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VMware Aria Automation vs nOps comparison

 

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
28th
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.9
Number of Reviews
4
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 (8th), Network Automation (6th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (20th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of nOps is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 5.8%, down from 11.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Aria Automation5.8%
nOps0.8%
Other93.4%
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—once set up, it manages AWS savings plans on my behalf, freeing my team to work on more valuable tasks without missing out on discounts."
"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."
"One customer saved 35 percent on their cloud bill, which is pretty significant."
"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 to work on more valuable tasks without losing out on discounts."
"nOps smoothly integrated with our AWS infrastructure and achieved significant savings without much intervention from our internal team."
"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."
"We use it to deploy databases and testing environments. It spins up quickly and also break down fast."
"I used the technical support during upgrades. They came onsite and are very technical. They are very good"
"We have been able to reduce the process to around 30 minutes."
"I can make a blueprint with an Active Directory deployment. With everything prepared, people can start installing our products."
"As it provides maximum functionality, it keeps automation short and sweet, and this helps writing automation in a modular format."
"The infrastructure has helped us to greatly increase our agility."
"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."
"It is possible to completely automatize the creation and removal of a virtual machine."
 

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"
"It's not a smooth upgrade process. For a DTA environment, which is very simple, it is a smooth process, but for our production environment, which is quite enhanced and has a lot of dependencies, it's not easy at all, and it results in a lot of errors... It takes a lot of retries to upgrade which ends up being costly."
"Technical support could be improved. I definitely feel that the product is accelerating faster than the support engineers are able to keep up with the knowledge needed to know what's going on. The developers maintaining vRealize Automation are doing a great job improving it, but VMware is not doing a great job of training the people who we call to get support for it."
"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. But that has to be automated as well. If there was a way for us to have the virtual machines connect to switches that are external to VMware, that would be great. That way, it would handle the entire workflow from creation and provisioning of a VM to the connectivity to the external IP addresses which allow our customers to have access to the VM. Currently, that IP configuration has to be done manually."
"Ability to mimic more VCD functionality. Ability to share blueprints among tenants, or have a master blueprint repository, so you don't have to move the stuff between tenants."
"It is bleeding edge technology, but at times, it is buggy."
"I don't feel that, with our implementation of vRealize Automation, we have really gotten very far."
"I would like to see more integration to do things like DR, from a court perspective."
"Better training, or training modules, wouldn't hurt."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"We do plan to see ROI with any new implementation of new technologies being implemented within our environment."
"The solution is free of cost."
"A simplified version for small businesses would be good."
"The solution is pretty expensive but provides good workload management."
"The solution has helped to increase infrastructure, agility, speed, and provisioning in the time to market."
"I would rate the pricing a ten out of ten, with ten being very expensive."
"So much can be done with the Open Source side, and especially for smaller shops. I personally think the pricing for Enterprise is hard to justify."
"The pricing is very high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise130
 

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?
nOps can be improved by having their account managers be more responsive and treat customers that are tail spend a little bit better than enterprise customers. I understand that smaller customers s...
What is your primary use case for nOps?
My main use case for nOps is cost savings. A quick, specific example of how I use nOps for cost savings is through their automated cost savings feature. This involves automated management of saving...
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: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.