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SolarWinds Network Device Monitor vs vRealize Network Insight comparison

SolarWinds and Broadcom are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. SolarWinds is ranked #27 with an average rating of 7.9, while Broadcom is ranked #36 with an average rating of 8.0. SolarWinds holds a 0.9% mindshare in NMS, compared to Broadcom’s 0.8% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of SolarWinds users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

SolarWinds Network Device M...

Read 23 SolarWinds Network Device Monitor reviews

1,712 Views
1,678 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

vRealize Network Insight

Read 47 vRealize Network Insight reviews

2,557 Views
1,841 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Network Device M...

vRealize Network Insight

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

SolarWinds Network Device Monitor and vRealize Network Insight compete in the network management domain. vRealize Network Insight offers a more comprehensive feature set, making it preferable for robust network analysis.

Features: SolarWinds Network Device Monitor provides real-time device monitoring, simplified alarms, and SNMP support. vRealize Network Insight includes advanced analytics, historical data analysis, and traffic optimization.

Room for Improvement: SolarWinds Network Device Monitor could improve with enhanced analytics, better scalability, and more comprehensive reporting. vRealize Network Insight might benefit from a simpler deployment process, reduced costs, and increased user-friendliness.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is known for quick setup and ease of use, making it suitable for rapid deployment. vRealize Network Insight requires a more involved deployment process but offers extensive VMware support.

Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds Network Device Monitor has competitive pricing, appealing to smaller networks. vRealize Network Insight justifies its higher cost with extensive features, supporting larger infrastructures for long-term ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed SolarWinds Network Device Monitor vs. vRealize Network Insight Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Network Device Monitor vs. vRealize Network Insight

February 2026

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Helped 881,821 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

SolarWinds Network Device M...

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

27th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

vRealize Network Insight

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

36th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (39th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is 0.9%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vRealize Network Insight is 0.8%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
SolarWinds Network Device Monitor	0.9%
vRealize Network Insight	0.8%
Other	98.3%

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Sorin Gogean

IT Infrastructure Senior Network Technician at Autoliv

Offers some features but needs better customization and analysis tools

There are solutions that can perform better, but due to pricing for our corporate implementation, we had to stay with this solution. It accomplishes the necessary tasks, but there is room for improvement. The features are not as customizable as we would prefer, but they are workable. If configured properly, you can perform a drill-down analysis. However, I have not used this feature much for our infrastructure on the network side.

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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

"I like the mapping that you could do and the dashboards were very pretty."

"The alerting functionality in SolarWinds Network Device Monitor helps us stay informed during off-hours by sending alerts if our main links or devices are impacted, allowing us to quickly address any issues."

"Since our devices are spread out across the world, we can see the status of these devices without having to send someone physically to a remote location, which saves money."

"SolarWinds is flexible and works with multiple vendor devices."

"SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is a straightforward product with valuable functionality."

"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is monitoring."

"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is it can alert you when a device is not working."

"The initial setup is straightforward."

More SolarWinds Network Device Monitor pros

"It's very user-friendly in the sense that the querying is just regular language like you and I speak or write. You don't need to know any SQL-query type of language to be able to get what you want out of it."

"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."

"It's a very powerful, very manageable product."

"The initial setup was straightforward."

"It has definitely helped us to meet compliance rules by assuring that all traffic is going to where it's supposed to go. It can be used to report that you are in compliance, as well as helping you get into compliance."

"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."

"It gives the visibility that was either broken or there in pieces only. This solution provides a unified view of the whole system, back and forth. It has helped to reduce time to value, increase performance, more easily manage networks, and provide deep visibility."

"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."

More vRealize Network Insight pros

Cons

"The security needs improvement, which is why we are moving away from Solar Winds. We have security concerns."

"SolarWinds Network Device Monitor could improve by being more user-friendly. The network has so many features which make it difficult to find how to configure how to use it. It is not simple to customize."

"The security could always be improved."

"In terms of price, it could be less expensive."

"The way they are presenting the map of our devices needs to be improved."

"Although I haven't explored all of the features available, I wouldn't mind if the software were made to be a bit more customizable."

"When an organization's network grows, the complexity of the dashboard becomes an area of concern where improvements are required."

"The solution is not user-friendly."

More SolarWinds Network Device Monitor cons

"The solution can be improved by making it more compatible with other brands, allowing for better integration."

"The UI, even though once you get to know it, it's easier, still it's hard to figure out by yourself. You have to go read, watch videos. It has a lot of data on it. So that is an issue."

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

"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."

"Support could be much better."

"The solution is very much viewer centric and it would be nice if it would transcend just the virtual infrastructure."

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

"If it were more application-aware, more descriptive; if it were able to determine the application that is actually doing the communication, that would be easier. More application information: which user or account it's accessing, is it accessing this application, doing these calls, if it is accessing a script, what script is it accessing. Things like that would provide deeper analytics so I can track what's going on. It would not just be, "These people shouldn't be talking," but who is actually doing these calls."

More vRealize Network Insight cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is not an expensive solution."

"The price of the SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is good."

"Well, we had a perpetual license and the renewal was $20 to $25,000."

"Thankfully, it doesn't take a lot of manpower to install and deploy."

"When compared with other solutions SolarWinds is more expensive."

"I find the cost of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor reasonable for our company. Though, I'm not aware of the exact licensing cost."

"The product is expensive."

"I rate the product's price as three to three and a half or on a scale of one to ten, where one means low price, and ten means high price."

More SolarWinds Network Device Monitor pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

"vRealize Network Insight is expensive."

"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."

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

"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."

More vRealize Network Insight pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

14%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Manufacturing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Healthcare Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	14

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	41

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about SolarWinds Network Device Monitor?

I rate the product's initial setup process a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one means it is a difficult phase and ten is an easy process.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Network Device Monitor?

I am not a positive person regarding SolarWinds Network Device Monitor.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SolarWinds Network Device Monitor?

See all answers

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

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Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Network Device Monitor

January 2026

SolarWinds Network Device Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Network Device Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

vRealize Network Insight

January 2026

Download vRealize Network Insight product report

Also Known As

Network Device Monitor

Arkin

Overview

Network Device Monitor is a free tool that makes it easy to monitor the real-time performance and health of a single device on your network with a desktop dashboard that alerts you when your device is in trouble.

SolarWinds

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

Air Rarotonga

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

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Network Device Monitor vs. vRealize Network Insight

February 2026

Free Report: SolarWinds Network Device Monitor vs. vRealize Network Insight

Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds Network Device Monitor vs. vRealize Network Insight and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.

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