VMware Aria Automation Reviews

VMware Aria Automation's most productive use case for us is in the financial sector. We are automating several things and using several tools from this solution. We use either plain blueprints, ABX actions, or pipelines. It is not one tool for everything, as it depends on the department and what is the most convenient method for them. We use many different methods and approaches from this tool.

One of the best features and advantages of VMware Aria Automation is that it has a nice user service portal. A user can log in and, through a catalog, can pick and choose something from a deployment, pipeline, or a VRO workflow. This is one of the best things that it has. The canvas is fantastic, and the blueprint design allows you to design everything. It has been enhanced a lot. Also, the YAML option on the right-hand side allows you to put your YAML code and build the whole thing. You can find ready-made things from the internet as well, created by others. It is a nice tool, and we have used it for a very long time now. I have been using it since it was not called Aria. It was called something else before it was renamed to VMware Aria Automation, and it was quite a long time back.

In our use case, the orchestration capabilities of VMware Aria Automation help to streamline our complex workflows because we leverage VRO when the going gets tough. When something is not doable with the tools we have with VMware Aria Automation, we use the capabilities of VRO because it has many plugins for many things, such as vCenter and hundreds of plugins from databases. There are predefined workflows as well, which is useful. We are also using a capability of vCenter that captures your moves in code, and then you can take that code and put it in the VRO, and you can make a workflow without having knowledge of how to write the workflow. I think it is called Code Developer Code or something similar in vCenter.

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.

I have been working with VMware Aria Automation for more than ten years.

Regarding VMware Aria Automation in general, I would say that it was extremely good. I would rate it a nine. However, at some moments, until the time that they moved from version six or seven to version eight and above, things changed. They tried to implement more and more things. Until version six or seven, it was perfect. But from version eight and above, I would say that the more things you try to do and promise your clients, the more issues arise. When you promise "We do this, we do that," and then you try to do this and that, you end up creating patches to fix this and fix that. I would say seven for version eight and above. Until version eight, it was perfect because it was very proven and stable, and it was doing very well what it was promising. But then they put more into it, and yes.

For VMware technical support in general, I have a very clear answer. For products and solutions that have really proven their stability, such as vSphere, vSAN, and NSX, I would say VMware Aria Operations and in general, the Aria product suites are above eight. It is very good. But for products that they have announced and are selling, such as Tanzu for vSphere or in general, Kubernetes that they have adopted and named Tanzu, I would say below two. I would say one, but I do not want to say one or two. I would say below five. I respect their availability and that they are willing to hear us, but they do not provide us help. I see a lot of lack of knowledge and lack of training. When you open a ticket, in very, very few cases, they solve it. This is around a particular solution, Tanzu. It is not for other solutions.

Positive

When working with VMware Aria Automation, if you are working with a particular vendor, you somehow adjust your needs to this particular vendor. When we have challenges, for example, when something is not doable with this tool, we have alternative solutions. We may move it to something else, such as a Kubernetes environment with CI/CD. Even though VMware Aria Automation can do that as well, we have this alternative workaround.

The customer does not feel comfortable with the new pricing model of VMware Aria Automation. I am not sure regarding the pricing and what the future of it is because customers are already looking for other solutions that are not so pricey. I see a lot of thoughts around the people making these decisions. When you are putting two solutions on the scale, on the left-hand side, you have one solution that has one million features, and on the other side, you have a solution that has half of the features that the other solution has. Because of the pricing model that VMware has adopted, they are looking for platforms that are not so feature-full. They do not care about the features anymore, and they are looking only at the prices because the price has become a real big obstacle for them. That is the feeling that I have. They are looking for alternatives. If you were having that discussion five years ago, it was a no-go. They did not even look at solutions that have fewer features. They were following VMware blindly. Now they are looking at other things. It is not only the company that I am working for. It is what I am hearing from here and there.

I work with AWS, and we are looking for other things as well.

I am using the orchestration capabilities of VMware Aria Automation.

I do not have an answer to the value of policy-based governance in maintaining compliance and mitigating risks with VMware Aria Automation.

I have not used the API integration support with VMware Aria Automation myself, but I am sure my other colleagues are using it.

In the organization that I work, VMware Aria Automation is still there and is playing a big part of the infrastructure. I do not hear rumors anywhere that this thing is going to be replaced or is not good. I am telling you what I am hearing from here and there.

