CloudStack vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

Apache and Broadcom are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. Apache is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.2, while Broadcom is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.0. Apache holds a 2.8% mindshare in CM, compared to Broadcom’s 7.1% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Apache users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

CloudStack

Read 34 CloudStack reviews

2,000 Views
1,820 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Automation

Read 171 VMware Aria Automation reviews

7,806 Views
4,293 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

CloudStack

VMware Aria Automation

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

CloudStack and VMware Aria Automation compete in the cloud management and automation domain, appealing to enterprises enhancing cloud operations. VMware Aria Automation exhibits a feature advantage with its extensive offerings.

Features: CloudStack supports API-driven operations, enables scalability across multiple hypervisors, and offers simplified management. VMware Aria Automation includes advanced provisioning automation, governance, and lifecycle management, optimized for complex cloud environments.

Room for Improvement: CloudStack could benefit from an enhanced user interface, better documentation, and more frequent updates to improve stability. VMware Aria Automation might improve by streamlining complex customizations, increasing integration capabilities, and simplifying initial setup processes.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: CloudStack offers quick deployment with community-based support. In contrast, VMware Aria Automation involves complex deployment processes but provides extensive customer service and professional support for intricate setups.

Pricing and ROI: CloudStack offers a cost-effective entry point with solid ROI for those embracing open-source solutions. VMware Aria Automation, though pricier at the onset, promises substantial ROI through its comprehensive feature set and robust automation capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed CloudStack vs. VMware Aria Automation Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack vs. VMware Aria Automation

December 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

CloudStack

Ranking in Cloud Management

7th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VMware Aria Automation

Ranking in Cloud Management

3rd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

171

Ranking in other categories

Configuration Management (7th), Network Automation (6th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (19th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of CloudStack is 2.8%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 7.1%, down from 10.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
VMware Aria Automation	7.1%
CloudStack	2.8%
Other	90.1%

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

Tharun Kumar Reddy Thamatam

Senior Infrastructure Consultant at Infosys

Achieving seamless infrastructure management with optimized network and user access controls

I believe enhancements could be made in CloudStack, particularly in the management servers. I had the opportunity to collaborate with one of the Apache CloudStack developers, leading to the installation of additional agents for better information retrieval from hypervisors. We implemented configurations, ensuring consistency across hosts and VMs. We also utilized Ansible or YAML files to automate password upgrades during patching activities and database management, showcasing our customization efforts for improvement. For future releases, it would be beneficial if Apache enhanced CloudStack by integrating alerting systems directly. We've had instances where hypervisors experienced overloads without prior alerts, so proactive alerts within the tool would better prepare us for addressing issues swiftly, preventing disruption in business operations. A portal summarizing system metrics alongside alert capabilities would greatly enhance our operational efficiency.

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Le Quang Long

Cloud Engineer at BIDV - Ngân hàng TMCP Đầu tư & Phát triển Việt Nam

Significantly streamlined operations with good automation that helps with simplifying workflows

It helps me build a big catalog and provide it to my end users. It helps us automate the workflow of creating many VMs and the TensorFlow key method. I do not meet many people to operate it live beforehand. It operates for both of my products, but as a product, it is complicated to integrate and automate with other products.

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

"Everything in CloudStack works effectively."

"CloudStack provides an environment that is very simple to use, with built-in APIs and a web interface that supports almost all features of AWS and Azure."

"CloudStack has greatly helped integrate our existing infrastructure because we manage a massive cloud platform with thousands of VMs and around 1,200 to 1,500 hypervisors."

"Killer features for me were: support for many hypervisors, ability to match business logic, "everything in one box," available APIs."

"The initial implementation process was quite good."

"My company could implement a lot of customizations and integration with load balancers and DNS. When we started using CloudStack, we didn't have that integration, so we developed that. We could fix anything missing in the solution."

"CloudStack is simple to stand up and get off the ground in a hurry. Its centralized design allows for easier troubleshooting when compared to OpenStack. Out of the box, it’s very well suited for white labeling and IaaS."

"I liked the separation of the isolated network versus the shared network."

More CloudStack pros

"To manage when VM's aren't being used, we have it set up so that it will auto-destroy them after a certain amount of time, obviously with permission from the user who owns it."

"Instead of only deploying templates, we can deploy blueprints which are easier on day-to-day operations."

"The solution is intuitive and user-friendly. E.g., you have less number of logins."

"The automation of the redundant tasks and the implementation of ServiceNow are huge for us..."

"For repeated installations and provisioning of VMs, we now have a clear definition of what has been installed, and we can monitor all that stuff."

"It benefits the speed of our development, and the speed of anything we test and send through to production."

