Red Hat CloudForms vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

Red Hat and Broadcom are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. Red Hat is ranked #35, while Broadcom is ranked #3 with an average rating of 7.9. Red Hat holds a 1.8% mindshare in CM, compared to Broadcom’s 6.2% mindshare. Additionally, 66% of Red Hat users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Red Hat CloudForms

Read 10 Red Hat CloudForms reviews

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945 Comparison Views

66% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Automation

Read 171 VMware Aria Automation reviews

8,437 Views
4,556 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Red Hat CloudForms

VMware Aria Automation

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

VMware Aria Automation and Red Hat CloudForms compete in automation capabilities. VMware Aria seems to have the upper hand due to its seamless AD group integration and advanced automation features.

Features: VMware Aria Automation offers seamless AD group integration which facilitates broad user access and the creation of custom service designs using vCO. It integrates with SaltStack for rapid service alerts and automation of scaling, providing multi-cloud support and remote execution advantages. Red Hat CloudForms provides extensibility through open-source tools, offering robust cross-platform support but often requires manual configuration for achieving full functionality.

Room for Improvement: VMware Aria Automation could enhance its logging capabilities and improve integration with public clouds and DevOps tools. Additionally, users have requested more comprehensive documentation and better testing procedures to resolve bugs in new versions. Red Hat CloudForms is noted for its complexity and challenging user-friendliness. Users suggest the product needs more intuitive plug-and-play features and easier integration processes.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Aria Automation is typically deployed in private clouds and receives mixed reviews regarding technical support. Some users benefit from swift assistance, while others experience delays in escalation and case handling. Red Hat CloudForms appreciates community-based support for its open-source components, but users report delays with official support channels. VMware Aria is favored for organizations seeking extensive customization.

Pricing and ROI: VMware Aria Automation’s pricing is perceived as high due to its multi-tiered licensing model, though it often yields ROI through reduced deployment times and operational efficiencies. Red Hat CloudForms is less expensive for open-source users but commands higher costs for enterprise solutions. It is less flexible in scaling without additional resources, but both solutions show substantial ROI through reducing manual intervention.

To learn more, read our detailed Red Hat CloudForms vs. VMware Aria Automation Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat CloudForms vs. VMware Aria Automation

February 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

Red Hat CloudForms

Ranking in Cloud Management

35th

Average Rating

6.4

Reviews Sentiment

5.8

Number of Reviews

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

171

Ranking in other categories

Configuration Management (7th), Network Automation (6th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (20th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Red Hat CloudForms is 1.8%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 6.2%, down from 11.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
VMware Aria Automation	6.2%
Red Hat CloudForms	1.8%
Other	92.0%

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

Ilhami Arikan

Cloud Services Automation Technologies Manager at Garanti Teknoloji

A stable solution that helps to provision servers

We use the solution to provision servers. I am impressed with the product's ability to create dynamic catalogs. The solution's provisioning engine needs to be improved. I would rate the solution's stability an eight out of ten. I would rate the product's scalability a seven out of ten and…

Read full review

reviewer2597814

IT Infrastructure Manager at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees

Compliance is maintained effectively and automation boosts productivity but further improvements in full-time reduction are desired

I am still using VMware tools. In fact, I have to migrate to a new alternative. I do not deal with vCenter or vSphere as or other VMware products yet. I do not deal with vSphere either. I do not use the Horizon Cloud yet or Horizon Desktop. We use VMware Workstation and vRealize. I use vRealize. VMware Aria Automation is compliant. It is not difficult for them. The regulations request us to perform or to have some security managed ways, and the regulations are clear about that, including authentication and everything related to security. Based on my experience, I rate VMware Aria Automation an eight out of ten.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features of Red Hat CloudForms are the benefit of the collective functionality."

"The multi-tenancy feature has been very helpful for our clients. It has been working fine and seamlessly for them. Its interface is also very simplified, and it is also an open and easy-to-scale solution."

"The stability of the solution is very good. We haven't had any issues with it."

"Red Hat CloudForms is stable once it is up and running."

"I am impressed with the product's reports."

"The optimization of the solution is quite interesting."

"I am impressed with the product's ability to create dynamic catalogs."

"Red Hat CloudForms is a stable product. There is no issue with the stability."

