Observer GigaStor vs vRealize Network Insight comparison

Viavi Solutions and Broadcom are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Viavi Solutions is ranked #83, while Broadcom is ranked #35 with an average rating of 8.0. Viavi Solutions holds a 0.5% mindshare in NMS, compared to Broadcom’s 0.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Viavi Solutions users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Observer GigaStor

Read 7 Observer GigaStor reviews

2,083 Views
1,312 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

vRealize Network Insight

Read 47 vRealize Network Insight reviews

4,017 Views
2,973 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Observer GigaStor

vRealize Network Insight

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

vRealize Network Insight and Observer GigaStor are competing products in the network analysis and monitoring category. Users generally prefer vRealize Network Insight for its support and pricing, while Observer GigaStor's robust features make it appealing.

Features: vRealize Network Insight provides advanced network visibility, security analysis, and integration with popular virtualization platforms. Observer GigaStor offers high-capacity packet capture, deep packet analysis, and historical data retrieval.

Room for Improvement: vRealize Network Insight could enhance its capabilities in packet-level analysis and historical data retrieval and expand its applicability to non-virtualized environments. Observer GigaStor may improve its pricing model, ease of use in virtualized environments, and integration with more virtualization platforms.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: vRealize Network Insight offers seamless integration with existing VMware environments, which aids in straightforward deployment. Its customer service is recognized for being responsive. Observer GigaStor supports detailed assistance during intricate deployments, beneficial in heterogeneous networks.

Pricing and ROI: vRealize Network Insight is noted for accessible initial costs and promises effective ROI through efficient network management. Observer GigaStor involves higher setup costs, justified by its comprehensive data capture and analysis capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Observer GigaStor vs. vRealize Network Insight Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Observer GigaStor vs. vRealize Network Insight

April 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 894,807 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

Observer GigaStor

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

83rd

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

8.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Troubleshooting (13th), Network Packet Broker (NPB) (8th)

vRealize Network Insight

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

35th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (41st)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Observer GigaStor is 0.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vRealize Network Insight is 0.8%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
vRealize Network Insight	0.8%
Observer GigaStor	0.5%
Other	98.7%

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Jeroen-Dubbelman

Director at Bitrate

Aids significantly in the threat-hunting process and provides a score-based evaluation of user experience

There are many valuable features, but understanding end-user response times stands out. It provides a score-based evaluation of user experience, helping customers quickly pinpoint whether issues originate from the network, server, client, or application. Additionally, it facilitates in-depth analysis of application dependencies. The retrospective network analysis capability of Observer GigaStor has been beneficial. It's a pivotal feature for network performance solutions. However, I prefer to consider the entire solution suite - GigaStor, along with GigaFlow and Apex - for comprehensive network visibility and monitoring. So, I prefer to integrate all three solutions to provide the best visibility. They complement each other well, with Apex aggregating and correlating data from both GigaStor and GigaFlow to enhance environmental understanding and troubleshooting efficiency.

Read full review

Shaijith KB

Senior System Specialist at General Directorate of Residence and Foreigners Affairs (GDRFA)

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.

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 ability to capture packets. It is not only for monitoring. That is very important for a company that wants to keep an eye on the packets, the transactions, the flows..."

"Go take a look at it. It's a great product and has great capabilities."

"It's able to capture packets and, after a long time, you can come and use that information; to check, to analyze - everything you would want to do. So it's very good and helpful if you want to protect your data. It is stored in a certain place where you can access it every time you want to analyze it."

"I have no regrets using this product, I am very satisfied for what I paid for it and for the things I am able to do with the product."

"Industry-leading line rates, packet-capture technology and data-mining capabilities are the most valuable features."

"Enables us to go back in time to capture an issue and analyze it for a solution, and this after the fact analysis is key to overcoming the bump in the night issues."

"If you have the opportunity, I would strongly encourage you to get it, because it makes the IT experience easier and more flexible, by providing the ability to see things in your networks like the directory packet label."

"It can help to write your rules, organize firewalls, your block, and also your protocols and IP address to come in or out of your network."

More Observer GigaStor pros

"vRNI can trace the flow of each and every packet and it is easy for us to troubleshoot all the issues that we do have with the networking."

"It has given us value since day one."

"It allowed us to set up NSX and to do microsegmentation, without all of the pain points of having to determine each port and each IP address that needed to have access, and which ones needed to be blocked."

"I love what we can do with this and I love everything it gives to us."

"Login site gives you the opportunity to collect logs from all of your hypervisors and your virtual servers, then put them all in one location and make them searchable."

"It has enabled us to set up and do application discovery, as far as network traffic is concerned, and set up the appropriate rules that we need to make sure we're compliant with our security frameworks."

"The solution helps reduce time to value, increase performance, provide deep visibility, and easily manage networks."

"vRNI can trace the flow of each and every packet and it is easy for us to troubleshoot all the issues that we do have with the networking. We can trace down the packet to a point where it has been dropped."

More vRealize Network Insight pros

Cons

"Maybe the graphical user interface could be simplified to allow people to use it more easily. It's already good, but they can work more on it to make it even easier."

"As of this moment, the graphics might need some improvement, because a lot of the information there must be input first to have full potential."

"I would like to have more than 4TB of storage available in the portable version of this solution."

"The Observer Console UI is consistent and stable, but could use some updating to be more modern."

"Graphics need improvement. Because a lot of the information there you have to input first in some case to have full potential. It could be more automated."

"GigaStor feeds into Apex. So, the area where there could be improvement would be in artificial intelligence. For example, the incorporation of more advanced machine learning or AI capabilities could enhance its functionality."

