VMware Aria Automation vs vCenter Orchestrator comparison

The compared vCenter Orchestrator and VMware Aria Automation solutions aren't in the same category. vCenter Orchestrator is ranked #6 in PA , with an average rating of 8.1, and holds a 0.3% mindshare in the category. VMware Aria Automation is ranked #2 in CM , with an average rating of 7.8, and holds a 11.1% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of vCenter Orchestrator users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of VMware Aria Automation users who would recommend it.

vCenter Orchestrator

Read 50 vCenter Orchestrator reviews

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83 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Automation

Read 170 VMware Aria Automation reviews

4,692 Views
2,059 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

vCenter Orchestrator

VMware Aria Automation

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

vCenter Orchestrator and VMware Aria Automation compete in the realm of virtualization and cloud automation software. VMware Aria Automation seems to have the upper hand due to its robust integration with third-party tools and advanced automation capabilities for hybrid cloud environments.

Features: vCenter Orchestrator is notable for its workflow automation and integration with VMware environments, providing a user-friendly single management interface and effective VM management. On the other hand, VMware Aria Automation is recognized for its automation strength in hybrid cloud settings, advanced orchestration capabilities, and its ability to enable complex service delivery and multi-cloud management.

Room for Improvement: vCenter Orchestrator needs to improve its cost-effectiveness, integrate better with non-VMware platforms, and simplify its interface for enhanced usability. VMware Aria Automation could benefit from better integration with third-party systems, streamlined documentation, and more user-friendly interfaces.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: vCenter Orchestrator is mainly used for on-premises deployments with established technical support but requires better response times and improved support quality. VMware Aria Automation is praised for its quick deployment in straightforward environments, though complex setups might require more effort and third-party support for smoother operations.

Pricing and ROI: vCenter Orchestrator's pricing model is complex and sometimes costly, but it provides value through its reliable virtualization management. VMware Aria Automation faces criticism for its high cost, particularly after transitioning to a subscription pricing model, but offers justified ROI for larger enterprises seeking comprehensive automation and hybrid cloud management.

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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

vCenter Orchestrator

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Process Automation (6th)

VMware Aria Automation

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

170

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Management (2nd), Configuration Management (7th), Network Automation (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (17th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (4th)

Mindshare comparison

vCenter Orchestrator and VMware Aria Automation aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. vCenter Orchestrator is designed for Process Automation and holds a mindshare of 0.3%, down 0.4% compared to last year.
VMware Aria Automation, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud Management, holds 11.1% mindshare, down 11.4% since last year.

Process Automation

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

Gerhard Gmelch

IT architect endpoint at Rohde & Schwarz

Enhance automation efficiency with cost-effective graphical workflow design

I use vCenter Orchestrator for automation purposes, specifically to run automation workbooks The most valuable features are the graphical UI for designing the workflows and the interfaces that come out of the box. Additionally, it is included in the VMware Vitalization Stack, which means there…

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Le Quang Long

Cloud Engineer at BIDV - Ngân hàng TMCP Đầu tư & Phát triển Việt Nam

Significantly streamlined operations with good automation that helps with simplifying workflows

It helps me build a big catalog and provide it to my end users. It helps us automate the workflow of creating many VMs and the TensorFlow key method. I do not meet many people to operate it live beforehand. It operates for both of my products, but as a product, it is complicated to integrate and automate with other products.

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 solution's most valuable feature is its good automation features."

"We have excellent technical support. They have always been helpful when we have needed them."

"We can scale the solution."

"The solution was easy to install."

"The most valuable feature is workflow automation."

"The implementation phase for vCenter Orchestrator was easy."

"User-friendly and easy to deploy."

"The most valuable feature is that this solution is complete, and you don't need any add-ons."

More vCenter Orchestrator pros

"The most valuable feature is being able to deploy a virtual machine from a low level. We can automate everything including network configuration, firewall configuration, storage, storage attachment, OS deployment, middleware, and so forth."

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

"Aria Automation gives you the flexibility to deploy tenants with customized blueprints for permissions and policies. Version 7.8 consisted of multiple products, so you had to deploy a lot of virtual machines on one of the servers. Starting from 8.6, VMware consolidated all the components into one Linux appliance. This allows the option to use vRA or DevOps capabilities."

"The automation part is valuable, especially where vRA integrates with vRO, because it reduces the amount of effort we have to make."

"The self service portal: People don't have to come to us to request something. They can just go fill out a form. Within 30 minutes, they have what they requested."

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

"vRealize automation stability is pretty good. They are always fixing bugs. The product team is doing a great job of addressing any issues that we might have."