More Red Hat CloudForms pros

"We needed vRA to easily integrate with our hypervisor, orchestration, security (tenant segmentation, PCI), workflows, custom code, and internal monitoring/management tools. Since we didn’t have time to develop our own web front-end during the development sprints, vRA saved considerable time and resource cycles. Its ability to easily integrate with all of the VMware cloud products as well as public cloud providers, like AWS and Azure, out-of-the-box, makes it an even more powerful tool."

"The ability to programmatically describe the desired state of a single, or an entire fleet of servers, on-premises, and in a cloud environment."

"The product is very user-friendly."

"The initial setup was straightforward. It's easy to deploy."

"It allows some of the tenants to self-provision their machines, so they don't have to wait for us to create the machine for them."

"The automation functionality has been most valuable. With a click of a button, we are able to automate provisioning, the build of new hardware and apply patches. These are all extremely important and differentiated tasks that can be automated in SaltStack."

"The best feature I saw with the VMware Aria Automation product was that it was easy to handle."

"The most valuable feature that we have is that it's able to deploy several different operating systems, it's able to deploy whatever we want. We can take a template, spin it up, revise it, save it back off, and be able to have that for other departments. We can have one for our Dev team and one for our research team which has some specific requirements. We can keep track of them and deploy things automatically."

More VMware Aria Automation pros

Cons

"The complexity of the solution is a bit high in comparison to VMware."

"The problem is that the platform requires it to be maintained and updated. Also, a few cases are still pending with the Red Hat support team since they are not closed yet."

"I have issues with the solution's permissions. Unlike VMware, the product doesn't allow folder-type permissions."

"Red Hat CloudForms could improve by allowing more customization of reports. We have to do a lot of coding to accomplish what we want. Additionally, the compatibility with the multi-cloud could improve. The latter versions of the solution removed Google support and the cost comparison between other clouds was high."

"It is difficult to create a complete dashboard that includes all the needed features or catalogs."

"All of the areas of Red Hat CloudForms could improve. It doesn't do half of the things that it says it can do out of the box. It takes configuration to make any of it work, which is not uncommon for solutions similar to this. However, it is frustrating."

"Because the solution needs to integrate with other products that surround it, there is a lot of configuration required, and this can be quite complex. It's not as easy as it is with, for example, VMware."

"The solution's provisioning engine needs to be improved."

More Red Hat CloudForms cons

"The initial setup was complex because we have a high availability cluster. Especially when it comes to upgrades, we have a lot of downtimes and problems. The upgrade experience has been painful."

"The back-end has a steep learning curve."

"The setup needs coding. It's not easy. It's not straightforward."

"The stability is why I rated it a seven and not higher. There were several cases where we had to restart some services because it wasn't working correctly anymore. People cannot extend their machine or replay their machine. There is no alert to say that there is a problem and that we should stop the service. The monitoring system is not very good."

"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."

"It is not intuitive or user-friendly. It's complicated as heck. We actually hired VMware Professional Services to come in. I understand the newer version, which we're not quite on yet, is easier and that the interface is better. But the product is really a profession unto itself. The user interface could be improved on."

"Normally, on the first call to technical support, you don't get the right person. The log analysis takes a long time. This is something which should be improved."

"I don't find it to be entirely user-friendly. There are a lot of complicated menus within menus within menus. Things move around from version to version."

More VMware Aria Automation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Red Hat CloudForms was not competitive, it was expensive."

"It is definitely cheaper than VMware. Everything is included. There is no challenge there."

"Red Hat CloudForms is a bit expensive."

"The product's licensing is based on the number of servers."

"Red Hat CloudForms has a subscript-based pricing model. The cost is approximately $20,000 annually which allows you to use as many users as you want."

"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."

"It is an open-source product."

"From a budget point of view, the pricing is a bit on the higher side."

"VMware Aria Automation is expensive."

"The pricing is very high."

"From the customer perspective, the value was worth it."

"SaltStack is an open-source product."

"We do plan to see ROI with any new implementation of new technologies being implemented within our environment."

More VMware Aria Automation pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

15%

Computer Software Company

13%

University

10%

Marketing Services Firm

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Large Enterprise	7

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	32
Midsize Enterprise	24
Large Enterprise	130

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...

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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 ...

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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 ...

