Red Hat CloudForms vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

Red Hat and Broadcom are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. Red Hat is ranked #33, while Broadcom is ranked #3 with an average rating of 7.9. Red Hat holds a 1.9% mindshare in CM, compared to Broadcom’s 5.8% 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

1,091 Views
1,080 Comparison Views

66% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Automation

Read 172 VMware Aria Automation reviews

9,092 Views
5,001 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: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat CloudForms vs. VMware Aria Automation

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

Red Hat CloudForms

Ranking in Cloud Management

33rd

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

172

Ranking in other categories

Configuration Management (8th), Network Automation (6th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (19th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Red Hat CloudForms is 1.9%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 5.8%, down from 11.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
VMware Aria Automation	5.8%
Red Hat CloudForms	1.9%
Other	92.3%

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

VasilisGiannitsiotis

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.

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 optimization of the solution is quite interesting."

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

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

"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 solution is compatible and integrates with various infrastructures or providers."

"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."

More Red Hat CloudForms pros

"The extensibility of the solution when it comes to writing your own ABX actions is a valuable feature. You can write it in PowerShell, JavaScript, or Python, which is great."

"Our customers don't have to manage HVAC and space and cooling and all of those things that they used to have to do. Today, all they have to do is provision a server and manage their users."

"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."

"The setup is getting better with each version."

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

"The solution has helped us to increase infrastructure agility, mostly because, in addition to it being able to do its thing on its own, it has tie-ins to other parts of our CICD pipeline. We use Jenkins for our build process which, of course, vRA has plugins for, to be able to integrate with it. We use Chef and there is the Chef build as part of our image that we standardized to deploy, and that can tie in with our section of the pipeline that it does for applications."

"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 feature of automated balancing which implemented between two data centers solely for the purpose of a recovery plan is valuable."

More VMware Aria Automation pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

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

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

"Our clients had challenges or issues with the updates. Its updates should be better managed. They should provide quicker and more stable updates. Its stability can also be better. We initially faced ease-of-use and compatibility issues while integrating it. We had a lot of compatibility issues with other products. Our clients are concerned about whether it is under IBM or it is still Red Hat. Clients are not very clear about the support, and they're not really happy with it. Currently, they're getting support from Red Hat, but going forward, they're not really clear about what would be the life cycle of the product, which is a concern for them."

"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."

"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."

More Red Hat CloudForms cons

"The initial setup is complex. There are too many components to integrate, especially when we integrated with different storage types and backup vendors. All the integration made it more complex."

"We have seen some issues with upgrades or installations. This means we have to raise a call every time with VMware."

"We had a lot of issues at first. Especially with doing any kind of upgrades, it was a complete tear-down and a complete rebuild of all the Blueprints. The upgrade process was not easy or intuitive at all. But it seems to be getting better."

"Broadcom has acquired the tool, which could lower its pricing. Many customers are moving away from VMware infrastructure towards enterprise systems like Azure or AWS. This shift could be due to two main reasons: pricing and uncertainty about the future, especially regarding how Broadcom will handle licenses and strategy."

"With the workflow aspect, which has manual intervention, a policy needs to be approved by somebody. There could be better management of that piece with better templates. It is like a workflow engine, but does not have enough example templates to do certain things. A lot of people waste a lot of time trying to figure out the same thing, and everybody is trying to figure out the same thing, e.g., how to make a MySQL cluster in a Windows environment?"

"It would be nice if, at the director level, the manager level, there was a pretty graphic. They don't like to see numbers and line items, they want to see graphs and scales and real world pictures. That would support better reporting."

"Its configuration process could be better."

"It has a learning curve."

More VMware Aria Automation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Red Hat CloudForms is a bit expensive."

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

"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."

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

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

"The cost of the solution is reasonable for us. Although it is relatively high, we prioritize stability and integration over cost."

"Better pricing is always handy, but I feel it's at the right price point."

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

"The pricing is very high."

"vRealize automation really should be a front door to the whole VMware suite of products."

"The tool is expensive since it is an enterprise product."

"They should provide one license for all the sub-products."

"SaltStack is an open-source product."

More VMware Aria Automation pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Marketing Services Firm

Government

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	33
Midsize Enterprise	24
Large Enterprise	130

Questions from the Community

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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

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Compared 5% of the time

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VMware Aria Operations vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 5% of the time

IBM Cloud Automation Manager vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 4% of the time

CloudStack vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 4% of the time

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Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 6% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 3% of the time

HashiCorp Terraform vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 3% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat CloudForms

March 2026

Download Red Hat CloudForms product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Automation

February 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

March 2026

Free Report: Red Hat CloudForms vs. VMware Aria Automation

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