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NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability vs NetBrain comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

NetBrain
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Network Troubleshooting (18th), Network Automation (6th)
NETSCOUT Network & Applicat...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (10th)
 

Featured Reviews

Deborah Gamelin - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President at Asset Track for Cloud, LLC
Good monitoring and troubleshoot capabilities, improves overall network traffic visibility
In my organization, we had 130,000 network devices that needed to be brought into the solution and mapped. NetBrain can handle the scale but the engineers that manage those devices have to go in and update all of them to allow NetBrain permission to poll them. It can get a little stressful for everybody when you're trying to roll out new stuff when you've got other issues that have to be addressed with other devices. In some cases, our devices had no automation at all. One example is the Cisco 3650. Right now, if you went through the inventory list, you see that we have different versions running. Some are on one version, whereas others are on another version. The problem with upgrading them is that they need to be done overnight because we don't want to disrupt any network traffic during business hours. Consequently, it could take us years to upgrade the versions before we can even get them onto these new tools. This may be an internal issue but it's a big one when you have a lot of devices. Even if you had 10,000 devices, it's still an issue. You have to consider the compatibility of the device against the tool, and being able to use certain commands to upgrade it.
HT
Newwork And Collaboration Supervisor at Nafeza
Monitoring has improved bandwidth insights and application diagnosis but setup and costs still need work
They need room for improvement about the spare parts. There are shortages in Egypt in their stock. We tried to make RMA for specific parts, and it took a long time. Comparing this to a vendor like Cisco, who provides any component next business day, NETSCOUT nGeniusONE took a long time. This needs more improvement. I believe it is expensive. They need to reduce its budget a little bit. Comparing to other solutions, it is very expensive.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"NetBrain is a very simple tool."
"This product has good network monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities."
"Enables maps to be drawn out."
"NetBrain is very good when it comes to network mapping, as it looks for different assets within the network available, so router, firewall, applications, et cetera, and it gives you the full mapping, asset mapping along with the full range including the firmware software update and all those things."
"Chain management is a good feature. I don't get it on other solutions."
"A reliable, time-saving tool for providing accurate layer 2 and layer 3 network mappings."
"NetBrain is faster, better and level sets the engineering technical sets."
"Other advice to users considering the solution would be: go with NetBrain."
"We have a good relationship with NETSCOUT, and it's reflected in the communication and the service that we see from them."
"The fact that it's able to capture and store packets from the wires is very useful for troubleshooting with our vendors, when issues do come up. It's valuable that we have that overall data for them."
"I love the single pane of glass view. It makes it easier to not have to navigate everywhere. It allows more simplistic visibility, without having to go from tool to tool to tool, or from window to window to window."
"We have seen a lot of return on investment: We have been able to recover radios in the field, we know exactly what is going on, we cut down fines from the service commission, and we have seen a measurable decrease in mean time to know, cutting troubleshooting down by days as we can now see the issues."
"We build application dashboards and performance indexes for locations."
"The packet capture is the most valuable feature for us. It gathers data from the device. In case somebody has a problem, I can go back X amount of time - days, hours - and get the data to do real troubleshooting."
"It is an easy-to-scale platform."
"It has played an integral part in providing valuable information in a critical arena."
 

Cons

"Support needs to improve for the installed product and some of the reporting could be more flexible to provide more complete cataloging."
"When I used the installed product before, I wasn't very satisfied with the support."
"The IP interface brief isn't consistent."
"The pricing needs to be improved."
"If you're comparing NetBrain as an NDR, I would rate it as a four or five, however, NetBrain has a different aspect of looking at things within the network."
"The solution could integrate more automation."
"It would be nice if the setup was a little simpler. Also, if the solution could provide more training materials for new people coming into our company so they can quickly learn how to use the functionalities."
"Netbrain must get AWS functionality done."
"The product was lacking for awhile when they did the Arbor acquisition. I was waiting to see more security stuff, which they did eventually add, and is now impressive."
"There is a big issue with the special way they use InfiniStream to store data."
"They can improve still on the workflows, document their workflows that are commonly used... We don't know some of the workflows yet, and it's not something that you can just read up in the manual. There is some stuff in the help manual and online, but it's to a point where you need to purchase extra training and services from them. You can't just go and read up on it yourself and learn from A to Z..."
"Sometimes, we can't access it."
"Some of the filters could be easier to see and to set up. That's the only thing that I've ever had any trouble with."
"The initial deployment is tedious and requires a lot of build, deployment and configuration time. Experience is key to a successful deployment."
"The technology goes end-of-life on us every year, which is why I am looking forward to vSTREAM. I don't like when devices go end-of-life on us so quickly. If we can get more of an advanced notice of when an end-of-life is brought up, because our certification process within the organization takes a while."
"The solution could do more for security. It should offer more security-related features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing is based on a per-device basis, which means that it can get very expensive if you have a large number of devices."
"The product is expensive, but less expensive than some of the competition and worth the price."
"There is a need to make yearly payments towards the licensing charges attached to the product. The product may come across as a cheap tool for some, while it may seem costly for others."
"It can be scalable. It just costs too much. With a company as big as ours, it gets too expensive to accommodate every single site."
"It can be expensive, but if you have a good configuration, based on what you are looking for, it's okay, it's manageable."
"This solution has saved us more than $50,000 a month and freed up 30 percent of our bandwidth."
"Their pricing is very competitive with other solutions... But what I like about NETSCOUT's licensing is that it's shared across all their platforms. They don't create a new licensing scheme for every one of their products. So for nGeniusONE, you buy a certain license level, and it works on all of their products."
"The product is too expensive compared to other products."
"The biggest problem we have with this product is the expense."
"If you are able and you are willing to use everything that Netscout provides to you, it's probably a relatively fair price. The problem is that it's such a large and such a complex tool that I'm not sure that many companies would be able to use it entirely, the way it's expected to be used."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise52
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
I would say if it’s an ISP that will build a scrubbing center, Netscout/Arbor is a good solution. In all other solutions, Imperva is a great choice.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NETSCOUT nGeniusONE?
Regarding its high price, I give NETSCOUT nGeniusONE a seven.
What needs improvement with NETSCOUT nGeniusONE?
They need room for improvement about the spare parts. There are shortages in Egypt in their stock. We tried to make RMA for specific parts, and it took a long time. Comparing this to a vendor like ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
NETSCOUT nGenius, NETSCOUT nGeniusONE, NETSCOUT nGeniusPULSE, NETSCOUT vSTREAM, NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG, Iris Session Analyzer, ClearSight Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CompuCon, TD Ameritrade, Move Inc.
Cerner Corporation
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