SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

SolarWinds and Broadcom are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. SolarWinds is ranked #19 with an average rating of 8.0, while Broadcom is ranked #18 with an average rating of 8.8. SolarWinds holds a 1.0% mindshare in APM, compared to Broadcom’s 1.4% mindshare. Additionally, 89% of SolarWinds users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 44 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

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4,330 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Read 14 VMware Aria Operations for Applications reviews

7,303 Views
4,017 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and VMware Aria Operations for Applications compete in the IT infrastructure monitoring and management space. SolarWinds holds an advantage in pricing and support accessibility, while VMware Aria Operations has a more comprehensive feature set, suggesting higher value at a premium cost.

Features: SolarWinds offers robust performance metrics, advanced server monitoring, and easy integration with expansive alerting capabilities. VMware Aria Operations provides predictive analytics, supports various application environments, and delivers detailed analytics for deeper performance insights.

Room for Improvement: SolarWinds could enhance its deployment process to reduce complexity and resource requirements. It may also improve its scalability features to compete with larger enterprise needs. Additionally, simplifying mobile integration could enhance user accessibility. VMware Aria Operations could reduce its premium cost to offer better value to cost-conscious users. Streamlining its rich feature set for simpler use, particularly for less technical users, might improve user experience. It might also benefit from expanding support hours to accommodate more global users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Aria Operations is praised for its streamlined deployment process and robust technical support, helping to minimize downtime. SolarWinds, though efficient, often requires more internal resources for effective utilization, posing a slightly more complex deployment challenge. However, its accessible service support is favorably noted by customers.

Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds is known for its competitive pricing structure, providing a beneficial ROI for budget-constrained organizations. VMware Aria Operations, though requiring substantial investment, offers significant long-term cost benefits through advanced analytics and scalability, potentially yielding a higher ROI for organizations ready to invest.

To learn more, read our detailed SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications Report (Updated: August 2026).

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

August 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

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

19th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

4.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (6th), Active Directory Management (8th)

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

18th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (14th), Container Monitoring (6th), Cloud Monitoring Software (13th)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.0%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 1.4%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
VMware Aria Operations for Applications	1.4%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor	1.0%
Other	97.6%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

NikhilKalwint

Technical Specialist at ServiceIO

Monitoring over a thousand systems has improved decision making and operational visibility

From an advantage perspective, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is comparatively cheaper from a commercial point of view. It is easy to install and configure, very user-friendly, and quick to get up and running, allowing you to see the early value adds in your organization. It is compatible with most technologies for monitoring with very few chances of incompatibility. Configuration also allows us to monitor all the technical parameters we are looking for, making it a very good experience for us. The alerting feature in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is a main advantage, as it alerts based on threshold breaches and can raise tickets to the ticketing system, send SMS, and email notifications, allowing engineers to work on those tickets to resolve issues and avoid further impact. The visibility into server health is a beneficial feature that I am utilizing. We widely use various application performance metrics in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor such as database monitoring and server monitoring, which are quite good enough for any monitoring solution. We utilize the customizable dashboards in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor.

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Ajay Shukla

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.

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 the solution are its real-time node monitoring and Help Desk's feedback."

"The product integrates with Remedy."

"It's good at monitoring system-specific things like ports, services."

"The solution has good alerts; notifications are sent via email to technicians, and you can filter the kinds of alerts you want to receive as well, which is excellent."

"The graphical interfaces, GUI customizations, and alert configurations are impressive."

"Solarwinds has an open database that allows you to do serious integrations. It doesn't matter which service desk you have, you can implement and integrate it with SolarWinds."

"AppInsight. Provides a simple way to get very in-depth monitoring configured for our most popular applications. Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint."

"There are many valuable features, including the network configuration manager, and the network performance manager."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

"The stability of Aria Operations for Applications has improved significantly over the years."

"It significantly improves application performance management by offering recommendations for resource allocation to avoid wastage or overcommitment."

"Wavefront gives us the complexity we need, instead of spending time coming up with a nice dashboard from some other means, or just creating and coding our own app."

"I gladly recommend VMware Aria Operations for Applications because it is cost effective and has commendable AI response capabilities."

"Tanzu itself, integrated with multiple solutions, bestows support and security upon a container platform, especially when it comes to managing open-source container platforms such as Kubernetes."

"The features I find most valuable is the querying and alerting capabilities."

"We haven't had any issues with stability."

