Cisco Intersight vs vRealize Network Insight comparison

Cisco and VMware are both solutions in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category. Cisco is ranked #18 with an average rating of 8.2, while VMware is ranked #23 with an average rating of 8.8. Cisco holds a 2.0% mindshare in IM, compared to VMware’s 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Cisco Intersight

Read 15 Cisco Intersight reviews

2,569 Views
2,046 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

vRealize Network Insight

Read 46 vRealize Network Insight reviews

885 Views
526 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Cisco Intersight

vRealize Network Insight

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

vRealize Network Insight and Cisco Intersight compete in the enterprise network management and cloud management categories. While vRealize is noted for its strong network insight capabilities, Cisco Intersight appears to have an advantage in comprehensive cloud management with its hybrid capabilities.

Features: vRealize Network Insight provides comprehensive log analysis across hypervisors and virtual servers, network visualization, and aids in network troubleshooting and microsegmentation. It excels in tracking data flows and optimizing firewall rules. Cisco Intersight integrates cloud management with hybrid capabilities, supports Kubernetes, and offers detailed insights into data center operations.

Room for Improvement: vRealize Network Insight needs better integration, more intuitive interfaces, and improved support for third-party products, with pricing and advanced analytics being areas of concern. Cisco Intersight users desire expanded automation, improved hybrid cloud management, and deeper integration with non-Cisco products.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: vRealize Network Insight is primarily deployed on-premises, praised for intuitive setup with strong VMware technical support, though initial challenges are noted. Cisco Intersight supports on-premises, public, and hybrid clouds, providing flexibility. Its technical support is well-regarded but could benefit from more in-depth assistance across platforms.

Pricing and ROI: vRealize Network Insight is considered costly but offers significant ROI through reduced troubleshooting and optimized deployments. Cisco Intersight, while expensive, provides value with competitive pricing and no extra fees for basic monitoring, ensuring efficient data center management and streamlined operations.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco Intersight vs. vRealize Network Insight Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Intersight vs. vRealize Network Insight

April 2025

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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

Cisco Intersight

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

18th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Management (12th)

vRealize Network Insight

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

23rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (23rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Cisco Intersight is 2.0%, down from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vRealize Network Insight is 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Featured Reviews

ItzikLiberman

System Presale at Bezeq

Provides data center management and full infrastructure visibility

Cisco Intersight is a very effective tool for data center infrastructure management. It provides visibility into other products and storage, and is beneficial for environments where Cisco and other vendors coexist, allowing full visibility of the entire infrastructure. We have visibility to other products and storages, some networking. It is also valuable for its integration capabilities with other products.

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NiteshKumar1

Principle consultant at Infosys

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Overall, I rate Cisco Intersight a ten out of ten."

"Cisco Intersight has valuable features for workflow automation and inventory administration."

"Intersight can validate our environment."

"The tool helps to manage Cisco servers."

"The product has good integration."

"Scalable portfolio of services for remote device management, with good cloud integration. It's also easy to set up."

"We enjoy having an inside view of all the data centers and all the EdgeX nodes within a single portal rather than going into the EdgeX connections one by one."

"Our organization uses Cisco Intersight since it helps manage our physical infrastructure."

More Cisco Intersight pros

"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."

"The most valuable feature for me is the different views that you can get when selecting an application or a VLAN. It shows you the traffic flows. It gives you a visual representation of something that, in text, just may not make as much sense."

"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 provides deep visibility into what is happening with traffic and helps us manage our network."

"The initial was straightforward. You can have it up and running in one hour."

"The gradual way the Network Insight shows you all the relevant information about your networks. It's pretty good. You can really dig deep deep inside and see where the problem is, where it comes from, what you have inside, how did you configure it. Also, it has alerts so you can have pretty much quite a big overview about your network. This is really something good."

"The most valuable feature is the profiling of the applications for micro-segmentation... It has made the migration to NSX much easier. Most of the sys admins within the smaller silos, they have no idea what ports are needed to run their stuff at all. I am pretty sure the micro-segmentation would never, ever have occurred without it."

"The most valuable features are the packet trace flow and that the view of the whole environment is deep."

More vRealize Network Insight pros

Cons

"The solution needs some enhancement in order to build the cluster in two nodes."

