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SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Obs...
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
17th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Aria Operations for ...
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (20th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (17th), Container Monitoring (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Cloud Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability is 1.2%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 2.1%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Aria Operations for Applications2.1%
SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability1.2%
Other96.7%
Cloud Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Kalyan Kothali - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Vice President at Wissen infotech
Unified dashboards have improved hybrid infrastructure monitoring and support daily operations
The dashboard and reporting can be improved. The way the dashboards are being configured and presented in SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability has certain challenges. The look and feel and ease of configuring are areas where we see difficulties. There are certain limitations where we are not able to select the range or live details. Specifically, I want to have a trend analysis on certain thresholds, but those are tricky and we are not able to do that. We are currently downloading that and then using Excel to represent it. Those kinds of features are missing as of now. AI features in SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability, we only started this in 2024. We are still stabilizing the environment. AI is the next thing, so we did not start looking into that yet. Even the dashboards that we are trying to build to understand the trend analysis in SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability show always the live information. What is the current state, how many monitors, how many are green, how many are amber, where we have warnings, what are at risk, is the live information that we could build from the dashboard. When trying to analyze the thresholds or how much increase we need to make, or what the trend is happening, getting into those details is difficult. Building those kind of reports is a tricky one. We struggle a lot in that area.
AS
Consultant at HCLTech
Automation and insightful diagnostics elevate operations while improvements are welcome
The new version 8.18 has brought significant improvements. The main purpose of using this tool is having a single console to manage all entities. The cloud integration capabilities, including private, public, and hybrid, are already well-implemented. The ability to manage multiple vCenters across different geographical locations is very effective. The new Skyline health feature and certificate and licensing management are particularly useful improvements. The dashboard's overview tab provides comprehensive information about current vCenter status, resizable amounts, reclamation opportunities, anomalies, diagnostics, licensing, and certificates. However, there is room for improvement in application analysis. The current functionality lacks detailed monitoring at the kernel level, focusing mainly on CPU, memory, and storage matrices. Enhanced application monitoring capabilities, including tracking downtime for specific types of applications such as transactional or e-commerce applications, would be beneficial.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Positive changes include improvements in uptime, faster troubleshooting, and reduced downtime."
"Live data is good for immediate action, specifically for the command center and the NOC team."
"The primary use cases are for customers who require complete infrastructure monitoring. I mean IT infrastructure, which includes network devices, security devices, and server environments, whether physical, virtual, or cloud-based. The platform can manage any infrastructure component that needs monitoring."
"I rate my satisfaction with SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability at nine out of ten."
"Reduced downtime and faster issue resolution are significant benefits of SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability; features such as PerfStack, NetPath, and intelligent maps allow organizations to visualize dependencies and pinpoint problems quickly."
"SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability provides a huge benefit on this new platform, and we can use it more efficiently with the customized reports and the dashboards."
"The initial setup is straightforward and quick if prerequisites are met, taking only a couple of days."
"SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability has helped our organization stay on top of network and system performance; it allows us to spot and fix issues quickly, reducing downtime and keeping us happy."
"VMware comes with a support team, and if you have trouble, you can easily create a ticket, and VMware will help you. Therefore, the best aspect is the support."
"It significantly improves application performance management by offering recommendations for resource allocation to avoid wastage or overcommitment."
"This solution will give you a single pane of glass for everything, and centralized monitoring."
"Scalability for VMware Aria Operations for Applications is easy to implement and manage."
"It has a familiar interface, which makes it easy to get started."
"For us, the ease of deployment in combination with TMZ was the most important part because we don't have to manually deploy a complex monitoring solution. We can more or less do that with the click of a button, and we are not dependent on the developers to provide us with all the necessary features and functions to make that work. We can just deploy it on a workload cluster and monitor at least a good part of the workload. If we want to go into detail, we clearly need to make changes, but for a good part of application monitoring, it gives us good insights."
"Using Wavefront, we have been able to reduce the complexity of our pipeline."
"The most valuable aspects of the solution are its ease of use and its ease of implementation."
