CloudStack vs VMware Aria Operations 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 #1 with an average rating of 8.6. Apache holds a 2.1% mindshare in CM, compared to Broadcom’s 3.7% 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

3,636 Views
3,491 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Operations

Read 376 VMware Aria Operations reviews

16,724 Views
11,038 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

CloudStack

VMware Aria Operations

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

VMware Aria Operations and CloudStack both compete in the cloud management and virtualization domain. VMware Aria Operations seems to have the upper hand with its intensive monitoring and predictive analytics, which provides a proactive approach to IT management.

Features: VMware Aria Operations offers robust monitoring and management tools that allow users to collect data and use real-time analytics to adjust policies for optimized performance. Its dynamic thresholding and predictive analytics help anticipate and mitigate potential issues. CloudStack provides strong multi-hypervisor support and scalability, catering to diverse cloud environments. Its API integration facilitates diverse operations and supports different hypervisors efficiently.

Room for Improvement: VMware Aria Operations could enhance its usability by simplifying the interface and improving third-party tool integration. Users suggest the need for more intuitive reporting and automation features, along with expanded documentation for customizations. CloudStack users recommend interface improvements and enhanced documentation to better address integration capabilities and user feedback during deployment.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Aria Operations supports both on-premises and hybrid cloud environments, presenting users with flexible deployment choices. It generally receives positive feedback for customer service, though technical support experiences may vary. CloudStack also benefits from a strong community support structure and offers several deployment models, including public cloud capabilities, although professional support could be expanded for complex setups.

Pricing and ROI: VMware Aria Operations can be expensive, particularly for large deployments, but it promises a strong return on investment by optimizing operational efficiency and minimizing downtime. Licensing options are varied and should be closely aligned with business needs. As an open-source platform, CloudStack eliminates licensing fees, presenting a cost advantage, though there might be expenses related to dedicated support and additional features. This flexibility and cost-effectiveness make it appealing for organizations aiming to manage expenses.

To learn more, read our detailed CloudStack vs. VMware Aria Operations Report (Updated: August 2026).

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack vs. VMware Aria Operations

August 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 908,800 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

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 Operations

Ranking in Cloud Management

1st

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

376

Ranking in other categories

Virtualization Management Tools (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of CloudStack is 2.1%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations is 3.7%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
VMware Aria Operations	3.7%
CloudStack	2.1%
Other	94.2%

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.

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 have been impressed by CloudStack's most recent updates around Kubernetes. In particular, they have worked with Kubernetes to support the Cluster API, and you can now easily integrate Kubernetes into CloudStack and get access to a lot of good features."

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

"The API with CloudStack made integration into various external facing web applications simple enough."

"You can manage infrastructure with a few people, since product is monolithic. We had three engineers (storage, virtual, Linux admins) only. Also, CS supports different flavours of hypervisors."

"Key features include stability, centralized management design that scales well, and transparent interoperability with different hypervisors and manufacturers.."

"CloudStack manages infrastructure with 2-4 thousands of hosts easily."

"CloudStack is highly stable."

"This is one of the major products that help to handle all of the NFV Infrastructure management services (IaaS), and it has helped us to quickly gain understanding and feel more powerful with respect to virtualization."

More CloudStack pros

"The historical data allows us to go back, look at the VM past historical data, CPU memory usage, and disk latency, and it helps us troubleshoot a lot of issues."

"From a manager's standpoint it's the dashboards, to be able to quickly and easily see what's going on in our environment so we can find hot spots, be more proactive about troubleshooting, and get to the root cause."

"Avoiding problems in the monitoring area is our strength. We use real-time monitoring models and real-time monitoring to do this. We also provide other capabilities, such as seeing changes in the environment."

"It gives us a single pane of glass to be able to look into our environment and find what the problems are."

"It has helped to reduce time to troubleshoot issues and improved quality of service."

"The key for us is visibility into the infrastructure, both at the application layer and with performance of historical trends."

"This solution has helped to reduce time to troubleshoot issues, improve quality of service to users, and provide costs savings through higher capacity utilization."

"So far, since we upgraded the product, over the course of a quarter, I've reclaimed in our team over 2,500 CPUs, and using the DRS automation field and other features, we're seeing a lot of success as far as load-balancing, and we can also forecast some of the trends that we have in our organizations with the product."

More VMware Aria Operations pros

Cons

"It is not widely used so Google does not help very much when you are troubleshooting, and the CloudStack forum is not very active."

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

"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."

"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 upgrade process can be improved further."

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

"The product has evolved a lot since the first versions in which it was very complicated to do version updates, and had various problems."

