VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth 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

VMware Aria Automation

Ranking in Cloud Management

3rd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

170

Ranking in other categories

Configuration Management (7th), Network Automation (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (17th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (5th)

VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth

Ranking in Cloud Management

22nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Cost Management (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 10.6%, down from 11.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth is 1.8%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

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.

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Steve Staten

Cloud Advisor Specialist at Converge Technology Solutions Corp

The solution has excellent scalability, great dashboards, and is stable

I use the solution daily, multiple hours a day to identify possible savings by analyzing the various displays as well as the policies for possible cost savings for our customers CloudHelth has helped our organization with trying to right-size virtual machines based on current utilization and…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"A lot of its DevOps for infrastructure capabilities improve reliability. Much effort was put in by some customers, like a large automobile manufacturer, a large telecom, and two large banks, to achieve a certain level of capabilities in this space. These DevOps for infrastructure capabilities have saved time for developers. In one use case for a large marketplace, a typical release cycle took about 80 hours and was brought down to three hours by automating deployment for developers. The quicker that deployments happen, the faster that they can do their product release cycles."

"The most valuable feature that we have is that it's able to deploy several different operating systems, it's able to deploy whatever we want. We can take a template, spin it up, revise it, save it back off, and be able to have that for other departments. We can have one for our Dev team and one for our research team which has some specific requirements. We can keep track of them and deploy things automatically."

"If you do a deployment for a proof of concept, it is simple."

"Our QA department is able to spin up a new instance of Windows virtual machine and test whatever use case they have, then turn it back down whenever they are done."

"It helps us automate the workflow of creating many VMs and the TensorFlow key method."

"I can make a blueprint with an Active Directory deployment. With everything prepared, people can start installing our products."

"We had a lot of config drift before, and this really helps us keep it on track. Speed to provision is probably our biggest, significant gain."

"The big benefit is it will spin up VMs quickly so it would take about 13 to 15 minutes to deploy a virtual machine. Whereas, if I were doing it based on an email from users who are requesting VMs, it might take time for me to hear back from them. This could be anywhere from an hour to a day."

More VMware Aria Automation pros

"We are able to create an internal price of the product that we can then sell to clients. We get the cost plan at a good discount and then resell it with a mark up to our enterprise-level clients. This flexibility in pricing is one of the solution's best features."

"The product is easy to use in terms of monitoring all the environments. It works for multiple clouds."

"The pricing is rather competitive right now."

"This solution is fast and very easy to understand, even if you are not a technician."

"We use dashboards quite heavily, but one of the features that have really stood out is some of the policies we've created to alert us of particular situations."

"The most valuable thing I have found is the cost saving recommendations"

"The solution is useful for cloud transparency and visibility in reports and dashboards that I have generated, especially the pre-populated dashboards."

"The solution is good for cloud cost management."

More VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth pros

Cons

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

"Maintaining the product requires effort and a good understanding of the environment, including how to set up the codes and other configurations. Pricing needs to be improved to improve the customer penetration."

"My impression of its stability is "middle of the road." We've had some issues where it seems to be a little bit sensitive, where deployments fail and we don't really know a specific reason why. We'll dig through logs and try and figure out what's going on, but it's not always apparent as to why it failed. And you can kick it off again and it'll succeed. So stability could be better."

"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."

"It would be nice if, at the director level, the manager level, there was a pretty graphic. They don't like to see numbers and line items, they want to see graphs and scales and real world pictures. That would support better reporting."

"Technical support could be improved. I definitely feel that the product is accelerating faster than the support engineers are able to keep up with the knowledge needed to know what's going on. The developers maintaining vRealize Automation are doing a great job improving it, but VMware is not doing a great job of training the people who we call to get support for it."

"vRO can get out of sync with vRA. We've run into every once in a while."

"It does go down from time to time. We have some issues with the appliances sometimes and we have to do reboots in the middle of the day. That affects the ability for them to deploy."

More VMware Aria Automation cons

"If you are working with the OS you need help and other connectors to get more information."

"The performance and accuracy of Cloud Health need to be improved."

"CloudHealth needs to start building out Turbonomics-types of features that help the customers who are using CloudHealth really understand everything down to the server level, the virtual machine level."

"I would like to see better integration from CloudHealth to create easier setup and implementation."

"It would be helpful to have a mobile version or a tablet version, especially for people who are outside of the office."

"The solution doesn't offer the best functionality, unfortunately. Some features just simply aren't on offer. The solution needs to offer more product milestones."

"The export features regarding CSV files and specifically around identifying savings plans have room for improvement, as well as the drill-down features for reservation utilization."

"The Perspectives feature could be better."

More VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have seen significant ROI. We used to have physical servers, it took 90 days to get a server, order it, buy it, and get it in. We have it down to 10 minutes, building a server with virtualization, and now that's too slow. So, we let the customer do it at their speed. Therefore, it is pretty much up in a couple of minutes and they have a server."

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

"There is confusion between licensing levels. There are three different licensed versions of vRealize Automation, and there are different things which can happen in each of them."

"A simplified version for small businesses would be good."

"It is an open-source product."

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

"SaltStack is an open-source product."

"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."

More VMware Aria Automation pricing and cost advice

"The licensing fees depend on how big the company is. If you are a larger company then you have a better contract with a better price. The price is different for a small company."

"I give the cost of the solution an eight out of ten."

"The pricing is competitive and while other products are good they are considerably more expensive."

"CloudHealth has a subscription-based model."

"There could be flexibility in pricing for the product."

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865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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 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 ...

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 ...

What do you like most about CloudHealth?

The product is easy to use in terms of monitoring all the environments. It works for multiple clouds.

What needs improvement with CloudHealth?

There could be flexibility in pricing for the product. They should provide information or tools to tune the cloud resources according to the environment size. It will help us get the right cost. Ad...

What advice do you have for others considering CloudHealth?

I rate VMware Aria Cost powered by CloudHealth an eight out of ten.

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs VMware Aria Automation

Comparisons

Compared 16% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 14% of the time

Morpheus vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 10% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 8% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 6% of the time

More VMware Aria Automation Competitors

Cloudability vs VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth

Compared 22% of the time

IBM Turbonomic vs VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth

Compared 17% of the time

Azure Cost Management vs VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth

Compared 17% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth

Compared 9% of the time

AWS Cost Explorer vs VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth

Compared 8% of the time

More VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth Competitors

Product Reports

VMware Aria Automation

Download VMware Aria Automation product report

VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth

Download VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth product report

Also Known As

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

Aria Cost powered by CloudHealth, CloudHealth

Overview

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

VMware Tanzu CloudHealth, formerly known as VMware Aria Cost Powered by CloudHealth, is a specialized cloud management platform tailored for Multi-Cloud Cost Optimization. It offers comprehensive visibility into cloud spending across various providers, enabling users to identify areas for optimization and make informed resource allocation decisions. With features like reserved instance management, resource rightsizing, and automated cost governance policies, it facilitates financial management for optimal cost efficiency. Beyond cost optimization, Tanzu CloudHealth enhances cloud operations through workload optimization and governance automation, catering to multi-cloud environments encompassing public, private, and hybrid clouds. Its primary focus remains on enabling organizations to effectively manage and reduce cloud expenditures while supporting operations across diverse cloud platforms.

VMware

Sample Customers

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

Pinterest, Dow Jones, RhythmOne, Ziff Davis, Acquia, Mentor Graphics, Lookout, Veracode, SwiftKey, Amtrak, Shi, Imgur, SumoLogic, NewsUK, Cloudera, Canvas

VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth vs. VMware Aria Automation