OpenNebula vs VMware Aria Operations comparison

OpenNebula and Broadcom are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. OpenNebula is ranked #9 with an average rating of 7.0, while Broadcom is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.6. OpenNebula holds a 2.5% mindshare in CM, compared to Broadcom’s 4.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of OpenNebula users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

OpenNebula

Read 15 OpenNebula reviews

2,805 Views
2,665 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Operations

Read 376 VMware Aria Operations reviews

9,256 Views
5,461 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

OpenNebula

VMware Aria Operations

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

VMware Aria Operations and OpenNebula compete in the cloud management category. Based on the data, VMware Aria Operations has the upper hand due to its advanced analytics and predictive insights specifically tailored for VMware environments.

Features: VMware Aria Operations is distinguished by real-time analytics, integration with vCenter/ESXI, and dynamic thresholds, which provide predictive insights into VMware environments. It offers capacity management and proactivity through detailed metrics for issue prevention. OpenNebula, meanwhile, is noted for its flexibility and adaptability across various platforms while being less specialized in VMware contexts.

Room for Improvement: VMware Aria Operations could enhance user engagement by simplifying its reporting features and improving the user interface for beginners. Additionally, expanding integration capabilities with third-party tools would extend its applicability beyond VMware. OpenNebula needs to improve its documentation and customer support for clearer communication. Of note, the platform would benefit from more robust community backing and quicker feature updates.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Aria Operations supports on-premises, hybrid, and private cloud deployments, with a recognized strong technical support network. However, reaching advanced support levels could be improved. OpenNebula is favored for its straightforward setup for on-premises and public cloud deployments, but it requires clearer communication channels and faster customer support response times.

Pricing and ROI: VMware Aria Operations is on the higher end of the pricing spectrum, making it more appealing to larger enterprises with specific VMware needs, substantiated by a significant ROI in environments heavily utilizing VMware. OpenNebula offers a cost-effective open-source alternative with lower upfront and operational costs, making it desirable for budget-conscious scenarios, albeit with some limitations in advanced features compared to VMware Aria Operations.

To learn more, read our detailed OpenNebula vs. VMware Aria Operations Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

OpenNebula vs. VMware Aria Operations

March 2026

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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

OpenNebula

Ranking in Cloud Management

9th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VMware Aria Operations

Ranking in Cloud Management

2nd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

376

Ranking in other categories

Virtualization Management Tools (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of OpenNebula is 2.5%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations is 4.3%, down from 8.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
VMware Aria Operations	4.3%
OpenNebula	2.5%
Other	93.2%

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

FOURES Jean-Philippe

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.

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AldoDomini

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"It is quite easy to deploy."

"The most valuable feature of OpenNebula is that it scales very well."

"The solution provides templates for configurations that can easily be exchanged to VMs."

"It makes maintenance very easy and stress-free for our teams."

"The service feature appeals most to us, thus it is the most valuable."

"What's best about OpenNebula that people like is that it's easy to deploy. It's also easy to manage. It's interesting because people choose OpenNebula over other solutions because of the ease of management."

"With a single click, we could set things up and initiate them."

More OpenNebula pros

"When there is an issue at the disk level in vSAN, vROps gives us an alarm that the issue is happening on particular disks. Other solutions cannot give this type of alert for vCenter. Even vCenter cannot give that type of information."

"I like that it's integrated with the other suite of tools. That's a big plus for the tool. It's well-integrated with Log Insight. We use that integration quite a bit."

"This solution is most definitely scalable. We've already gone back to the drawing board and specifically designed it from the ground up, to be scalable with the size of our environment moving forward."

"It gives me more insight on issues like: Do we need to add more hardware to the clusters; when disks are low, to add more disk space. It's a preventive type of maintenance."

"The most valuable feature is determining if more resources are needed, at the hypervisor level, based on the workload of the virtual machines that we have in our environment."

"It's pretty user-friendly. It is very intuitive, the layout is well-built, and the user experience is well-built. You look at the interface and you say, "Oh, I understand what these sections or what these categories of features do." For example, for reporting, there's a tab that says "Reporting." You click on it and there are all your reports. So the user interface is really well-designed to make it intuitive."

"I have found the backup extremely useful in my use cases."

"Valuable features include trending of performance and capacity. Also, being able to dive into some more detailed analysis of performance metrics and compare them to a baseline of what's normal for particular time frames."

