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VMware Aria Automation vs vRealize Business for Cloud [EOL] comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
172
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (3rd), Configuration Management (10th), Network Automation (7th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (28th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (7th)
vRealize Business for Cloud...
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

VasilisGiannitsiotis - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
TM
Solutions Architect and project manager at MIB leipzig
Complete solution for automation, orchestration, and end-to-end lifecycle management
The most valuable feature is automation. With the automation, you can easily and quickly implement it by deploying gnashing on virtual environments. It doesn't take long to develop an automation blueprint. You need about half an hour, and then you can install or deploy it on several systems. That was our first great advantage in the project because we urgently needed to deploy across many different systems. So automation helps us to do our work quickly and easily. VMware vRealize has standardized systems for doing work after the deployment. First, you have to set up the language on the system itself. Then there are vRealize's orchestration features. You can implement code in your deployment script to do this configuration automatically. So the orchestrator is a beneficial component. With this, you can implement automatic language selection and automated integration. In other systems, you can implement a multi-blueprint or multi-system environment to deploy the entire database environment and applications on this database with one click. The lifecycle manager is also essential. In version 7.5, you must provide a dir example username and password to access the Citrix server and controller. What's more, you have to include this in your script or your code. But in version 8, you can provide the username and password or store them in the lifecycle manager. So then you can pick it up from there. And that's the only location where you have to change the password. You don't have to change it in every script. That's a massive improvement in version 8.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We have definitely seen an ROI because automation is directly related to productivity."
"The repetitive tasks which took provisioning storage, network, and compute two to three weeks, now takes five minutes."
"We have given internal IT developers the ability to self-provision VMs for development and testing, which has drastically increased their efficiency and increased the communication and transparency between IT development and IT operations."
"We needed vRA to easily integrate with our hypervisor, orchestration, security (tenant segmentation, PCI), workflows, custom code, and internal monitoring/management tools. Since we didn’t have time to develop our own web front-end during the development sprints, vRA saved considerable time and resource cycles. Its ability to easily integrate with all of the VMware cloud products as well as public cloud providers, like AWS and Azure, out-of-the-box, makes it an even more powerful tool."
"Reactors, because of the automation help they provide (reacting to custom events)."
"We did the POC and we managed to cut those six or seven hours to around half an hour a day or so."
"The self-service capabilities are by far the best that we've seen in terms of features."
"The operations manager does a fantastic job on the front end because it includes on-premises and cloud use cases."
"The solution's cost management is very good."
"I like the integration with other applications or vendors."
"The way the dashboard works with the main orchestrator to combine different types of cloud providers is helpful."
"The flexibility of the solution is the most valuable feature."
"It doesn't take long to develop an automation blueprint. You need about half an hour, and then you can install or deploy it on several systems. That was our first great advantage in the project because we urgently needed to deploy across many different systems."
"The most valuable feature is that it allows us to compare the billing between the clouds."
"I like the openness of the solution."
"Overall, this is a good solution and we have not had any problems, but I can't say that it is perfect because of the issues with the documentation and knowledge base."
 

Cons

"I rate it a seven out of ten because it needs improvement in stability, performance, and quality."
"The most important thing that we missed in vRanger was the possibility to mount several images instantaneously and present it so we can run it immediately."
"It is not super-intuitive. It does require some skills to understand how to use it."
"vCenter and vRA, I believe they share two different databases so sometimes you have to somehow sync them up. I wish there was only one database between the two or, somehow, one database would rule over the other one, so if you have both products, the vCenter might use the vRA database. Otherwise, when you do stuff in vCenter, you have to write a command on vRA to update the databases."
"Minion-based deployment is not very smooth. Most of the time, many minions were in a stale state and didn't respond to the salt-master."
"I rate the solution at seven out of ten because I don't believe it's a perfect solution."
"On a scale of one to 10 stability is a seven. There are a lot of moving parts and we often have difficulty with like an individual service on one of the components failing and bringing down the entire stack, and that's pretty regular."
"There are a lot of improvements required with regards to vRealize Automation."
"The product needs some investment in configuration. I would like to see better and more optimized configuration in the tool's future releases."
"The problem with VMware is the price."
"It would be a good idea for VMware to be compatible with the most popular orchestration tools in the market."
"The pricing model is complicated and would be more predictable if it were simplified."
"The solution's private cloud is much too expensive."
"If you haven't established a vSphere cluster and you only have a single server to integrate, you can't deploy any service."
"At the moment, in the POC, we have a very huge issue because you definitely have to implement a vSphere cluster."
"It's not always easy to find the information you need."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an open-source product."
"The solution is free of cost."
"This is an expensive product and the high price is starting to become an issue for us."
"Better pricing is always handy, but I feel it's at the right price point."
"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."
"I would rate the pricing a ten out of ten, with ten being very expensive."
"It is pricey for what you get."
"It made the provisioning of the virtual machines easier and faster. We can react more quickly to customers' demands."
"It's expensive, which is one of the problems with this solution."
"The product is a cost-effective solution."
"The pricing model is complicated."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
22%
Construction Company
19%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise131
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise3
 

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 ...
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Also Known As

VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
VMware IT Business Management Suite, VMware ITBM, IT Business Management Suite, Digital Fuel
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Rent-A-Center, SAIC - (Science Applications International Corporation), Tribune Media, iGATE, EMC, Deutsche Telekom, GEFCO, Banca Ifis
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