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Cloudify vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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

Cloudify
Ranking in Cloud Management
39th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Aria Automation
Ranking in Cloud Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
172
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (10th), Network Automation (7th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (27th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Cloudify is 1.4%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 5.5%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Aria Automation5.5%
Cloudify1.4%
Other93.1%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Ullas Soman - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Consultant at Coforge Growth Agency
Great at enabling a single platform to communicate with an entire infrastructure.
The best feature of Cloudify is that it enables a single platform to communicate with the DB, with applications, and with the entire infrastructure. The product is very stable and has a lot of troubleshooting and analytical features. It's easy to understand and user-friendly. If you want to uninstall something, it's very easy to have the logic created in Cloudify. Other solutions don't have this. For example, if you wanted to decommission after three or four years, rather than going for a full decommission, it's possible to unallocate a particular space. If you want to allocate storage for a new build, it's very easy to deploy, uninstall and release some storage from the TOSCA.
VasilisGiannitsiotis - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT at ITSolutions
Automation has streamlined complex financial workflows but still needs more intuitive orchestration
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.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Cloudify provides the infrastructure-as-code, as well as operational action capabilities (orchestrated startups or upgrades, and more)."
"It has enabled us to create the DICE Deployment Service and simplified deployment of any other services (monitoring, continuous integration, etc.)."
"The solution includes the option to run background scripts and processes from a connected API."
"Product has given us the ability to catch early scaling issues that many companies hit on with private clouds."
"We have been able to realize ROI for our customers in the form of reduced cost, higher top line and increased valuation through improved profitability."
"We have found that this is not an undue burden, and the extra work gives immense flexibility and portability."
"The best feature of Cloudify is that it enables a single platform to communicate with the DB, with applications, and with the entire infrastructure."
"TOSCA model allows modeling the application rather than the automation. It is a machine-readable representation of the application and its infrastructure, which can be used for other things too, not just for the orchestration (e.g. enterprise architecture big picture, who connects to whom)."
"The IT support for developers is nice as well because they are able to manage the environment themselves."
"From day 1 that it went into production, we started seeing its benefits."
"It requires very limited time to set up an enterprise environment."
"Go for it. It's a perfect product of a heterogeneous environment."
"It is very stable, especially for high availability features."
"It is probably 90 percent quicker to get something out the door than it was before."
"We monitor the configurations against CIS standards. We run CIS benchmarks and maintain configurations with higher CIS values for each server."
"VMware Aria Automation has made a lot of things easier. It has really helped the operations team to spin up the virtual machines."
 

Cons

"Cloudify is not a turn-key solution, nor designed as such."
"It lacked the user interface for multitenancy and basic platform management tasks. It is a leader in the niche area that they like to perform in, but it only does about 30% of top-tier advanced functions of platform management. It doesn't meet about 70% of what you need to manage a private cloud platform."
"There were some issues with deploying the solution on OpenStack Mitaka."
"It lacked the user interface for multitenancy and basic platform management tasks."
"The solution could be improved with respect to error handling. If we want to troubleshoot further and deep dive, we don't have access to admin privileges to extract those errors."
"Unlike the Docker environment, Cloudify takes time for configuration and its learning curve."
"I'd like to see a more simplified upgrade process so it can be completed in one step rather than multiple steps (snapshot backup + snapshot restore)."
"Error handling could be improved; GUI is lacking with respect to user privileges and connectivity."
"I'm not wanting any particular feature; but there should be cost reductions. VMware comes at a high cost, and that's why we are in the process of transitioning to a more affordable alternative."
"in general, it took us a long time to get it off the ground. We had a lot of issues upfront and we determined that we just needed to scrap it. I think we scrapped it two or three times before we actually got it built the way we wanted, and we're still not where we need to be. We have had downtime. There have been some issues, but we're also two iterations behind on version."
"Windows support is advertised as a first-rate supported platform; however, it is ripe with issues that have added countless hours to our roadmap."
"With the workflow aspect, which has manual intervention, a policy needs to be approved by somebody. There could be better management of that piece with better templates. It is like a workflow engine, but does not have enough example templates to do certain things. A lot of people waste a lot of time trying to figure out the same thing, and everybody is trying to figure out the same thing, e.g., how to make a MySQL cluster in a Windows environment?"
"The stability needs a lot of work. The troubleshooting component of vRealize is a pain. The administration and the upgrades are not up to the mark. If they were able to improve on that, that would be the best thing and would make it much easier to run it in the enterprise."
"I don't find the solution to be intuitive and user- friendly. The GUI is really complicated. Tracking down logs and errors is very hard. Then, it takes a specialized JavaScript person to build. Also, I'm not sure how the upgrades are going now, but they definitely need to evolve the upgrade process. Finally, the logs are very generalized. Giving more of an indicator of what's actually going wrong, rather than just a generic error code, would help."
"I would like to see more integration to do things like DR, from a court perspective."
"There are a number of bugs and regression errors that can make it frustrating at times, but given the flexibility so far I have found adequate workarounds."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I wasn't involved in the pricing of it because we were just doing prototype work with it, but I was told by the upper management team that it was quite expensive. That was another reason we switched to Morpheus."
"The pricing is very high."
"From the customer perspective, the value was worth it."
"This is an expensive product and the high price is starting to become an issue for us."
"The solution is pretty expensive but provides good workload management."
"It is pricey for what you get."
"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."
"Customers say this solution is costlier compared to its competitors."
"We have seen significant ROI. We used to have physical servers, it took 90 days to get a server, order it, buy it, and get it in. We have it down to 10 minutes, building a server with virtualization, and now that's too slow. So, we let the customer do it at their speed. Therefore, it is pretty much up in a couple of minutes and they have a server."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
18%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Construction Company
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise131
 

Questions from the Community

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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...
Is there any way to try VMware Aria Automation for free?
When it comes to VMware Aria Automation, you have three choices for free runs: Hands-on Lab (HOL) Advanced lab A free trial I cannot describe in detail the second and third options as my company ...
Which sectors can benefit the most from VMware Aria Automation?
I was looking at VMware Aria Automation case studies recently and I got the impression that three main kinds of companies were using it most often: Social organizations Financial institutions and ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Proximus Partner Communications (Israel) VMware NTT Data Metaswitch Spirent Communications Lumina Networks Atos Fortinet
Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudify vs. VMware Aria Automation and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.