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SolarWinds AppOptics vs vRealize Network Insight comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 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

SolarWinds AppOptics
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
61st
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (55th), Cloud Monitoring Software (44th)
vRealize Network Insight
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
41st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (35th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of SolarWinds AppOptics is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vRealize Network Insight is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
vRealize Network Insight0.8%
SolarWinds AppOptics0.8%
Other98.4%
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

John Yuko - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Manager ICT - Projects at I&M Bank Ltd
Unique features allow consolidating and combing metrics into a single dashboard, but don't monitor mobile solutions
I would like to see more granular information provided on Unix applications. Also, the integration with Unix services should be a bit more straightforward in terms having an agent to retrieve your credentials rather than having to enter or save them for SSH on SolarWinds. From the outset, we had to set some commands to log into the search console, and they are saved on the solution, which presents a challenge in terms of exposure. The solution is unable to monitor APK solutions completely because we'd then be forced to break down the APK and provide the APIs or go through the source code. They don't have a module that can analyze an application that is maybe under-used.
Shaijith KB - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"With minimal effort on our part, TraceView provides extraordinary visibility into the requests that flow through our SOA applications."
"The product has a great dashboard."
"Some of the most valuable features of SolarWinds are the topology discovery and network performance analysis."
"The sum solution, NTA, and DPA."
"The reporting of the solution is very good."
"It's a solid application."
"Technical support is always live and they're supportive."
"The reporting of the solution is very good."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is being able to easily see the path that the VM traffic is taking, what ports are in use."
"It has really tightened down the security; that was something that we were lacking, and it has also given us deep visibility into our network so 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, and web servers, identify everything that is communicating, and see it all on one product."
"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 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."
"It provides deep visibility into what is happening with traffic and helps us manage our network."
"I find it user-friendly and intuitive. With the GUI interface that we do use on a regular basis, it's easy to navigate, it's easy to see, easy to query. We get reports. It's easy to use."
"The solution is also extremely intuitive and user-friendly."
 

Cons

"The integration with Unix services should be a bit more straightforward."
"I would like to see more integration with other tools that are available on the market."
"AppOptics would benefit from having a much more centralized view."
"The support is not too bad, but also not very good—it's quite standard."
"Because of its inability to monitor mobile solutions, I would rate this solution as a seven out of ten."
"AppOptics would benefit from having a much more centralized view."
"Does not perform traditional SNMP/CLI/NetFlow/WMI etc monitoring."
"I would like to see more integration with other tools that are available on the market."
"However, stability is still in question because I don't think we have tested it to the core."
"It can be a bit painful to deploy."
"Better integration into VRB."
"It just needs to be more reliable and more accurate. At some point, there are some things where it does not match properly."
"Technical support has been responsive. The response has always been immediate. Whether or not they've fixed it immediately is a different story."
"Since Broadcom acquired VMware, it has been experiencing challenges. Many sales processes are not well defined."
"I want to be able to monitor a network flow that is approximately two weeks back, but I haven't found an easy way to do this."
"vRNI needs more remediation where it hooks into NSX."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Mostly, it's a perpetual license. We don't have any customers using the subscription right now—it's mostly a perpetual license that the customers purchase. The licensing is based on the number of elements, whereas other solutions are node-based."
"Since it's a negotiable rate, I would rate the pricing as a five out of five."
"I believe the current licensing cost is reasonable."
"It has brought more money into our company."
"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."
"They should include the product in NSX because it's important to have it for deployment."
"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."
"vRealize Network Insight is expensive."
"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 an expensive product because we have a lot of nodes."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise43
 

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....
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...
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...
 

Also Known As

AppOptics, SolarWinds TraceView, Librato
Arkin
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

TraxoCovea Insurance BTE TechnologyDatarista
NTTi3, VCIX-NV, VMware Networking and Security Business Unit, Illumio, CompuNet
Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds AppOptics vs. vRealize Network Insight and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.