VMware Aria Automation helps to simplify our resource management. It is one of the main tools of automation. There are other tools as well. It is not the only one, but this one, as far as the infrastructure is aware, and I mean Infrastructure as a Service, is playing a big part in the organization. At least for the IaaS, the Infrastructure as a Service. Whatever is infrastructure, that means VMs, the creation of VMs, modifying VMs, getting resources out of VMs, VMs in general, because we have thousands of them. So this is a big tool for infrastructure.

I am a senior IT person, and I am involved in many things in this organization. It is not only VMware, but I am also doing CI/CD and cloud work outside of VMware.

I am rating this review a seven overall.

I use it to automate operations such as creating a game and setting up a Panzu Kubernetes cluster. I also use it to automate processes after creating a VM. I place at least the lookout of the VM's CyberApp to manage it. 

Currently, I am integrating it with CyberApp and Email. I use the RedSchool API to integrate other automation with the server app. I use NTP to connect the email to the email server.

It helps me build a big catalog and provide it to my end users. It helps us automate the workflow of creating many VMs and the TensorFlow key method. I do not meet many people to operate it live beforehand. It operates for both of my products, but as a product, it is complicated to integrate and automate with other products.

It operates for both of my products, however, as a product, it is complicated to integrate and automate with other products.

I have used the solution for ten months.

We have technical support. If you have an issue, you can raise it to my support. I am not satisfied, however.

Neutral

This is the first product I have used.

It is quite challenging to install. It takes about one week.

I had a team of three people. One of them joined as a junior.

I have not used alternate solutions.

I will recommend it to others who are using PMI products like Long and Samsung, anything like that. 

It can be used with private on-premise clouds or infrastructure like OpenStack. It can easily integrate with an on-premise private setup like OpenStack. 

I rate it eight out of ten.

We used to have VMware Aria Automation on 6.5 version, and then we started to use vRealize. As we were changing the licensing model about two years ago, we started looking for an alternative.

We are using vRealize basically for test environment and sandbox. It is not critical for the company, but in order to save some cloud investment, we are planning to keep the on-premises solution or migrate to another one.

The best feature I saw with the VMware Aria Automation product was that it was easy to handle.

It has an intuitive graphical interface, which was why we were changing.

With vRealize, it is just the vRealize Automation or the VMware Aria Automation.

We do not utilize the orchestration capabilities.

We have strong regulations for maintaining compliance and mitigating risks with this product.

We do not utilize the orchestration capabilities.

We used to have VMware Aria Automation on 6.5 version, and then we started to use vRealize.

I would not rate them wrong because we never had major issues to report or request support.

I will give them an eight for support.

Positive

We used to have API integration support, but now as we moved all the APIs universe to the cloud, we are using the AWS features.

It was related to RPA processes, and we used to use a Blue Prism solution for RPA. This was the first thing we used regarding integration between the automated process using Blue Prism and that tier of APIs, and the support helped us understand how to keep a standard on that.

I cannot provide specific details at this moment about FTE hours improved, but the calculation was regarding effective hours of reducing and expanding the working operations over the business hours.

It was more than 20% improvement, which is very good for us.

Our focus is basically the full-time reduction, the FTE hours; that is our goal to include new automations within the different business hour operation range.

We have the most major infrastructure on the cloud right now, but the VMware Aria Automation solution we have is on-premises. Therefore, as the obsolescence and the server replacement are coming, we are looking for an alternative to use rather than VMware Aria Automation.

I am still using VMware tools. In fact, I have to migrate to a new alternative.

I do not deal with vCenter or vSphere as or other VMware products yet.

I do not deal with vSphere either.

I do not use the Horizon Cloud yet or Horizon Desktop.

We use VMware Workstation and vRealize.

I use vRealize.

VMware Aria Automation is compliant.

It is not difficult for them. The regulations request us to perform or to have some security managed ways, and the regulations are clear about that, including authentication and everything related to security.

Based on my experience, I rate VMware Aria Automation 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 the product for automation purposes for high CPU utilization. We can create a playbook using it.

The product saves a lot of time and cost for us. It has valuable features for creating a playbook.

VMware Aria Automation could be more user-friendly. It is complex to use for new users. It should have automated tools or drag-and-drop functionality.

We have been using VMware Aria Automation for one year.

It is a stable product.

We have three VMware Aria Automation users in our organization. It is a scalable product.

The technical support team takes time to reply to queries. 

