Azure Monitor vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

Microsoft and VMware are both solutions in the Cloud Monitoring Software category. Microsoft is ranked #3 with an average rating of 7.8, while VMware is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.8. Microsoft holds a 5.6% mindshare in CMS, compared to VMware’s 1.7% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Azure Monitor

Read 55 Azure Monitor reviews

12,653 Views
4,808 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Read 14 VMware Aria Operations for Applications reviews

2,539 Views
990 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Azure Monitor

VMware Aria Operations for ...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

VMware Aria Operations for Applications and Azure Monitor are leading monitoring tools. Azure Monitor often stands out for its feature richness, while VMware Aria Operations for Applications excels in pricing and support.

Features: VMware Aria Operations for Applications comprehensive analytics, detailed metric collection, flexible pricing models. Azure Monitor native integration with Azure services, extensive logging capabilities, and expansive feature set.

Room for Improvement: VMware Aria Operations for Applications needs enhancements in scalability and alerting mechanisms. Azure Monitor improvements needed in log query complexity, dashboard customization, and user-friendly log queries.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Aria Operations for Applications more straightforward deployment, responsive customer support. Azure Monitor highly integrated with Azure, complex for non-Azure environments, comprehensive but less responsive support.

Pricing and ROI: VMware Aria Operations for Applications flexible and competitive pricing, good ROI. Azure Monitor higher cost, extensive features, slower ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Monitor vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications Report (Updated: August 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Azure Monitor vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

August 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Azure Monitor

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

5th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

3rd

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

18th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

14th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (17th), Container Monitoring (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Cloud Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Azure Monitor is 5.6%, down from 8.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 1.7%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Muhammad Usman Khawar

Software Engineer (DevOps/ SRE) at Sensys LLC

Native integration simplifies monitoring but documentation and cost improvements are needed

The ease of access in Azure is significant since it's native to the platform and easy to integrate. It has no maintenance overhead, and users don't have to navigate to another portal to get their desired result. It's the handiness that it has, rather than the features. The interpretation from the logs and injection requires custom runbooks. While it's complex, many services provide native insights and workbooks. It does the basic job quite efficiently. They added new kinds of metrics with more integrations to send out metrics. They have even added support for third-party tools that can be integrated. Azure Monitor is working on improvements and becoming more mature. Azure Monitor is stable and scalable. Azure Monitor is evolving with new workbooks and dashboards.

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ToniLindberg

senior consultant at Virtual Consultants Sverige AB

Troubleshooting capabilities have improved application monitoring and support engagement

I can see what happens end to end, which is pretty beneficial. The solution has troubleshooting capabilities, providing a direct connection to knowledge base articles from VMware Broadcom. When I encounter an error, I can search directly within the system to see what solutions have been employed by others. It has a familiar interface, which makes it easy to get started.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"For me, the best feature is the log analysis with Azure Monitor's Log Analytics. Without being able to analyze the logs of all the activities that affect the performance of a machine, your monitoring effectiveness will be severely limited."

"It allows you to set thresholds on the metrics and receive alerts."

"The tool's most valuable feature is the alert system, which can be set according to our metrics. The integration is smooth."

"It is a robust, stable product."

"Recently, they have improved their integration with other resources, so we get even more robust data."

"It's a service from Microsoft, so it will scale."

"The solution has tons of valuable features."

"It is a move-in powerful feature compared to other market-leading tools."

More Azure Monitor pros

"The stability of Aria Operations for Applications has improved significantly over the years."

"For us, the ease of deployment in combination with TMZ was the most important part because we don't have to manually deploy a complex monitoring solution. We can more or less do that with the click of a button, and we are not dependent on the developers to provide us with all the necessary features and functions to make that work. We can just deploy it on a workload cluster and monitor at least a good part of the workload. If we want to go into detail, we clearly need to make changes, but for a good part of application monitoring, it gives us good insights."

"VMware Aria Operations for Applications offers significant features such as real-time statistics, the ability to identify possible issues within the VM environment, and helpful heat maps."

"The features I find most valuable is the querying and alerting capabilities."

"It has a familiar interface, which makes it easy to get started."

"The solution provides single-console management for multiple VMware environments and cloud integrations, whether hybrid, private, or public cloud."

"People are very pleased with the implementation."

"This solution allows me to have true visibility for any metrics when it comes to my cloud, and private."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications pros

Cons

"Using Azure Monitor and Azure Arc separately to monitor different environments can be complicated."

"Automation related to gathering metrics from more applications could be improved."

"Azure Monitor can improve by adding some kind of storage for logs."

"When something goes down, we want the option to have automation in place to get it back up again as quickly as possible."

"If it is configured incorrectly, you can end up with a huge bill."

"It might not have all of the capabilities we will need."

"There is room for improvement in stability."

"We encounter some difficulties in monitoring the operating system on its own."

More Azure Monitor cons

"It could use a URL document server. Everything in the market is moving towards automation and everybody's looking for the single click operations as well relational data locality."

"The implementation is a long process that should be improved."

"The main problem I have is that the license cost is very high."

