vRealize Network Insight Reviews

It's not just on the networking side that we use it. We use vRealize products in our product data, in developing software, as a managed cloud provider. We use vRealize Network Insight as part of our product, which can later be used by the support team to check all the problems which are arising in the network itself. We use software-defined networking, SDN. That's one reason we are using it.

In terms of its performance, we are still in a beta version of our product itself. We are not using it greatly in production yet but we will be using it in two or three months, down the line. There are network flows that we need to know about, if there are any anomalies in the network itself - depending upon the network that our team has deployed. That's the reason we use the vRNI tool, to look into all these parameters.

We also use it for a few performance parameters, depending upon if there are any configuration issues in the network that we have deployed. vRNI has given us a few recommendations on how we can actually set up our firewalls.

It saves us on our SLA times because we are getting directly to the troubleshooting points. That is one of the main things that we are benefiting from. Whenever we have problems with our environment, we are able to solve them a bit sooner than we might otherwise have been able to. These benefits are directly connected to monetary benefits. It has helped to reduce time to value.

While increased performance depends upon what we are using in our networks, Network Insight is more towards how we actually see the entire network as a whole. Performance is mostly determined by what physical parts we are using in the network. While vRNI does not exactly increase the performance, we can better use the network we do have.

Finally, it provides deep visibility.

It has its own UI where you can actually see all the problems. It can directly list all the problems that we're having in the network. Not only that, but it also gives us recommendations on how we can troubleshoot issues. That helps us to go to the problem in the network and not look around at a hundred places to actually troubleshoot a single issue. That's one of the most common use cases we have, troubleshooting the problems in our network.

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. 

I also think it is intuitive and user-friendly. I've been using this product for a long time now. If you look at the UI, you see how user-friendly it is. It has a lot of features in it and it has a lot of options that you can go through. Everything that you actually need to know is covered in the product.

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.

It is quite stable. We haven't had any downtime with it.

We have not tried to scale it yet.

The implementation is quite straightforward. We were able to go ahead and install it with the plans and recommendations that were provided.

We have also upgraded it. There are two proxy platform VMs when it comes to Network Insight. In the newer versions what I discovered is that you can directly install it through the UI, so it's a little automated. In the older versions, we had to do it from the CLI. So this is a new feature in it.

I would recommend the product. I don't think there is any other product like this on the market right now.

I rate this product at seven out of ten because the product is great but there are still a few more improvements that can be made to it, as I said above. It could have more physical devices integrated and supported.

When selecting any type of vendor, our most important criteria is support.

We want to use it for the basics, checking out traffic flows. One of the main reasons we got it was that we have a new mobile application, and we'd like to track all the traffic between the different layers: DMZ layer, database layer, app layer.

The most valuable feature is being able to easily see the path that the VM traffic is taking, what ports are in use.

It's pretty much user-friendly, but it could always be friendlier. Anything that would make it easier would be helpful.

So far, it has been pretty stable.

As far as I know, the scalability is good.

We have not had to use technical support yet.

Make sure you check out the demo, make sure you have enough time to check out the demo, run it in your environment for a while, and study up as much as you can on it.

The primary use case is for tracking flows within the data center and it has worked very well.

It has given us much better insight into how we're deploying and how we perform after we deploy. It has also definitely helped to reduce time to value, and definitely helped provide deep visibility.

We tend to rely on vROps for the monitoring aspect, the performance piece of it, but that's because we're particularly focused on capacity right now. I expect to run the two in parallel when we're in a more operational model, where I will have the day-to-day folks deeply involved. Right now, it's still primarily run by engineers.

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.

It's intuitive and user-friendly. It makes perfect sense to somebody familiar with the VMware world.

In a very general way, I would like to see an improvement in interoperability with third-party product, from other vendors.

We've had no issues at all with stability. It has been solid.

Scalability is still untested by us.

The team has used technical support, although I am not familiar with the outcomes. We've generally been happy with VMware support across the board, so I can't imagine the experience has been different for this product.

We came to the conclusion that we needed to invest in a new solution by working with the VMware team. It was not an impulsive decision by any means.

The best ROI is "sane deployments." It's not intuitive, but it has actually helped us keep the number of deployments down, and we definitely get placement right the first time much more often.

If you're VMware shop, investigate this deeply because it makes sense to live in the ecosystem.

We use it for networking and it has performed well.

It helps pinpoint, in the logs and the like, what we need for analyzing and for troubleshooting. It has also provided us with deep visibility.

• Monitoring
• Tracking

It's also intuitive and user-friendly. The screen looks exactly the same as the other appliances for VMware, so it's easy to navigate.

I would like to see more reporting features, more dashboards.

It hasn't caused any problems so it's pretty stable.

We haven't scaled yet so we don't know about the scalability yet.

The network team has had to call technical support a couple times. The help they got was great.

We switched to this solution after it was suggested by my TAM.

In terms of selecting a vendor, we have a very stringent vetting process. Thank God, VMware was one of them that met the criteria. It was a no-brainer.

I was involved in the setup in terms of deploying the OVA files. It was straightforward.

We have seen ROI by using it. We used to use a few tools combined to get to what we're getting by using this solution now. We don't have to pay as much support, we don't have to buy three or four tools to do what we need done.

For me, it was a no-brainer because we would like to integrate everything with VMware. I hate to go to another supplier, use another tool, to do the same thing.

I would definitely endorse the solution.

For us, it's for a security tool, to analyze flows and network traffic and to try to progress along the path of microsegmentation.

In terms of monitoring network flows, if we're trying to set up microsegmentation rules in our distributed firewall, we'll say, "Okay, let's just start with a case." We'll try to isolate an app, and isolate all the network traffic there. We'll analyze it, validate or do discovery using vRNI, and then set up the appropriate rule.

