Cisco Piston Enterprise OS [EOL] vs VMware Aria Operations comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Cisco and Broadcom are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. Additionally, 100% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Cisco Piston Enterprise OS ...

Read 1 Cisco Piston Enterprise OS [EOL] review

100% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Operations

Read 376 VMware Aria Operations reviews

20,487 Views
13,726 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Cisco Piston Enterprise OS ...

VMware Aria Operations

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco Piston Enterprise OS [EOL] and VMware Aria Operations based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix, Broadcom, IBM and others in Cloud Management.

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Cloud Management

October 2026

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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

Cisco Piston Enterprise OS ...

Average Rating

9.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VMware Aria Operations

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

376

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Management (3rd), Virtualization Management Tools (2nd)

Featured Reviews

Enterprise677

BS Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

A simple interface and helpful support for a solution that grows with us

It's a flexible enough tool to submit the changes that you want. It gives you the ability to cancel any loop. You can connect new orchestrations together. It offers enough support so that you don't need to have the need to get another device. The user interface is simple and easy to use.

Read full review

AldoDomini

Senior System Network Analyst at Net spa

Have faced limitations due to high costs but have maintained reliability over time

The primary issue is the pricing, which is very expensive for my company's budget. We cannot afford to pay such a large fee. We are not Microsoft or BMW; we are a small company. As a small company, I have no power to negotiate directly with VMware. Perhaps larger companies have more opportunity to contract directly with VMware, but I do not have that leverage. The only path I can follow is to change solutions. Net.spA is a company working in the field of waste management. We are not a technological company, so we do not have a large margin to justify purchasing and maintaining the VMware infrastructure at current costs.

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

"I strongly recommend the solution to people."

"It offers enough support so that you don't need to have the need to get another device."

"The most valuable feature is being able to see what's actually going on, down to the VMware storage level, and the fact that it can give you a suggested change and explain why."

"Just having a central measurement point was light years ahead of trying to go into each one, or setting up different types of software that have monitoring."

"I like the dashboards. We can view in our service groups before something in our service goes wrong and causes issues."

"The most valuable features are the ability to look at performance metrics historically, and the capacity planning where we can see waste in our environment."

"Capacity planning alerts dashboard get all the alerts from the external network and use ELK to show them in the production environment."

"Best tool for capacity planning and analyzing the existing infrastructure in VMware."

"VMware provides 24/7 online support, and I would give them a ten out of ten."

"The solution has helped us to decrease overall downtime, and in two years we have had one hour of downtime in total."

More VMware Aria Operations pros

Cons

"The solution is just too expensive, so maybe the pricing could be better."

"One of the expectations would be to have third-party integrations, plug-ins like with Lumidor."

"Our hands are tied by using this product. It is not as flexible as it could be."

"One of the shortfalls with the algorithms of vRealize Operations is that if you want to add additional capacity and you're moving from one, just as an example, Intel generation to another generation, generally speaking, vROps only does it by megahertz, and not the new spec end values, as other tools can."

"It doesn't. No benefits."

"There should be a better database control, so that we are able to manage it a bit better."

"Honestly, I don't think it's as good as it used to be. I think it's gone downhill a little bit."

"I would like to see a full RESTful API for everything and PowerCLI modules that interact with more of the different features. It doesn't have a complete API set and it's not a complete PowerCLI module yet. I'd love to see that developed more, to be able to interact with other applications and automation."

"The deployment of the solution can be improved by making it less complex."

More VMware Aria Operations cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"The licensing is not clear at the moment if the on-premises pricing is the same as on the cloud. I am checking on the pricing. However, you can save a lot of money with the cloud solution because you need to spend time installing, upgrading, and connecting with the on-premises solution. Also, you don't need to spend time scheduling the maintenance and maintaining the solution when using the cloud version."

"We have seen huge ROI. It has certainly reduced troubleshooting."

"The solution has helped to reduce the time to troubleshoot issues."

"The solution is costly."

"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 an affordable solution that doesn't require any additional costs."

"If the VMs were trimmed, then we wouldn't have to buy as much software/hardware, and this means less licenses. While most of it is VMware licenses, which are relatively cheap, there are SQL licenses for Microsoft, and this is where we could start saving a lot of money."

