Observer GigaStor vs vRealize Network Insight comparison

Viavi Solutions and Broadcom are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Viavi Solutions is ranked #94, while Broadcom is ranked #40 with an average rating of 8.3. Viavi Solutions holds a 0.2% mindshare in NMS, compared to Broadcom’s 0.6% 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

624 Views
300 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

vRealize Network Insight

Read 47 vRealize Network Insight reviews

1,694 Views
1,203 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Observer GigaStor

vRealize Network Insight

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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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: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Observer GigaStor vs. vRealize Network Insight

September 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

Observer GigaStor

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

94th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

8.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Troubleshooting (14th), Network Packet Broker (NPB) (11th)

vRealize Network Insight

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

40th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (40th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Observer GigaStor is 0.2%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vRealize Network Insight is 0.6%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
vRealize Network Insight	0.6%
Observer GigaStor	0.2%
Other	99.2%

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.

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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.

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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

"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."

"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..."

"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."

"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."

"This solution allows us to see exactly what is going on in the network and we can very quickly solve issues with users."

"I also have the ability to see an application's performance, to see what's going on, why a network is slow, why this program for this user is experiencing a delay or some network issue"

"The solution is extremely intuitive and user-friendly. When you log in to the application you are presented with a dashboard that is very reasonable for an initial user, and you can then customize it to your specific needs. But for all the data that we've found, we've only had to go through two or three drill-downs to get into that information."

"The most valuable feature is the visualization. It's really handy to be able to classify network objects as with applications and see the interaction between them."

"I find that the interface of most VMware products is very similar, which I consider an advantage due to its ease of use compared to other tools like Splunk."

"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."

"What's valuable to us is the ability to get a view into the virtual space, which is something we haven't had before. Before, it was done by collecting from network endpoints and extrapolating into the virtual environment. Now it's coming directly from the virtual environment."

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

"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."

More vRealize Network Insight pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

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

"The compatibility with each and every component of the infrastructure is the main thing that I am looking for. I would like them to make sure that it's compatible with different kinds of storage systems, etc. I have seen the compatibility list. I feel it can be more compatible than it is right now."

"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."

"I'd like to see better support for being able to search the hardware NetFlow data. It ingests fairly well, but you can't tell, in a lot of cases, what source the data came from. I'd like to see more support for picking specific sources. That way you could really make a compelling use case. There are also some difficulties where it can't exactly trace the path between source and destination but if you hit the reverse flow on the same search it shows the entire path."

"I would like to see more interoperability on the firewall and low balancer sides."

"The only issue we have is that the solution does not always capture the host names."

"vRNI needs more remediation where it hooks into NSX."

"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."

"I would like to see them expand the capabilities to infrastructure types other than just VMware."

More vRealize Network Insight cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's quite expensive."

"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."

"vRealize Network Insight is expensive."

"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 has brought more money into our company."

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

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

"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'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 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

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

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	41

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Observer GigaStor?

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Observer GigaStor?

I would rate the pricing a ten out of ten. It's quite expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Observer GigaStor?

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 coul...

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.

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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

Comparisons

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Compared 27% of the time

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Compared 19% of the time

NETSCOUT nGeniusONE vs Observer GigaStor

Compared 16% of the time

AppNeta by Broadcom vs Observer GigaStor

Compared 13% of the time

Fortinet FortiSIEM vs Observer GigaStor

Compared 13% of the time

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Alluvio AppResponse vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 22% of the time

VMware Aria Operations for Applications vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 14% of the time

DX NetOps vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 12% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 10% of the time

Goliath Performance Monitor vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 10% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Observer GigaStor

September 2025

Download Observer GigaStor product report

Buyer's Guide

vRealize Network Insight

September 2025

Download vRealize Network Insight product report

Also Known As

No data available

Arkin

Overview

Observer GigaStor is a network analysis tool that comes in a variety of form factors, including rack mount, portable, and virtual. Capable of storing up to a petabyte of traffic for later analysis, GigaStor helps ensure optimal network and application performance.

Viavi Solutions

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.

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

September 2025

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: September 2025.

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