VMware Aria Operations vs VMware Tanzu Platform comparison

VMware Aria Operations and VMware Tanzu Platform are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. VMware Aria Operations is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.7, while VMware Tanzu Platform is ranked #25 with an average rating of 8.7. VMware Aria Operations holds a 4.9% mindshare in CM, compared to VMware Tanzu Platform’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of VMware Aria Operations users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of VMware Tanzu Platform users who would recommend it.

VMware Aria Operations

Read 376 VMware Aria Operations reviews

7,096 Views
4,116 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

VMware Tanzu Platform

Read 23 VMware Tanzu Platform reviews

6,615 Views
331 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Operations

VMware Tanzu Platform

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

Both VMware Aria Operations and VMware Tanzu Platform excel in cloud management and infrastructure, with Aria Operations having an advantage in infrastructure management and Tanzu leading in Kubernetes and microservices support.

Features: VMware Aria Operations offers features like virtual machine monitoring, predictive analytics, and capacity planning, with excellent integration into VMware’s suite, enhancing operational efficiency. VMware Tanzu Platform provides exceptional Kubernetes management, integration, and application lifecycle management across multi-cloud environments.

Room for Improvement: VMware Aria Operations users suggest enhancements in reporting, third-party integration, dashboard streamlining, and user-friendliness. VMware Tanzu Platform could improve its user interface, provide more detailed application tracing, and offer better customization options to increase usability for cloud-native workloads.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Aria Operations supports versatile deployment across on-premises, hybrid, private, and public clouds, demonstrating flexibility. Tanzu Platform also supports varied deployment models, especially for hybrid and public clouds. Both offer robust customer service backed by VMware, though recent changes may impact experiences.

Pricing and ROI: VMware Aria Operations involves a straightforward licensing model, often bundled with other VMware services, offering good ROI through efficiency, though potentially costly for smaller enterprises. VMware Tanzu Platform, considered more expensive, is suited for medium to large enterprises, providing value for containerized application deployment and management.

To learn more, read our detailed VMware Aria Operations vs. VMware Tanzu Platform Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations vs. VMware Tanzu Platform

December 2025

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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 Operations

Ranking in Cloud Management

2nd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

376

Ranking in other categories

Virtualization Management Tools (1st)

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 (11th), Development Platforms (3rd), Container Management (5th), Service Mesh (7th), Agile and DevOps Services (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of VMware Aria Operations is 4.9%, down from 8.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Tanzu Platform is 1.0%, 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 Operations	4.9%
VMware Tanzu Platform	1.0%
Other	94.1%

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

AldoDomini

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.

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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

"Most valuable features are the dashboards that we can customize per-user that logs into them. If we need to make a dashboard that's very high-level for our executive to see how our virtual environment's handling things, we can do that. Or, if we need to deep-dive technically, we can do that for our engineers."

"It gives us visibility into the virtual infrastructure, and even the physical infrastructure, and into the workloads running. We have visibility even at the level of the appliance services. We can monitor everything. We can also create dependency reports, so if a service is down, it will not impact things. It gives us those dependencies brilliantly."

"The alerting feature would be the most valuable feature for us. It gathers more metrics. In the latest versions, there are metrics that are being exactly captured with vCenter which are a bit better. Aside for that it provides a historical analysis of metrics over time."

"The most valuable features of VMware Aria Operations include monitoring CPU, memory, and storage."

"The product's initial setup phase is straightforward."

"There are many valuable features. The top feature is historical trending analysis and future workload predictions. There's a workload forecaster/predictor model in there and it's very helpful for capacity planning."

"It helped troubleshooting issues with storms of software data that cost a lot of IO."

"Valuable features include the PowerCLI module and the ability to do scripting, to pull information out, to simplify reporting and troubleshooting. Being able to gather metrics, or to gather information to alert on it, or to be able to present it in a report, is crucial because, even if the interface is fast, we want to be able to do everything faster through automation. The fact that that's being developed more and more is very important."

