VMware Aria Automation vs VMware Tanzu Platform comparison

VMware Aria Automation and VMware Tanzu Platform are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. VMware Aria Automation is ranked #3 with an average rating of 7.9, while VMware Tanzu Platform is ranked #25 with an average rating of 8.7. VMware Aria Automation holds a 6.2% mindshare in CM, compared to VMware Tanzu Platform’s 1.1% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of VMware Aria Automation users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of VMware Tanzu Platform users who would recommend it.

VMware Aria Automation

Read 171 VMware Aria Automation reviews

8,437 Views
4,556 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

VMware Tanzu Platform

Read 23 VMware Tanzu Platform reviews

6,982 Views
419 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Automation

VMware Tanzu Platform

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

VMware Aria Automation and VMware Tanzu Platform compete in the IT automation and management industry. VMware Aria Automation has the upper hand in centralized log collection and user experience, while VMware Tanzu Platform excels in Kubernetes management and multi-cloud support.

Features: VMware Aria Automation provides centralized log collection, access control through AD groups, and extensible user experiences, making it ideal for blueprint design and automation. VMware Tanzu Platform focuses on efficient Kubernetes cluster management, robust VMware infrastructure integration, and support for multi-cloud environments, catering to modern application development.

Room for Improvement: VMware Aria Automation users report challenges with logging, template management, and documentation, suggesting improvements in vCenter integration and workflow automation support. VMware Tanzu Platform needs better integration with non-VMware clouds, enhanced security, and disaster recovery capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Aria Automation supports on-premises and private cloud implementations but struggles with hybrid cloud deployments, and although its customer service is well-regarded, some report delays. VMware Tanzu Platform is praised for hybrid and public cloud deployment, but experiences with customer service and support vary, with some facing unresolved issues.

Pricing and ROI: VMware Aria Automation is known for high costs that may deter smaller enterprises, justified by significant workload reductions. VMware Tanzu Platform, despite its expense, is competitively priced with discounts, offering promising ROI through infrastructure agility and faster application delivery, though initial costs may be a barrier for smaller organizations.

To learn more, read our detailed VMware Aria Automation vs. VMware Tanzu Platform Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Automation vs. VMware Tanzu Platform

February 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

VMware Aria Automation

Ranking in Cloud Management

3rd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

171

Ranking in other categories

Configuration Management (7th), Network Automation (6th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (20th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (5th)

VMware Tanzu Platform

Ranking in Cloud Management

25th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Build Automation (14th), PaaS Clouds (12th), Development Platforms (3rd), Container Management (5th), Service Mesh (7th), Agile and DevOps Services (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 6.2%, down from 11.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Tanzu Platform is 1.1%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
VMware Aria Automation	6.2%
VMware Tanzu Platform	1.1%
Other	92.7%

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

reviewer2597814

IT Infrastructure Manager at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees

Compliance is maintained effectively and automation boosts productivity but further improvements in full-time reduction are desired

I am still using VMware tools. In fact, I have to migrate to a new alternative. I do not deal with vCenter or vSphere as or other VMware products yet. I do not deal with vSphere either. I do not use the Horizon Cloud yet or Horizon Desktop. We use VMware Workstation and vRealize. I use vRealize. VMware Aria Automation is compliant. It is not difficult for them. The regulations request us to perform or to have some security managed ways, and the regulations are clear about that, including authentication and everything related to security. Based on my experience, I rate VMware Aria Automation an eight out of ten.

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ErmiasGirma

Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at Safaricom Ethiopia plc

Has supported container-based deployments and improved infrastructure visibility through monitoring tools

Aria Operations, formerly known as VMware vRealize Operations, has been renamed to vROps. We are currently using this for monitoring purposes. For orchestration, we are using VCD to automate Telco Cloud. VCD is an automation tool, and we are also using VMware Tanzu Platform for the Kubernetes environment, alongside TKG, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid. These are also other solutions for the Tanzu Kubernetes environment. For Telco Cloud, we are using it to automate our company's operations, which is for a telecom company. We are familiar with these products, especially vCenter, ESXi, VCD, vCF, and vROps. It is very easy to integrate applications when we deploy vCenter and ESXi since we can enable vSphere with Tanzu feature. We can build namespaces and provide application developers the platform to deploy their applications on pods within containerization. We can easily manage, pull results, and create containers efficiently, making it a simple way to handle applications. We provide namespace labels for application developers, and we can manage their resources along with other aspects easily. Regarding security, we use many tools such as CDX and LDAP, AD for integrating our Kubernetes cluster with the developer teams. We can manage roles and permissions simply. It is very straightforward to integrate with EDX and other third-party tools, Active Directory, to the Kubernetes cluster, allowing easy access and management.