"Using Wavefront, we have been able to reduce the complexity of our pipeline."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications pros

Cons

"Reporting is the only thing with which we currently have challenges. They have this in two ways. There is the report writer, which is the backend, and we also have web reports, which are on the console. So, they have removed the report writer for the backend reports, and we are making use of the web console, but most of the users are not finding it very interesting to use the frontend reports. I would like them to bring back the report writer. That's the key area within it to improve on the reporting. If they can bring back the report writer, then most users will actually be comfortable. I have some customers who are trying to export their report to an Excel format, but it is not possible because they said any report that has been done from the web console cannot be exported to Excel, but most of the customers need to export their reports to Excel. That's one area they need to work on."

"There is one feature that is a report writer. And they are currently trying to take it out from being a stand-alone application and integrating to the web. This doesn't give us the flexibility and it doesn't expand what we can get when it comes to reporting. So, putting it on the web is going to make it difficult to get some information. Leaving it where it is now will help us a lot."

"The product does not explain why a problem occurred."

"AppInsight needs to include more applications, the current list is very limited."

"The technical support is nothing special."

"Nodes in Azure are able to be monitored with the use of agents, but this does not apply to cloud service offerings that are not node based."

"The technical support was better in previous years. With the launch of the premium support service, the normal support has declined."

"Downside of the tools is the web console are hung or crash. It need to improve the performance."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

"In the new version, I would love to see more prediction capabilities. It would be great if one could see the alerts get a little more enriched with information and become more human-friendly instead of the technical stuff that they put in there. I think those would be really awesome outcomes to get."

"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."

"So far, the solution's learning curve has been pretty high."

"Its billing model is consumption-based. I understand the consumption-based model, but it is not necessarily easy to estimate and guess how many points or how much we are going to consume on a specific application up until we get to that point. So, for us, it would be helpful to have more insights or predictability into what we can expect from a cost perspective if we are starting to use specific features. This can potentially also drive our consumption a bit more."

"The support from VMware is not very helpful. This is because you always receive many questions from the support service but few actual solutions."

"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."

"The initial setup should be easier and more seamless."

"The documentation and integration with Kubernetes could be improved."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."

"When planning for the number of licenses to purchase, make sure you understand all of the elements within an application required to really understand performance well. In our case, we quickly came to the conclusion that an unlimited license for SAM was the way to go."

"We are on an annual license to use the solution. The price of the solution is expensive. The price is based on a bunch of factors, such as the number of engines and elements."

"I like the pricing for this SolarWinds product."

"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."

"The licenses start from USD 3000.00 and go up to USD 20,000.00 for the year. It's a perpetual license. Nothing is free in SolarWinds, anything that you need is an additional cost."

"The tool is available for my company at a good price point."

"The product might cost you $30,000 USD to buy, but scaling this solution requires the purchase of additional polling engines at $20,000 USD each."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."

"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."

"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

Educational Organization

13%

University

Financial Services Firm

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Construction Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	21

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	10

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

The initial cost is quite high, but the renewal cost is reasonable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

There is definitely room for improvement besides simplifying its setup. As a non-technical person, I believe the dashboards could be improved. Everything we use appears on video walls, and we need ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

I am doing research as we currently have both solutions, and I am looking to see if we need both or can manage with one. Currently, the outcome indicates that we need both. The focus point is diffe...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

July 2026

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations for Applications

July 2026

VMware Aria Operations for Applications report

Download VMware Aria Operations for Applications product report

Also Known As

SolarWinds SAM

Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability

Overview

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor provides comprehensive server, application, and infrastructure monitoring, focusing on integration, application dependency, and network insights through user-friendly interfaces and detailed dashboards.

With AppStack and AppInsight support, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor offers service management, detailed resource dashboards, and integration capabilities. It monitors hardware metrics and performance parameters, facilitating database and network insights for cloud and virtual environments. Robust alerting, predictive analytics, and capacity planning ensure efficient management of server health and application performance.

What are the key features?

Integration: Seamlessly connects with existing tools.
AppStack: Provides a holistic view of applications.
AppInsight: Supports widely-used applications.
SNMP Polling: Efficient network data collection.
Diagnostics: Real-time troubleshooting.
Customizable Dashboards: Tailored monitoring views.

What benefits should users expect?

Comprehensive Monitoring: Extends from servers to databases.
Transparent Control: Enhances visibility into performance metrics.
User-Friendly: Simplifies proactive monitoring with alerts.
Predictive Features: Supports capacity and trend planning.

Industries implement SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor to enhance server utilization reporting, network configuration, and AV equipment performance tracking. They benefit from monitoring critical services across diverse deployment models, improving management efficiency and decision-making.

SolarWinds

VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront is a powerful tool for monitoring and analyzing the performance and availability of applications and infrastructure in real-time.

With its comprehensive monitoring capabilities, visualizing and analyzing data becomes effortless. The real-time alerting system ensures timely issue resolution, while scalability and a user-friendly interface provide a seamless experience for smooth operations.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

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

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

August 2026

Free Report: SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

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