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OpenNebula vs VMware Aria Operations comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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

OpenNebula
Ranking in Cloud Management
17th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Aria Operations
Ranking in Cloud Management
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
376
Ranking in other categories
Virtualization Management Tools (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of OpenNebula is 1.7%, down from 7.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations is 3.9%, down from 8.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Aria Operations3.9%
OpenNebula1.7%
Other94.4%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

FOURES Jean-Philippe - PeerSpot reviewer
Products Manager at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Reliable, simple to manage, and offers great technical support
The support of VXLAN fits with our network management. Thanks to this we can propose mixed solutions using virtual resources on OpenNebula and bare metal servers hosted in our facilities linked to each other on the sale network. This use case is very useful when some applications need bare metal power (Kubernetes workers, huge databases, AI models computations, et cetera). The cluster management is very useful for splitting our different clusters (mutual vs dedicated). We can manage deployments and capacity planning without pain. The API is also really simple and it helped us to develop the Terraform provider to manage OpenNebula like any other cloud infrastructure.
AldoDomini - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Network Analyst at Net spa
Have faced limitations due to high costs but have maintained reliability over time
The primary issue is the pricing, which is very expensive for my company's budget. We cannot afford to pay such a large fee. We are not Microsoft or BMW; we are a small company. As a small company, I have no power to negotiate directly with VMware. Perhaps larger companies have more opportunity to contract directly with VMware, but I do not have that leverage. The only path I can follow is to change solutions. Net.spA is a company working in the field of waste management. We are not a technological company, so we do not have a large margin to justify purchasing and maintaining the VMware infrastructure at current costs.

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 templates for configurations that can easily be exchanged to VMs."
"OpenNebula freed my customer from doing the maintenance operations of the servers because now that can be done by his clients."
"With a single click, we could set things up and initiate them."
"The ability to use it almost like a public cloud for an organization is a big asset, as it will create a value proposition and can control costs in a great way."
"The most valuable feature of OpenNebula is that it scales very well."
"OpenNebula has very good integration with SAP Storage, is easy to use, has a good UI, and is very scalable."
"For the entire data center, as a private cloud, I believe that user management, expert management, and the virtual data center is completely magic for the users."
"I also like the ability to build custom functions. I can define a function where I have two types of views and configure the dependencies. The virtual data centers concept allows me to define users. If a user wants to join certain kinds of machines, the host and the other user won't see them. It gives me the flexibility to define multiple views and data centers in one place."
"The capacity planning: Purchasing hardware takes a long time for us."
"It gives you a better understanding of your VM environment, the sizing of VMs, whether they are properly sized, and provides a central plain glass to see your environment."
"Right now I'm working with a lot of other products. We're in the process of flushing out our old HPE system and moving everything over. A lot of the automation that we do, and emailing, sending out customer notices, we've been able to take that over from the HPE Operations Orchestration, and the old stack, and automate it into vRO very quickly."
"The main point of installing, deploying, and troubleshooting with vRealize Operations is to provide visual dashboards to ensure that the entire workload is functioning properly."
"We went from using industry standard KPIs to going to a complete on-demand model based on the algorithms from vRealize Operations. It has enabled us to drive more utilization out of our existing compute infrastructure to the point where, for a period of six months, we didn't purchase a single server or any additional compute. We were able to continue to sweat our existing assets."
"It's much easier to show problems to users."
"Avoiding problems in the monitoring area is our strength. We use real-time monitoring models and real-time monitoring to do this. We also provide other capabilities, such as seeing changes in the environment."
"The most valuable feature is being able to optimize our environment so we can better manage it."
 

