VMware Aria Operations Reviews

The analytics engine:

• Goes through all the data which we are out to collect and gives us a nice dashboard.
• Gives details about the whole infrastructure.
• Shows how things are working now.

We used to do all the calculations manually. Now everything is done within the analytics engine itself. So, it gives us a very clear vision, or data, about what we need in our infrastructure support applications.

A feature that would definitely help is something that automatically resizes the virtual infrastructure. That is one thing that we would like to see in vROps. It would understand the workloads' requirements and then resize them based upon orchestration and automation rules.

I've never had an issue with it.

I've never had an issue with it.

I have never used it.

No. We need the solution because we have to monitor our environment. So for monitoring the virtual infrastructure, it is the key component.

It is a straightforward architecture, but you can make it complex based upon your architecture. Based upon where and how you want to deploy.

All the architecture is based upon your datacenter layout. It's a pretty straightforward process but you have to consider your layout.

In-house.

The most important criteria is that the solution must understand the overall software, defined as it is in your architecture; not only the hypervisor layer but the VMs run on it, the storage, the computing that will be running, and the network as well.

Research integration with any other portal that you want to monitor along with your hypervisor.

I would highly recommend going forward with this solution.

Because we are implementing Workspace ONE and Identity Manager, it helps us figure out that process. To scale properly, we need to get proper measurements to know how much storage we need and how much processing we need from a retail perspective.

Better reporting functionality would help plus an automated reporting functionality, because we don't sit with the product all the time.

It's very new to us.

Stability works fine.

I have not used technical support.

It wasn't very good.

Important considerations: Support would probably be number one, then how much pertinent information is provided.

I also think it's important working with a partner. We didn't initially, but we did get involved with a partner that helped us to understand the products better.

The reporting:

• Being able to look into how everything is running.
• How our equipment is running.
• What's going on in the overall environment.

Expressed to management when we're overseeing commitment and when we need more hardware. It helps us to determine that.

Easier management and it should be more user-friendly. When you look at it, and you see a lot of badges, you think, "Oh my god, that looks terrible." But it's really not, they just need to make it easier to read, a better UI.

It seems like a pretty stable product. We do have occasions where we have to reboot some of the appliances, but that's normal operations.

Seems to be fairly able to easily balance it out across datacenters and environments, although we've remained pretty static in terms of scaling.

Tech support is always good. They always work well. There are Irish guys, those are our late night calls and I don't really want to be on those.

I wasn't involved in the setup.

For us, they have to be on our approved list to begin with. There are a lot of legal ramifications for us.

They always do a comparison of different tools, whether it's DMC or if it's for different solutions. We have two or three different vendors we can go to. Personally, I'd prefer to stay with the VMware stuff.

VMware does a really good job of integrating all of their tools together, whereas you get some third parties where they kind of haphazardly integrate in, and they may or may not stay well-integrated. Or, they have difficulty getting integrated. You have to a lot API calls, WMI, and that kind of stuff.

Make sure initially you set it up properly. Don't try taking shortcuts.

I like the availability features and the capacity management. The availability features, like system uptime, we are using some of the endpoint monitoring features for service availability.

The user interface is good.

It definitely has a better view and visibility for everything that's going on, and helps keep tabs and makes sure everything is running well.

Continue on the endpoint side, so you can dig deeper into the Windows operating system, services, and events, because we're trying to use it to replace System Center Operations Manager (SCOM). It doesn't quite do everything, but it's getting there.

We've upgraded a few times, probably a year and a half.

We haven't had any issues with it. It's worked well for us.

It works fine for us. Our environment is pretty small. We have eight hosts on the service side and eight hosts on the desktop side. We're still working on integrating it with the desktop side, but it's fairly small, that has worked for us.

I have not personally used it for this solution, but we're a BCS customer, so we can get support pretty easily if we need to.

Just Microsoft Systems Center.

We were missing things, and weren't seeing alerts for different things. We're pretty heavily invested in VMware, so it integrated more easily.

It was straightforward.

It was pretty much Microsoft or VMware, from our concerns. So, we started with one and went the other way.

