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NETSCOUT vSTREAM vs vRealize Network Insight comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

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

NETSCOUT vSTREAM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
79th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
vRealize Network Insight
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
23rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (23rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of NETSCOUT vSTREAM is 0.3%, down from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vRealize Network Insight is 0.6%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

MM
Troubleshooting at the packet level helps us resolve issues more quickly
The solution provides increased visibility during an IT deployment. It enables us to troubleshoot a service when it is down. As we expand our company, more users are using the tool to quickly resolve issues. It helps us and them get to root cause quickly. For example, last week a DNS was not running anymore. We checked the packet and saw that there was a buffer overload. It has cut our overall troubleshooting time. Sometimes it took a month to troubleshoot something that we can now do within days. nGenius has helped increase application or network uptime. The DNS I mentioned is now a better server with more capacity than before, because of our troubleshooting. We see a measurable decrease in mean time to know and mean time to repair. We see that when our customers are using this tool, their stability on the link is getting better and better, every time they use it. Also, we use the solution for unified communication application performance and it helps with uptime and end-user experience. Sometimes the quality of voice calls is not good enough, so we use the Media Monitor to check the quality in real-time.
NiteshKumar1 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One of the valuable features is the packet decoding."
"vSTREAM gives us better visibility and reporting about our network infrastructure, allowing for cost-optimization."
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"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 solution helps reduce time to value, increase performance, provide deep visibility, and easily manage networks."
"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."
"It helps a lot because, until now, we didn't have the tools to figure out the micro level, VM-to-VM kind of traffic; that was not in the current environment. We could not figure out VM-to-VM communication from the other tools. This is the tool which gives us end-to-end transparency."
 

Cons

"I would like to see improvements made to the user guide."
"Room for improvement exists in filtering in the packet decode."
"I would like for it to have a smaller footprint of the virtual appliance and better performance."
"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."
"In a very general way, I would like to see an improvement in interoperability with third-party product, from other vendors."
"Since Broadcom acquired VMware, it has been experiencing challenges. Many sales processes are not well defined."
"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."
"The solution is very much viewer centric and it would be nice if it would transcend just the virtual infrastructure."
"It just needs to be more reliable and more accurate. At some point, there are some things where it does not match properly."
"I would like to see more interoperability on the firewall and low balancer sides."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing is quite expensive."
"They should include the product in NSX because it's important to have it for deployment."
"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."
"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's an expensive product because we have a lot of nodes."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
12%
Energy/Utilities Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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?
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.
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...
 

Also Known As

vSTREAM
Arkin
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Metropolitan Police Agency, Banpara, PropertyRoom.com
NTTi3, VCIX-NV, VMware Networking and Security Business Unit, Illumio, CompuNet
Find out what your peers are saying about NETSCOUT vSTREAM vs. vRealize Network Insight and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,451 professionals have used our research since 2012.