More VMware Aria Operations pros

Cons

"Backup features are only available in the enterprise edition. The community version lacks a good solution for making backups."

"There are small things that are hard. For example, making sure that it is going to be installable on public clouds."

"Hosting platforms are limited so the deployment process needs improvement."

"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."

"Most of the competitors are offering some sort of billing software to transform their installation to work as a small-sized public cloud, but those offerings from OpenNebula are still missing."

"An area for improvement in OpenNebula is the number of features it has. The solution doesn't have that many cloud features compared to other solutions. You'd say, "Okay, simplicity over a rich feature list?" Some say, "No, I need a big machine or a cloud interface for my customers to manage resources. I don't have to go and do it for them." Some people do it that way, and it works, but I'd like to improve the limited features in OpenNebula."

"It should have a simple REST API like most other tools. It's the industry standard format. An XML-RPC API gives you an XML document that you have to convert and then do something with that. REST API endpoint provides outputs in a JSON document. I would also like to see support for user data or heat templates, which OpenStack offers, but OpenNebula doesn't have this yet."

"The storage feature that they have is a bit confusing."

More OpenNebula cons

"Some of the more advanced stuff takes a bit of time to dig into it. It takes a little longer to setup if you want really detailed stuff. They could make the learning curve smoother."

"Monitoring is useful but if the solution can't automate or function without my input, it's a waste of my time. That's where I found out there are some issues with this product, there are elements that are not as intuitive as they could or should be."

"There are some metrics that are not included in the canned set, that we've created. They call them super metrics in the tool, where you create your own metric. But the super metrics are not really reliable. It might be because we didn't create them correctly, although we did have help from VMware. They also don't translate into newer versions like a canned metric would. One of them is a vCPU to pCPU ratio. That's one that is missing, which should be very simple for them to collect."

"We would like easier customer reporting, because to do customer reports, we have to do a lot of programming."

"It requires a lot of knowledge to manage. For example, if you are collecting a lot of data for analysis, the virtual appliance drive spaces can fill up. In this case, you need engineers who know how to expand those spaces."

"I would like to go back in history on the performance data and blank out some of that performance data so that it isn't used in calculations."

"Maybe the interface is a little bit archaic. It needs to be updated and again we're on view 6.2, we're not even on 7 yet. So maybe it's changed, but a more modern look and approach."

"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."

More VMware Aria Operations cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"OpenNebula gives good value for money."

"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."

"We use the Community Edition, rather than the Enterprise Edition."

"VRA is very expensive but OpenNebula is free."

"The solution is open source so is free."

"The billing is complicated because every country has a different option. Here in Chile, we don't pay for this kind of service with the Chilean pesos. We use another currency. In the future, I think vROps needs to work with governments for a native solution."

"It has reduced time to troubleshoot issues. With our customized dashboards, we can target issues and attribute them to the correct team."

"We have licenses on a three year basis. Licensing costs are much higher, but given the stability of the solution, it is a reasonable price."

"The product is too expensive to implement."

"I have reduced the time to troubleshoot for my customers."

"Pricing is good for us. We're non-profit so we get a break on that."

"I would give the solution a three out of five, with one being cheap and five being expensive. There are some elements of the pricing that are good, and some areas where I feel like I'm being charged for something the product can't provide yet."

"There has been a bit of cost savings in that we could decide to move workloads around a bit better."

More VMware Aria Operations pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

University

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Marketing Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	3

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	65
Midsize Enterprise	62
Large Enterprise	278

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with OpenNebula?

The web interface could be better. It's not very difficult to use, but there's room for enhancement. Another area for improvement is the integration with hardware to manage the lower layer of the n...

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What is your primary use case for OpenNebula?

Previously, we were using VMware, but recently, we've started using OpenNebula for cloud management. As a big cloud provider, it helps give customers increased control over their clusters. We use L...

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What advice do you have for others considering OpenNebula?