 

Cons

"Currently, SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability monitors AWS, Azure, and virtual environments, but it is primarily built on the traditional Orion platform."
"The solution could improve in areas such as on-premises container monitoring, CICD observability, and providing additional documentation and support files in languages other than English."
"I have experienced a problem with SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability, although I cannot detail the specific problems I have encountered."
"SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability could be improved in several ways. It feels slow sometimes, especially when handling large amounts of data."
"SolarWinds tends to lose some advantages because the SNMP criteria for monitoring Huawei devices are not providing the comprehensive reports we need, leading me to deduct one point."
"Regarding AI features in SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability, we currently depend on other AI features such as BigPanda and other tools. There are some improvements in correlation, but it is still not fully automated."
"SolarWinds HCO platform offers various features spanning components, such as network, security, server, virtual, and application components. Common features include dashboarding, reporting, and alerting. These features provide comprehensive visibility, allowing you to see how one area's issues affect others. For instance, if a network issue impacts server performance, this visibility is crucial."
"The solution could improve in areas such as on-premises container monitoring, CICD observability, and providing additional documentation and support files in languages other than English."
"The solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor."
"VMware technical support has declined since the Broadcom acquisition. Previously, they were more focused on issue resolution, but now they prioritize licensing verification before providing support."
"VMware technical support has declined since the Broadcom acquisition. Previously, they were more focused on issue resolution, but now they prioritize licensing verification before providing support."
"It could use a URL document server. Everything in the market is moving towards automation and everybody's looking for the single click operations as well relational data locality."
"They could make it more easy to plug-in data so that a nontechnical person will be able to use it, like accountants or finance people. That way they don't have to ask us."
"I find that there could be improvements in the support service response time, as the urgency varies unless specified as Priority 2 or 1 cases."
"The main problem I have is that the license cost is very high."
"I would like to see integration with Kubernetes cluster and APIs so that you can manage the entire stack."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is quite reasonable. It has moved to node-based licensing, simplifying the process. They don't distinguish between different types of nodes, such as server nodes, physical routers, or switches. One node equals one license, making it easy to manage. If you have 500 devices, you need five hundred licenses to get all the features of this unified monitoring platform."
"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."
"The licensing costs are very high, particularly when you consider that we have to purchase a level 1 license for every integration, such as the load balancer, HAProxy, and the MSSP. And if you want to use vSAN, that's another license. Then, of course, Tanzu Observability has its own separate license."
"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."
"I don't have the details. In our case, there is a mixture in place. We have production usage, and we are also doing training for VMware. So, we also have a training instance. It is worth the money you would spend on it. That's because if you were to build all of this yourself by using some of the open source tools, then you would need a lot of time."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
7%
University
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability?
SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability is device-based. How many devices we want to bring on board determines the cost. Technically, we have built multiple clusters based on the regions that we want...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability?
Regarding AI features in SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability, we currently depend on other AI features such as BigPanda and other tools. There are some improvements in correlation, but it is stil...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability?
Most valuable features of SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability compared to the previous platform are not immediately apparent. However, since we have not fully moved to SaaS, I cannot comment on t...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
The solution includes cost drivers that can be configured according to your environment. You can input server-wise, CPU-wise, storage, and memory costs per hour or day. Once cost drivers are provid...
What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
The new version 8.18 has brought significant improvements. The main purpose of using this tool is having a single console to manage all entities. The cloud integration capabilities, including priva...
What is your primary use case for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
I have been involved in several projects where I had to implement automation and monitoring alerting. I performed automation using VMware Aria Operations for Applications. There is an automation ta...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
1. Atlassian 2. Cisco 3. Databricks 4. DigitalOcean 5. Equinix 6. Fidelity Investments 7. Google 8. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 9. Honeywell 10. IBM 11. Intel 12. JetBlue Airways 13. LinkedIn 14. Lyft 15. Mastercard 16. Microsoft 17. MongoDB 18. Netflix 19. Nvidia 20. Oracle 21. PayPal 22. Pinterest 23. Qualcomm 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. SAP 27. Spotify 28. Square 29. TMobile 30. Twitter 31. Uber 32. VMware
Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.