Icinga vs vRealize Network Insight comparison

Icinga and VMware are both solutions in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category. Icinga is ranked #14 with an average rating of 7.8, while VMware is ranked #40 with an average rating of 8.8. Icinga holds a 4.1% mindshare in IM, compared to VMware’s 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 85% of Icinga users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Icinga

Read 17 Icinga reviews

3,307 Views
391 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

vRealize Network Insight

Read 46 vRealize Network Insight reviews

793 Views
113 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Icinga

vRealize Network Insight

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

```html

Icinga and vRealize Network Insight compete in network monitoring and management. Icinga is preferred for its cost-effectiveness and support, while vRealize Network Insight offers extensive features that justify its higher price, giving it an edge for comprehensive network insights.

Features: Icinga supports numerous plugins allowing monitoring of infrastructure and services, providing significant flexibility and robust community backing. Its integration capabilities ensure seamless operations with existing systems. vRealize Network Insight provides advanced analytics and detailed network troubleshooting abilities. Its features include deep insights into network flow and performance, network visualization, and capacity planning which cater to enterprises with complex networks.

Room for Improvement: Icinga could enhance its user interface for a more intuitive experience, offer more detailed documentation, and improve scalability for large-scale deployments. vRealize Network Insight might integrate more third-party tools, streamline its installation process, and reduce its overall operational costs for better access to smaller enterprises.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Icinga offers straightforward open-source deployment, supported by a responsive community. It integrates well with existing tools but requires technical expertise. vRealize Network Insight provides cloud-based deployment, easing complexities with professional support and managed services, ideal for enterprise environments seeking simplified setup processes.

Pricing and ROI: Icinga's implementation costs are minimal, enhancing cost-efficiency and ROI for small to mid-sized businesses due to its open-source nature. vRealize Network Insight, while having a higher initial setup cost, offers substantial ROI through advanced insights and automation, positioning it as a preferred choice for large enterprises requiring comprehensive network visibility.

```

To learn more, read our detailed Icinga vs. vRealize Network Insight Report (Updated: May 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Icinga vs. vRealize Network Insight

May 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 858,945 peers since 2012

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

Icinga

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

10th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

14th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (8th), Cloud Monitoring Software (14th)

vRealize Network Insight

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

35th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

40th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Icinga is 4.1%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vRealize Network Insight is 0.4%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Featured Reviews

Claudio Kuenzler

Senior Systems Engineer at Infiniroot

A free and time-saving product that helps to monitor servers and network devices

I use the product for server and network device monitoring. A team of five people is managing the solution, and around 50 people are using the solution in the organization Pro-active monitoring and alerting helped us to decrease downtimes of services. The apply rules feature saves a lot of time.…

Read full review

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The drafts are easy but what I like about Icinga is that there are many add-ons that you can download."

"It is really easy in Icinga to create your own plugin and integrate it without any fuss. And it works just perfectly fine."

"The best thing about the solution is how it highlights errors, the issues, and what needs my attention. The solution directs me to areas that I should look for first."

"Icinga has multiple automation and integration features. There is an API for everything and a web UI for configurations. The APIs enable you to automate tasks in Icinga. We can also use plugins to talk to the API. The Icinga Director talks to a database in the background, and you can import settings from the CMDB to all systems in Icinga."

"This solution has a self-healing handler where if the service is down, it is automatically restarted."

"We have found the solution to be stable."

"The apply rules feature saves a lot of time."

"I like the ability to amend and adjust things really easily, which is useful in a case where you could make it auto-discover and then set a template to say all of these applications or servers under this template have an automatic threshold set that you’d set up manually."

More Icinga pros

"The solution has helped improve our organization by directing the network traffic using SDN."

"I find that the interface of most VMware products is very similar, which I consider an advantage due to its ease of use compared to other tools like Splunk."

"The graphical interface of this environment is so good with all the views, the graphics, and everything in them. It's really easy for me. It doesn't need an engineer to work on it. It's easy enough that anyone can get into the environment and look for issues or look at how communication is going on across the VMs. It's pretty much straightforward."

"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."

"The initial setup was straightforward."

"The most valuable feture is NetFlow to help us understand how VMs communicate with each other over ports that are known and ports that are also unknown to us. Our company is a security company, so it's very important for us to know exactly which VMs are doing what at all times."

"The ability to use the natural language query and see the visualization is quickly intuitive, and it works very well."

"It allows us to go from virtual through NSX, up to the core, and see all of that in one pane of glass, it's pretty easy."

More vRealize Network Insight pros

Cons

"One of the areas that are frustrating is remote monitoring for more than one machine."

"The installation and configuration are very complex."

"Icinga’s automation could be improved."

"At this time, the layout of the website is a bit difficult. It should be more user-friendly for changing the background and logos."

"The user interface should be improved."

