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

18,013 Views
12,069 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.

To learn more, read our detailed Cloud Management Report (Updated: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Management

September 2026

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Helped 913,806 peers since 2012

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 (2nd), Virtualization Management Tools (1st)

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.

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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."

"Over-provisioning helps us a bit, and we have a lot over-provisioned VMs, thus we show different teams that this type of resource can help manage their environment, and with over-provisioning, we track it all."

"Its job automation features and reporting capabilities are unique and valuable."

"Ease of use and the ability to do what I need to do is very easy."

"Capacity planning is the most valuable feature, as far as the storage is concerned, your servers are concerned, your ESX environment is concerned; when you need to add more ESX hosts."

"It allows us to see the VM, our cluster utilization - the cluster level is what I work on the most. I'm able to see how much is being utilized, the rate of resource utilization, and when it will actually run out."

"This effectively uses data mining and analytics on the vCenter databases to provide you with initial health, risk, and efficiency views of your estate."

"It's nicer for our customers, because if they say the server is slow, we can actually look and see if it really is slow or if it's their application, or figure out what's going on."

"Tech support's really good. Anytime we've had any issues whatsoever, any of our engineers, or whoever we contact, is pretty available within a few hours of our posting a problem to support."

More VMware Aria Operations pros

Cons

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

"An improvement would definitely be quick analytics on what to do."

"For the most part, we have found it to be user-friendly. It has gotten better over time since the first version of vROps that I used. The interface has really improved since then."

"We haven't found it to be intuitive or user-friendly. We're on version 6.0, it's gotten better since but there's a lot of things we have to do under the hood to make it work how we want it to work. It doesn't work out of the box very well until it's been fine-tuned."

"I'd like to see a little more training, free training on the VMware site; to get some more information within the VMware community. There's quite a bit of stuff out there but getting that access can be daunting sometimes."

"We're on the 6.0 version, so it does lack a little bit of that intuitiveness. You have to have some experience with VMware to get around inside of it."

"It's not always the easiest product to work around in, and build meaningful dashboards."

"I think their support has some challenges. I've had better support from other vendors, to be honest."

"There's some improvements that they can do as far as make it more user-friendly and get away from Java."

More VMware Aria Operations cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"We have definitely seen ROI by removing unnecessary servers and VMs. By having vROps as an assistant when it comes to monitoring and managing resources, it has helped us a lot with cost savings and managing expenses."

"We have licenses on a three year basis. Licensing costs are much higher, but given the stability of the solution, it is a reasonable price."

"It has reduced time to troubleshoot issues. With our customized dashboards, we can target issues and attribute them to the correct team."

"This is an enterprise-level product and everything is included in the VMware Suite license."

"We would like to build custom dashboards in the standard license. Right now, this is available in the enterprise license, not the standard license."

"The price of the solution is expensive."

"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the product price an eight out of ten."

"As we continue to implement it across multiple environments, it reduces costs as well."

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

12%

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

VMware Aria Automation vs Cisco Piston Enterprise OS [EOL]

Compared 14% of the time

IBM Turbonomic vs Cisco Piston Enterprise OS [EOL]

Compared 14% 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 6% 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 7% 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 3% of the time

More VMware Aria Operations Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Management

September 2026

Download Cisco Piston Enterprise OS [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations

August 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: September 2026.

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