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VMware Aria Operations for Applications vs vRealize Network Insight comparison

VMware Aria Operations for Applications and vRealize Network Insight are both solutions in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category. VMware Aria Operations for Applications is ranked #17 with an average rating of 8.8, while vRealize Network Insight is ranked #41 with an average rating of 8.3. VMware Aria Operations for Applications holds a 1.5% mindshare in IM, compared to vRealize Network Insight’s 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of VMware Aria Operations for Applications users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of vRealize Network Insight users who would recommend it.
VMware Aria Operations for ...
Read 14 VMware Aria Operations for Applications reviews
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  • 1,379 Comparison Views
93% willing to recommend
vRealize Network Insight
Read 47 vRealize Network Insight reviews
  • 1,764 Views
  • 776 Comparison Views
89% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

vRealize Network Insight and VMware Aria Operations for Applications compete in the network visualization and monitoring solutions category. VMware Aria Operations for Applications may have the upper hand due to its broader application monitoring capabilities across diverse cloud infrastructures.

Features: vRealize Network Insight includes network visualization, microsegmentation, and traffic flow analysis for effective network monitoring. It specializes in providing insights into virtual environments and is essential for capacity management. VMware Aria Operations for Applications offers extensive monitoring across multiple environments such as cloud platforms and features comprehensive app-centric capabilities, making it suitable for diverse infrastructures.

Room for Improvement: vRealize Network Insight could enhance integration with firewall tools and improve application identification; users also face challenges with its licensing model and pricing structure. VMware Aria Operations for Applications can improve by adding more intuitive alerting and prediction features, enhancing interoperability with non-VMware infrastructures, and simplifying the initial setup process. Documentation and user education are areas both products can enhance.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: vRealize Network Insight is deployed on-premises and receives positive feedback for responsive and knowledgeable technical support. VMware Aria Operations for Applications supports on-premises and hybrid cloud deployments, emphasizing flexibility. Support is similarly regarded well, with deployment needs varying based on scope.

Pricing and ROI: vRealize Network Insight is considered expensive but offers valuable network insights and labor-saving features, effectively supporting NSX deployments and reducing troubleshooting time. VMware Aria Operations for Applications has a high pricing structure with multiple integrations needed, but it delivers substantial ROI by reducing deployment times and enabling application rationalization. Both products demonstrate cost reduction and operational efficiency, with user concerns about expense.

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To learn more, read our detailed VMware Aria Operations for Applications vs. vRealize Network Insight Report (Updated: September 2025).
Buyer's Guide
VMware Aria Operations for Applications 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

VMware Aria Operations for ...
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
17th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (18th), Container Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (14th)
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 (40th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 1.5%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vRealize Network Insight is 0.5%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
VMware Aria Operations for Applications1.5%
vRealize Network Insight0.5%
Other98.0%
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

ToniLindberg - PeerSpot reviewer
Troubleshooting capabilities have improved application monitoring and support engagement
I can see what happens end to end, which is pretty beneficial. The solution has troubleshooting capabilities, providing a direct connection to knowledge base articles from VMware Broadcom. When I encounter an error, I can search directly within the system to see what solutions have been employed by others. It has a familiar interface, which makes it easy to get started.
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Shaijith KB - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"The stability of Aria Operations for Applications has improved significantly over the years."
"This solution allows me to have true visibility for any metrics when it comes to my cloud, and private."
"I find VMware Aria Operations for Applications to be very stable, and I would rate it a ten out of ten."
"The solution provides single-console management for multiple VMware environments and cloud integrations, whether hybrid, private, or public cloud."
"The features I find most valuable is the querying and alerting capabilities."
"Tanzu itself, integrated with multiple solutions, bestows support and security upon a container platform, especially when it comes to managing open-source container platforms such as Kubernetes."
"The solution is great for virtualization and preparing the infrastructure in Tanzu to test products. It's very fast and has good visibility."
"No issues with stability."
More VMware Aria Operations for Applications pros
"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 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."
"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."
"It's a very powerful, very manageable product."
"The ability to use the natural language query and see the visualization is quickly intuitive, and it works very well."
"One of the most valuable features is the ability to look at the traffic flows, to look at NetFlow data."
"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."
"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

