VMware Aria Automation Reviews

We primarily use this solution to deploy servers. It is run on our own private cloud that we put into place because our legacy infrastructure did not allow self-service. It was operated by administrators and other people. We have a requirement that disallows us to be open to the outside, which means that we can't interconnect with clouds like Azure.

Whether for legacy purposes or our cloud system, we use it for automation. We automate each and every task, such as deploying servers, network configuration, operating system deployment, and others. Deploying a server has 13 tasks starting with creating the VM and allocating storage on the network, to saving a password in a secure location.

Using this solution has greatly reduced the time it takes to deploy a server. It used to take at least one month, whereas now, to deploy a server takes two hours.

Using this product has changed the processes that the developers follow. It changed things for them but I don't know what they were doing before that.

We have used VRA to improve our security posture, in part because we can avoid relying on administrators and other people. The solution has all of the privileges necessary to deploy what we have to deploy. This means that we have better control over our security and the fact that we have automated the process, we know if it's not working, and we know whether everything is done correctly. If you rely on people, there can be human errors, in particular with respect to the firewalling not being properly done. There are specifics such as whether we had more ports open than necessary, or perhaps not enough. By automating everything, our process, including the security, has really improved the way that we handle the communication between the new server and the rest of the infrastructure.

Implementing VRA has enabled us to leverage other VMware products to support IT ops. We already had VMware products in our organization and adding VRA to the environment has helped make better use of those components. This was not our primary driver but it was a good plus for us later.

VRA has allowed us to save application provisioning time, as well. I estimate that our time to provision has gone from one week to one hour.

The most valuable feature is being able to deploy a virtual machine from a low level. We can automate everything including network configuration, firewall configuration, storage, storage attachment, OS deployment, middleware, and so forth.

We use some of the DevOps features for infrastructure capabilities including VMware cloud templates, infrastructure pipeline for continuous delivery, and interactive development for GitOps use cases. I am not responsible for using these features but they have given us a lot more flexibility in our development. 

The DevOps capabilities have saved time for the developers, although I do not have the exact details. I can say that it is significant. 

Multitenancy management is a little bit difficult to do, so it is an area that can be improved.

We have been using VMware vRealize Automation for more than five years.

The stability of this product is good. We use it on a daily basis.

Scalability-wise, this is a good solution.

We have approximately 100 people using the cloud-based part of the solution, whereas about 10 of them use the legacy system.

We do not currently have plans to increase our usage.

We did not have another similar solution prior to this one. However, VMware did help us to drive value from the cloud quicker than the previous process. VRA gives us more reliability and more flexibility, allowing us to deploy faster through task automation. However, I can't explain specific ways that it may have helped our business.

The initial setup was complex, although I wouldn't necessarily say that it is because of the solution. Rather, there is complexity because of our environment. I was not part of the implementation team so I do not know all of the details.

It took approximately one month to deploy.

Our in-house team was responsible for deployment. We have some VMware experts in the organization. Approximately five people are required for deployment and maintenance. There is a support engineer, a solution architect, and we are responsible for the level-three support.

This is not the type of solution we deploy with the goal of seeing a return on investment. It is mainly used to speed up server deployment and infrastructure deployment. As we are in the banking industry, the fact that we are faster to deliver infrastructure or applications is not part of a return on investment. We deployed the solution in order to provide better quality to our internal clients.

When people out of IT were asking for infrastructure, it took a long time and they were upset. We have started to deploy some shadow IT and the driver behind deploying VRA was to show that we now have the tools to deploy things more quickly. 

This is an expensive product and the high price is starting to become an issue for us.

We are currently using version 7 of the solution but we are transitioning to version 8.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We use vRealize Automation not only to track the utilization of the environment but to deploy new VMs on a regular basis. When DevOps decide they need a whole bunch of VMs spun up for a new version of an application we are already running, we can duplicate everything we've already got, spin them all up, get them running. When they're done with whatever test case they have going on, we can either move them over to staging or we can completely wipe out the entire environment, and that's a lot easier to monitor and manage.

Simplification. It gives us one interface to control multiple environments. It's an easier way to look at how a large chunk of information or data or processors are being used, and what they're being used for.

I would like to see it expanding, growing in all of the cloud-based stuff that they are really pushing towards, and have it be more capable of what it is already doing. But in reality, that's probably our own fault because we're a little bit behind on the version of VMware that we're running. It's probably just that we need to get caught up on our version.

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.

Scalability is probably the best part about it. You can take things that you've already defined, that you've already built once, and build them again multiple times, without significant effort.

I haven't used technical support but my co-worker has, more than once, to deal with issues we were having while we were in the process of setting it up. I was off on other tasks so I never really had to deal with tech support. But, from what he said, it worked out well. They knew what they were talking about, they helped us get it sorted out.