I recommend it, especially if you need a management interface for a small to medium private cloud. I would rate OpenNebula an eight out of ten.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

CloudStack vs OpenNebula

Compared 24% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs OpenNebula

Compared 9% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs OpenNebula

Compared 6% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs OpenNebula

Compared 6% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs OpenNebula

Compared 4% of the time

More OpenNebula Competitors

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 11% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 9% of the time

IBM Turbonomic vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 7% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 5% of the time

Nutanix Prism vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 5% of the time

More VMware Aria Operations Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

OpenNebula

March 2026

Download OpenNebula product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations

February 2026

Download VMware Aria Operations product report

Also Known As

No data available

VMware vRealize Operations (vROps), vCenter Operations Manager (VCOPS)

Overview

OpenNebula provides the most simple but feature-rich and flexible solution for the comprehensive management of virtualized data centers to enable private, public and hybrid IaaS clouds. OpenNebula interoperability makes cloud an evolution by leveraging existing IT assets, protecting your investments, and avoiding vendor lock-in.

OpenNebula is a turnkey enterprise-ready solution that includes all the features needed to provide an on-premises (private) cloud offering, and to offer public cloud services.

OpenNebula

VMware Aria Operations is a high-ranking virtualization management and cloud management tool that automates and simplifies IT management to the applications it supports. It achieves this through full-stack visibility from physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructure. The product allows users to enable self-driving IT operations management across private, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments. This is conducted with the unified operations platform that delivers continuous performance, capacity and cost optimization, and integrated compliance through artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and predictive analytics.

VMware Aria Operations Use Cases

VMware Aria Operations has several use cases, some of which include:

Continuous performance optimization: VMware Aria Operations allows users to assure application performance at a minimal cost, facilitated by real-time predictive analytics and artificial intelligence. The product can be used to automatically balance workloads, improve consolidation rations, optimize and rightsize workloads, and avoid contention.
Capacity and cost management: VMware Aria Operations can be utilized to reduce cost and improve efficiency with real-time ML-based capacity and cost analytics. The solution uses these tools to visualize cost savings opportunities and accelerate decision-making.
Intelligent remediation: This product can also be used to predict, prevent, and troubleshoot issues with actionable insights. Through other VMware integrations, users can streamline and centralize IT operations.
Integrated compliance: The solution can be utilized to reduce risk and enforce IT regulatory standards for VMware Cloud through integrated compliance and automated drift remediation.

VMware Aria Operations Features

The product has various features which users can utilize. Several of the features that the 2022 version of VMware Aria Operations introduced include:

Management pack builder: This feature is a no-code solution that allows users to expand their operations visibility to anywhere they wish. The builder allows users to connect to a data source using an HTTP or Amazon AWS data source, as well as to make API calls, create objects, and build out relationships with other objects in the product.
Public cloud basic actions: This is a set of features that allows VMware Aria Operations users to initiate actions automatically via the product's UI for AWS, Microsoft Azure, or GCP CE instances.
Rule-based application discovery: Through this new feature of the product, users can easily discover multiple applications running in all or specific areas of infrastructure and view associated resources. This can be achieved through simple user-defined rules, including discovering applications based on tags, object names, and properties.
Aria Operations capacity management: This feature allows organizations to view the results of what-if analysis based on their allocation model and specify business hours for capacity calculations.
Alerts: This is a set of features that include components called Conditions and Symptoms, which are used to alert different types of issues on the platform.
User access management: Through this feature, users can benefit from improved ways to configure in VMware Aria Operations with the introduction of scopes.
Support for raw device mapping storage: This feature allows users to get configuration details about their raw device mapping (RDM), such as disk sharing, compatibility mode, and SCSI Bus Sharing.

VMware Aria Operations Benefits

VMware Aria Operations brings various benefits to the organizations using it. Among them are the following:

The product helps organizations reduce unplanned downtime and maximize return on investment (ROI) in hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
VMware Aria Operations simplifies management for hybrid clouds from migration assessments.
Users can benefit from an accelerated journey to VMware Cloud on AWS through this solution.
The product can be delivered on premises or as a service, providing flexibility for its users.
VMware Aria Operations can increase operational efficiency through monitoring and management features.
The solution accelerates decision-making through detailed cost analytics, which is visualized for users' convenience.
VMware Aria Operations allows users to both utilize standard compliance templates and create their own custom ones.

Reviews from Real Users

Mohamed N., a tech lead VMware support engineer at a tech services company, appreciates VMware Aria Operations because it is easy to use, stable, and support is always available.

Mojtaba K., a senior system administrator at a comms service provider, values VMware Aria Operations due to the fact that its dashboards give you a glimpse of what is really going on in your virtualized environment.

Broadcom

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

Buyer's Guide

OpenNebula vs. VMware Aria Operations

March 2026

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