It's worth giving it a shot. I think there's a lot of benefit with it. It does pretty much everything you should need it to do.

Also, I find being part of the VMware community useful.

Whatever you go with, make sure you are able to get good support.

The performance graphing, and being able to dig in if there are any issues with a particular VM alerting.

It helps with troubleshooting times, or at least proves to somebody it's not a virtualization issue. Shows what's going on inside the VMs and the environment as a whole.

I don't know if this really helps us with anything stability-wise. It can uncover some things that we may not have known, and it will bubble them up to the surface.

I definitely would like to see the development of dashboards not requiringe a PhD. There's so much data in there. There's so many knobs and things you can turn, that's all great and all, but just to get the basic data that I think is usable, and to build an easy to use dashboard, could be simplified. More of a drag and drop type model, without having to dig into things for correlations.

The solution itself has been very stable. Upgrades are easy, and it's been real stable.

We haven't scaled it since we deployed it from the initial sizing other than adding disc space to it, but to add extra collector nodes, or whatever. Simple.

Not for vROps.

I was not involved.

It's not always the easiest product to work around in, and build (meaningful) dashboards. I think the UI has improved greatly over the years, but I think there's definitely room for improvements to make it overall easier to manage the product without having to be a specialist in the product.

Do your due diligence. Evaluate all of the products, and make sure what you're buying is going to meet your needs and criteria. Whatever that may be.

Things to look out for:

• Definitely functionality
• Ease of use
• Scalability
• Cost value

It's all about the push-pull configurations. Before, we were using home-brewed apps. We were also using a lot of open source products, and those are great. But if the guy that's managing the open source product leaves, then you're kind of up the creek without a paddle, so vROps fills this void. It's a packaged offer from VMware, therefore it plays well with the entire suite. We're running the entire suite with vRealize, vROps, and we've got our entire VMware infrastructure running our NSX platform in Amazon's private cloud, because of this vROps is able to monitor and examine stuff. We're able to push-pull configs from that, and the biggest thing I like is to be able to push-pull configurations.

The biggest benefit is because it's an app developed by VMware and we are a VMware shop, they play well together. There aren't any plugins that I have to download. There's no modification of code. You install it and away you go.

I'd like the GUI to be flashier. It's the one thing that's missing. It's very clunky, which is fine. It's functional. You don't need it to be flashy. The backend problems have been resolved for the most part. At least, I feel that they have.

There needs to be more training. Once I build this and hand it off to somebody else, there is a lack of training available.

I don't know if it's the environment. I have been having issues in the field. One of them was with vROps. We're trying to use containers with Docker, but we're having issues when we try to run these in containers. Outside of the containers, they run great. In a clustered form, we have three availability zones and vROps is running processes fine. We start a container, then it becomes an issue. I don't know if it's just the way we configured it. I don't know what it is, but that's my issue. When I try to make it run in containers, it doesn't work.

It scales really nice. Just like most VMware products, they all scale really nice.

I haven't used it.

We were using all open source products, yet I was having issues monitoring my environment. I was using stuff like ELK (we're still using ELK), but I was trying to do everything with ELK, Cisco Tetration, and other products. It just wasn't doing it, so the sales guy said, "I'll give you a 30-day PoC of vROps. If you don't like it, cancel it. If you like it, then pay for it."

It wasn't complex, but I've spoken to other people who thought it. So for me, personally no, it was pretty straightforward, but I've been working in the VMware world for a while. I would say, it was very straightforward.

A lot of open-source stuff. What vROps does today, I've done it with open source products. In fact, I logged stashed stuff like that. I've done all those functions there and I've written scripts in a box that push and pull from places where I need it. I know there are other competitors out there, but I've just never been able to see those guys.

It's a good product, but it's gotta be a partnership.

We made them switch our sales guys.

Because I really didn't like our last sales guy, he was really about pushing the product, not about relationship. He didn't care what business we're in. He didn't really care about me as a customer. Our current salesperson is fantastic. She's great. She cares about us. She's invested in what we do. She's local and familiar with that area. I love that. It creates a personal touch. It means a lot.