There were other solutions that were used previously, but this one is the main one I have used, personally. Before coming to Bass Pro, where I am working now, it was a lot of VMware on bare metal and dealing with it directly. vRealize wasn't there.

We see our ROI is in terms of the reduced workload, because we can see a lot of things on one place and don't have to spend a lot of time going out looking for them, and in the simplification of deployment. Again, we can go to one place, do what we need to do, go off and work on other projects and come back and it's taken care of it itself.

I give the solution a nine out of ten. Again, that's probably our own being behind. It's entirely possible the newest version is a ten. It's the whole extension, further into more modern technology, but we're not on the newest version at the moment. So it's probably already there and we don't see it yet. We're trying to get everything pulled together between our company and several other companies, to be on the same version. We're in the process of upgrading to the 6.5 and then, hopefully, very soon to 6.7.

My primary use case for this solution is to automate the development of the infrastructure. I deployed the VM for the development team.

I like that it is easy to deploy the infrastructure.

I have found 7.4 to be user-friendly but 7.5 is not, in fact, it's a nightmare. They changed everything on the graphic user interface, the mode where the user interacts with the product. 

7.4 is okay but we have had some issues with 7.5. We have issues with the approval process of the request. The link for the approval doesn't work. I opened a ticket with VMware and I still haven't gotten an answer. I don't like the infrastructure.  

I have found the scalability to be good. We share infrastructure with multiple machines and infrastructure servers. 

Technical support isn't great. I opened a ticket with them two weeks ago and have yet to receive an answer. 

We knew that we needed to switch to this solution because our customers asked for it. 

The initial setup was straightforward. It's easy to deploy. 

The upgrade experience was a nightmare. I upgraded from 7.4 to 7.5 and it's been terrible. 

I am the integrator. I do the deployment for our customers. 

Our customers have seen ROI but I don't know the exact numbers. 

I would rate this solution a nine and would advise someone looking into this or a similar solution to invest in VMware Orchestrator. It's behind vRealize Automation for almost everything. You should know vRealize Orchestrator first and then try to deploy, install, and configure vRealize Automation. 

We use it for monitoring.

The benefits include a smoother migration to cloud services and access to new features, but overall, it doesn’t seem to have a significant impact.

I like its capacity, the self-service portal, and operational automation. The most beneficial feature is that it saves time when creating new virtual machines, deploying security measures, and writing infrastructure code, making things easier and faster. We have a standard we follow, reducing the time spent repeatedly rewriting everything.

The integration is a bit tight. I need the right package to use it properly. The new automation processes for VMware are messy, and support could be better.

We’ve been using VMware Aria Automation for six months.

Overall, it’s stable.

I don’t have complaints about its scalability; it seems fine.

When we call support, responses take a long time, and urgent issues can’t wait days for a reply.This leads to operational troubles.

Negative

We evaluated four different options, including Nutanix for virtualization and Ansible for automation.

The experience was not straightforward; we used the Gradios version before, so it wasn’t a new experience, but it was typical.At first, we received direction from VMware technicians, but after the first month, we had to handle everything ourselves. It took longer than expected because of hardware issues and is not fully complete yet.

I would rate it high because, compared to other solutions, VMware’s pricing is quite expensive. VMware products have become significantly more costly in recent years, leading to higher costs.

If you can afford it, I would recommend it. Its integration with virtualization and high availability features make it valuable. I don’t see a direct integration of AI; it seems more about resource management and efficiency than advanced AI features.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I use the solution in my company for our day-to-day tasks, like the creation of VMs, policy assignments, and some network mappings to the virtual machines, which are all done through the tool's automated policies in Aria Operations.

The most helpful feature of the product stems from the fact that you can create a lot of virtual machines automatically using the tool's automation features.

The high price of the tool is an area of concern where improvements are required.

I have been using VMware Aria Automation for two years.

The product is stable.

It is a highly scalable solution.

My company has an additional team that consists of people who coordinate directly with the VMware support team.

From the usability point of view, if you have experience working on other platforms, then you will feel familiar working with VMware Aria Automation, and it would mostly be the same experience. Only VMware Aria Automation's interface would feel different compared to the interfaces of the Other products one may have experienced with in the past. Most of the features are the same in VMware Aria Automation and in the other products that are similar to it.

In my company, we work with other tools, but there are dedicated teams who are assigned specifically to use each product.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

The solution can be deployed in a month.

It is an expensive product. After VMware's acquisition by Broadcom, there was a rise in the price of VMware Aria Automation. My company's procurement team handles the pricing part.

I did see a significant improvement in our company's IT efficiency, especially when there were a lot of deployments, as it eased up the efforts.

The most beneficial feature of the product for my company's on-premises infrastructure revolves around VMware vSphere and VMware Aria. I can't speak in much depth about other tools as I have not been exposed to other products since some other team in my company handles them.

