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VMware Aria Automation vs vRealize Business for Cloud [EOL] comparison

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Executive Summary

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 Automation
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
172
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (3rd), Configuration Management (10th), Network Automation (7th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (27th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (7th)
vRealize Business for Cloud...
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

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.
TM
Solutions Architect and project manager at MIB leipzig
Complete solution for automation, orchestration, and end-to-end lifecycle management
The most valuable feature is automation. With the automation, you can easily and quickly implement it by deploying gnashing on virtual environments. It doesn't take long to develop an automation blueprint. You need about half an hour, and then you can install or deploy it on several systems. That was our first great advantage in the project because we urgently needed to deploy across many different systems. So automation helps us to do our work quickly and easily. VMware vRealize has standardized systems for doing work after the deployment. First, you have to set up the language on the system itself. Then there are vRealize's orchestration features. You can implement code in your deployment script to do this configuration automatically. So the orchestrator is a beneficial component. With this, you can implement automatic language selection and automated integration. In other systems, you can implement a multi-blueprint or multi-system environment to deploy the entire database environment and applications on this database with one click. The lifecycle manager is also essential. In version 7.5, you must provide a dir example username and password to access the Citrix server and controller. What's more, you have to include this in your script or your code. But in version 8, you can provide the username and password or store them in the lifecycle manager. So then you can pick it up from there. And that's the only location where you have to change the password. You don't have to change it in every script. That's a massive improvement in version 8.

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 most valuable features is lifecycle management. It allows my teams to create, manage, and retire all of our infrastructure objects in the data center."
"compare-to-competition; Citrix was on our short list. But over the last ten years, we have been a big VMware shop. We wanted to continue with VMware because we are confident that VMware can address any kind of problem situation, any challenges. But with Citrix, we didn't find that kind of credibility when we did solution testing, a PoC."
"Self-service and automation reduce the amount of time to build a virtual machine and reduce the operation costs."
"Reactors, because of the automation help they provide (reacting to custom events)."
"Now, it's no more than a half hour to activate a new VM at the customer's site."
"vRA provides that single pane of glass for our cloud tenants to deploy, monitor, access, and manage their VMs/guest operating systems."
"There are a lot of different benefits with this product, because there are a lot of things that we're trying to automate."
"It has integration with the rest of VMware solutions."
"I like the openness of the solution."
"The most valuable feature is that it has a very easy and adaptive look and feel, compared with some other cloud solutions."
"I like the integration with other applications or vendors."
"The tool helps us to monitor the services provided to customers as a cloud provider. The product is a monitoring solution that helps customers pay for their utilization of services."
"The way the dashboard works with the main orchestrator to combine different types of cloud providers is helpful."
"It doesn't take long to develop an automation blueprint. You need about half an hour, and then you can install or deploy it on several systems. That was our first great advantage in the project because we urgently needed to deploy across many different systems."
"The most valuable feature is that it allows us to compare the billing between the clouds."
"This solution has made us aware that we are over-provisioning our virtual machines."
 

Cons

"One of the features that's a struggle today is some of the public cloud extensibility. Some of the plugins that are native to vRA and vRO, I'd like to see them come out earlier for vRO. I understand that in vRA, the plugins are a little bit more polished because the VRA is the GUI. But we'd like to see them released earlier in vRO, prior to a GUI being released. Azure, for example, is a public cloud provider but we have some instability issues with the plugin in vRO. It's okay for us if we separate the vRA from vRO plugin releases. So I'd like to see some increased stability in some of those public cloud plugins."
"Salt does not support performing remote actions that require a sudo password with Salt SSH (agentless Salt execution)."
"I would also like to see them streamline the install. It's split between Windows and Linux appliances, and it would be easier if it was all appliances. I think they're going that way."
"Salt Cloud Windows support isn't that mature."
"Ability to mimic more VCD functionality. Ability to share blueprints among tenants, or have a master blueprint repository, so you don't have to move the stuff between tenants."
"The stability is why I rated it a seven and not higher. There were several cases where we had to restart some services because it wasn't working correctly anymore. People cannot extend their machine or replay their machine. There is no alert to say that there is a problem and that we should stop the service. The monitoring system is not very good."
"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."
"Licensing's expensive."
"It's not always easy to find the information you need. You must have a lot of technical experience to find the right location for what you're implementing within the program."
"I would like it if they could provide their customers with more qualified support, like some training videos."
"It's not always easy to find the information you need."
"The solution's private cloud is much too expensive."
"There are some kinks to resolve with the Web GUI user interface, as it freezes at times."
"Better integration with other VMware toolsets would be beneficial."
"At the moment, in the POC, we have a very huge issue because you definitely have to implement a vSphere cluster."
"The problem with VMware is the price."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"They should provide one license for all the sub-products."
"It made the provisioning of the virtual machines easier and faster. We can react more quickly to customers' demands."
"The pricing is very high."
"From a budget point of view, the pricing is a bit on the higher side."
"We do plan to see ROI with any new implementation of new technologies being implemented within our environment."
"The solution is pretty expensive but provides good workload management."
"The product is a cost-effective solution."
"It's expensive, which is one of the problems with this solution."
"The pricing model is complicated."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
20%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Construction Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
11%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise131
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise3
 

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...
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 ...
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Also Known As

VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
VMware IT Business Management Suite, VMware ITBM, IT Business Management Suite, Digital Fuel
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Rent-A-Center, SAIC - (Science Applications International Corporation), Tribune Media, iGATE, EMC, Deutsche Telekom, GEFCO, Banca Ifis
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