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Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs VMware Aria Automation comparison

 

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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.6
Nutanix Cloud Manager optimizes efficiency, stability, and scalability, enhancing user experiences while reducing costs and operational overhead.
Sentiment score
7.5
VMware Aria Automation significantly reduces provisioning times and workload, enhancing productivity and cost efficiency with varied ROI among users.
Anything that reduces bandwidth and reduces the brain work that our teams have to do to maintain systems across all environments is time-saving and cost-saving.
The biggest return on investment for me when using this product is the fast deployment and the rapid integration and migration without impacting our operations during the migration.
Playbooks and automation definitely freed up engineer time. This allows us to focus on other projects and not have to get hands-on, reducing operational costs.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.3
Nutanix Cloud Manager's customer service is acclaimed for quick response, expert support, and efficient issue resolution, ensuring customer satisfaction.
Sentiment score
6.7
VMware Aria Automation support receives mixed reviews, with varying responsiveness, community reliance, and documentation improvement needed.
There is a feature that allows you to escalate the call.
The handoff with support and the knowledge of the support engineer is significantly better than experience with other vendors.
The customer service and technical support I've received have been phenomenal.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Nutanix Cloud Manager is praised for its scalability, enabling efficient workload management and seamless integration across infrastructures.
Sentiment score
7.5
VMware Aria Automation is praised for scalability and efficiency, though configurations can pose challenges; updates improve adaptability for enterprises.
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) scales well.
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) has not had any issues scaling with the growing needs of my company.
Scaling with Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is not as straightforward as they claim, largely due to the assumption that you have IPv6 enabled on your switches.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Nutanix Cloud Manager is reliable and stable, with improved performance and excellent support, despite earlier hardware and memory issues.
Sentiment score
6.8
VMware Aria Automation is reliable, but experiences issues with upgrades and integrations, though recent versions show improvements.
We've never had any downtime related to the Nutanix product itself.
I would rate the stability a nine out of ten.
The stability and reliability of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) have been excellent.
 

Room For Improvement

Nutanix Cloud Manager needs interface, integration, and usability improvements, with enhanced documentation, pricing transparency, and expanded features.
VMware Aria Automation needs better UI, domain integration, broader cloud support, stability, migration, pricing, documentation, and automation features.
Quick resolution of disconnection issues and errors in plugins is crucial.
If there are licensing errors, for example, being told I have 96 cores licensed but Nutanix Flow not licensed despite having assigned units, it complicates things unnecessarily.
We were an HPE shop, so it was good when they brought in HPE as an OEM.
It operates for both of my products, however, as a product, it is complicated to integrate and automate with other products.
 

Setup Cost

Nutanix Cloud Manager offers competitive pricing with flexibility, providing cost-effective solutions compared to VMware and Cisco for various budgets.
Users appreciate VMware Aria Automation's features but criticize its confusing and costly licensing structure and potential extra support costs.
It's not cheap, but there are savings and return on investment when coming from a non-Nutanix shop.
It is not cheap or expensive.
I appreciate the pricing model of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM); it's very easy to understand, so I wouldn't change anything.
 

Valuable Features

Nutanix Cloud Manager offers seamless scalability, automation, and integration, enhancing resource management and efficiency with intuitive features and dashboards.
VMware Aria Automation enhances cloud management, automating tasks with user-friendly features, efficiency, cost reduction, and flexible integration.
It's easy to control resources and govern the resources, and it frees up support to focus on other things without having to help developers.
I would approximate the cost savings to be in the 20% to 25% range since we can optimize our resources and avoid the need to purchase more hardware or reuse resources in the infrastructure from one implementation.
The importance of faster outcomes for their environment is significant; for example, when I delivered the Disaster Recovery solution, we included automation for auto-configuration of VMs and resizing of VMs, which replaced many tasks that were previously done manually.
It helps us automate the workflow of creating many VMs and the TensorFlow key method.
 

Categories and Ranking

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)
Ranking in Cloud Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (4th), Virtualization Management Tools (4th), Cloud Cost Management (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (7th)
VMware Aria Automation
Ranking in Cloud Management
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
170
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (7th), Network Automation (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (17th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is 6.0%, up from 5.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 11.8%, up from 11.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Raouf Mahfoud Silhadi - PeerSpot reviewer
Managing diverse environments has been streamlined with robust disaster recovery features and automation capabilities
The most valuable features I have found with Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) are related to Disaster Recovery, specifically the Nutanix Disaster Recovery solution with Prism Central, and Flow micro-segmentation. Flow micro-segmentation is part of the Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) networking capabilities, and most scenarios are related to standard clusters with Disaster Recovery, including environments with both Nutanix AHV and VMware. The importance of faster outcomes for their environment is significant; for example, when I delivered the Disaster Recovery solution, we included automation for auto-configuration of VMs and resizing of VMs, which replaced many tasks that were previously done manually. The implementation of automation solutions helps free up time for their IT team, allowing them to manage more of the application part rather than the infrastructure, especially for stability and automation tasks from Nutanix.
Le Quang Long - PeerSpot reviewer
Significantly streamlined operations with good automation that helps with simplifying workflows
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
36%
Educational Organization
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
4%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which set of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) features do you find to be the most useful?
For me, the features related to cost savings are the best part of NCM. Of course, the whole product is worth using and when it comes to cloud management, there is a reason why it is favored by so m...
Are the setup process and further maintenance of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) difficult?
When I came into my current organization, NCM was already set up. According to the team that dealt with it, the product was fairly easy to set up. Compared to other products, our IT rates are set u...
Is Nutanix Cloud Manager’s Intelligent Operations feature effective?
Yes, this is a highly effective feature and the rebranding only made things better as they introduced more improvements. You can benefit from Zero coding task automation Automated optimization Tic...
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

Nutanix Cloud Manager Intelligent Operations, Nutanix Cloud Manager Self-Service, Nutanix Cloud Management Cost Governance, Nutanix Cloud Manager Security Central
VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco
Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs. VMware Aria Automation and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
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