Grafana vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

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Grafana Labs Logo
12,421 views|8,458 comparisons
86% willing to recommend
VMware Logo
2,486 views|2,203 comparisons
90% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Jun 29, 2023

We performed a comparison between Grafana and VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront based on real PeerSpot user reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: While some found Grafana to be straightforward, others found it complex. Similarly, VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront's setup varied in difficulty, with some finding it easy and quick while others found it more complex. It was suggested to involve technical, network, and security teams during the setup process for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront.
  • Features: Grafana offers customizable dashboards and is open-source, working well with Prometheus databases. Meanwhile, VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront is easy to deploy and supports open-source technologies with a focus on third-party integration.
  • Pricing: Grafana's setup cost is dependent on the number of metrics ingested daily, while VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront can be costly due to licensing fees for integrations and add-ons. The basic version of Grafana is adequate for visualization, but certain functions necessitate the enterprise version. Tanzu Observability, on the other hand, requires a standard vSphere license and a minimum of three clusters.
  • Service and Support: Grafana's customer service is a mixed bag, with some users finding it helpful while others rely on the community forum. VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront also has mixed support, with some users not needing it and others finding it okay but with some issues.
  • ROI: According to the reviews, Grafana has enriched data visualization and easy monitoring that leads to a positive ROI. On the other hand, VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront provides a significant ROI with faster issue resolution, optimized infrastructure, improved application performance, and reduced costs.

Comparison Results: Grafana offers a more customizable and visually appealing experience with good integration and an open source nature, at a more moderate pricing model with a helpful community, making it the preferred solution. While VMware Tanzu Observability is praised for ease of deployment and integration with multiple solutions, it has concerns with its consumption-based billing model, high license costs, and difficulty in customizing dashboards. 

To learn more, read our detailed Grafana vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications Report (Updated: March 2024).
768,857 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"We can write queries in different languages, which is beneficial for visualization.""Kubernetes could help us to better visualize the trend of our data by recording and displaying our history over a chosen duration, such as the last 30 days.""It is easy to change and move virtual servers.""It excels in providing comprehensive details when there are downtimes or fluctuations, offering thorough reports.""Visualisation: It is easy to create beautiful, understanding graphs, snapshots to share the graphs with people who do not have access to Grafana, and templating to create powerful graphs.""The dashboards are very easy to work with.""Grafana is able to connect with multiple data sources, unlike Elasticsearch.""The solution can scale well."

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"Tanzu itself, integrated with multiple solutions, bestows support and security upon a container platform, especially when it comes to managing open-source container platforms such as Kubernetes.""People are very pleased with the implementation.""For us, the ease of deployment in combination with TMZ was the most important part because we don't have to manually deploy a complex monitoring solution. We can more or less do that with the click of a button, and we are not dependent on the developers to provide us with all the necessary features and functions to make that work. We can just deploy it on a workload cluster and monitor at least a good part of the workload. If we want to go into detail, we clearly need to make changes, but for a good part of application monitoring, it gives us good insights.""No issues with stability.""The most valuable aspects of the solution are its ease of use and its ease of implementation.""The solution is great for virtualization and preparing the infrastructure in Tanzu to test products. It's very fast and has good visibility.""The features I find most valuable is the querying and alerting capabilities.""This solution allows me to have true visibility for any metrics when it comes to my cloud, and private."

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Cons
"The formatting could be better.""They should improve the functioning of its editing tool.""Setting up alerts via Grafana is a bit complicated, and alerting needs to improve.""Trigger limits are difficult to see in a graph.""Its interface could be more accessible.""One area for improvement in Grafana is that depending on your version, you have to pay for the features, making the license expensive. It would be great if the licensing model could be more flexible. In the next release of Grafana, I want cluster creation to be available, which would help in Grafana deployment and scaling. Currently, the scaling process for the solution is a bit complicated.""The technical support has room for improvement.""Lacks in-depth graphs and sufficient AI."

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"It could use a URL document server. Everything in the market is moving towards automation and everybody's looking for the single click operations as well relational data locality.""The implementation is a long process that should be improved.""Its billing model is consumption-based. I understand the consumption-based model, but it is not necessarily easy to estimate and guess how many points or how much we are going to consume on a specific application up until we get to that point. So, for us, it would be helpful to have more insights or predictability into what we can expect from a cost perspective if we are starting to use specific features. This can potentially also drive our consumption a bit more.""They could make it more easy to plug-in data so that a nontechnical person will be able to use it, like accountants or finance people. That way they don't have to ask us.""The initial setup should be easier and more seamless.""I would like to see integration with Kubernetes cluster and APIs so that you can manage the entire stack.""The main problem I have is that the license cost is very high.""The documentation and integration with Kubernetes could be improved."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "​Grafana is free and open source.​"
  • "I use the open source model so it is free."
  • "My company uses the open-source version of Grafana, so it's free."
  • "We use the open-source version of Grafana."
  • "We are using the open-source license."
  • "I give the price an eight out of ten."
  • "You need to purchase the solution's license for its commercial use."
  • "The solution is expensive."
  • More Grafana Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."
  • "I don't have the details. In our case, there is a mixture in place. We have production usage, and we are also doing training for VMware. So, we also have a training instance. It is worth the money you would spend on it. That's because if you were to build all of this yourself by using some of the open source tools, then you would need a lot of time."
  • "The licensing costs are very high, particularly when you consider that we have to purchase a level 1 license for every integration, such as the load balancer, HAProxy, and the MSSP. And if you want to use vSAN, that's another license. Then, of course, Tanzu Observability has its own separate license."
  • "I would rate the pricing as three out of five."
  • More VMware Aria Operations for Applications Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The product's initial setup phase was very easy.
    Top Answer:For me, Grafana is a cheap tool because I don't have to spend much time learning the product since it is a simple solution. I don't know if there are different paid versions of the product.
    Top Answer:I have a problem with Grafana in the area of documentation. There is a problem in the area of some graphs where you connect elements. With Grafana, there is only one name that can be included for ten… more »
    Top Answer:VMware comes with a support team, and if you have trouble, you can easily create a ticket, and VMware will help you. Therefore, the best aspect is the support.
    Top Answer:It's hard to set up Tanzu clusters. It's hard to do a POC. Once you set up a customer's environment, you easily see the problems. The initial setup should be easier and more seamless.
    Ranking
    Views
    12,421
    Comparisons
    8,458
    Reviews
    36
    Average Words per Review
    387
    Rating
    7.9
    Views
    2,486
    Comparisons
    2,203
    Reviews
    4
    Average Words per Review
    549
    Rating
    8.3
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability
    Learn More
    Grafana Labs
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    Overview

    Grafana is an open-source visualization and analytics platform that stands out in the field of monitoring solutions. Grafana is widely recognized for its powerful, easy-to-set-up dashboards and visualizations. Grafana supports integration with a wide array of data sources and tools, including Prometheus, InfluxDB, MySQL, Splunk, and Elasticsearch, enhancing its versatility. Grafana has open-source and cloud options; the open-source version is a good choice for organizations with the resources to manage their infrastructure and want more control over their deployment. The cloud service is a good choice if you want a fully managed solution that is easy to start with and scale.

    A key strength of Grafana lies in its ability to explore, visualize, query, and alert on the collected data through operational dashboards. These dashboards are highly customizable and visually appealing, making them a valuable asset for data analysis, performance tracking, trend spotting, and detecting irregularities.

    Grafana provides both an open-source solution with an active community and Grafana Cloud, a fully managed and composable observability offering that packages together metrics, logs, and traces with Grafana. The open-source version is licensed under the Affero General Public License version 3.0 (AGPLv3), being free and unlimited. Grafana Cloud and Grafana Enterprise are available for more advanced needs, catering to a wider range of organizational requirements. Grafana offers options for self-managed backend systems or fully managed services via Grafana Cloud. Grafana Cloud extends observability with a wide range of solutions for infrastructure monitoring, IRM, load testing, Kubernetes monitoring, continuous profiling, frontend observability, and more.

    The Grafana users we interviewed generally appreciate Grafana's ability to connect with various data sources, its straightforward usability, and its integration capabilities, especially in developer-oriented environments. The platform is noted for its practical alert configurations, ticketing backend integration, and as a powerful tool for developing dashboards. However, some users find a learning curve in the initial setup and mention the need for time investment to customize and leverage Grafana effectively. There are also calls for clearer documentation and simplification of notification alert templates.

    In summary, Grafana is a comprehensive solution for data visualization and monitoring, widely used across industries for its versatility, ease of use, and extensive integration options. It suits organizations seeking a customizable and scalable platform for visualizing time-series data from diverse sources. However, users should be prepared for some complexity in setup and customization and may need to invest time in learning and tailoring the system to their specific needs.

    VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront is a powerful tool for monitoring and analyzing the performance and availability of applications and infrastructure in real-time. 

    With its comprehensive monitoring capabilities, visualizing and analyzing data becomes effortless. The real-time alerting system ensures timely issue resolution, while scalability and a user-friendly interface provide a seamless experience for smooth operations.

    Sample Customers
    Microsoft, Adobe, Optum, Sky, Nvidia, Roblox, Wells Fargo, BlackRock, Informatica, Maersk, Daimler Truck, SNCF, Atlassian, DHL, SAP, JPMorgan Chase, Cisco, Citi and many others.
    1. Atlassian 2. Cisco 3. Databricks 4. DigitalOcean 5. Equinix 6. Fidelity Investments 7. Google 8. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 9. Honeywell 10. IBM 11. Intel 12. JetBlue Airways 13. LinkedIn 14. Lyft 15. Mastercard 16. Microsoft 17. MongoDB 18. Netflix 19. Nvidia 20. Oracle 21. PayPal 22. Pinterest 23. Qualcomm 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. SAP 27. Spotify 28. Square 29. TMobile 30. Twitter 31. Uber 32. VMware
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Retailer21%
    Computer Software Company21%
    Comms Service Provider14%
    Financial Services Firm14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm21%
    Computer Software Company14%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Retailer6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm16%
    Computer Software Company16%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    Government6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business33%
    Midsize Enterprise19%
    Large Enterprise47%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise70%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business30%
    Midsize Enterprise10%
    Large Enterprise60%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business19%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise68%
    Buyer's Guide
    Grafana vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Grafana vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    768,857 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Grafana is ranked 6th in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 38 reviews while VMware Aria Operations for Applications is ranked 32nd in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 9 reviews. Grafana is rated 8.0, while VMware Aria Operations for Applications is rated 7.6. The top reviewer of Grafana writes "Agent-free with great dashboards and an active community". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware Aria Operations for Applications writes "Easy to deploy, worth the money, and helpful for uptime monitoring and performance insights". Grafana is most compared with New Relic, Azure Monitor, Sentry, Dynatrace and WhatsUp Gold, whereas VMware Aria Operations for Applications is most compared with Dynatrace, Datadog, Zabbix, Prometheus and AppDynamics. See our Grafana vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications report.

    See our list of best Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability vendors.

    We monitor all Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.