My company has not integrated VMware Aria Automation with some other tools or platforms.

I rate the tool a seven and a half to eight out of ten.

We use SaltStack to configure virtual machines, ESXi hosts, or any Windows product.

The product’s most valuable feature is its ability to provide environmental security.

There could be better initial documentation for the product.

We have been using SaltStack for six months now.

It is a stable product. I rate its stability an eight out of ten.

The platform scales well. We can configure multiple systems. I rate its scalability a ten out of ten.

We can contact VMware support. But we find out the solutions ourselves. Although, its online documentation needs a lot of improvement.

Negative

We have deployed SaltStack on a hybrid cloud. It is difficult to set up and requires one executive to operate the deployment. I rate the process a six out of ten.

It is an open-source product.

The product works great for changing configurations. I recommend it for the DevSecOps environment. I rate it a seven out of ten as it is not user-friendly.

VMware Automation allows you to deploy your blueprint on-prem or on a public cloud, so you have a consistent, unified service catalog.  Users can request revisions to our infrastructure, applications, and resources from one portal on the private or public cloud. We only have one or two people with the knowledge and experience to use vRA and the vRA Orchestrator.

Aria Automation gives you the flexibility to deploy tenants with customized blueprints for permissions and policies. Version 7.8 consisted of multiple products, so you had to deploy a lot of virtual machines on one of the servers.  Starting from 8.6, VMware consolidated all the components into one Linux appliance. This allows the option to use vRA or DevOps capabilities.

They could extend the ability to use vRealize Orchestrator Automation for organizations with multiple tenants. It should be easier to operate and extend different capabilities from vRealize Orchestrator. Currently, it's difficult to build advanced services in Aria Automation because you need to use the vRealize Orchestrator. 

I have been using Aria Automation for about three or four years

Aria Automation is stable.

You can deploy a single node or an enterprise cluster consisting of three nodes. 

I rate VMware support six out of 10. 

Setting up Aria Automation is difficult. The complexity varies depending on the environment size and infrastructure. It has a lot of prerequisites. For example, it has to have a firewall prepared before installation. Aria Automation is deployed through an installer called vRealize that integrates VMware identity manager, Aria Automation, and the vRealize Lifecycle Manager. The deployment takes about three days.

I rate VMware Aria Automation seven out of 10. Aria Automation needs products like vRealize Orchestrator to extend its capabilities and accessibility. If you are using Aria Automation by itself, you won't get the features you want, and the license cost is high. It needs to be cheaper, easier to use, and have more native capabilities. 

Before deploying Aria Automation, you need to know the prerequisites for the nodes. Each appliance consists of multiple components, and each has its own log. You need to understand your use case and what you want to use so you can customize the services you need to provide. For simple services, you can use only Aria Automation. If you need to customize advanced services, you will have to purchase vRealize Orchestrator and also CI/CD DevOps tools.

The primary use case is to deploy an automated self-service portal for virtual machines for testers and developers to use. It is performing well.

It benefits the speed of our development, and the speed of anything we test and send through to production. It helps us get things to market faster. We're able to get the application out and be more agile with it.

It also raises the caveat for people who like VM sprawl. We have people who don't clean up after themselves.

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.

Once you get in there and start to understand the product, it is more intuitive. However, for somebody coming in from the outside, it takes a while to understand it. There is a lot of terminology. I am the primary admin on it, but I have some guys who tend to support me when I'm gone, and they try to find stuff on it. They don't know the best place to look because some of the terms don't make a lot of sense to them. This is more of a training issue than just getting better familiar with the product. I would like them to improve the product training.

We had a stability issue just this morning. This past weekend was patch day, so it was Monday and patches were done Saturday. The form didn't display properly, so I had to reboot the vRA. Due to the HA, we had to reboot the vRA appliances to get it working again. This might be because the database were ripped out from underneath of it and never reconnected. However, this is not a common occurrence.

Version 7.3 seems to be more scalable than previous versions.

I have talked to some folks out of Denver who do a lot of the vRA support. We also use a partner out in the UK who helps to support us. Both are responsive.

We brought in vRA as part of a new product offering for our customers. It's what we have used from the ground up to provision virtual machines.

I worked with the UK partner to set up the 7.3 version. The upgrade process 6.x to 7.3 was a significant effort. I'm hoping that 7.3 to the next version is much smoother.

I'm very interested in the integration with Puppet. However, my organization doesn't have the funding for something like Puppet right now. If VMware would integrate that feature set (Puppet) into vRA. That would be very awesome.

Find out what the requirements are and what do you want do with it, then see if it fits. If you're looking to deploy virtual machines through a self-service portal, this product works well.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: It meets our requirements.