"The solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor."
"The documentation and integration with Kubernetes could be improved."
"In the new version, I would love to see more prediction capabilities. It would be great if one could see the alerts get a little more enriched with information and become more human-friendly instead of the technical stuff that they put in there. I think those would be really awesome outcomes to get."
"The solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor."
"It could use a URL document server. Everything in the market is moving towards automation and everybody's looking for the single click operations as well relational data locality."
"The return on investment is best suited for organizations that do not have the resources for a dedicated VM environment team. However, the cost of the product doesn't show significant benefits."
"VMware technical support has declined since the Broadcom acquisition. Previously, they were more focused on issue resolution, but now they prioritize licensing verification before providing support."
"They could make it more easy to plug-in data so that a nontechnical person will be able to use it, like accountants or finance people. That way they don't have to ask us."
More VMware Aria Operations for Applications cons
"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."
"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."
"In a very general way, I would like to see an improvement in interoperability with third-party product, from other vendors."
"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."
"It just needs to be more reliable and more accurate. At some point, there are some things where it does not match properly."
"There are some random glitches in the Web UI, but they are usually pretty cosmetic in nature. I don't really seem to use any browser other than Chrome with it. I also get some weird errors from time to time on the hardware NetFlow Collectors, where it doesn't sync data."
"I would like to see more reporting features, more dashboards."
"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."
More vRealize Network Insight cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."
"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."
"The licensing costs are very high, particularly when you consider that we have to purchase a level 1 license for every integration, such as the load balancer, HAProxy, and the MSSP. And if you want to use vSAN, that's another license. Then, of course, Tanzu Observability has its own separate license."
"I don't have the details. In our case, there is a mixture in place. We have production usage, and we are also doing training for VMware. So, we also have a training instance. It is worth the money you would spend on it. That's because if you were to build all of this yourself by using some of the open source tools, then you would need a lot of time."
"vRealize Network Insight is expensive."
"It's an expensive product because we have a lot of nodes."
"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."
"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."
"I rate vRealize Network Insight's pricing a seven point five out of ten."
"We have spent less time investigating network flows, so it is absolutely cost-effective."
More vRealize Network Insight pricing and cost advice
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise41
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
The solution includes cost drivers that can be configured according to your environment. You can input server-wise, CPU-wise, storage, and memory costs per hour or day. Once cost drivers are provid...
See all answers
What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
The new version 8.18 has brought significant improvements. The main purpose of using this tool is having a single console to manage all entities. The cloud integration capabilities, including priva...
See all answers
What is your primary use case for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
I have been involved in several projects where I had to implement automation and monitoring alerting. I performed automation using VMware Aria Operations for Applications. There is an automation ta...
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.
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
 

Comparisons

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
VMware Aria Operations for Applications
August 2025
VMware Aria Operations for Applications reportDownload VMware Aria Operations for Applications product report
Buyer's Guide
vRealize Network Insight
August 2025
vRealize Network Insight reportDownload vRealize Network Insight product report
 

Also Known As

Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability
Arkin
 

Overview

VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront is a powerful tool for monitoring and analyzing the performance and availability of applications and infrastructure in real-time. 

With its comprehensive monitoring capabilities, visualizing and analyzing data becomes effortless. The real-time alerting system ensures timely issue resolution, while scalability and a user-friendly interface provide a seamless experience for smooth operations.

VMware
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.
VMware
 

Sample Customers

1. Atlassian 2. Cisco 3. Databricks 4. DigitalOcean 5. Equinix 6. Fidelity Investments 7. Google 8. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 9. Honeywell 10. IBM 11. Intel 12. JetBlue Airways 13. LinkedIn 14. Lyft 15. Mastercard 16. Microsoft 17. MongoDB 18. Netflix 19. Nvidia 20. Oracle 21. PayPal 22. Pinterest 23. Qualcomm 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. SAP 27. Spotify 28. Square 29. TMobile 30. Twitter 31. Uber 32. VMware
NTTi3, VCIX-NV, VMware Networking and Security Business Unit, Illumio, CompuNet
Buyer's Guide
VMware Aria Operations for Applications vs. vRealize Network Insight
September 2025
Free Report: VMware Aria Operations for Applications vs. vRealize Network Insight
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