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VMware Aria Automation vs nOps comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

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

nOps
Ranking in Cloud Management
17th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
4.6
Number of Reviews
5
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
172
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (10th), Network Automation (7th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (28th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of nOps is 0.9%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 5.3%, down from 9.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Aria Automation5.3%
nOps0.9%
Other93.8%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Tom Weeks - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Director of Engineering at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Automates savings plan management and improves cost visibility while reducing cloud infrastructure needs
I find it to be a valuable cost-savings tool. Its best features include several things: first, it is hands-off, so I can set it and forget it. I get it set up, and it manages AWS savings plans on my behalf. This frees my team up to work on more valuable work without losing out on valuable discounts. It also provides a dashboard with more detailed insights into cost and AWS cloud costs than what comes out of the box with AWS Cost Explorer. Third, the nOps Kubernetes agent automatically resizes pods based on usage, which allows us to run significantly fewer EC2 instances than we would otherwise. nOps has positively impacted my organization by saving both time and money.
VasilisGiannitsiotis - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT at ITSolutions
Automation has streamlined complex financial workflows but still needs more intuitive orchestration
Something to improve in VMware Aria Automation would be related to VCF 9, as I do not know what it is trying to bring because they exposed it as the solution of everything. So VCF 9 will bring VCF Automation and VCF Operations, the new product line of VMware. I have not seen what this brings or what else it includes. Maybe in the area of vRealize Orchestrator, this would be beneficial because VRO can do everything. Perhaps a more user-friendly way to use that tool would be helpful because the possibilities there are endless. I am looking for more user-friendly navigation in VMware Aria Automation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution provides actionable reporting and cost-saving recommendations."
"I find it to be a valuable cost-savings tool; its best features include several things: first, it is hands-off, so I can set it and forget it, and it manages AWS savings plans on my behalf, freeing my team up to work on more valuable work without losing out on valuable discounts."
"nOps smoothly integrated with our AWS infrastructure and achieved significant savings without much intervention from our internal team."
"One customer saved 35 percent on their cloud bill, which is pretty significant."
"Since making this shift, we have seen a twenty to thirty percent reduction in the total AWS compute expenditure, which represents a significant win for us."
"The automation of the redundant tasks and the implementation of ServiceNow are huge for us, as we are a cloud provider to the campus."
"We use it as a self-service customer portal for all of our present customers, and so far it's going pretty well with a lot fewer tickets and much faster onboarding."
"For a few years, when we needed a server, it took us three months to deliver one, and now we can bring one up in approximately 15 minutes."
"The initial setup is straightforward. It's not that difficult."
"The benefits are that it gives you a heads-up display and dashboard of the way everything's running. The ability to automate around those tasks is really where we get the value."
"The extensibility of it and the customization of a lot of the Blueprints, that you can customize, and the community as a whole. There's a ton of community-generated Blueprints that might be (helpful) to set up a design for your automation needs, that you can use as a base and go on from there and make changes to it."
"Now, it's no more than a half hour to activate a new VM at the customer's site."
"This product has saved us time in standing up new servers, as well as allowed us to automate the deployment of these servers and the applications that run on them."
 

Cons

"I suggest improving the heat map capability with the option to use showback values as the x and y-axis."
"The customer support is lacking but still pretty good."
"From the features, I would like to see RDS RIs and maybe better visibility on how the engine is deciding whether to use spot or on demand, to replace the instance or not"
"However, it misses a perfect score because multi-cloud feature parity is still catching up to its gold-standard AWS toolset."
"With distributed, installation is a pain. I have always gotten into errors when employing a distributed environment, which provides High Availability."
"We have seen some issues with upgrades or installations. This means we have to raise a call every time with VMware."
"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."
"Windows support is advertised as a first-rate supported platform; however, it is ripe with issues that have added countless hours to our roadmap."
"I would not recommend this product. I think that there are better products to meet your needs that are competitors on the market."
"Multitenancy management is a little bit difficult to do, so it is an area that can be improved."
"The upgrade experience is horrible. It's not straightforward, there are a lot of failures, a lot of support interactions. It's not something that we are able to pull off ourselves. I've been with vRA since it was termed vCSA. We've gone through multiple rounds, and it has never been easy."
"It is not super-intuitive. It does require some skills to understand how to use it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"VMware Aria Automation is expensive."
"It is pricey for what you get."
"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."
"It made the provisioning of the virtual machines easier and faster. We can react more quickly to customers' demands."
"We do plan to see ROI with any new implementation of new technologies being implemented within our environment."
"I would rate it high because, compared to other solutions, VMware’s pricing is quite expensive. VMware products have become significantly more costly in recent years, leading to higher costs."
"SaltStack is an open-source product."
"The solution is pretty expensive but provides good workload management."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
21%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
15%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise131
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for nOps?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it was very easy, and it was also brokered by us with the client. I did not purchase nOps through the AWS Marketplace.
What needs improvement with nOps?
While the AWS integration is flawless and deeply mature, I believe the multi-cloud capabilities for platforms such as Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud Platform can sometimes feel a bit less comprehe...
What is your primary use case for nOps?
My primary use case for nOps is automated AWS cost optimization, FinOps compliance, and infrastructure visibility. I use it to instantly surface underutilized resources and automate the management ...
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...
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 ...
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 ...
 

Also Known As

nOps - Cloud Optimization Platform
VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Find out what your peers are saying about VMware Aria Automation vs. nOps and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.