Neutral

We have used Dell IDPA before. We switched to VMware Aria Automation for more flexibility. It integrates with many VMware products, including Nutanix and ESXI data centers and hypervisor.

The deployment is easy. It takes a day to complete. It requires two to three executives from the network, data center, reporting, and implementation department to work on it. It can be integrated on-premises and on the cloud. 

The product is easy to maintain. One executive can maintain 500 virtual machines. It needs two more executives to manage more than 500 different cloud accounts.

They should provide one license for all the sub-products. For example, if we purchase VMware Aria Automation, they should also add a license for VMware vRealize Automation. It is tricky to upgrade and manage multiple licenses together. We have to pay additional costs for support services for critical issues.

I rate VMware Aria Automation a seven out of ten. They should provide only one license and free support services until the product’s life cycle ends. Also, its support team should respond faster.

My customers use it to build their private cloud infrastructure.

VMware Aria Automation improves the IT service delivery process. It can automate manual operations, but you need a development team with coding or programming skills to develop blueprints and automation workflows. 

While Aria Automation is a good product for that purpose, we haven't had many customers use it due to its cost and the development skills required. That's a challenge to consider.

Aria Automation can manage some aspects of public clouds, but I have no experience with that. We only use it for private cloud development.

The Blueprints feature is a good one. This feature supports the installation and improvement of automation processes. 

It includes a user-friendly, drag-and-drop interface that assists customers in automating routine tasks without the need for coding. These are simple routines, though.

The self-service functionality allows customers to provision VMs with a single click. They don't need to submit a request to the IT team and wait for them to create the VM. This reduces waiting time for the automation process.

I would like to see better integration capabilities. Maybe if they could develop libraries within Aria Automation for simpler integration with other third-party solutions, instead of just basic integration.

So, integration with backup solutions would be helpful. 

We have been working with this solution for five years. We used to work with the vRealize Automation version, but the name changed earlier.

It was also called VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite.

I would rate the stability a seven out of ten.

We have medium-sized businesses as our clients for this solution. 

The customer service and support are okay because the quality of the support varies from case to case. 

Neutral

The initial setup is difficult. I would rate my experience with the initial setup a six out of ten, with ten being easy. 

It is difficult because of load balancing and we need to prepare information and certificates, and there's a learning curve involved. In the past, this product didn't require any load balancers to deploy or certificates for deployment, but now it does.

For the setup only, we need two or three days. But for configuration to edit a routine or test a routine, it can take anywhere from maybe one to two weeks.

So, two to three days for setup and then one to two weeks for deployment.

I would rate the pricing a ten out of ten, with ten being very expensive. 

I recommend the solution because we've worked with it for many years, but we only have two or three customers because of the price. So, we can't start many projects.

However, I would recommend this solution for the automation function itself, and how to group and publish those groupings is quite easy for customers to learn with Aria.

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

Currently, our usage of VMware Aria Automation is relatively light, mainly focused on automating VMs. However, we aim to broaden our use cases to include more complex scenarios, such as integrating with ServiceNow for end-to-end automation from request to execution. Our goal is to transition towards self-service and comprehensive automation.

The process for customers to automate with VMware Aria Automation is predominantly manual. Requests are made through tickets, which are assigned to Resolver tools. Approvals may come via email, and the execution team logs into Aria Automation to input and execute the requested tasks. Overall, it involves a mix of manual processes, email communication, and ticketing systems.

Currently, the primary feature we're using in VMware Aria Automation is its ability to execute tasks quickly. However, we haven't explored other features like workload management or the full stack yet. So it's hard to make comparisons or fully utilize its potential until we expand our usage.                 

Our current use cases aren't very complex, but as our environment grows, we're seeing a greater need for automation. We're considering expanding our automation efforts, especially since other competitive products are starting to offer similar features.

I have been using VMware Aria Automation for the past one and a half years.

I would rate the stability 8 out of 10. 

I would rate the scalability 6 out of 10. The scalability has improved, making it easier to expand and maintain additional features in VMware Aria Automation.

The response time is usually good, but for more complex cases or requests involving extensive data, the turnaround time may be longer.

The integration works well and there are plenty of out-of-the-box integration options available. While I haven't used all of them extensively, the integration experience is generally smooth and straightforward, typically requiring just one step for standard environments.

Before implementing VMware Aria Automation, users should consider their specific use cases and how the solution aligns with the demands of their working environment. They should also take into account pricing considerations, potential need for ongoing support, and whether the support team is responsive and helpful. Additionally, users should evaluate the availability of features and assess whether the solution meets their requirements effectively.