"We have found some problems with Nagios, and support isn't very responsive."

"The tool currently fails to provide notifications to users."

"There is room for improvement in multi-tenancy. It's not perfect, not even really good. It's average, but it should be improved."

More Icinga cons

"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."

"Support could be much better."

"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."

"It just needs to be more reliable and more accurate. At some point, there are some things where it does not match properly."

"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 UI, even though once you get to know it, it's easier, still it's hard to figure out by yourself. You have to go read, watch videos. It has a lot of data on it. So that is an issue."

"Since Broadcom acquired VMware, it has been experiencing challenges. Many sales processes are not well defined."

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

More vRealize Network Insight cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We're using the free version of Icinga."

"The solution is free to use."

"It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low."

"Even though Icinga's financial cost is low, it is an expensive product regarding the resources required to maintain and operate it."

"The solution is cheap."

"The product is inexpensive compared to other DBM products."

"It's an open-source solution."

"This is an open-source solution with paid support."

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

"We have spent less time investigating network flows, so it is absolutely cost-effective."

"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."

"vRealize Network Insight is expensive."

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

"It reduces costs. It takes something that may be challenging and makes it more usable and visual by being able to bring in tools, seeing what their impact is, such as microsegmentation and application rationalization, and seeing it quickly."

"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."

"It has brought more money into our company."

More vRealize Network Insight pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which IT Infrastructure Monitoring solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

858,945 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Icinga?

The best thing about the solution is how it highlights errors, the issues, and what needs my attention. The solution directs me to areas that I should look for first.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Icinga?

It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low. If you want to include this product in the services you offer to your customers, the return on i...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Icinga?

There is room for improvement in multi-tenancy. It's not perfect, not even really good. It's average, but it should be improved. For instance, multi-tenancy for monitoring the virtual infrastructur...

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

Zabbix vs Icinga

Compared 44% of the time

Nagios Core vs Icinga

Compared 21% of the time

Checkmk vs Icinga

Compared 10% of the time

Nagios XI vs Icinga

Compared 4% of the time

Centreon vs Icinga

Compared 3% of the time

More Icinga Competitors

ThousandEyes vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 15% of the time

DX NetOps vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 14% of the time

VMware Aria Operations for Applications vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 10% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 9% of the time

DX Spectrum vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 9% of the time

More vRealize Network Insight Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Icinga

June 2025

Download Icinga product report

Buyer's Guide

vRealize Network Insight

May 2025

Download vRealize Network Insight product report

Also Known As

Icinga Cloud Monitoring

Arkin

Overview

Icinga monitors systems, network devices, infrastructure, and services, helping manage and analyze server resources. It automates ticket incidents and alerting, providing oversight of client Windows and Linux systems.

Icinga offers comprehensive monitoring of servers including CPU utilization and RAM space, facilitating automated incident management and alerting. Frequently deployed on-premises, this monitoring tool is key for managed services providers and organizations to oversee and ensure optimal performance of various environments, including applications like databases and web servers. It provides extensive features for creating custom plugins, stabilization, scalability, and high customization capabilities suitable for different infrastructure needs.

What are the key features of Icinga?

Event Handler: Facilitates automatic self-healing of systems.
Extensive Plugin Library: Offers a wide range of plugins for monitoring.
Ease of Use: Simplifies user experience with an intuitive interface and Icinga Director for easy configurations.
Open-Source Nature: Free to use, modify, and distribute.
Automation Capabilities: Integrates with APIs and Ansible Collections for automation.
Custom Plugins: Users can create and integrate their own plugins.
Stability and Scalability: Provides reliable performance across different scale infrastructures.

What are the benefits or ROI to look for when evaluating Icinga?

Critical Issue Highlighting: Effectively identifies and notifies about critical problems.
High Customization: Offers flexibility for diverse monitoring needs.
Automated Alerting: Reduces manual effort and improves response times.
Extensive Integration: Works seamlessly with other tools and platforms.

Icinga implementations span multiple industries, providing essential monitoring for IT infrastructure in healthcare, finance, and education. Managed services providers utilize Icinga to maintain and monitor client systems across various environments while ensuring optimal performance and compliance. It is highly valued in these sectors for its ability to customize monitoring, improving operational efficiency and reducing downtime.

Icinga

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

Puppet Labs, Audi, Spacex, Debian, Snapdeal, McGill, RIPE Network Coordination Centre

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

Buyer's Guide

Icinga vs. vRealize Network Insight

May 2025

Free Report: Icinga vs. vRealize Network Insight

Find out what your peers are saying about Icinga vs. vRealize Network Insight and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

858,945 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Icinga vs. vRealize Network Insight report.

See our list of best IT Infrastructure Monitoring vendors and best Network Monitoring Software vendors.

We monitor all IT Infrastructure Monitoring 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.