More VMware Aria Operations pros

"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."

"There are a lot of services available in VMware Tanzu Application Service, such as databases and application servers. You have everything you need in one application and you do not need to search outside of the solution."

"Tanzu Mission Control has quite a set of rich features when compared to OpenShift."

"We never experienced any problems with scalability."

"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 initial setup is easy."

"The most valuable feature of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is the management functionality of the cluster life cycle. Additionally, the solution integrates well with other vendors, such as Velero for backups and Sonobuoy for compliance. Additionally, it works well in multi-cluster environments."

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

More VMware Tanzu Platform pros

Cons

"I would like to find a tool that is a single pane of glass for everything. The endpoint operations agent doesn't really do much when you install it on an endpoint - for example, on a Windows Server or a Linux server. You don't really get any beneficial information at the OS level from VMware tools."

"The tool itself is not as scalable as we'd like it to be. We have seven or more data centers and we have collectors deployed throughout the whole environment, but we have capacity and performance issues with the tool. We'd like to expand the product so that we would have more capacity, but it has limitations."

"It is a bit complex, so you need to spend time with it."

"There's a lot of stuff we want to do that we can't. I would advise someone considering this solution to take classes and get a lot of information because this solution may look simple but it's a lot harder than it seems."

"If this tool can integrate with other products, for example, those that monitor the network devices or any other storage devices, it will be very beneficial."

"At the beginning, the stability was not that good. The latest versions are much better."

"When we first bought it, our vision was to use role-based access, give application teams access to view a dashboard for their stuff. We found out that the vROps tool can't handle more than about 20 concurrent sessions... We have some 3000 applications."

"It would be nice if it could tell me more about my hardware, if there were any updates on the network that should be deployed, if some firmware needs to be deployed on the server, etc."

More VMware Aria Operations cons

"The solution could improve by having better integration with other solutions such as HPE."

"The solution's initial setup process was complex...The solution could benefit from improved customization and visibility for its users."

"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."

"Another area of improvement is pricing."

"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."

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

"We want to see a new feature that helps build more security architecture like Zero Trust Security or shifting left in Kubernetes."

"LYNX is a managed cluster solution that takes care of specific details within a cluster, such as sequences or services. I haven't seen this feature in Tanzu Mission Control."

More VMware Tanzu Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution has a huge cost. If we could just have one license covering everything that vROps can do, that would be great. I would prefer it this way."

"There has been a bit of cost savings in that we could decide to move workloads around a bit better."

"Five or six years ago, when we took it, it was a very good option. Now, I think I have to reevaluate, to be honest."

"Pricing could always be cheaper, but it's acceptable."

"It is an affordable solution that doesn't require any additional costs."

"The initial costs are a bit on the higher side but the licensing is flexible."

"We have licenses on a three year basis. Licensing costs are much higher, but given the stability of the solution, it is a reasonable price."

"Most small users don't adopt VMware Aria Operations until it's necessary. Small businesses are looking for it, too. We need more monitoring and insights, so we're analyzing solutions to help us out here. I rate the solution’s pricing a five out of ten."

More VMware Aria Operations pricing and cost advice

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

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

"I would recommend that businesses look into the full price for their requirements. The price is high, but there are some open-source add-ons that can be used for customization while keeping costs down, although these might not be suitable for everyone."

"It is not the most expensive option, and I believe the capabilities align well with the value it provides."

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

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

"Its pricing is very competitive. We get around 70% or 75%, sometimes even 80%, discount on the product. I would rate it a four out of five in terms of pricing."

"VMware Tanzu Mission Control is cheaper than Red Hat OpenShift."

More VMware Tanzu Platform pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing 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	64
Midsize Enterprise	62
Large Enterprise	278

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 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...

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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...

