Nagios Core vs vRealize Network Insight comparison

Nagios and VMware are both solutions in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category. Nagios is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.2, while VMware is ranked #23 with an average rating of 8.8. Nagios holds a 3.7% mindshare in IM, compared to VMware’s 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of Nagios users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Nagios Core

Read 51 Nagios Core reviews

4,209 Views
3,272 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

vRealize Network Insight

Read 46 vRealize Network Insight reviews

848 Views
509 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Nagios Core

vRealize Network Insight

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

vRealize Network Insight and Nagios Core are network monitoring solutions competing in the network management category. vRealize Network Insight is favored for its comprehensive features, while Nagios Core remains popular due to its open-source nature.

Features: vRealize Network Insight offers advanced network visualization, micro-segmentation capabilities, and exhaustive troubleshooting features. It supports real-time monitoring and provides user-friendly dashboards with natural language query capabilities. Nagios Core is valued for its flexibility and extensibility, allowing customization through a wide array of monitoring plugins.

Room for Improvement: vRealize Network Insight could improve integration with third-party products, application identification, and reporting capabilities. Nagios Core faces challenges with its complex setup process, cumbersome user interface, and basic reporting tools, necessitating an easier configuration and more intuitive graphical displays.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: vRealize Network Insight is mainly deployed on-premises and is known for responsive technical support with knowledgeable staff. Nagios Core, also predominantly deployed on-premises, offers community-based support, suitable for users with robust technical expertise due to its extensive customization requirements.

Pricing and ROI: vRealize Network Insight is considered expensive, yet supports labor savings and efficient network management, providing ROI by reducing time and increasing network performance. Nagios Core, being free, avoids licensing costs but requires customization investments. Its open-source nature is cost-effective for tech-savvy users seeking to minimize expenses.

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

Buyer's Guide

Nagios Core 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

Nagios Core

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

11th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

13th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

vRealize Network Insight

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

23rd

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

23rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Nagios Core is 3.7%, up from 3.2% 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

Nishith-Vyas

Tech Lead at STL Digital Limited

Valuable reporting and alert system with room for PDF export improvements

The NetEase reporting structure needs improvement, especially the availability report, which is weak. It should be generated automatically with minimal human intervention and should be exportable as a PDF. Besides that, an integrated PDF export feature for reports is necessary. Also, the alert mechanism and graphing mechanism need to be integrated properly into Nagios Core. Currently, integrating these requires advanced Linux knowledge. Integration of more visualization tools like Grafana and Prometheus for better graphing and visualization is also recommended.

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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

"I would rate the overall solution ten points out of ten."

"The most valuable feature depends on the project. It's great if you need to check to ensure a service is running 24/7. I can use the full solution for free, and it's flexible. If I need to add a dashboard, I can integrate it with Nagios. Cloud synchronization is wonderful."

"The most valuable feature of Nagios Core is the ability to check the availability of the server for network connectivity. Additionally, the interface is good."

"The notifications are definitely one of the most valuable features of Nagios Core. We know what to look for and what to expect when things are down."

"Key features include the GUI interface, its notification capabilities, and the real-time reporting."

"Alert calls occur anytime a service goes down or a matrix is difficult and that helps us to quickly restore service and transfer work."

"The most valuable feature is the performance parameters of the system."

"The good thing about Nagios Core is it covers everything."

More Nagios Core pros

"The automation collects all the relationships between servers, allowing us to visualize these relationships and organize the migration into waves."

"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."

"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."

"compare-to-competition; I would recommend the product. I don't think there is any other product like this on the market right now."

"It allows you to see traffic that you couldn't otherwise see, which is traffic within your Layer 3-bounded network, meaning east-west traffic. It's hard to get that any other way."

"I like being able to see the flows coming in and out of the product. In terms of monitoring network flows, we use it to verify whether or not different servers/applications should be communicating with each other."

"We're a smaller company so it automates a lot of the tasks and lets us focus in on building out our own solution. It's quicker, there is less building of manual solutions, and less downtime. It allows our developers to quickly develop, get provisioning done, de-provisioning, etc; the stuff that you would expect to be able to make it streamlined."

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

More vRealize Network Insight pros

Cons

"We're using the free version, which limits us in terms of the things that we can do. If we had the paid version, a lot of our issues would probably go away. For example, we can't isolate instances that are being built or updated with the production ones. When they're being built, on Nagios, they're showing in red. It'd be nice to be able to partition those off until they're all green, and then we can bring them into the environment. This is probably because we've got the free version and not the paid version. If we went for the paid version, it would probably allow us to do exactly what we want to or remove the restrictions that we have, but if we are able to isolate instances in the free version, it would make life much easier."

"I would like to see more training videos."

"It is a bit slow due to latency."

"The dashboard and monitoring features could be improved."

"The interface could be improved."

"Nagios Core does not have a graphic display."

"The dashboard should be improved."

"Nagios Core can improve the graphical interface, it would make things a little easier."

More Nagios Core cons

"If it had some kind of plugins with vSphere, more effective plugins with Horizon View or other VMWare products, if it had interconnectivity, I think it would be more effective than it is today."

"The virtual appliance has rebooted."

"It needs to be a little easier to use and to understand the information it's putting out. That would make it more helpful. If you're not a network person you need to understand things like network policies and concepts. If you gave it to a regular admin, it would be nice if it were easier for them to pick up what is going on, understand the flows and whether or not stuff should be talking to each other, as opposed to just port groups and IP addresses."

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

"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."

"The only real improvement they can make is to add more third-party vendors into the environment, mostly switch manufacturers, because it's really limited to Cisco equipment and there are a lot of companies out there other than Cisco."

"Support could be much better."

"While it's not exactly a feature, what normally happens when we are trying to look at the VM flow portion is - although Network Insight does have options to integrate a few physical switches into it - we can't really get an end-to-end flow of the network. We might be using a few switches that are not supported by Network Insight. That is where they can improve, in the support for more physical switches and network devices."

More vRealize Network Insight cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free version of Nagios Core."

"Most the plugin features are free."

"The enterprise version has technical support. The version we are using is free."

"Lessening the price point would be an improvement."

"Nagios Core is free to use."

"Nagios Core is a cheap solution."

"It's free."

More Nagios Core pricing and cost advice

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

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

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

"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."

"It has brought more money into our company."

"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."

"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."

More vRealize Network Insight pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Government

Financial Services Firm

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 Nagios Core?

What I like about Nagios Core is that it helps me ensure everything is running smoothly by checking the status of hosts and services.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nagios Core?

Nagios Core is a free and open-source product. We don't charge for the product itself, but we charge for the man-hour costs related to installation, configuration, ongoing operation, and maintenance.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Nagios Core?

The dashboard should be improved. It's very simple. I don't have a very clear or specific suggestion. You can change the skin of the dashboard, however, it's good for me.

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

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Compared 16% of the time

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Compared 13% of the time

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Compared 12% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Nagios Core

April 2025

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Buyer's Guide

vRealize Network Insight

April 2025

Download vRealize Network Insight product report

Also Known As

No data available

Arkin

Overview

This is IT infrastructure monitoring's industry-standard, open-source core. Free without professional support services.

Nagios

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

Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel

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

Buyer's Guide

Nagios Core vs. vRealize Network Insight

April 2025

Free Report: Nagios Core vs. vRealize Network Insight

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

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