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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

"Being able to give provisioning of environments over to our developers and the different teams has enabled them to put up environments faster and also freed up time for the IT team. This is really one of our bread and butter solutions for our developers."

"The automation of the redundant tasks and the implementation of ServiceNow are huge for us..."

"The blueprint functionality of the product is intuitive and user-friendly. The concept of the blueprints is visual and easy to use."

"The ability to programmatically describe the desired state of a single, or an entire fleet of servers, on-premises, and in a cloud environment."

"It is very stable, especially for high availability features."

"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."

"In terms of scalability, vRA has connections to a lot of different systems. It's very flexible and an impressive product."

"The product saves a lot of time and cost for us. It has valuable features for creating a playbook."

More VMware Aria Automation pros

"The most important feature of Tanzu Mission Control is its integration with the other products, especially with ESX and vSAN. This is a strong part of Tanzu Mission Control. In other solutions, such as OpenShift or Kubernetes, you can find similar features, but they don't have similar integration. With Tanzu Mission Control, you get a total solution with only one provider. You have the integration with the infrastructure, virtualization of networking, and virtualization of storage. You have a natural integration, and you don't have the problem of integrating it with different products or providers. Sometimes, different companies have good integration, but it is not always guaranteed. For example, many years ago, Cisco and VMware were good partners in networking, but when VMware started to sell ESX, the relationship was broken. This is the problem that you can face when you are using solutions from two different companies."

"The most popular feature of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is its graphical user interface for describing network policies on the Service Mesh, which is highly integrable with other tools commonly used in supply chains such as security."

"The multi-tenancy with the VCD is great."

"We feel very good about these features."

"Tanzu is easy to upgrade and scale, whether we're talking about horizontal or vertical scaling. It is as smooth as possible without any downtime. The platform maintenance, upgrading, and operations part is very smooth."

"We never experienced any problems with scalability."

"The solution is integrated very well with a lot of other systems. Also, its GUI is very good."

"The valuable feature I have found to be the management of Kubernetes clusters in a private cloud or public clouds, such as Azure or Google Cloud Platform."

More VMware Tanzu Platform pros

Cons

"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 have not found this solution to be user-friendly. It's really complicated. The demo shows that you can automate anything but they only show basic scenarios. If you want to do anything more complicated than that, it becomes very complicated to set up."

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

"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."

"The setup is difficult. You need a technical person to help you set it up."

"The initial setup was complex from beginning to delivery. The current version is a bit more complex than version 7 to deploy."

"With the workflow aspect, which has manual intervention, a policy needs to be approved by somebody. There could be better management of that piece with better templates. It is like a workflow engine, but does not have enough example templates to do certain things. A lot of people waste a lot of time trying to figure out the same thing, and everybody is trying to figure out the same thing, e.g., how to make a MySQL cluster in a Windows environment?"

"The initial setup was complex because we have a high availability cluster. Especially when it comes to upgrades, we have a lot of downtimes and problems. The upgrade experience has been painful."

More VMware Aria Automation cons

"Having a unified dashboard to manage all infrastructure, whether it involves additional IT infrastructure or modern apps, would be highly advantageous"

"This product doesn't have a GUI. In order to use it properly, I need to connect it to a new GUI or build a GUI to manage it — it's pretty difficult."

"Tanzu could provide more granular control over whatever networking is being done on the containers. I would also like to see a slightly more detailed view of application-level tracing. I'm referring to the connections between different microservices. If they added a service-matching feature, that would be helpful for the customers to build or be more effective."

"The disaster recovery feature could be improved to provide better tracking of issues. I would also like to see the introduction of a dashboard view, for even further integration of all the areas that Mission Control looks at."

"The solution is currently focused on VMware infrastructure and I would like to see more options made available."

"It is not easy to build a solution with containers. It has a graphical user interface, but you need to have a lot of knowledge of Linux and how to work in the command mode. Its support can also be improved. Currently, its biggest disadvantage is that it is a new product, and the clients prefer to go for a solution that has been in the market for a long time. There are not that many people who know this product."

