SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor vs. VMware Aria Automation

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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

Microsoft Intune

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 6.9%, down from 10.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor is 1.5%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 4.8%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Configuration Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Microsoft Intune	6.9%
VMware Aria Automation	4.8%
SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor	1.5%
Other	86.8%

Configuration Management

Featured Reviews

AkashKamble

Sr MacOS specialist engineer at Cyber24

Enables management of multiple operating systems with a single license

The best feature is that it's a Microsoft product, so if anything goes wrong, we get quick support for anything required. Remote system functionality allows us to sit anywhere and take control of any device via remote management. We can enhance security for clients' laptops with built-in Microsoft Defender, which is available with the Microsoft Intune license. We use it for reporting purposes through endpoint analytics. When pushing scripting, there are two types available: remediation script and reservation script. Through endpoint analytics, you can push defender policies to clients. It helps with reporting, inventory updates, and monitoring tenant status health.

Read full review

Akhil Reddy

Software Developer at NOESIS Portugal

Alerting has helped us detect server issues across our environment

The alert mechanism is the biggest advantage of SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor. The customizability of the alerting system is particularly valuable. Whatever devices are in the environment, whether EC2 servers or on-premises servers, all of them can be monitored using this service. I can easily find out what exactly is going wrong in the environment. The clear audit trail aids in troubleshooting and optimization. The tool is effective for detecting unauthorized changes across platforms.

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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 most valuable feature is that we can manage workstations or Android devices remotely without needing the device to be connected to our local network."

"It is much easier to deploy software updates and Windows updates globally because of the cloud base, so I can manage from anywhere, making it quite convenient for me."

"We can securely manage both company-owned devices and personal devices enrolled in our BYOD program."

"It is very easy for me to configure all the things. Once I create policies and applications in Intune, it is very easy for us to enroll users."

"Intune's most valuable features are its device management capabilities, particularly its centralized integration with other Microsoft stack components."

"The most valuable feature is the policy CSPs."

"Microsoft Intune is far more efficient and faster than MECM."

"Advanced endpoint analytics provides granular information about devices in Microsoft Intune, facilitating easier troubleshooting at system and application levels."

More Microsoft Intune pros

"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor is version control. For example, if we began on the first of the month and we considered that as the configuration of the server, I could set that configuration as my baseline. On a daily basis, if there was the operations team that did, for example, server patching, the tool will maintain all levels of versions."

"The product’s alert feature is good. We receive notifications whenever some failures occur in the configuration."

"The customizability of the alerting system is particularly valuable; whatever devices are in the environment, whether EC2 servers or on-premises servers, all of them can be monitored using this service."

"SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor is a good-to-have solution for all customers who are under audit pressure, especially from regulatory authorities."

"We can do the following from the same tool: Deploy code, redeploy code and platform, and maintain system compliance."

"The ROI that we see is that people don't have to work too hard to have something done and therefore they have more time to market."

"We haven't hit any limits yet, scalability is good."

"It has integration with the rest of VMware solutions."

"Scalability is probably the best part about it. You can take things that you've already defined, that you've already built once, and build them again multiple times, without significant effort."

"I am now able to rollout critical updates within seconds on all affected servers, and it doesn't matter if there are five or 500 of them."

"usability; It's very user-friendly. It is not hard to go and find things. There is a one-click Help that you can use to find all the documentation you need to manage it."

"The most valuable feature is vRA’s ability to integrate whether with additional VMware vRealize suites or other vendors' cloud products."

More VMware Aria Automation pros

Cons

"I would like to see better integration with Microsoft."

"Onboarding of endpoint devices is not straightforward. The onboarding process was a little heavier than I thought it would be."

"Intune's server management could be better. If it could incorporate more features from System Center into Intune's Configuration Manager, it would be beneficial."

"The configuration could be better by consolidating options and making it simpler."

"The interface is not as modern as some competitors in terms of single pane of glass visibility across the entire landscape. It has a very Azure vibe and may not be as graphically appealing as other products."

"Lacking ability to leverage more iOS device management internally."

"We face multiple scenarios where IT decision-makers request specific policy implementations, however, due to product limitations, we cannot fulfill these requests."

"Integrating certain group policies can be challenging and may necessitate using on-premises systems to integrate them with Microsoft Intune."

More Microsoft Intune cons

"In a feature release, they could enhance the reporting. However, we have not evaluated this part of the solution extensively."

"The price of SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor is not reasonable, it is slightly on the higher side."

"The product’s support services and licensing models need improvement."

"Some dashboards I observed in Dynatrace are not available in SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor."

"This solution could be integrated with more hardware for an improved offering."

"We upgraded twice. The last upgrade was a bit problematic."

"It has some limitations for scalability, especially for remote data center management. For some components, everything need to be centralized."

"I don't find the solution to be intuitive and user- friendly. The GUI is really complicated. Tracking down logs and errors is very hard. Then, it takes a specialized JavaScript person to build. Also, I'm not sure how the upgrades are going now, but they definitely need to evolve the upgrade process. Finally, the logs are very generalized. Giving more of an indicator of what's actually going wrong, rather than just a generic error code, would help."

"Salt Cloud Windows support isn't that mature."

"The stability is 95 percent. There are some situations where it gets a little bit clumsy. When it gets really big, when you're dealing with a very large deployment, it can be a little bit difficult, but it's better than nothing. It does a significant job, given what it's tasked to do."