"In the new version, I would love to see more prediction capabilities. It would be great if one could see the alerts get a little more enriched with information and become more human-friendly instead of the technical stuff that they put in there. I think those would be really awesome outcomes to get."

"I would like to see integration with Kubernetes cluster and APIs so that you can manage the entire stack."

"I find that there could be improvements in the support service response time, as the urgency varies unless specified as Priority 2 or 1 cases."

"The solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor."

"The documentation and integration with Kubernetes could be improved."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would rate Azure Monitor a two out of five for affordability."

"Regarding pricing, Azure Monitor is free with Azure license, so there are no additional costs for using it."

"It is a pay-as-you-go model. I find it very cost-effective."

"The tool's pricing is very good. I could say that Microsoft offers different cost models, which are listed on the product's website."

"The licensing is a monthly fee."

"Its cost depends on the ingestion of the logs. It could go anywhere. For an out-of-the-box platform such as FrameFlow, you pay pretty much a fixed price and you get what you get, whereas, with something like Azure Monitor, you pay by the ingestion charge, so you can have one client who pays hardly anything for the same alerts, and another client pays loads and loads."

"Azure Monitor is cheaper compared to other third-party monitoring tools."

"The cost of Azure Monitor application performance should be less expensive."

More Azure Monitor pricing and cost advice

"The licensing costs are very high, particularly when you consider that we have to purchase a level 1 license for every integration, such as the load balancer, HAProxy, and the MSSP. And if you want to use vSAN, that's another license. Then, of course, Tanzu Observability has its own separate license."

"I don't have the details. In our case, there is a mixture in place. We have production usage, and we are also doing training for VMware. So, we also have a training instance. It is worth the money you would spend on it. That's because if you were to build all of this yourself by using some of the open source tools, then you would need a lot of time."

"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."

"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Manufacturing Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?

Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...

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What do you like most about Azure Monitor?

Azure Monitor is a very easy-to-use product in the cloud environment.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Azure Monitor?

The primary challenge is the documentation. The major challenge that remains is the costing factor for the logs ingestion. The cost skyrockets once you start using it, and there are complaints that...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

The solution includes cost drivers that can be configured according to your environment. You can input server-wise, CPU-wise, storage, and memory costs per hour or day. Once cost drivers are provid...

See all answers

What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

The new version 8.18 has brought significant improvements. The main purpose of using this tool is having a single console to manage all entities. The cloud integration capabilities, including priva...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

I have been involved in several projects where I had to implement automation and monitoring alerting. I performed automation using VMware Aria Operations for Applications. There is an automation ta...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Azure Monitor

August 2025

Download Azure Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations for Applications

July 2025

VMware Aria Operations for Applications report

Download VMware Aria Operations for Applications product report

Also Known As

No data available

Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability

Overview

Azure Monitor is a comprehensive monitoring solution offered by Microsoft Azure. It provides a centralized platform for monitoring the performance and health of various Azure resources, applications, and infrastructure.

With Azure Monitor, users can gain insights into the availability, performance, and usage of their applications and infrastructure. The key features of Azure Monitor include metrics, logs, alerts, and dashboards. Metrics allow users to collect and analyze performance data from various Azure resources, such as virtual machines, databases, and storage accounts.

Logs enable users to collect and analyze log data from different sources, including Azure resources, applications, and operating systems. Azure Monitor also provides a robust alerting mechanism that allows users to set up alerts based on specific conditions or thresholds. These alerts can be configured to notify users via email, SMS, or other notification channels. Additionally, Azure Monitor offers customizable dashboards that allow users to visualize and analyze their monitoring data in a personalized and intuitive manner.

Azure Monitor integrates seamlessly with other Azure services, such as Azure Automation and Azure Logic Apps, enabling users to automate actions based on monitoring data. It also supports integration with third-party monitoring tools and services, providing flexibility and extensibility.

Overall, Azure Monitor is a powerful and versatile monitoring solution that helps users gain deep insights into the performance and health of their Azure resources and applications. It offers a wide range of features and integrations, making it a comprehensive solution for monitoring and managing Azure environments.

Microsoft

VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront is a powerful tool for monitoring and analyzing the performance and availability of applications and infrastructure in real-time.

With its comprehensive monitoring capabilities, visualizing and analyzing data becomes effortless. The real-time alerting system ensures timely issue resolution, while scalability and a user-friendly interface provide a seamless experience for smooth operations.

VMware

Sample Customers

Rackspace, First Gas, Allscripts, ABB Group

1. Atlassian 2. Cisco 3. Databricks 4. DigitalOcean 5. Equinix 6. Fidelity Investments 7. Google 8. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 9. Honeywell 10. IBM 11. Intel 12. JetBlue Airways 13. LinkedIn 14. Lyft 15. Mastercard 16. Microsoft 17. MongoDB 18. Netflix 19. Nvidia 20. Oracle 21. PayPal 22. Pinterest 23. Qualcomm 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. SAP 27. Spotify 28. Square 29. TMobile 30. Twitter 31. Uber 32. VMware

Buyer's Guide

Azure Monitor vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

August 2025

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