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Comparisons

VMware Cloud Director vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 10% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 9% of the time

CloudStack vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 7% of the time

Morpheus vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 7% of the time

Cloudify vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 7% of the time

More Red Hat CloudForms Competitors

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 14% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 8% of the time

Morpheus vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 7% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 4% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 4% of the time

More VMware Aria Automation Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat CloudForms

January 2026

Download Red Hat CloudForms product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Automation

January 2026

Download VMware Aria Automation product report

Also Known As

No data available

VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack

Overview

Manage container, virtual, private, and public cloud infrastructures

Managing a complex, hybrid IT environment can require multiple management tools, redundant policy implementations, and extra staff to handle the operations. Red Hat® CloudForms simplifies IT, providing unified management and operations in a hybrid environment.

As your IT infrastructure progresses from traditional virtualization toward an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) model, CloudForms evolves, protecting your investments and providing consistent user experience and functionality.

Red Hat

VMware Aria Automation is a cloud management tool that allows companies to simplify their cloud experience through a modern automation platform. The solution is designed to deliver self-service clouds, multi-cloud automation with governance, and DevOps-based security and infrastructure management. It helps organizations improve IT agility, efficiency, and productivity through its various features.

VMware Aria Automation has multiple use cases that include the following:

Self-service multi-cloud: VMware Aria Automation can be used to deliver consistent self-service consumption. Another use case in this area is for delivering infrastructure across VMware Clouds as well as public clouds.
Multi-cloud governance: The solution can be used to manage cost, performance, networking, configuration, and security at scale for multi-cloud environments. VMware Aria Automation offers all this with an everything-as-code approach.
DevOps for infrastructure: Through VMware Aria Automation, companies can enable a powerful infrastructure as code platform with support for iterative development and infrastructure pipelining.
Kubernetes automation: Users can utilize VMware Aria Automation to automate the management of Kubernetes clusters and namespaces with support for vSphere with Tanzu.
Security operations: VMware Aria Automation facilitates event-driven automation to deliver full-service IT system compliance enforcement and vulnerability remediation.

VMware Aria Automation Features

VMware Aria Automation has various features that allow users to easily perform operations. Some of the solution's capacities include:

VMware Cloud agnostic template: This feature allows organizations to use a single cloud template to deploy with Infrastructure as a Code. Deployment options include VMware Cloud as well as major public cloud platforms such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and more.
Extensibility and customization: This VMware Aria Automation feature allows users to get full extensibility and customization. This can be achieved through Aria Automation Orchestrator, Action-Based Extensibility (ABX), and built-in integrations with common third-party tools.
Self-service multi-cloud: This feature enables users to request and provision infrastructure resources. It can be done across clouds using a unified and consistent Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) consumption layer, idempotent REST API, and self-service catalog.
Centralized policies and governance: VMware Aria Automation offers a feature for users to manage multiple clouds with templatized cloud and policy definition, automated remediation, and cloud environment visibility.
Configuration management: Through this feature of the product, day 1 and 2 control can be achieved for virtualized and cloud environments. This can be done with intuitive configuration automation, compliance enforcement, and vulnerability remediation.
Infrastructure pipelining: Through this feature, organizations can access user-friendly release automation pipelines. They can be specifically tailored for CI/CD in infrastructure use cases.

VMware Aria Automation Benefits

VMware Aria Automation offers its users various benefits. Some of the biggest advantages that the solution brings to companies that utilize it include:

VMware Aria Automation provides faster time to market for companies through offloading manual tasks with advanced workflows and agile templating.
The solution offers high levels of security and control.
This product is suitable for beginners, as it offers a self-service consumption experience for users.
VMware Aria Automation accelerates innovation through Infrastructure as Code and DevOps principles.
The product provides users with flexibility, as it is compatible with the most popular public cloud solutions.
The solution offers fast deployment because of all natively integrated functions.

Reviews from Real Users

Awais J., CTO/CEO at a tech services company, likes VMware Aria Automation because it saves a lot of time, provides more visibility, and has extensive automation capabilities.

An IT consultant at a government rates VMware Aria Automation highly because the product gives you flexibility to analyze and consume resources.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

Cox Automotive, Penn State, FICO, G-ABLE, Seneca College, ITandTEL, The Paris Lodron University of Salzburg (PLUS), MyRepublic, Macquarie, The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, CBTS, Network Data Solutions (NDS)

Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat CloudForms vs. VMware Aria Automation

February 2026

Free Report: Red Hat CloudForms vs. VMware Aria Automation

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