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NetBrain vs vRealize Network Insight comparison

 

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 (15th), Network Automation (4th)
vRealize Network Insight
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (40th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (41st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Network Management solutions, they serve different purposes. NetBrain is designed for Network Troubleshooting and holds a mindshare of 2.8%, up 1.7% compared to last year.
vRealize Network Insight, on the other hand, focuses on IT Infrastructure Monitoring, holds 0.5% mindshare, up 0.5% since last year.
Network Troubleshooting Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
NetBrain2.8%
LinkRunner13.6%
Wireshark12.6%
Other71.0%
Network Troubleshooting
IT Infrastructure Monitoring Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
vRealize Network Insight0.5%
Zabbix12.2%
Datadog5.2%
Other82.1%
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Deborah Gamelin - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Shaijith KB - PeerSpot reviewer
Comprehensive management and detailed reports benefit operations while improvements are needed in support and maintenance
We have Tanzu and OpenShift. We have OpenShift, Canonical, and the Tanzu one. The Tanzu platform from VMware is a Kubernetes platform. We haven't completely installed Tanzu yet; we installed the vROps part. vRealize Network Insight is beneficial because you can control the East-West traffic. vRealize has a component called NSX, which has East-West traffic controlling and micro-segmentation, that is one of the best options, and we have the layer extension, layer 2 extension possible through NSX. If you have anything accountable in any business, even in a candy business, having proper accountability on what you are selling and buying will save a lot. If you don't know what you're selling and buying, you will end up with a loss. My team does not use the flow analytics feature; we have a security and network monitoring team, which is a different SOC team. I am using it as an administrator internally. We perform different tasks including costing analysis, capacity management, and many other things. vRealize Network Insight has a concern about the maintenance part, as it requires a person to monitor it completely. It's not something you install and your report will be generated automatically. You have to work on this properly to get the insights. vRealize Network Automation, vRealize Operations, and vRealize Network Insight are completely related to the network. I cannot say much about these network aspects because I am on the operations side, but overall, the vRealize suite is good for reporting perspective or any ISO-related documentation; this is very helpful. The product is called vRealize Operations Manager, and now it is referred to as Aria or vAria. I am now a Senior System Specialist. We use different metrics because we have multiple departments, and we can monitor utilization and comparisons with the previous year. On a scale of one to ten, I rate this solution a seven.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Chain management is a good feature. I don't get it on other solutions."
"This product has good network monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities."
"A reliable, time-saving tool for providing accurate layer 2 and layer 3 network mappings."
"Enables maps to be drawn out."
"NetBrain is a very simple tool."
"It's user-friendly. It's similar to the GUI that most VMware products are moving to, and the consistency across those makes it easy to switch from one product to another. Also, the search bar at the top is plain text and it helps you, it guides you along with your search query, so that helps. The first day you're in there you can start building actual queries."
"The most valuable feature for us is that insight into what our network is really doing - it's a fairly complex network. Not having to go through thousands of lines of network configuration to find firewall ports that were open or closed, for various ports, was very valuable. It went out and found everything we need very quickly."
"It provides deep visibility into what is happening with traffic and helps us manage our network."
"It's a very powerful, very manageable product."
"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."
"The automation collects all the relationships between servers, allowing us to visualize these relationships and organize the migration into waves."
"The most valuable feature is being able to easily see the path that the VM traffic is taking, what ports are in use."
"Whenever we say "valuable" with respect to the network, it's more towards the security. The firewall rule issues it shows us and the recommendations that we get from vRNI are the most valuable features because they are actually making our network more secure."
 

Cons

"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."
"The IP interface brief isn't consistent."
"The solution could integrate more automation."
"Support needs to improve for the installed product and some of the reporting could be more flexible to provide more complete cataloging."
"Each device needs to be configured to allow NetBrain to poll for the information it needs, which can be very time-consuming for a large network."
"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 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."
"The virtual appliance has rebooted."
"vRNI needs more remediation where it hooks into NSX."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Since Broadcom acquired VMware, it has been experiencing challenges. Many sales processes are not well defined."
 

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."
"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 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 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."
"vRealize Network Insight is expensive."
"I rate vRealize Network Insight's pricing a seven point five out of ten."
"It's an expensive product because we have a lot of nodes."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise41
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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?
In VMware you have to buy a separate license for it. We have VVF and VCF-type of licenses, and if you want to go with this NSX and sort of higher-end professional services, you need to go with VCF....
What needs improvement with vRealize Network Insight?
There is room for improvement as not all cases are getting resolved, and we often do not get L3 support directly, having to go through L1 and L2, resulting in delays that usually are a headache for...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Arkin
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CompuCon, TD Ameritrade, Move Inc.
NTTi3, VCIX-NV, VMware Networking and Security Business Unit, Illumio, CompuNet
Find out what your peers are saying about NetBrain vs. vRealize Network Insight and other solutions. Updated: May 2020.
867,783 professionals have used our research since 2012.