Dashboards, then the troubleshooting parts of it. For example, the dashboards that troubleshoot issues with VMs.

It can create a list of operational tasks that need to be addressed. This way we can give a list to operational people of what they need to do on a day-to-day basis.

Needs simpler dashboards; executive level dashboards.

Get all of your access roles enabled so that you can use them in both places.

It's a large product, but it's very stable after you get all the pieces and enough low balance involved.

Great. We have six main nodes and a bunch of external nodes (remote connectors).

Good. They know the product very well.

We were previously using eg operational intelligence. We got a new system because we needed more integration and wanted more insight into what's going on in our environment.

It's complex, but as long as you follow all the steps and don't miss anything, it's fine.

When selecting a better alternative, look at scalability and support.

Test it out. Make sure you get the dashboards you want.

We use the product for quite a few purposes.

Two of the main reasons why:

1. We wanted a tool where we could actually see what's happening within the vSphere environment, as well a give us the ability to plan for future growth. So, a planning tool that we use for planning, but also for notifications of events which are actually happening in the environment.
2. To minimize downtime, as well as be in a position to plan for future growth.

It is very important to us to be able to see exactly what's going on in the environment on one screen. Go to the dashboard, you actually see hotspots, you highlight your hotspots, and drill right down.

We are in a better position from an IT point of view. We can actually show management our plan based on growth, whatever growth they're looking for within the environment, as well as be proactive. In other words, when systems are down, this tool actually gives us that ability.

I would say it's slow. The version we have right now is pretty robust in the sense that after you've installed it, and it's been running for awhile - it has to run for at least thirty days or longer. Then, it really gives you back meaningful data.

What would I like to see enhanced? The only thing I don't like is I've actually had to set it up twice from the ground up. That can be annoying. But, other than that the data it's providing is very useful to us.

We set it up twice because we had major releases and we upgraded the vSphere environment. Quite a few releases and we didn't follow through with that part of the product, so it was behind. Therefore, to catch up, it was more advisable for us to start over.

You can change versions of vSphere, but you'll also need to upgrade your product. There were a few times where we actually had to start all over collecting more data. It's one of those tools where it needs to be running for a while. It collects a lot of the analytics before you can actually start using the information it's providing you. There were a few times where we had to start over. We just couldn't do an upgrade and take the data forward.

It is very stable. We've been through quite a few generations of it, and it's been very stable.

Scalability in the sense that we're a small shop. So, scalability in the sense that it serves our purpose.

They are knowledgable and very supportive. You are always reaching the right person.

No, we weren't using anything before. We were looking for something.

It was very straightforward. Right out of the box you install it and you let it run for 30 days, and it starts giving you back data.

We did the setup.

Not at the time of the purchase. Other vendors came once our product became GA.

We did not look at any of them, since we had already purchased.

We spoke to quite a few other vendors that actually had other products with similar functions of dashboard very similar, or dashboards that were suppose to be better, and they gave you much more analytics of the data. But again we stuck with this product, and the reason why we stuck with it, it gave us what we were looking for. There are some other products that are more proactive, but we decided not to take that approach.

Take a good look at it. It integrates well with the vSphere environment. There are other products that do integrate well, and supposedly give you much more granular detail than this product does. I don't know. It's just a matter of preference, I'd say. It depends on how grand you want to go and how aggressive you want to go in your approach to fixing issues within your environment.

I would look at all the products and see exactly how grand you wanna get and how much information you're looking for, then make the decision. Right out the box, you install it, once it's set up, it's already collecting data, and that was as much setup as we needed.

Integration is very important, support, and also there wasn't any product on the market at the time that worked directly with vSphere. We were one of the early adopters of vSphere. Once our product came out, I wanted, from the start, what it's doing now. In other words, it was a good choice.

We spoke to quite a few other vendors that actually had other products with similar functions of dashboard very similar, or dashboards that were suppose to be better, and they gave you much more analytics of the data. But again we stuck with this product, and the reason why we stuck with it, it gave us what we were looking for. There are some other products that are more proactive, but we decided not to take that approach.