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

10th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (11th)

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 (16th), Container Monitoring (6th), Cloud Monitoring Software (12th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Nagios Core is 1.9%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 1.6%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

IT Infrastructure Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Nagios Core	1.9%
VMware Aria Operations for Applications	1.6%
Other	96.5%

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.

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

"Nagios is able to minimize server downtime and this in turn helps to generate more revenue."

"Nagios Core is a great tool for monitoring the infrastructure including MSM queues, and when we use the agent, we can add other things as well."

"Using Nagios, I'm managing more than 1000 services, which involves the following operating nodes: IBM AIX, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, HP-Unix, Windows enterprise-grade OS, Cisco router/switches, FortiGate and WatchGuard firewalls, APC UPS systems, and many more."

"The most valuable feature depends on the project. It's great if you need to check to ensure a service is running 24/7. I can use the full solution for free, and it's flexible. If I need to add a dashboard, I can integrate it with Nagios. Cloud synchronization is wonderful."

"We are using Nagios Core on a VM and it's working very well, even though the specs of the VM are very low because it doesn't require much storage."

"The application performance monitoring feature is valuable."

"Our customers like that Nagios Core is an open source solution. It can be customized to our customers' specific needs."

"The solution's most valuable feature is that it offers proper alerting capabilities."

More Nagios Core pros

"I find VMware Aria Operations for Applications to be very stable, and I would rate it a ten out of ten."

"We haven't had any issues with stability."

"Wavefront gives us the complexity we need, instead of spending time coming up with a nice dashboard from some other means, or just creating and coding our own app."

"For us, the ease of deployment in combination with TMZ was the most important part because we don't have to manually deploy a complex monitoring solution, we can more or less do that with the click of a button, and we are not dependent on the developers to provide us with all the necessary features and functions to make that work."

"The stability of Aria Operations for Applications has improved significantly over the years."

"Wavefront's monitoring tools and visibility into public cloud platforms are competing with the best out there."

"The most valuable aspects of the solution are its ease of use and its ease of implementation."

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

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications pros

Cons

"The dashboard should be improved."

"We're using the free version, which limits us in terms of the things that we can do. If we had the paid version, a lot of our issues would probably go away. For example, we can't isolate instances that are being built or updated with the production ones. When they're being built, on Nagios, they're showing in red. It'd be nice to be able to partition those off until they're all green, and then we can bring them into the environment. This is probably because we've got the free version and not the paid version. If we went for the paid version, it would probably allow us to do exactly what we want to or remove the restrictions that we have, but if we are able to isolate instances in the free version, it would make life much easier."

"I believe Nagios Core will need to provide an option for big data platforms in the future."

"Don't use it. If you're starting from scratch, there are products that scale better and perform better, and they use the same plugin syntax as they were initially Nagios forks."

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

"I believe Nagios Core will need to provide an option for big data platforms in the future."

"Making it a little easier to configure and set up from the start would help. There are multiple layers that you have to wade through to be able to set it up, to do it the right way, and to get it to do what you want it to do."

"The mapping is a little hard."

More Nagios Core cons

"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."

"The solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor."

"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."

"However, it is still not a very mature product."

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

"They could make it more easy to plug-in data so that a nontechnical person will be able to use it, like accountants or finance people."

"They just need more capability. A few areas still need more enhancements in the technology capability space."

"The main problem I have is that the license cost is very high."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have saved a lot of time, money, and effort in reducing disaster times, which is owed to Nagios quick alerting."

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

"The product is cheaply priced."

"Lessening the price point would be an improvement."

"Most the plugin features are free."

"Nagios Core is a cheap solution."

"It's free."

"We are using the free version."

More Nagios Core pricing and cost advice

"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."

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

"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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893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	23

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

Nagios Core offers a versatile monitoring solution that efficiently manages notifications, reporting, and resource usage. Its open-source architecture provides flexibility and customization options for comprehensive infrastructure health management.

Nagios Core, known for its extensible plugin architecture, proactively enhances infrastructure management with customizable notifications and reliable reporting. Seamlessly integrating various plugins, it offers real-time dashboards and efficient alerting systems for thorough monitoring. Its adaptability and ease of configuration make it popular among users seeking flexible monitoring solutions. However, improvements in the web interface, scalability, performance, and visualization are needed to enhance accessibility. Users seek better alert mechanisms, more robust PDF export features, and simpler setup processes for increased efficiency.

What are the key features of Nagios Core?

Customizable Notifications: Tailor alerts to suit specific needs.
Reliable Reporting: Provides detailed insights into system performance.
Light Resource Usage: Operates efficiently with minimal resource demands.
Extensible Plugin Architecture: Supports a wide range of third-party integrations.
Real-Time Dashboards: Offers instant insights into system health.

What benefits should users expect from Nagios Core?

Flexibility: Allows detailed customization for unique monitoring requirements.
Open-Source Nature: Encourages community-driven enhancements and support.
Integration Capabilities: Facilitates seamless interaction with other tools and platforms.
Adaptability: Supports monitoring across different environments seamlessly.

In many industries, Nagios Core is integral to monitoring infrastructure and services, including cloud servers, applications, and network devices. Users rely on it for issue detection, capacity planning, and maintaining system stability in environments like AWS and on-premise servers. Its capabilities in CPU, memory, and bandwidth monitoring along with alert systems support sectors needing real-time oversight of critical equipment.

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