"I would like to have more than 4TB of storage available in the portable version of this solution."

"There are some issues, in our environment that puts processing restraints on the Gigastor when turning on trending data to be sent to APEX."

More Observer GigaStor cons

"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."

"Support could be much better. They do not do a good job of finding issues."

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

"The only reason I would not give it a nine or a 10 is for cost reasons. It seems to be one of those things that really belongs as part of the product inherently and not as an add-on."

"It can be a bit painful to deploy."

"The only reason I would not give it a nine or a 10 is for cost reasons. It seems to be one of those things that really belongs as part of the product inherently and not as an add-on. That would be my only concern."

"Make the GUI easier to use."

"It needs to be a little easier to use and to understand the information it's putting out."

More vRealize Network Insight cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It depends on the requirements you have. There are three types of license. There's the updates license, the work group license, and the workstation license."

"It's quite expensive."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

More vRealize Network Insight pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

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

See recommendations

894,807 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Government

Healthcare Company

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Large Enterprise	3

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	43

Questions from the Community

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

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....

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for vRealize Network Insight?

We have Tanzu, and we also work with multiple Kubernetes services such as Nutanix and Google. We are working on these Kubernetes services on the operations side. For Tanzu, we have several componen...

See all answers

Comparisons

Wireshark vs Observer GigaStor

Compared 14% of the time

Gigamon Deep Observability Pipeline vs Observer GigaStor

Compared 8% of the time

IxChariot vs Observer GigaStor

Compared 7% of the time

Viavi Observer Platform vs Observer GigaStor

Compared 6% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs Observer GigaStor

Compared 6% of the time

More Observer GigaStor Competitors

Kentik vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 13% of the time

Nmap vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 7% of the time

Datadog vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 5% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 5% of the time

Alluvio AppResponse vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 4% of the time

More vRealize Network Insight Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Observer GigaStor

April 2026

Download Observer GigaStor product report

Buyer's Guide

vRealize Network Insight

April 2026

Download vRealize Network Insight product report

Also Known As

No data available

Arkin

Overview

Observer GigaStor provides detailed network visibility and data capture for efficient troubleshooting and analysis. It's a robust tool designed to manage today’s complex network environments, offering reliability and performance insights.

Observer GigaStor specializes in long-term network traffic capture, delivering comprehensive forensic analysis capabilities. It stands as a trusted resource for IT departments aiming to resolve network performance issues swiftly. By capturing and storing packets with high precision, it aids in identifying both current and past anomalies, ensuring network health and performance continuity through proactive monitoring.

What are the key features of Observer GigaStor?

Long-term Data Capture: Enables storage of vast amounts of data for extensive historical analysis.
Comprehensive Protocol Support: Offers support for diverse protocols, enhancing troubleshooting accuracy.
Retrospective Analysis: Provides the ability to trace issues back to their origin point, improving issue resolution speed.
Scalability: Adapts to network growth without sacrificing performance capabilities.

What benefits and ROI can be expected from reviews?

Increased Troubleshooting Efficiency: Provides quicker resolution times, reducing network downtime.
Enhanced Network Visibility: Improves understanding of network performance and traffic patterns.
Reduced Operational Costs: Limits the need for manual troubleshooting, saving on labor costs.
Improved Decision Making: Data insights aid in strategic planning for infrastructure improvements.

Observer GigaStor's implementation spans across various industries, from telecommunications to finance, where maintaining robust and secure network performance is crucial. Its ability to analyze and retrieve historical network data supports compliance and operational stability demands in these sectors.

Viavi Solutions

vRealize Network Insight provides deep visibility into network flows, intuitive visualization, and real-time monitoring. It identifies communication patterns and offers insights into east-west traffic within data centers, simplifying complex network analysis and troubleshooting.

This platform enhances efficiency in firewall management and supports microsegmentation with an intuitive interface. Its integration with VMware products and natural language querying adds value. Users use it for optimizing network flows, planning NSX deployments, and visualizing traffic. It assists in applying security policies, tracking data center flows, and building network architecture by providing advanced insights for policy refinement, ensuring network performance and compliance.

What are the key features of vRealize Network Insight?

Deep Network Visibility: Offers detailed insights into network flows and communication patterns.
Intuitive Visualization: Simplifies monitoring with clear, real-time graphics.
User-Friendly Interface: Facilitates easy navigation for complex network analysis.
Integration with VMware: Seamless alignment with existing VMware products.
Natural Language Querying: Offers insights with easy-to-use query capabilities.

What benefits should users consider in reviews?

Efficiency in Firewall Management: Streamlines and optimizes firewall operations.
Supports Microsegmentation: Enhances security through improved policy enforcement.
Advanced Network Insights: Provides valuable data for performance optimization.
Compliance Assurance: Ensures adherence to security and performance standards.

In specific industries, vRealize Network Insight is implemented to optimize network architecture, manage application dependencies, and enhance security measures. Companies utilize its analytical capabilities to refine policies and ensure robust network performance and security compliance, particularly in complex and hybrid cloud environments.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

Cisco Systems, Hawaiian Telecom, Renown Health, State of Nevada, U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, Allstate Insurance, Jack Henry & Associates, United States Airforce, US Bank, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Chicago Board Options Exchange

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

Buyer's Guide

Observer GigaStor vs. vRealize Network Insight

April 2026

Free Report: Observer GigaStor vs. vRealize Network Insight

Find out what your peers are saying about Observer GigaStor vs. vRealize Network Insight and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.

DOWNLOAD NOW

894,807 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Observer GigaStor vs. vRealize Network Insight report.

See our list of best Network Monitoring Software vendors.

We monitor all Network Monitoring Software 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.