would definitely recommend this solution.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: simplicity, functionality, but mainly simplicity. 

The most valuable feature must be positive planning and the way you can see real-time weekly updates, these are the plus points of this solution. If there is any kind of business constraint going on and the users of the stakeholders are asking for updates such as why it is down, or why is the CPU percentage low or can we have a historical trend., then all of this information you can easily get from the solution. So, we mainly use this solution for getting this data and putting it on paper, such as what is the particular time that something happened or this time the server went down, etc. Hence, it can give you a brief idea of the microscopic data.

There is scope to improve the computing aspect.

It is one of the best stable solutions out there. I have used vCOps prior to vROps so I cannot judge as to how the stability was before and how it is now.

We have Platinum Support so everything is in place, i.e., not only for vROps but for all the solutions that they provide, so their technical support is the best. The team is knowledgeable.

An engineer came to us from their end to help us to install and deploy the solution for us; it was a piece of cake for us.

I will definitely recommend vROps to others.

• It is about being able to keep tabs on your VMware environment as a whole, instead of having to log into your vCenter all day and keeping tabs.
• It's about being able to get alerts for whatever goes wrong with your systems, and what helps in getting around in your vCenter environment.

We have use it to maintain our VMware infrastructure, and for that, it seems to be good.

What we can do is product chain monitoring. We can keep tabs on a certain app which is running. Whatever is wrong just shows up as red, instead of green, then when we know who to talk to. It's an easier way of doing things than logging into vCenter for every little problem, and trying to find out what's wrong.

Maybe a little more flexible in terms of being able to combine monitoring results with results from other products without having to buy stuff from Blue Medora. It used to be that way in the past, but they gave it all to Blue Medora, and they charged everything, "with a fork".

It seems okay. Not much to complain about, since it seems stable enough. We have had a few problems with the stability in the past, when we tried to make it a cluster, but as long as you don't do something like that it works.

The issues we did have were general database corruption issues, and problems getting it to do whatever it was suppose to do. Also, problems getting settings changed, which kept making them stick.

This is not an issue for us yet. We don't have enough VMs to go outside the scaling properties of vROps.

We have used the basic VMware support, and it seems alright.

If you want to monitor something else, besides VMware, use something else. Use it for monitoring VMware, nothing else.