"We did encounter issues with stability, and the main issue was secondary storage. When it is not available, XenServers and hypervisors are affected. And CS doesn’t do anything to reboot, or fix. Come to think of it, maybe it shouldn’t, considering their approach – CS just orchestrates everything else on the hypervisor and storage level."

More CloudStack cons

"The product's support services need improvement."

"Adding and configuring add-ons is not straightforward."

"The organizational layout of it is pretty bad."

"Out of all of the tools that VMware provides, I think vRealize is probably one of the more challenging tools."

"It can be user-friendly once you get the dashboard set up but it can be complicated to get the information you want, the way you want it. Finally, if there were an easier way to share dashboards, that would be a big one."

"If you want to automate the resizing of machines, you should be able to schedule it, so it happens at two in the morning instead of right now, because if you do it in the middle of a workday that's a big no-no. Automation should be a bit more intuitive."

"There is room for improvement in asset management and resource usage."

"Maybe the interface is a little bit archaic. It needs to be updated and again we're on view 6.2, we're not even on 7 yet. So maybe it's changed, but a more modern look and approach."

More VMware Aria Operations cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"CloudStack is an open-source product."

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

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

"The solution is open-source and free."

"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."

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

"We have seen ROI in performance. It used to be our company was giving out eight CPUs to all servers. That was bad performance-wise. People were seeing slow compute times for their applications."

"If one is low price and ten is high price, I rate the product price a ten."

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

"Five or six years ago, when we took it, it was a very good option. Now, I think I have to reevaluate, to be honest."

"The pricing: It's expensive."

"Don't overallocate! This means that you don't have to buy many hosts. You can save money that way."

"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."

"Pricing is good for us. We're non-profit so we get a break on that."

More VMware Aria Operations pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Management solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

Outsourcing Company

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Outsourcing Company

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	66
Midsize Enterprise	61
Large Enterprise	281

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 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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

OpenNebula vs CloudStack

Compared 11% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs CloudStack

Compared 9% of the time

Turbo360 (Formerly Serverless360) vs CloudStack

Compared 6% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs CloudStack

Compared 5% of the time

IBM Turbonomic vs CloudStack

Compared 3% of the time

More CloudStack Competitors

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 7% of the time

IBM Turbonomic 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 4% of the time

More VMware Aria Operations Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack

August 2026

Download CloudStack product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations

July 2026

Download VMware Aria Operations product report

Also Known As

Vmops, Cloud.com

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

Overview

CloudStack offers an easy-to-manage platform compatible with multiple hypervisors, enabling seamless networking and efficient workload scaling. Its advanced APIs and open-source nature facilitate automation and customization, making it ideal for extensive cloud environments.

CloudStack is recognized for ease of setup, robust networking, and hypervisor compatibility. Supporting a range of workloads, it scales efficiently, offering flexible features like VM migration, private networking, and multi-zone support. Its user-friendly open-source design aids troubleshooting and customization, making it ideal for managing broad cloud deployments. Despite needing upgrades in interface and integration with third-party vendors and container technology, CloudStack remains a strong choice for businesses seeking effective virtualization solutions. Improvements in documentation, regional management, and emerging tech support would enhance usability and performance.

What are CloudStack's notable features?

Hypervisor compatibility: Supports diverse virtualization technologies for flexible deployment.
Robust networking: Ensures reliable and scalable network infrastructure management across zones.
Advanced APIs: Facilitates automation and integration to streamline cloud operations.
VM migration: Enhances operational flexibility with seamless virtual machine relocations.
Private networking: Provides secure and isolated network environments for critical tasks.
Multi-zone support: Offers scalable solutions for distributed cloud management.

What benefits and ROI should users consider?

Open-source model: Allows extensive customization without licensing costs, enhancing ROI.
Ease of management: Simplifies operations, reducing time and resources spent on maintenance.
Scalability: Enables growth and adaptability, fostering agility in expanding businesses.
Flexibility: Supports various workloads and environments, meeting diverse operational needs.

CloudStack is implemented across industries, used in managing virtual environments, offering IaaS in public, private, and hybrid cloud models. Companies use it for internal virtualization and customer service, integrating with hypervisors across data centers to orchestrate virtual machines and support development and testing globally.

Apache

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

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

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

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack vs. VMware Aria Operations

August 2026

Free Report: CloudStack vs. VMware Aria Operations

Find out what your peers are saying about CloudStack vs. VMware Aria Operations and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.

DOWNLOAD NOW

908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our CloudStack vs. VMware Aria Operations report.

See our list of best Cloud Management vendors.

We monitor all Cloud Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.