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VMware Aria Automation vs nOps comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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

"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."
"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."
"One customer saved 35 percent on their cloud bill, which is pretty significant."
"The solution provides actionable reporting and cost-saving recommendations."
"We're automating a lot of OS builds, and the front-end gives us a way for users to go and request those services and the orchestrator part lets us automate a lot of the functions involved in them."
"I think vRA stands at the top of the list of the products that we rate, because of the problems that it has helped us to solve, in terms of providing the services to our end customers."
"Our speed of provisioning has also improved; we used to build systems manually, which would take four hours or a day, but nowadays we're able to spin something up off a template that we update every so often and it takes about 20 minutes."
"It has made it easier for IT to support developers, and our tech support people are happy with it."
"Before, it took us two days to provision new machines, and today the whole process is done in about two hours."
"vRealize Automation has improved the speed of provisioning just by automating things, making people think about whether a human really needs to do something or can we make the machines do it for us. It is a lot faster to deploy things now."
"The setup was complex in many ways. The first reason is that we have many teams who work on it so it gets complicated gathering all of the people. The second reason is that it can be complicated to install it quickly, within a reasonable amount of time."
"The ROI that we see is that people don't have to work too hard to have something done and therefore they have more time to market."
 

Cons

"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"
"I suggest improving the heat map capability with the option to use showback values as the x and y-axis."
"However, it misses a perfect score because multi-cloud feature parity is still catching up to its gold-standard AWS toolset."
"The most important thing that we missed in vRanger was the possibility to mount several images instantaneously and present it so we can run it immediately."
"Stability has gotten a lot better. However, the vRO aspect, when you have a multi vRA head, is a little bit finicky still. vRO still needs to stay on one appliance and be one application, because, when you have two, you can't see runs on the other one that are happening when you're not logged into that one."
"The stability is okay, but could be improved. We sometimes receive strange errors, which can only be solved with specialists."
"vRealize Automation on the back-end is still a little complicated. It has a lot of moving pieces, simplifying that from a pure infrastructure point of view would be a good thing. I would then like to have more out-of-the-box functionality and integrations with VMware components."
"Its configuration process could be better."
"The high price of the tool is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"I would like to see a simpler way of provisioning it. As is, we can automate the provisioning of a VM, however, when it comes to the external IPs, that is outside of VMware."
"I have found 7.4 to be user-friendly but 7.5 is not, in fact, it's a nightmare."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Better pricing is always handy, but I feel it's at the right price point."
"VMware Aria Automation is expensive."
"It is an expensive product. After VMware's acquisition by Broadcom, there was a rise in the price of VMware Aria Automation."
"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."
"The cost of the solution is reasonable for us. Although it is relatively high, we prioritize stability and integration over cost."
"Customers say this solution is costlier compared to its competitors."
"The solution has helped to increase infrastructure, agility, speed, and provisioning in the time to market."
"vRealize automation really should be a front door to the whole VMware suite of products."
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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.