"quality-of-latest-release; Compared to the earlier versions, from my experience, the upgrade process is easier; for example, the compatibility checks. I also don't need to go and find out the resources that are required. It tells me in one report what the current environment is like and, if I want to go to the next level, what things I need to take care of. Based on that I can make things happen."

"compare-to-competition; Citrix was on our short list. But over the last ten years, we have been a big VMware shop. We wanted to continue with VMware because we are confident that VMware can address any kind of problem situation, any challenges. But with Citrix, we didn't find that kind of credibility when we did solution testing, a PoC."

More VMware Aria Automation pros

Cons

"I would like to see support for native VLAN, and fault-tolerance."

"My teammates have complained about the upgrade. The source code had massive files that had to be merged with our own development to upgrade to the latest version of CloudStack. It was quite painful for them. CloudStack could add some cost management tools to give me some control over the costs associated with the number of users of my services."

"The user can't upload SSH keys from the UI. We have to use the API for this, and it is not always convenient."

"This product needs a lot improvement on the development side. Every new version introduces new bugs. It lacks many features needed for NFV like DPDK, SR-IOV support, etc."

"The absence of the feature, deploy an instance from a snapshot, is the weak point of the platform. It is a feature that everyone needs nowadays."

"I encountered some stability issues. When I tried to remove high-capacity virtual machines it took a long time to update, and sometimes the VM status failed to update properly in the cloud database. This occurred multiple times, even though I had sufficient resources."

"The number of contributors to this solution is relatively small compared to other solutions. However, if more frequent users of CloudStack contribute to the open-source community, it will significantly enhance the overall community experience and make it more useful for everyone involved."

"The product does not have an easily implementable payment gateway."

More CloudStack cons

"Maintaining the product requires effort and a good understanding of the environment, including how to set up the codes and other configurations. Pricing needs to be improved to improve the customer penetration."

"It would be better if VMware would provide API documentation for developers and customers on the Internet."

"We still struggle a little bit with the configuration as far as making sure that we have all the endpoints where they need to be, because that's not as agile as we'd like in the back-end. We're working towards that with our DevOps teams to make sure that we're touching the right endpoints and getting the right data."

"The initial setup is very complex because we have a bunch of customization workflows. They were built-in features that we had to program as code with Orchestration."

"I don't find the solution to be intuitive and user- friendly. The GUI is really complicated. Tracking down logs and errors is very hard. Then, it takes a specialized JavaScript person to build. Also, I'm not sure how the upgrades are going now, but they definitely need to evolve the upgrade process. Finally, the logs are very generalized. Giving more of an indicator of what's actually going wrong, rather than just a generic error code, would help."

"VMware needs to make it to where it is not as custom. Right now, you spend a lot of time making the services work. In order to get it up and running initially, that takes time."

"They should concentrate on navigation and service improvements."

"It is not super-intuitive. It does require some skills to understand how to use it. I had no problem, but I had spent a lot of time already learning this product ahead of moving it to an operational status. But as we did so, we had a hard time bringing some people from other groups into the fold, to script and work against this environment. So, the ability to build workflows within that automation needs to be streamlined."

More VMware Aria Automation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As far as I know, CS is still free of charge. If you want to pay some money, Citrix Cloud Platform is based on CS, I think. As for hypervisors – everything as usual, you need to pay for VMware and vCenter. As for XenServer, recently they changed the free feature list, so you may need to pay some money to get useful features like XenMotion."

"There is no license, so the product is free unless you are buying professional technical support services."

"CloudStack is an open-source product."

"CloudStack is an open source solution, so you don't need to pay anything for it. When our company develops something specially for CloudStack, it is donated to the Apache Software Foundation and provided to anyone that wants to use it."

"The solution is open-source and free."

"Give an effort to planning. If possible, contract a specialized consultant company for the initial setup and knowledge transfer."

"The Apache CloudStack is open source, so you do not have licenses to purchase."

"It is a 100% open-source solution needing just an Apache license. Also, there are no hidden fees to be paid."

"There is confusion between licensing levels. There are three different licensed versions of vRealize Automation, and there are different things which can happen in each of them."

"The solution is pretty expensive but provides good workload management."

"They should provide one license for all the sub-products."

"Better pricing is always handy, but I feel it's at the right price point."

"We do plan to see ROI with any new implementation of new technologies being implemented within our environment."

"The cost of the solution is reasonable for us. Although it is relatively high, we prioritize stability and integration over cost."

"I would rate the pricing a ten out of ten, with ten being very expensive."

"SaltStack is an open-source product."

More VMware Aria Automation pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Educational Organization

10%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	32
Midsize Enterprise	24
Large Enterprise	130

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CloudStack?

CloudStack is open-source, so there is no cost apart from learning. Billing solutions, if outsourced, come at a moderate cost.

See all answers

What needs improvement with CloudStack?

