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 #3 with an average rating of 8.6, while VMware Tanzu Platform is ranked #23 with an average rating of 8.5. VMware Aria Operations holds a 6.7% mindshare in CM, compared to VMware Tanzu Platform’s 1.1% 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 375 VMware Aria Operations reviews

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3,618 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

VMware Tanzu Platform

Read 22 VMware Tanzu Platform reviews

6,728 Views
202 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Operations

VMware Tanzu Platform

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 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: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations vs. VMware Tanzu Platform

September 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

3rd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

375

Ranking in other categories

Virtualization Management Tools (1st)

VMware Tanzu Platform

Ranking in Cloud Management

23rd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Build Automation (13th), PaaS Clouds (11th), Development Platforms (3rd), Container Management (3rd), Service Mesh (8th), Agile and DevOps Services (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of VMware Aria Operations is 6.7%, down from 8.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Tanzu Platform is 1.1%, up from 0.3% 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	6.7%
VMware Tanzu Platform	1.1%
Other	92.2%

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

Amar Sorro

Team Lead Virtualization at Hybrid Tech

Manage and monitor crucial banking operations with deep logging and efficient alerting

The most valuable features of VMware Aria Operations include its excellent monitoring capabilities. It allows me to perform deep monitoring and logging of the entire environment, providing a quick alarm and warning system through email. These features help me in efficiently managing virtual machines. The solution also offers easy access to VMware KB articles for problem resolution, ensuring quick access to troubleshooting information.

Read full review

DarshanChaudhari

Solutions Architect Hybrid Cloud Practice US/Europe at Tech Mahindra Limited

Empowers seamless connectivity and integration through APIs while offering robust auto-scaling

I am involved in IT services and we provide a solution to customers. We work with VMware, Nutanix, OpenShift, and Microsoft Hyper-V The Tanzu platform is highly available, scalable, and flexible. It offers native services for autoscaling and integrations through APIs, allowing seamless…

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

"One of the best features is the monitoring. It gives you proactive recommendations, based on the information that you have. It recommends changes. For example, if an ESX service is heavily loaded, it will tell you to make some changes, such as storage optimizations. Every tool does monitoring, but this one gives you more proactive monitoring, with the recommendations and actions that are needed."

"We have effectively reduced a lot of our memory and we love the Idle VMs."

"The vRO (using Functional Programming of Javascript) is a hand-down of the favorite component of this suite."

"The reports: Print any kind of reports or generate them, and send them to somebody if they say my VM is going very slow."

"The initial setup process is fairly simple, especially if you are only setting up a standalone instance."

"The initial setup is very straightforward. The platform and add-on solutions are straightforward."

"The analysis features available with it allow us to do very high-level, enhanced root-cause analysis on events and issues that arise."

"The most valuable feature for me that the pre-implemented, existing dashboards. The fact that I don't need to create a dashboard myself is helpful"

More VMware Aria Operations pros

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

"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."

"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."

"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 most valuable feature of the solution is the ability to check the flow of all the different variants within our applications."

"Defining security metrics has proven beneficial for customers in maintaining a safe environment."

"The Day 2 operations support is the most vital feature"

"The Tanzu platform is highly available, scalable, and flexible."

More VMware Tanzu Platform pros

Cons

"I can't pinpoint any specific areas for improvement at the moment, though there is always room for better pricing, licensing options, and potential enhancements in the user interface or customization."

"The UI interface of the application has been stagnant for a long time."

"VMware Aria Operations is considered overpriced. Customers have commented on the pricing issues, noting that doubling the price is not normal. They are reviewing other options due to this pricing concern."

"The deployment of the solution can be improved by making it less complex."

"It is sometimes quite hard to use. If I need details, there is a huge amount of information that I need to review. It isn't a three-click solution."

"It's a very complex product. It has gotten better over the years, but they still have some work to do. It still requires a lot of time, and some training, to get accustomed to it."

"In vCenter 6.7, there are themes. I would like to see that add to vRealize Operations as well."

"The whole interface is like an information overload, it just bombards me with messages, warnings, and alerts. When I follow through on the majority of these messages, I realize that I'm really just wasting time because they're not really real problems."

More VMware Aria Operations cons

"Customers have noticed a considerable price increase after VMware's acquisition by Broadcom."

"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."

"Addressing the high upfront costs could improve the product. Implementing a subscription-based model with tiered service options could make it more accessible to a broader range of customers."

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

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

"Customers have noticed a considerable price increase after VMware's acquisition by Broadcom."

"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."

More VMware Tanzu Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As we continue to implement it across multiple environments, it reduces costs as well."

"Get the right licensing and increase your licensing as you upgrade and grow. If you get the wrong licensing, it will be expensive, especially if you plan improperly."

"Cost is an issue on vROps. The Standard edition, for an organization our size, is just not useful at all. However, I like the price point of vROps Standard. But as a company, the Advanced is the minimum version that we can use, because we need the customization, we need a lot of the features that Advanced brings. But the price is substantially higher than Standard. It's always been a challenge to try to go in to my leadership and say, "Here's what I want." I've always got to go back and super-justify it and it's not an easy win. Whereas, if the pricing were closer to the Standard model, or maybe even a little bit above that, it's an easier conversation with leadership. But because it really feels like more than double the price, I'm not sure the value, double the money, is there, as an easy-sell to my leadership."

"We would like to build custom dashboards in the standard license. Right now, this is available in the enterprise license, not the standard license."

"Don't overallocate! This means that you don't have to buy many hosts. You can save money that way."

"We have definitely seen ROI by removing unnecessary servers and VMs. By having vROps as an assistant when it comes to monitoring and managing resources, it has helped us a lot with cost savings and managing expenses."

"When we last did a comparison of solutions, the pricing was equal or similar."

"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

"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."

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

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

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

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

"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."

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

More VMware Tanzu Platform pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	62
Midsize Enterprise	62
Large Enterprise	278

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	9

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...

See all answers

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...

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

VMware Aria Automation vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 19% of the time

IBM Turbonomic vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 8% of the time

Nutanix Prism vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 8% of the time

VMware vSphere vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 8% of the time

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager vs VMware Aria Operations

Compared 8% of the time

More VMware Aria Operations Competitors

Rancher Labs vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 17% of the time

Kubernetes vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 13% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 9% of the time

Docker vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 5% of the time

More VMware Tanzu Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations

September 2025

Download VMware Aria Operations product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Tanzu Platform

September 2025

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

September 2025

Free Report: VMware Aria Operations vs. VMware Tanzu Platform

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