We utilize the solution for various purposes, including backup solutions with other tools. It automates the backup of servers once they are provisioned, integrates with Cloud Director, and manages SQL databases and storage solutions like NetApp and VMAX.

The platform's most valuable features are its automation capabilities and agility. Eliminating manual backups simplifies the processes and enhances the customer experience. Its integration with other products is also highly beneficial.

Our primary challenge is upgrading the product to the latest version. This process requires careful communication with the vendor to mitigate risks.

I recommend enhancing Red Hat Ansible's integration for better automation and bulk configuration management.

We have been using VMware Aria Automation for approximately five years.

I rate the solution's stability a nine. 

The solution is highly scalable. Approximately 1,500 users are engaged with the product in our organization.

Scaling up is easy, but scaling out requires additional planning and consultation. I rate the scalability a ten. 

We have contacted the technical support team. Their response is generally good, but sometimes cases are transferred between different teams, which can delay resolution.

Positive

The setup is relatively straightforward, though upgrading the system can be complex. Deployment typically takes four to five days, carried out by the vendor's step-by-step plan.

I rate the process an eight. 

The cost of the solution is reasonable for us. Although it is relatively high, we prioritize stability and integration over cost.

I recommend the product due to its effectiveness in automation and integration.

I rate it a ten. 

I use the solution to provision virtual machines. 

We automated many tool deployments with the help of the product, cutting short manual deployments and eliminating the need for human interaction. Its most valuable features include integrating various tools and working with different products using plugins. 

The tool's automation performance is excellent, and I rate it four point five out of ten. 

Maintaining the product requires effort and a good understanding of the environment, including how to set up the codes and other configurations. Pricing needs to be improved to improve the customer penetration. 

I have been using the product for four years. 

The tool is stable, but you will encounter issues when it hits the upper limit. 

VMware Aria Automation is easily scalable. My company has 15-20 users. 

I have used Red Hat before, and VMware Aria Automation is better. It is considered better due to its extensive experience in the field. The tool has acquired an existing product in the domain for several years.

The product's deployment process is much simpler than it used to be, especially with the latest version. While previous versions had multiple components and pillars, the latest version has significantly reduced complexity, improving the deployment process. It took a few weeks to complete. You would need two to four resources to complete the deployment. 

The tool's integration with the existing VMware infrastructure is easy due to product similarity. 

The solution's ROI is good. It can be enhanced with improvement in prices. 

I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten. 

We use VMware Aria Automation for autoscaling. We have multiple databases on multiple nodes. We leverage Aria Automation to migrate workloads to other nodes during the downfall. Additionally, it facilitates training VMs for rapid deployment as needed.

We can connect between multiple VMs in a matter of seconds.

The connectivity between VMs is easy, but they can be made more effective if we have a single proof point where we can configure all the biggest data at a single point. It will be very helpful for the deployment team. They could maintain every log from multiple VMs being collected or taken to adequate various VMs in a single cluster at a particular time.

I have been using VMware Aria Automation for two years.

We haven't got any instability in the VMware Automation.

I rate the solution's stability a ten out of ten.

We have to review some aspects while scaling the VMs due to the connectivity issue.

Internally, the solution is being used by around 10-15 people and 10,000-15,000 people across the globe. We use it daily because the application needs to be up and running for the whole day. Users are currently using Aria Automation.

I rate the solution’s scalability an eight out of ten.

Technical support is good. If we have any issues, we call the team. They respond in no time.

Positive

We had an open-source Automation on the POC basis. It was in the development phase. We didn't deploy due to the security features.

The initial setup is moderate. There could be some trouble connecting multiple VMs to a single master node, but eventually, after getting some hands-on practice, one can leverage tools easily. During the initial period when the team struggled, they took around two hours to deploy. When everyone understood VMware, it took around 30-40 minutes. It was an in-house setup.

We require around three to four people consolidated into a single and deployment teams. They have multiple aspects of others. One was having all the monitoring logs. One was handling VM files or configuration files that need to be maintained. One was looking after all sorts of needs to maintain for every stage. One was a developer looking after all these team members and managing the deployment completely.

I rate the initial setup an eight out of ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy.

I rate the product’s pricing a nine out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive.

We require only two people to maintain this solution, including one monitoring it and another going through all the software documents to be maintained.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.