"I would like to see a free offering. Cost is always a factor in any sort of line. Obviously, the value added is there and it's worth it."

More VMware Aria Operations pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Outsourcing Company

13%

Construction Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	66
Midsize Enterprise	61
Large Enterprise	281

Questions from the Community

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What's the difference between VMware vRA (automation) and vROps (operations)?

vROP is a virtualization management solution from VMWare. It is efficient and easy to manage. You can find anything you need from the software interface. It provides complete visibility over applic...

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Is VMware Aria Operations a user friendly solution?

In terms of user-friendliness, VMware Aria Operations is one of the best solutions out there. It is not overly complex to set up and you can rely on the technical support to provide you with assis...

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What is the most useful new feature of VMware Aria Operations?

For me, the alerts features are the most unique part of this product, no matter the current name it uses. When they introduced the new version of VMware Aria Operations, they also introduced more a...

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Comparisons

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs Cisco Piston Enterprise OS [EOL]

Compared 15% of the time

IBM Turbonomic vs Cisco Piston Enterprise OS [EOL]

Compared 14% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs Cisco Piston Enterprise OS [EOL]

Compared 13% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs Cisco Piston Enterprise OS [EOL]

Compared 7% of the time

Flexera Cloud Management Platform (CMP) vs Cisco Piston Enterprise OS [EOL]

Compared 7% of the time

More Cisco Piston Enterprise OS [EOL] Competitors

IBM Turbonomic vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 7% of the time

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 6% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 5% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 5% of the time

Densify vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 4% of the time

More VMware Aria Operations Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Management

October 2026

Download Cisco Piston Enterprise OS [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations

October 2026

Download VMware Aria Operations product report

Also Known As

Piston Enterprise OS

VMware vRealize Operations (vROps), vCenter Operations Manager (VCOPS)

Overview

Piston Enterprise OS (pentOS) is an enterprise grade cloud operating system meeting the security and governance needs of enterprises wanting to use OpenStack for their infrastructure services. pentOS is an OpenStack distro that builds on top of the OpenStack codebase adding some proprietary features to meet the security and governance needs of the enterprise customers.

Cisco

VMware Aria Operations provides detailed metrics, graphing capabilities, and historical data for proactive infrastructure management, offering a single pane of glass for comprehensive views, alert notifications, and seamless integration with VMware tools.

VMware Aria Operations is designed for monitoring and optimizing virtual environments, empowering businesses to enhance infrastructure efficiency and manage workloads. With stress ratings and capacity planning, it facilitates troubleshooting performance issues while forecasting resource needs. Automation and integration with VMware tools streamline operations, making it indispensable for maintaining system health and enabling data-driven decisions. Users appreciate its comprehensive infrastructure views, though they note the interface complexity and high pricing as key considerations. Improved automation, third-party integration, and usability are desired enhancements.

What are the key features of VMware Aria Operations?

Single Pane of Glass: Provides comprehensive views of infrastructure for easy management.
Performance Monitoring: Tracks performance with detailed metrics and trend analysis.
Capacity Planning: Offers insights into stress ratings and future resource needs.
Alert Notifications: Effectively notifies users of potential system issues.
Automation and Integration: Streamlines operations with VMware tools.

What benefits should users consider in reviews?

Infrastructure Efficiency: Ensures optimal use of virtual environments for effective workload management.
Operational Visibility: Improves decision-making with detailed insights and analytics.
Resource Optimization: Helps forecast and allocate resources efficiently.
Proactive Management: Facilitates early detection of issues to maintain system health.

VMware Aria Operations' implementation across industries like finance, healthcare, and education showcases its utility in maintaining operational efficiency. It aids in tracking usage metrics and integrating workflows, benefiting sectors with critical performance and resource management needs.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

Kuwait Petroleum Italia, Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Science Applications International Corporation, Tribune Media, Heartland Payment Systems, Telkom Indonesia, Columbia Sportswear, iGATE, CSS Corp, Angel Broking, Adira Finance, Hipskind, Beiersdorf Shared Services, Innovate Mas Indonesia, Adobe, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi , Join Experience S.A, Borusan Holdings, Department of Transport - Abu Dhabi

Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix, Broadcom, IBM and others in Cloud Management. Updated: October 2026.

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