"One of the most valuable features is lifecycle management. It allows my teams to create, manage, and retire all of our infrastructure objects in the data center."

More VMware Aria Automation pros

Cons

"I would like to see, from within the Web Console, being able to define the project and custom templates per user; almost like how CloudSpec has approached the solution."

"We would like more flexibility in sizing data storage and virtual machines, as the current options aren't very adaptable."

"The only point for improvement is the price, which has increased by 135%, making it very expensive."

"The licensing is expensive and should be improved."

"It could be integrated with third-party hypervisors."

"The solution has a limited count of parallel executions, which can be a bottleneck for larger environments."

"Its technical support team takes a long time to escalate the issues."

"I would like to see a greater ability to do mobile administration."

More vCenter Orchestrator cons

"They should make it a little bit more dynamic, a little bit easier to deal with large-scale AD deployments. They need to make it a little more enterprise-ready. That is the one thing that kills us."

"Multitenancy management is a little bit difficult to do, so it is an area that can be improved."

"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."

"The upgrade process 6.x to 7.3 was a significant effort. I'm hoping that 7.3 to the next version is much smoother."

"I want to see HTML5. I want to get rid of JavaScript... we have a lot of issues with Java crashing when we're using vCenter. I obviously don't want that to happen with the vRealize Automation and Orchestrator side."

"One of the features that's a struggle today is some of the public cloud extensibility. Some of the plugins that are native to vRA and vRO, I'd like to see them come out earlier for vRO. I understand that in vRA, the plugins are a little bit more polished because the VRA is the GUI. But we'd like to see them released earlier in vRO, prior to a GUI being released. Azure, for example, is a public cloud provider but we have some instability issues with the plugin in vRO. It's okay for us if we separate the vRA from vRO plugin releases. So I'd like to see some increased stability in some of those public cloud plugins."

"I don't think it's intuitive or user-friendly. I think it's a good tool. Any automation tool, these days, the learning curve is kind of high. You're teaching sysadmins who never developed stuff. Maybe they modified a little bit of code and now you tell them, "Hey, here's the tool, use it." But you have to know a little bit of DevOps. So you have to train them how to do the scripting."

"As a product, it is complicated to integrate and automate with other products."

More VMware Aria Automation cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the product price a seven to eight out of ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."

"vCenter Orchestrator is a very expensive solution."

"The licensing cost is manageable because they have different versions available, standard, essential, and advanced."

"This solution is expensive and the licensing is more attractive for Haveri."

"The product is expensive."

"My company needs to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the product."

"vCenter Orchestrator is an expensive solution."

"We provide the VMware solution to our clients, for which they pay a perpetual license."

More vCenter Orchestrator pricing and cost advice

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

"VMware Aria Automation is expensive."

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

"It made the provisioning of the virtual machines easier and faster. We can react more quickly to customers' demands."

"I would rate the pricing a ten out of ten, with ten being very expensive."

"So much can be done with the Open Source side, and especially for smaller shops. I personally think the pricing for Enterprise is hard to justify."

"The pricing is very high."

"I would rate it high because, compared to other solutions, VMware’s pricing is quite expensive. VMware products have become significantly more costly in recent years, leading to higher costs."

More VMware Aria Automation pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Government

12%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about vCenter Orchestrator?

The stability of the product is very good.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for vCenter Orchestrator?

We're running a low-profile budget. This is not our main focus on investment technology, so we're trying to reduce costs due to the change from perpetual to subscription licenses.

See all answers

What needs improvement with vCenter Orchestrator?

After the change from perpetual licensing to subscriptions, the cost model changed. We are considering alternatives since we lost the perpetual aspect, and support is changing.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

Comparisons

VMware Aria Operations vs vCenter Orchestrator

Compared 25% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs vCenter Orchestrator

Compared 19% of the time

Microsoft System Center Orchestrator vs vCenter Orchestrator

Compared 12% of the time

More vCenter Orchestrator Competitors

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 16% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 14% of the time

Morpheus vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 11% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 9% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 3% of the time

More VMware Aria Automation Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

vCenter Orchestrator

June 2025

Download vCenter Orchestrator product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Automation

June 2025

Download VMware Aria Automation product report

Also Known As

No data available

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

Overview

VMware vCenter Orchestrator simplifies the automation of complex IT tasks and integrates with VMware vCloud Suite components to adapt and extend service delivery and operational management, effectively working with existing infrastructure, tools and processes.

VMware

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.

VMware

Sample Customers

Beiersdorf Shared Services

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

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