Cons

"They should add more features like object storage."
"Template management also needs improvement in OpenNebula because it's inferior right now."
"The front-facing API can be improved to support lots of requests when the platform is huge with lots of virtual resources."
"The storage feature that they have is a bit confusing."
"Backup features are only available in the enterprise edition. The community version lacks a good solution for making backups."
"The web interface could be better. It's not very difficult to use, but there's room for enhancement."
"They have been saying for the past two and a half years that they would develop a feature to hot-add RAM and CPU, but it does not work."
"There are small things that are hard. For example, making sure that it is going to be installable on public clouds."
"It needs dashboards that we can present at the executive level. The GUI, overall, could be better."
"VMware vRealize Operations (vROps) should improve instant monitoring. Currently, the monitoring is on an interval of five to ten minutes, if I want to know what is happening now I cannot."
"I would like to see them bring in metrics for other things in the infrastructure, not just the virtual infrastructure: for example, being able to bring in metrics from my arrays themselves or my fiber channel switches or my ethernet switches. Being able to collect that data would help in being able to lay a holistic view on top of how my entire system is functioning, from the hypervisor all the way down to my end-point."
"The one thing that I am always missing is training specific to Horizon. There is no training class you can go to for the Horizon add-on for vROps. I'd like to see specific training for Horizon admins, as opposed to general vSphere admins."
"vROps is a bit expensive and that's a reason that small clients say, "No, I don't think we need this.""
"One thing that is not ideal is that I actually have to buy a third-party plug-in for things like NetApp."
"Certificate Management should be simplified for non-technical staff members."
"It would be good to have more detailed reports and more details on the dashboard."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing for OpenNebula used to be free, but now it's no longer free. A customer contacted me asking to move to another provider because of the changes in the licensing terms for OpenNebula. I have no information on how much the OpenNebula license is because the customer pays for it, and I only do the integration."
"OpenNebula gives good value for money."
"The solution is open source so is free."
"OpenNebuoa has recently come up with a new subscription model that is economical and a lot of new customers are choosing this as it is an easy subscription model."
"We use the Community Edition, rather than the Enterprise Edition."
"VRA is very expensive but OpenNebula is free."
"It is an affordable solution that doesn't require any additional costs."
"Most small users don't adopt VMware Aria Operations until it's necessary. Small businesses are looking for it, too. We need more monitoring and insights, so we're analyzing solutions to help us out here. I rate the solution’s pricing a five out of ten."
"The solution has a huge cost. If we could just have one license covering everything that vROps can do, that would be great. I would prefer it this way."
"Our manpower costs have been reduced due to the automation in conjunction with the usage of the dashboard."
"vRealize Operations has proved to be a cost effective solution for our big environment."
"Pricing is good for us. We're non-profit so we get a break on that."
"Get the right licensing and increase your licensing as you upgrade and grow. If you get the wrong licensing, it will be expensive, especially if you plan improperly."
"The licensing is not clear at the moment if the on-premises pricing is the same as on the cloud. I am checking on the pricing. However, you can save a lot of money with the cloud solution because you need to spend time installing, upgrading, and connecting with the on-premises solution. Also, you don't need to spend time scheduling the maintenance and maintaining the solution when using the cloud version."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
University
7%
Construction Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business66
Midsize Enterprise61
Large Enterprise281
 

Questions from the Community

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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 VMware Aria Operations a user friendly solution?
In terms of user-friendliness, VMware Aria Operations is one of the best solutions out there. It is not overly complex to set up and you can rely on the technical support to provide you with assis...
What is the most useful new feature of VMware Aria Operations?
For me, the alerts features are the most unique part of this product, no matter the current name it uses. When they introduced the new version of VMware Aria Operations, they also introduced more a...
 

Also Known As

No data available
VMware vRealize Operations (vROps), vCenter Operations Manager (VCOPS)
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Akamai, BBC, Fermilab, Terradue, Surf Sara, Produban, Netways, ESA, China Mobile, BlackBerry, Deloitte, Fuze, Telefonica, Trivago, Nokia, Encore Tech, Beeks.
Science Applications International Corporation, Tribune Media, Heartland Payment Systems, Telkom Indonesia, Columbia Sportswear, iGATE, CSS Corp, Angel Broking, Adira Finance, Hipskind, Beiersdorf Shared Services, Innovate Mas Indonesia, Adobe, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi , Join Experience S.A, Borusan Holdings, Department of Transport - Abu Dhabi
Find out what your peers are saying about OpenNebula vs. VMware Aria Operations and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.