Enhancements for CloudStack can focus on integrating more hypervisors, as mentioned regarding current features. We're working on a new feature that will allow for certain limited functions, but ove...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for CloudStack?

My usual use cases for CloudStack involve an AWS style private cloud or public cloud. I can deploy an AWS style cloud using the open source tool that is CloudStack. The use case depends on the cust...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Is there any way to try VMware Aria Automation for free?

When it comes to VMware Aria Automation, you have three choices for free runs: Hands-on Lab (HOL) Advanced lab A free trial I cannot describe in detail the second and third options as my company ...

See all answers

Which sectors can benefit the most from VMware Aria Automation?

I was looking at VMware Aria Automation case studies recently and I got the impression that three main kinds of companies were using it most often: Social organizations Financial institutions and ...

See all answers

Comparisons

OpenNebula vs CloudStack

Compared 45% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs CloudStack

Compared 6% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs CloudStack

Compared 5% of the time

HPE OneSphere vs CloudStack

Compared 5% of the time

VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth vs CloudStack

Compared 4% of the time

More CloudStack Competitors

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 15% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 9% of the time

Morpheus vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 8% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 5% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 4% of the time

More VMware Aria Automation Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack

January 2026

Download CloudStack product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Automation

January 2026

Download VMware Aria Automation product report

Also Known As

Vmops, Cloud.com

VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack

Overview

Apache CloudStack is open source software designed to deploy and manage large networks of virtual machines, as a highly available, highly scalable Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing platform.

Apache

VMware Aria Automation is a cloud management tool that allows companies to simplify their cloud experience through a modern automation platform. The solution is designed to deliver self-service clouds, multi-cloud automation with governance, and DevOps-based security and infrastructure management. It helps organizations improve IT agility, efficiency, and productivity through its various features.

VMware Aria Automation has multiple use cases that include the following:

Self-service multi-cloud: VMware Aria Automation can be used to deliver consistent self-service consumption. Another use case in this area is for delivering infrastructure across VMware Clouds as well as public clouds.
Multi-cloud governance: The solution can be used to manage cost, performance, networking, configuration, and security at scale for multi-cloud environments. VMware Aria Automation offers all this with an everything-as-code approach.
DevOps for infrastructure: Through VMware Aria Automation, companies can enable a powerful infrastructure as code platform with support for iterative development and infrastructure pipelining.
Kubernetes automation: Users can utilize VMware Aria Automation to automate the management of Kubernetes clusters and namespaces with support for vSphere with Tanzu.
Security operations: VMware Aria Automation facilitates event-driven automation to deliver full-service IT system compliance enforcement and vulnerability remediation.

VMware Aria Automation Features

VMware Aria Automation has various features that allow users to easily perform operations. Some of the solution's capacities include:

VMware Cloud agnostic template: This feature allows organizations to use a single cloud template to deploy with Infrastructure as a Code. Deployment options include VMware Cloud as well as major public cloud platforms such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and more.
Extensibility and customization: This VMware Aria Automation feature allows users to get full extensibility and customization. This can be achieved through Aria Automation Orchestrator, Action-Based Extensibility (ABX), and built-in integrations with common third-party tools.
Self-service multi-cloud: This feature enables users to request and provision infrastructure resources. It can be done across clouds using a unified and consistent Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) consumption layer, idempotent REST API, and self-service catalog.
Centralized policies and governance: VMware Aria Automation offers a feature for users to manage multiple clouds with templatized cloud and policy definition, automated remediation, and cloud environment visibility.
Configuration management: Through this feature of the product, day 1 and 2 control can be achieved for virtualized and cloud environments. This can be done with intuitive configuration automation, compliance enforcement, and vulnerability remediation.
Infrastructure pipelining: Through this feature, organizations can access user-friendly release automation pipelines. They can be specifically tailored for CI/CD in infrastructure use cases.

VMware Aria Automation Benefits

VMware Aria Automation offers its users various benefits. Some of the biggest advantages that the solution brings to companies that utilize it include:

VMware Aria Automation provides faster time to market for companies through offloading manual tasks with advanced workflows and agile templating.
The solution offers high levels of security and control.
This product is suitable for beginners, as it offers a self-service consumption experience for users.
VMware Aria Automation accelerates innovation through Infrastructure as Code and DevOps principles.
The product provides users with flexibility, as it is compatible with the most popular public cloud solutions.
The solution offers fast deployment because of all natively integrated functions.

Reviews from Real Users

Awais J., CTO/CEO at a tech services company, likes VMware Aria Automation because it saves a lot of time, provides more visibility, and has extensive automation capabilities.

An IT consultant at a government rates VMware Aria Automation highly because the product gives you flexibility to analyze and consume resources.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

GreenQloud, Exoscale, TomTom, ASG, PC Extreme, ISWest, Grid'5000

Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack vs. VMware Aria Automation

December 2025

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