Nagios Core vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

Nagios Core vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

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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

Nagios Core

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

11th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (10th)

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

16th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (19th), Container Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (15th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Nagios Core is 2.4%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 1.6%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

IT Infrastructure Monitoring Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Nagios Core	2.4%
VMware Aria Operations for Applications	1.6%
Other	96.0%

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Featured Reviews

Husham Yaqoob

Senior System Administrator at Interactive Group

Monitoring solution provides comprehensive visibility across IT infrastructure

The good thing about Nagios Core is it covers everything. Everything in the IT domain, you can monitor anything. You can even monitor printers, the ports of printers, Core workstations, and storage. You can monitor the workflow Core and the utilization of computes. If you want to grasp everything of your IT equipment on a single interface, you can use Nagios. It's the best one. It provides dashboards, and you can also configure your emails and alerts with it. If something is critical, you can configure it to notify via emails. It has a very handy dashboard, providing live alerts and visibility for everything.

Read full review

Ajay Shukla

Consultant at HCLTech

Automation and insightful diagnostics elevate operations while improvements are welcome

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 private, public, and hybrid, are already well-implemented. The ability to manage multiple vCenters across different geographical locations is very effective. The new Skyline health feature and certificate and licensing management are particularly useful improvements. The dashboard's overview tab provides comprehensive information about current vCenter status, resizable amounts, reclamation opportunities, anomalies, diagnostics, licensing, and certificates. However, there is room for improvement in application analysis. The current functionality lacks detailed monitoring at the kernel level, focusing mainly on CPU, memory, and storage matrices. Enhanced application monitoring capabilities, including tracking downtime for specific types of applications such as transactional or e-commerce applications, would be beneficial.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Key features include the GUI interface, its notification capabilities, and the real-time reporting."

"Other products are good but from the configuration point of view Nagios is really very lightweight. The price is really good in my opinion. Another important thing is that my Nagios engine still works with Dual core 8GB ram for the last 10 years."

"The most valuable features are the reports and the way it generates the report in a graphical manner."

"The application performance monitoring feature is valuable."

"Nagios Core is very configurable. Whatever you want, you can do it."

"What I like about Nagios Core is that it helps me ensure everything is running smoothly by checking the status of hosts and services."

"The notifications are definitely one of the most valuable features of Nagios Core. We know what to look for and what to expect when things are down."

"The reporting structure and the feature set are valuable to me."

More Nagios Core pros

"Tanzu itself, integrated with multiple solutions, bestows support and security upon a container platform, especially when it comes to managing open-source container platforms such as Kubernetes."

"The solution is great for virtualization and preparing the infrastructure in Tanzu to test products. It's very fast and has good visibility."

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

"It significantly improves application performance management by offering recommendations for resource allocation to avoid wastage or overcommitment."

"People are very pleased with the implementation."

"VMware comes with a support team, and if you have trouble, you can easily create a ticket, and VMware will help you. Therefore, the best aspect is the support."

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

"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."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications pros

Cons

"It's not that easy to install the product itself. Also, the UI is a bit hard for regular users to navigate through."

"t was a little hard to get our setup represented in the configuration."

"The UI is a little outdated and graphics could be displayed in a better way."

"It is a bit slow due to latency."

"The dashboard should be improved."

"Nagios Core does not have a graphic display."

"Cloud monitoring is an area for improvement because there aren't too many plugins available."

"Nagios Core is limited in terms of distributed setups, and there is no central view for remote data centers."

More Nagios Core cons

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

"The return on investment is best suited for organizations that do not have the resources for a dedicated VM environment team. However, the cost of the product doesn't show significant benefits."

"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."

"VMware technical support has declined since the Broadcom acquisition. Previously, they were more focused on issue resolution, but now they prioritize licensing verification before providing support."

"Its billing model is consumption-based. I understand the consumption-based model, but it is not necessarily easy to estimate and guess how many points or how much we are going to consume on a specific application up until we get to that point. So, for us, it would be helpful to have more insights or predictability into what we can expect from a cost perspective if we are starting to use specific features. This can potentially also drive our consumption a bit more."

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

"An area for improvement would be more in-depth reporting, such as analyzing disk IO during business hours compared to after hours."

"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."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Nagios Core is free to use."

"Most the plugin features are free."

"The product is cheaply priced."

"Lessening the price point would be an improvement."

"We are using the open-source, unpaid version."

"Nagios Core is a cheap solution."

"We are using the free version of Nagios Core."

"It's free."

More Nagios Core pricing and cost advice

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

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

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Government

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	22

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	10

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nagios Core?

Nagios Core is a free and open-source product. We don't charge for the product itself, but we charge for the man-hour costs related to installation, configuration, ongoing operation, and maintenance.

What needs improvement with Nagios Core?

The dashboard should be improved. It's very simple. I don't have a very clear or specific suggestion. You can change the skin of the dashboard, however, it's good for me.

What is your primary use case for Nagios Core?

I was a senior system administrator. I've been using Nagios Core for more than ten years now. It can be used to monitor hosts, such as machines, and monitor services of any kind. I'm using it to mo...

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...

What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

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...

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Product Reports

Nagios Core

Download Nagios Core product report

VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Download VMware Aria Operations for Applications product report

VMware Aria Operations for Applications report

Also Known As

No data available

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

Overview

This is IT infrastructure monitoring's industry-standard, open-source core. Free without professional support services.

Nagios

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.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel

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

Nagios Core vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications