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Alluvio AppResponse vs vRealize Network Insight comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 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

Alluvio AppResponse
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
59th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (48th)
vRealize Network Insight
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
38th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (41st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Alluvio AppResponse is 0.4%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vRealize Network Insight is 0.6%, down from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Ahmet Kilic - PeerSpot reviewer
It's a total solution that gives you end-to-end visibility at all levels
I rate Alluvio AppResponse 10 out of 10. If you work for a financial company especially, you probably face problems on the application side. The problem is easy to identify, but you need to determine the root cause. You can solve issues easily via AppResponse because it shows you all the details of your transactions so you can see the real problem in the database, network, software, etc. For example, you can find the solution easily if you create the right dashboard on your site. If you can't find the problem, you can observe or investigate PCAP.
NiteshKumar1 - PeerSpot reviewer
The tool's configuration is easy and artifacts are easily accessible through professional services and the web
The product is highly regarded, and many customers have been using it along with other VMware products like vSphere and VMware vCloud Usage Insight. However, recently, there's been a trend among customers, especially those using VMware for a considerable period, to explore the potential of migrating to the public cloud. The common concern among these customers is how the VMware products will perform in the public cloud environment. Migrating instances from VMware to different platforms is not easy, especially when dealing with many instances across multiple customers. Customers are keen to maintain the functionality of their existing VMware products but prefer to run them on the public cloud instead of on-premise servers. Our clients for vRealize Network Insight are enterprise businesses. I rate it a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's a stable product. Riverbed has invested a significant amount of research and development into it, so it's a solid tool overall."
"When it comes to the ability to scale up the product, this is suitable for small medium and large environments,"
"I have found the AppResponse, which is a packet capture solution, very good. It gives you the ability to drill down back in time. You've got all the packets there. You can troubleshoot it later, not immediately. It's very interesting."
"The most valuable feature is performance monitoring."
"AppResponse is a total solution that gives you end-to-end visibility into applications at all levels, from Layer 1 to Layer 7. We can trace all those sections: physical, IP, transport, presentation, application, etc. It gives us the full picture."
"We really like the scalability capabilities."
"The most valuable feature of Alluvio AppResponse is the actual response time for measuring performance."
"Riverbed's product is a superb product."
"The most valuable features are the monitoring and tracking. It's also intuitive and user-friendly. The screen looks exactly the same as the other appliances for VMware, so it's easy to navigate."
"It helps a lot because, until now, we didn't have the tools to figure out the micro level, VM-to-VM kind of traffic; that was not in the current environment. We could not figure out VM-to-VM communication from the other tools. This is the tool which gives us end-to-end transparency."
"The ability to use the natural language query and see the visualization is quickly intuitive, and it works very well."
"It has enabled us to set up and do application discovery, as far as network traffic is concerned, and set up the appropriate rules that we need to make sure we're compliant with our security frameworks."
"The most valuable feature is the visualization. It's really handy to be able to classify network objects as with applications and see the interaction between them."
"It has really tightened down the security. That was something that we were lacking. It has also given us deep visibility into our network. We can really get down and see all of the traffic within the data center, between the VMs, between the applications, database servers, other application servers, web servers. We can identify everything that is communicating, and we can see it all on one product."
"It's a very powerful, very manageable product."
"It's very user-friendly in the sense that the querying is just regular language like you and I speak or write. You don't need to know any SQL-query type of language to be able to get what you want out of it."
 

Cons

"Technical support needs to be more responsive."
"The AI features should be addressed in respect of the analysis and intelligence that must be supported and delivered in the tool to predigest the large amounts of data."
"The reporting models need improvement as most of the time, we have to customize the reports manually."
"They need to better integrate with products and solutions from different vendors."
"Alluvio AppResponse should improve its ability to expand across multiple operating systems."
"The recent changes in corporate structure may have caused some decrease in support quality."
"Need to bring back the NetFlow module for AppResponse."
"Integration between NPM and APM solutions would improve efficiency. There is no agent on the server site related to AppResponse."
"When we talk about those micro-segmentation rules, there's an Export function. It is very macro-segmentation oriented instead. So if you choose an application, it will find the tiers within that application and say that it's communicating on, say, port 80 to a separate VLAN. There might be 200 machines in that other VLAN. You don't want to open port 80 at all of them. So we need a lot more granularity in those suggested firewall rules."
"I want to be able to monitor a network flow that is approximately two weeks back, but I haven't found an easy way to do this."
"After you use it for a little while you become accustomed to it but the layout doesn't feel very intuitive. You have to dig around and find the exact place where you can find the information, where you can actually see your east-west traffic, etc. I would like them to bring that information more to the forefront, instead of having to find it."
"The IT infrastructure industry is expected to evolve towards a hybrid cloud model in the next five to ten years. In this model, most of the customer's resources reside on-premise within a private cloud setup, such as VMware. Another segment operates within public cloud environments like Azure and AWS, and a portion remains in traditional data centers. There should be seamless interoperability between public and private clouds. AWS and VMware need to work together to make it possible. Whether users interact with on-premise infrastructure or configure resources in the public cloud, the user experience must be seamless."
"The only reason I would not give it a nine or a 10 is for cost reasons. It seems to be one of those things that really belongs as part of the product inherently and not as an add-on. That would be my only concern."
"I want to see more in terms of microsegmentation. As of now, I can see the rules, but they are not in a readable format that I can convert to microsegmentation and can fit into NSX Manager."
"I would like to see application identification. That would be cool."
"The virtual appliance has rebooted."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is a little bit high, especially because we have to pay an import tax."
"The licensing model is expensive compared to its competitors, but the service it gives to your business, and the data quality, means that it's worth it."
"It is costly for small and medium businesses."
"The solution is no more expensive than other products."
"It has brought more money into our company."
"The solution has helped us to reduce time, increase performance, reduce costs, and even easily manage networks. We are probably seeing 10 to 20 percent labor savings because we are able to be very specific and focused on what we want to do. It ends up saving the customer money and makes us be more efficient on our cost deliveries."
"They should include the product in NSX because it's important to have it for deployment."
"It's a little expensive, but for what you're getting out of the product, you often see the trade-off. It depends on the type of licensing you have. It might be a little too pricey for some."
"Cost always has room for improvement, you could always make it cheaper. But I think it's a good value for what you pay for it."
"We have spent less time investigating network flows, so it is absolutely cost-effective."
"vRealize Network Insight is expensive."
"The solution has reduced the time that we spend on other products. For example, with NSX, we were able to quickly find things that we would normally spend days trying to figure out."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
13%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
Insurance Company
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Riverbed SteelCentral AppResponse?
The most valuable feature of Alluvio AppResponse is the actual response time for measuring performance.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Riverbed SteelCentral AppResponse?
The pricing of Riverbed Alluvio AppResponse is really high. Very few customers buy Riverbed because many do not have the sufficient budget. Its pricing is comparatively higher than SolarWinds. Rive...
What needs improvement with Riverbed SteelCentral AppResponse?
The reporting models need improvement as most of the time, we have to customize the reports manually. Additionally, a feature similar to SolarWinds AppStack, which provides a holistic view of the i...
What do you like most about vRealize Network Insight?
The tool's ease of configuration and use and the availability of information and artifacts through professional services and the web are key factors that customers find valuable.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for vRealize Network Insight?
Broadcom is known for increasing product prices, making them expensive compared to what people used to pay. I liken the subscription model to not truly owning what you pay for.
What needs improvement with vRealize Network Insight?
Right now, I do not see a specific area for improvement. My main concern is understanding the intentions of Broadcom, which has acquired VMware. Broadcom should improve by going back to what was wo...
 

Also Known As

Riverbed AppResponse, OPNET SteelCentral AppResponse, ACE Live, OPNET, AppResponse Xpert
Arkin
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

N11.com, OneMain Financial, China Bank, Halkbank, Kaust
NTTi3, VCIX-NV, VMware Networking and Security Business Unit, Illumio, CompuNet
Find out what your peers are saying about Alluvio AppResponse vs. vRealize Network Insight and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,957 professionals have used our research since 2012.