"I found this module difficult to configure and unreliable, as far as getting and maintaining control of new instances as they were created by the autoscaling group."

"There is a little bit of pain when it comes to libraries and what is needed to run the product."

More VMware Aria Automation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It comes as a bundle, so you do not really know what the prices are. Microsoft does not break it down to the user cost for us. It is just bundled with our E5 license."

"Cost is not my department, but the product is included in the E5 license that we already pay for every user, so no additional cost is incurred."

"It is reasonable. When you have Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 license, it is already licensed in that license. So, you could say it is free."

"Microsoft Intune's pricing is reasonable."

"The price of Intune is often included as part of a bundle with other Microsoft licenses, which makes it somewhat cheaper."

"I recently got to know that the AD P1 license is compulsory to use Intune Autopilot, which was surprising for me. Earlier, this was not the case. It is the wrong thing to do. We now need to purchase AD P1 licenses for us and for our customers. I would rate it a seven out of ten for pricing."

"Most of our clients come to us with licensing already in place. On average, it costs $6 per device per month to add Intune to an Office 365 subscription, but I am not sure."

"Microsoft Intune is available for individual purchase at a low per-device cost."

More Microsoft Intune pricing and cost advice

"The price of SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor is not reasonable, it is slightly on the higher side."

"SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor has medium pricing compared to other solutions."

"The solution has helped to increase infrastructure, agility, speed, and provisioning in the time to market."

"Customers say this solution is costlier compared to its competitors."

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

"The pricing for this solution is roughly 20% lower than the competitive products in the market."

"This is an expensive product and the high price is starting to become an issue for us."

"VMware Aria Automation is expensive."

"The solution is pretty expensive but provides good workload management."

"It is an expensive product. After VMware's acquisition by Broadcom, there was a rise in the price of VMware Aria Automation."

More VMware Aria Automation pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

No data available

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	126
Midsize Enterprise	54
Large Enterprise	168

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	33
Midsize Enterprise	24
Large Enterprise	130

Questions from the Community

How does Microsoft Intune compare with VMware Workspace One?

Microsoft Intune is a great tool for managing a mobile device fleet while keeping access control. The solution makes ...

What are the pros and cons of Microsoft Intune?

Microsoft Intune is a great configuration management tool and has a lot of good things going for it. Here are some of...

How does Google Cloud Identity compare with Microsoft Intune?

Microsoft Intune offers not only an easy-to-deploy data protection and productivity management solution, but also ...

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

In general, I think that licensing for SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor is acceptable, and the solution is qui...

What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor?

Some dashboards I observed in Dynatrace are not available in SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor. The dashboard f...

What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor?

I work only with SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor. My major use case is the monitoring of environment servers ...

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 y...

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 fre...

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 compa...

Jamf Pro vs Microsoft Intune

Comparisons

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Compared 8% of the time

Workspace ONE UEM vs Microsoft Intune

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ManageEngine Endpoint Central vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Entra ID vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 4% of the time

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AWS Config vs SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor

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HashiCorp Terraform vs SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor

Compared 9% of the time

SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager vs SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor

Compared 7% of the time

AWS Systems Manager vs SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor

Compared 7% of the time

BMC TrueSight Automation for Networks vs SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

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Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 9% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 6% of the time

Morpheus vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 5% of the time

HashiCorp Terraform vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 3% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 3% of the time

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Product Reports

Microsoft Intune

Download Microsoft Intune product report

Configuration Management

Download SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor product report

SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor report

VMware Aria Automation

Download VMware Aria Automation product report

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager

SolarWinds SCM

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

Overview

Microsoft Intune is a cloud-based service designed for device management, security, and compliance. It supports automation and facilitates endpoint management for Windows, iOS, and Android devices, ensuring data protection and efficient policy enforcement.

Microsoft Intune offers seamless integration with tools like Windows Autopilot to automate device setup and deployment. Integrated with Azure Active Directory, it enhances policy management while providing robust reporting and analytics tools for compliance tracking. Despite its intuitive interface aimed at simplifying navigation and device security management, there are challenges such as compatibility issues with Linux and Mac, limited policy support for Android, and demands for better third-party integration. It's widely used for both corporate-owned devices and BYOD scenarios in dynamic IT environments.

What are the key features of Microsoft Intune?

Windows Autopilot: Automates device setup for rapid deployment.
Azure Active Directory Integration: Enhances user policy management.
Reporting and Analytics: Improves compliance visibility.
Mobile Application Management: Ensures app security without compromising personal data.
Cloud-Based Management: Allows management from any location.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Time Efficiency: Automation reduces time in policy enforcement and configuration updates.
Enhanced Security: Ensures data protection across corporate-owned and BYOD devices.
Improved Compliance: Advanced reporting tools enhance compliance visibility.
Flexible Management: Cloud-based nature supports management from any location.

In industries such as finance and healthcare, Microsoft Intune is implemented to ensure data protection and compliance with regulatory standards. Manufacturing sectors utilize Intune for managing a distributed workforce across global locations, while educational institutions employ it to secure and manage devices in learning environments supporting both students and faculty.

Microsoft

Network compliance
Network automation
Configuration backup
Vulnerability assessment
Network Insight for Cisco and Palo Alto
Integration with Network Performance Monitor

SolarWinds

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

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway

Information Not Available

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

SolarWinds Server Configuration Monitor vs. VMware Aria Automation