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SolarWinds Virtualization Manager vs VMware Aria Operations comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 13, 2024

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 Virtualization M...
Ranking in Virtualization Management Tools
7th
Average Rating
7.4
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Aria Operations
Ranking in Virtualization Management Tools
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
376
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Virtualization Management Tools category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is 11.1%, up from 9.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations is 26.0%, down from 33.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Virtualization Management Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
VMware Aria Operations26.0%
SolarWinds Virtualization Manager11.1%
Other62.9%
Virtualization Management Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Ravi Khanchandani - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder Director at Techsa Services
Optimizing virtual environments by reclaiming and allocating resources efficiently
SolarWinds Virtualization Manager optimizes VM performance and virtualization. It provides me with recommendations for resource allocation, indicating if a virtual machine is under-provisioned or over-provisioned. This allows me to reclaim resources, such as reducing the number of CPU cores or RAM, which is beneficial. Its capacity planning feature is also very useful for me. The GUI is highly simplified, cutting across various virtualization platforms, including VMware, Hyper-V, and Nutanix environments.
AldoDomini - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Network Analyst at Net spa
Have faced limitations due to high costs but have maintained reliability over time
The primary issue is the pricing, which is very expensive for my company's budget. We cannot afford to pay such a large fee. We are not Microsoft or BMW; we are a small company. As a small company, I have no power to negotiate directly with VMware. Perhaps larger companies have more opportunity to contract directly with VMware, but I do not have that leverage. The only path I can follow is to change solutions. Net.spA is a company working in the field of waste management. We are not a technological company, so we do not have a large margin to justify purchasing and maintaining the VMware infrastructure at current costs.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is a great tool that is easy to use...It is a stable solution."
"SolarWinds Virtualization Manager optimizes VM performance and virtualization."
"SolarWinds Virtualization Manager optimizes VM performance and virtualization."
"The most valuable features of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager are the non-Windows servers' monitoring and capacity planning."
"It helps an organization quickly create test and dev environments for developers to come up with new software and patch tests."
"The initial setup is very straightforward. It is very intuitive to install."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the effectiveness of hardware availability and flexibility."
"The most valuable feature is it's pre-warning. We get to know ahead of time when systems are starting to have problems. We can pay attention to the alerts and know right away that there's an issue developing at some point. We also use it to monitor poorly configured VMs: over-configured, under-configured."
"It visualizes stuff better, so we can pinpoint or see problems"
"It gives us a lot of details about the environment that we normally wouldn't be able to see without using other tools. We get visibility into our infrastructure, a single interface to see storage performance, VM performance, and to find issues in the environment that we wouldn't normally see."
"I can go back a little bit, a week or a month, look at the history, to troubleshoot."
"The dashboards and the interface are very easy to understand, very lively, and very dynamic."
 

Cons

"SolarWinds needs to support integration with other virtualization platforms like KVM or Linux-based systems."
"SolarWinds needs to support integration with other virtualization platforms like KVM or Linux-based systems."
"The problem or issue with the product is related to its pricing."
"The SolarWinds Virtualization Manager platform in general can have a better response time in the performance."
"I rated this solution an eight and not a ten because we work to give a multi-tenant product to our customers and vROps doesn't meet our needs."
"It can get a bit complex when getting into the endpoint monitoring during setup."
"vROps is, by its nature, a very complex product."
"In terms of what could be improved or added to VMware vRealize Operations (vROps), from my experience, it needs more work in the ITSM space because my company never used it as an IT service management tool."
"If Aria could send alerts when a specific system or VM is using excessive resources, we could consult the storage team to address the problem proactively."
"The prebuilt dashboards are easy to use, but if you want to create your own, it is not so easy. It is the same for reports."
"The tool is user-friendly, but you need to study to learn about the many features that the tool offers. It is not a tool that you can just start to work with when it comes to capacity planning. You need to study the documentation."
"I'd like to see more out-of-the-box dashboards and less customizing of the environment. The interface could be more streamlined. There are still a lot of old dashboards versus the new UI dashboards."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The is an annual subscription needed to use this solution."
"The maintenance and support are a part of the package, meaning it is included in the product's price."
"vRealize Operations has proved to be a cost effective solution for our big environment."
"There's a smaller category that stands out due to its affordability, especially for recent versions, which I rate as four or five in terms of value. However, if you're looking for a vCenter with older, more advanced features, it comes at a significantly higher cost, and I would rate it around ten. They provide us with a choice between a recent version and one integrated, and I lean towards the former."
"The initial costs are a bit on the higher side but the licensing is flexible."
"Pricing could always be cheaper, but it's acceptable."
"When we last did a comparison of solutions, the pricing was equal or similar."
"Don't overallocate! This means that you don't have to buy many hosts. You can save money that way."
"The product is too expensive to implement."
"The licensing is quite expensive for our company."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Non Profit
9%
Government
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business64
Midsize Enterprise62
Large Enterprise278
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?
This solution delivers significant cost savings, especially from a capacity perspective. Consistent monitoring is essential in a virtualization environment, and Virtualization Manager, or VMAN as i...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?
SolarWinds needs to support integration with other virtualization platforms like KVM or Linux-based systems.
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?
We predominantly work with financial organizations such as large banks, stock exchanges, and insurance companies, as well as IT-enabled services (ITES). I use SolarWinds Virtualization Manager at o...
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...
Is VMware Aria Operations a user friendly solution?
In terms of user-friendliness, VMware Aria Operations is one of the best solutions out there. It is not overly complex to set up and you can rely on the technical support to provide you with assis...
What is the most useful new feature of VMware Aria Operations?
For me, the alerts features are the most unique part of this product, no matter the current name it uses. When they introduced the new version of VMware Aria Operations, they also introduced more a...
 

Also Known As

SolarWinds VMAN
VMware vRealize Operations (vROps), vCenter Operations Manager (VCOPS)
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Elliot Health System
Science Applications International Corporation, Tribune Media, Heartland Payment Systems, Telkom Indonesia, Columbia Sportswear, iGATE, CSS Corp, Angel Broking, Adira Finance, Hipskind, Beiersdorf Shared Services, Innovate Mas Indonesia, Adobe, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi , Join Experience S.A, Borusan Holdings, Department of Transport - Abu Dhabi
Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds Virtualization Manager vs. VMware Aria Operations and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,665 professionals have used our research since 2012.