"Cisco Intersight's license cost is very high compared to AWS and Azure solutions, which have lower initiation costs. The high initial cost is a significant concern."

"The usability must be better."

"The unique problem with Cisco Intersight is that it's not supporting some players."

"The product's setup should be easier."

"More products should be made compatible with iWORK, including more software and hardware."

"An area for improvement in Cisco Intersight is automation. It needs more automation capabilities. Apart from enhanced automation, I want Cisco Intersight to integrate with third-party monitoring tools in its next release."

"The product could be easy to use."

More Cisco Intersight cons

"There could be some deeper analytics into packet inspection and trace flows. It could use some kind of machine learning to look at Layer 7 traffic for potential malware or corrupt packets."

"I would like to see more reporting features, more dashboards."

"I'd like to see better support for being able to search the hardware NetFlow data. It ingests fairly well, but you can't tell, in a lot of cases, what source the data came from. I'd like to see more support for picking specific sources. That way you could really make a compelling use case. There are also some difficulties where it can't exactly trace the path between source and destination but if you hit the reverse flow on the same search it shows the entire path."

"I would like to see them expand the capabilities to infrastructure types other than just VMware."

"I would like to see application identification. That would be cool."

"The solution can be improved by making it more compatible with other brands, allowing for better integration."

"The solution is very much viewer centric and it would be nice if it would transcend just the virtual infrastructure."

"After Broadcom acquired VMware, I would rate their support at five or less in many cases. It's difficult to find necessary documentation, open tickets, and get support."

More vRealize Network Insight cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cisco Intersight is not cheap, but it's not the most expensive product either."

"Cisco Intersight has competitive pricing. On a scale of one to five, my rating for its pricing is four."

"You can get a free license for monitoring but need to purchase a license if you need extra control."

"The product is cost-effective."

"It's just the standard licensing cost. There are no additional fees."

"It's an expensive product because we have a lot of nodes."

"They should include the product in NSX because it's important to have it for deployment."

"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."

"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."

"I rate vRealize Network Insight's pricing a seven point five out of ten."

"vRealize Network Insight is expensive."

"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."

"It has brought more money into our company."

More vRealize Network Insight pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

35%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco Intersight?

Intersight can validate our environment.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco Intersight?

I do not have notes for improvement.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Cisco Intersight?

I use it mostly for managing servers and updating their hardware licenses to get the hardware status in the cloud. Mostly, my customers develop Intersight on-premises because there are many restric...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 8% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs Cisco Intersight

Compared 7% of the time

HPE OneView vs Cisco Intersight

Compared 7% of the time

IBM Turbonomic vs Cisco Intersight

Compared 5% of the time

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ThousandEyes vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 21% of the time

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Compared 17% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 16% of the time

DX Spectrum vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 13% of the time

ManageEngine OpManager vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 12% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Intersight

April 2025

Download Cisco Intersight product report

Buyer's Guide

vRealize Network Insight

April 2025

Download vRealize Network Insight product report

Also Known As

Intersight

Arkin

Overview

Cisco Intersight is Cisco’s systems management platform that delivers intuitive computing through cloud-powered intelligence. This platform offers a more intelligent level of management that enables IT organizations to analyze, simplify, and automate their environments in ways that were not possible with prior generations of tools. This capability empowers organizations to achieve significant savings in Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and to deliver applications faster, so they can support new business initiates. The advantages of the model-based management of the Cisco UCS platform plus Cisco Intersight are extended to Cisco UCS servers and Cisco HyperFlex and Cisco HyperFlex Edge systems. Cisco HyperFlex Edge is optimized for remote sites, branch offices, and edge environments.

Cisco

VMware vRealize Network Insight delivers intelligent operations for software-defined networking and security. It helps customers build an optimized, highly-available and secure network infrastructure across multi-cloud environments. It accelerates micro-segmentation planning and deployment, enables visibility across virtual and physical networks and provides operational views to manage and scale VMware NSX deployments.

VMware

Sample Customers

EXMAR, RapidScale

NTTi3, VCIX-NV, VMware Networking and Security Business Unit, Illumio, CompuNet

Buyer's Guide

Cisco Intersight vs. vRealize Network Insight

April 2025

Free Report: Cisco Intersight vs. vRealize Network Insight

Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Intersight vs. vRealize Network Insight and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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