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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

VMware Aria Automation vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 13% of the time

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 9% of the time

IBM Turbonomic vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 7% of the time

VMware vSphere vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 7% of the time

Nutanix Prism vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 6% of the time

More VMware Aria Operations Competitors

Rancher Labs vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 13% 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

Docker vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 6% of the time

Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 5% of the time

More VMware Tanzu Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations

January 2026

Download VMware Aria Operations product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Tanzu Platform

January 2026

Download VMware Tanzu Platform product report

Also Known As

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

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

Overview

VMware Aria Operations is a high-ranking virtualization management and cloud management tool that automates and simplifies IT management to the applications it supports. It achieves this through full-stack visibility from physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructure. The product allows users to enable self-driving IT operations management across private, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments. This is conducted with the unified operations platform that delivers continuous performance, capacity and cost optimization, and integrated compliance through artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), and predictive analytics.

VMware Aria Operations Use Cases

VMware Aria Operations has several use cases, some of which include:

Continuous performance optimization: VMware Aria Operations allows users to assure application performance at a minimal cost, facilitated by real-time predictive analytics and artificial intelligence. The product can be used to automatically balance workloads, improve consolidation rations, optimize and rightsize workloads, and avoid contention.
Capacity and cost management: VMware Aria Operations can be utilized to reduce cost and improve efficiency with real-time ML-based capacity and cost analytics. The solution uses these tools to visualize cost savings opportunities and accelerate decision-making.
Intelligent remediation: This product can also be used to predict, prevent, and troubleshoot issues with actionable insights. Through other VMware integrations, users can streamline and centralize IT operations.
Integrated compliance: The solution can be utilized to reduce risk and enforce IT regulatory standards for VMware Cloud through integrated compliance and automated drift remediation.

VMware Aria Operations Features

The product has various features which users can utilize. Several of the features that the 2022 version of VMware Aria Operations introduced include:

Management pack builder: This feature is a no-code solution that allows users to expand their operations visibility to anywhere they wish. The builder allows users to connect to a data source using an HTTP or Amazon AWS data source, as well as to make API calls, create objects, and build out relationships with other objects in the product.
Public cloud basic actions: This is a set of features that allows VMware Aria Operations users to initiate actions automatically via the product's UI for AWS, Microsoft Azure, or GCP CE instances.
Rule-based application discovery: Through this new feature of the product, users can easily discover multiple applications running in all or specific areas of infrastructure and view associated resources. This can be achieved through simple user-defined rules, including discovering applications based on tags, object names, and properties.
Aria Operations capacity management: This feature allows organizations to view the results of what-if analysis based on their allocation model and specify business hours for capacity calculations.
Alerts: This is a set of features that include components called Conditions and Symptoms, which are used to alert different types of issues on the platform.
User access management: Through this feature, users can benefit from improved ways to configure in VMware Aria Operations with the introduction of scopes.
Support for raw device mapping storage: This feature allows users to get configuration details about their raw device mapping (RDM), such as disk sharing, compatibility mode, and SCSI Bus Sharing.

VMware Aria Operations Benefits

VMware Aria Operations brings various benefits to the organizations using it. Among them are the following:

The product helps organizations reduce unplanned downtime and maximize return on investment (ROI) in hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
VMware Aria Operations simplifies management for hybrid clouds from migration assessments.
Users can benefit from an accelerated journey to VMware Cloud on AWS through this solution.
The product can be delivered on premises or as a service, providing flexibility for its users.
VMware Aria Operations can increase operational efficiency through monitoring and management features.
The solution accelerates decision-making through detailed cost analytics, which is visualized for users' convenience.
VMware Aria Operations allows users to both utilize standard compliance templates and create their own custom ones.

Reviews from Real Users

Mohamed N., a tech lead VMware support engineer at a tech services company, appreciates VMware Aria Operations because it is easy to use, stable, and support is always available.

Mojtaba K., a senior system administrator at a comms service provider, values VMware Aria Operations due to the fact that its dashboards give you a glimpse of what is really going on in your virtualized environment.

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

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

Verizon, Cerner, Zipcar, Avarteq

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations vs. VMware Tanzu Platform

December 2025

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