"The network control and security policies must be improved."

"One potential area for expansion would be leveraging AI capabilities, which my customer might be interested in exploring as they grow."

More VMware Tanzu Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"They should provide one license for all the sub-products."

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

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

"The solution is free of cost."

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

"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."

"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."

More VMware Aria Automation pricing and cost advice

"The price of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is greater than that of Red Hat's competitor solution"

"The license for VMware Tanzu Application Service is expensive. The license should be cheaper."

"Since we were at a large data center, the price might not have been a concern for us."

"The solution is only for large or medium size enterprises because it is expensive."

"One of our Spanish customers told us that VMware Tanzu Service Mesh is a very expensive product for their data center."

"The least expensive licensing cost for VMware is around $350 per core."

"There are different licenses available. You have to upgrade your license if you want to scale the solution more."

"The product is not expensive, but it is not cheap."

More VMware Tanzu Platform pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	32
Midsize Enterprise	24
Large Enterprise	130

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	10

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...

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

Which is better - OpenShift Container Platform or VMware Tanzu Mission Control?

Red Hat Openshift is ideal for organizations using microservices and cloud environments. I like that the platform is auto-scalable, which saves overhead time for developers. I think Openshift can b...

See all answers

What do you like most about VMware Tanzu Mission Control?

It definitely gives the end customer a good overview and perspective of running applications in terms of overall workload footprint. TMC provides a very detailed description of your cloud-native ap...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Mission Control?

The price of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is greater than that of Red Hat's competitor solution. I would rate the pricing of VMware Tanzu Mission Control as four out of ten.

See all answers

Comparisons

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 14% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 8% of the time

Morpheus vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 7% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 4% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs VMware Aria Automation

Compared 4% of the time

More VMware Aria Automation Competitors

Rancher Labs vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 11% of the time

Kubernetes vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 9% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 7% of the time

Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 5% of the time

Docker vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 5% of the time

More VMware Tanzu Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Automation

January 2026

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Buyer's Guide

VMware Tanzu Platform

January 2026

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Also Known As

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

Tanzu Application Catalog, Application Platform, Application Service, Hub, Mission Control, Service Mesh, Build Service, Concourse for VMware Tanzu

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.

Broadcom

VMware Tanzu Platform is designed for cloud-native development and management of Kubernetes, CI/CD processes, microservices, and containerized workloads. It supports deployments both on cloud and on-premises, providing centralized management via Mission Control.

VMware Tanzu Platform offers seamless integration with vSphere, ESX, and vSAN, supporting centralized cluster management and lifecycle management. The platform provides a GUI for monitoring CI/CD pipelines and network policies, enhancing multi-tenancy and Day 2 operations. Users can easily manage Kubernetes clusters, monitor applications, and integrate with tools such as GitHub, GitLab, Cloud Foundry, and Azure. It ensures compliance and security for service providers, financial institutions, and businesses.

What are the key features of VMware Tanzu Platform?

Integration with vSphere, ESX, and vSAN: Enhances compatibility and flexibility.
Seamless Cluster Management: Centralized control over Kubernetes clusters.
CI/CD Pipelines and Network Policies: Simplifies monitoring and management.
Multi-tenancy Support: Facilitates resource sharing among multiple users.
Comprehensive Lifecycle Management: Streamlines deployment and scalability.
Observability Platform: Provides enhanced visibility and control.

What benefits and ROI should users look for in VMware Tanzu Platform reviews?

Centralized Management: Simplifies operations and reduces manual effort.
Enhanced Compliance and Security: Meets regulatory requirements.
Flexibility in Deployment: Supports both cloud and on-premises options.
Seamless Integration: Works with multiple vendors and tools.
Developer-Friendly Environment: Improves productivity and innovation.

Industries such as financial institutions, service providers, and businesses requiring rigorous compliance and security deploy VMware Tanzu Platform. These entities benefit from centralized management, streamlined DevOps processes, and integrated tools, enhancing their capabilities in cloud-native developments and containerized workloads.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

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

Verizon, Cerner, Zipcar, Avarteq

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Automation vs. VMware Tanzu Platform

February 2026

Free Report: VMware Aria Automation vs. VMware Tanzu Platform

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