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vRealize Network Insight pros and cons

Vendor: VMware
4.3 out of 5

Pros & Cons summary

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

vRealize Network Insight allows users to visualize network flows and monitor communications between servers and applications, providing insight that simplifies microsegmentation and network configuration.
vRealize Network Insight supports network traffic monitoring, including packet tracking and flow analysis, enabling effective network configuration and security management.
vRealize Network Insight offers deep visibility into network traffic, allowing users to see detailed communication patterns within their networks, enhancing compliance and performance tracking.
vRealize Network Insight assists in migrations by providing dependency mapping, reducing outages and troubleshooting needs, and improving network efficiency.
vRealize Network Insight automates network traffic management, assisting companies in saving time and resources while improving network security and performance.

CONS

vRealize Network Insight requires enhanced interoperability with third-party products and brands for better integration.
Microsegmentation rules in vRealize Network Insight need more granularity and should be more readable for effective implementation into NSX Manager.
The current scope of interoperability in vRealize Network Insight between physical switches and other network devices needs expansion to include a broader range of infrastructure components.
Additional application information and enhanced application-aware capabilities in vRealize Network Insight are necessary to facilitate easier network policy understanding and better analytics tracking.
vRealize Network Insight incurs challenges with pricing, particularly in regions where costs are dollar-based, suggesting potential for pricing model improvement.
 

vRealize Network Insight Pros review quotes

SM
Aug 29, 2018
The ability to use the natural language query and see the visualization is quickly intuitive, and it works very well.
SO
Sep 2, 2018
One of the most valuable features is the ability to look at the traffic flows, to look at NetFlow data.
RS
Sep 5, 2018
The most valuable feature for me is the different views that you can get when selecting an application or a VLAN. It shows you the traffic flows. It gives you a visual representation of something that, in text, just may not make as much sense.
Learn what your peers think about vRealize Network Insight. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.
SeniorEn151a - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 5, 2018
Whenever we say "valuable" with respect to the network, it's more towards the security. The firewall rule issues it shows us and the recommendations that we get from vRNI are the most valuable features because they are actually making our network more secure.
MG
Sep 3, 2018
It allows us to go from virtual through NSX, up to the core, and see all of that in one pane of glass, it's pretty easy.
Javed Koor - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 7, 2023
The best feature of this application is its ability to capture everything within the same application, as well as capture all the traffic.
DP
Sep 5, 2018
It allows you to see traffic that you couldn't otherwise see, which is traffic within your Layer 3-bounded network, meaning east-west traffic. It's hard to get that any other way.
BF
Sep 5, 2018
It has really tightened down the security. That was something that we were lacking. It has also given us deep visibility into our network. 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, web servers. We can identify everything that is communicating, and we can see it all on one product.
Enterpri525c - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 2, 2018
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.
LH
Aug 29, 2018
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.
 

vRealize Network Insight Cons review quotes

SM
Aug 29, 2018
I would like to see more interoperability on the firewall and low balancer sides.
Shaijith KB - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 29, 2025
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 us.
SO
Sep 2, 2018
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.
Learn what your peers think about vRealize Network Insight. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.
RS
Sep 5, 2018
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.
SeniorEn151a - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 5, 2018
While it's not exactly a feature, what normally happens when we are trying to look at the VM flow portion is - although Network Insight does have options to integrate a few physical switches into it - we can't really get an end-to-end flow of the network. We might be using a few switches that are not supported by Network Insight. That is where they can improve, in the support for more physical switches and network devices.
MG
Sep 3, 2018
The only real improvement they can make is to add more third-party vendors into the environment, mostly switch manufacturers, because it's really limited to Cisco equipment and there are a lot of companies out there other than Cisco.
Javed Koor - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 7, 2023
The only issue we have is that the solution does not always capture the host names.
LH
Aug 29, 2018
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.
reviewer1353651 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 15, 2020
The solution is very much viewer centric and it would be nice if it would transcend just the virtual infrastructure.
PB
Mar 9, 2023
There could be some deeper analytics into packet inspection and trace flows. It could use some kind of machine learning to look at Layer 7 traffic for potential malware or corrupt packets.