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 have the real-time updates that we can see, so that's been pretty valuable. The mapping is really good, so that has also been a pretty good feature for us.

It's somewhat user-friendly but some of the data that's presented is not always clear. But that's like any tool. You just have to get used to using it.

The stability is great. There is no problem with it.

The scalability is fine.

We invested in NSX, so we wanted a tool that would give us visibility into that virtual layer.

When selecting a vendor what's important for us is whether they are able to fulfill the requirements that we have defined in our business case.

There's no real advice. You'll know if you need something like this or not. You don't just purchase it and then hope for the best. You have a use case for it.

It's mainly for monitoring so that we can design our NSX firewalls.

Previously, we had no idea how the dataflow worked. We knew how all the applications and servers worked, but we never knew how the dataflow was happening. vRNI provides more insight into the dataflow.

It definitely saves times because we are not using this for performance monitoring and not really for monitoring for troubleshooting.

Dataflow. We tag our virtual machines and then we try to find out the traffic between the web server and app servers, and the traffic between the Dev servers and Prod servers, so that we can build the firewalls around them.

We just started using it so I don't really know a lot of the features yet.

The stability is good. It has never crashed.

I haven't tried to scale it yet.

We had the VMware Professional Services team when we started with our NSX project. They helped us set this up and familiarized us with how to use it. They were helfpul.

If you have a VMware suite and you are going to use NSX, then I would definitely recommend vRNI.

I rate the solution at eight out of ten. I'm still getting familiar with it. 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.

Our primary use case for the solution is to monitor the end-to-end network aspect of our environment. The performance is really good. We don't have any delays or the like. It gives us really good performance.

vRNI can trace the flow of each and every packet and it is easy for us to troubleshoot all the issues that we do have with the networking. We can trace down the packet to a point where it has been dropped.

It has reduced the time to value, increased performance, and allowed us to more easily manage networks and gain deeper visibility. I see this product as most effective in the troubleshooting area. Every time I try to troubleshoot something it minimizes my troubleshooting time to about one-tenth of what it would otherwise take me.

The most valuable features are the packet trace flow and that the view of the whole environment is deep.

We use the trace flow to monitor each packet. For example, if we have any networking issues, we use the trace flow to follow the packet and find out exactly where it has been dropped and then we try to fix the issue at the place where it has been dropped. That's how we troubleshoot it.

Also, the graphical interface of this environment is so good with all the views, the graphics, and everything in them. It's really easy for me. It doesn't require an engineer to work on it. It's easy enough that anyone can get into the environment and look for issues or look at how communication is going on across the VMs. It's pretty much straightforward.

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.

It's really stable. I really like it.

We haven't really scaled it across. While we do have it in our production environment, we haven't applied it across the whole infrastructure. We are at a point where we are working on that.

Tech support has been really good. They're really responsive. They'll get onto a WebEx whenever we need them, so it's really good.

I was involved in the initial setup and it's really straightforward. It's not complex at all. Anyone can do it.

If you are having too many issues with your network, having issues with tracing the flow of your network, this is the product you should be using to troubleshoot the issues.

I rate it a nine out of ten. It's not a ten because of the compatibility issue.

We use it to capture the logs from the network and then build and figure out the policies for microsegmentation. In addition, if anything goes down, it captures the logs.

We have it integrated with vCenter and NSX Manager. It captures the logs from there, and then it updates the logs. From there we can figure things out. Also, we can make a bubble and then we can figure out the grouping.

It helps a lot because, until now, we haven't had the tools to figure out the micro level, VM-to-VM kind of traffic; that was not in the current environment. We could not figure out VM-to-VM communication from the other tools. This is the tool which gives us end-to-end transparency.

It has helped reduce time to value. It helps us to troubleshoot, to know exactly where the problem is.

I like the automation part. For the network, it can capture the logs and we can do automation from there. We get all the logs whenever we want and it keeps the logs for a month or so, so we can just go in and figure out what the issue was, as much as one month back.

I want to see more in terms of microsegmentation. As of now, I can see the rules, but they are not in a readable format that I can convert to microsegmentation and can fit into NSX Manager. I'm looking for that kind of feature.

Also, while it is user-friendly for the virtual part, it is not as friendly for the physical part.

We have not had any outages, any crashes.

We are using about 400-plus hosts, so it is capable of a big scale. We haven't scaled up beyond that, but it is good.

Technical support is very helpful.

We did not have a previous solution. We just implemented NSX recently, so we just installed vRNI along with that.

For Network Insight, the setup is very straightforward.

I would tell a colleague who is looking into this or a similar solution that vRNI is a great tool because, without it, it would be impossible to manage the operations part.

I rate vRNI at eight out of ten. For the other two points, I would need more regarding the microsegmentation part. It doesn't give me the clarity I want. It captures a lot, but it doesn't give complete clarity. That is something I am looking for.

When looking for a vendor, support is the main criteria.

They have a legacy environment that they're trying to use microsegnmentation on. So the use case is to facilitate that because they don't necessarily know a lot of the firewall rules from the original environment, which was a physical environment. Now that it has gone virtual, they want to use the vRNI to get better firewall rules in there and make it more streamlined.

The main usage of it is microsegmentation and troubleshooting, not real monitoring of the environment, because we have other tools that do the monitoring of the environment. But when it comes down to bringing in new environments and making sure they're microsegmented, it's pretty easy to use for that purpose. No other product is available to do that.

And we use it for troubleshooting because 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.

Right now, since the PoC, in the environment that we're using it on, for troubleshooting any issues that come up, or in the case of the microsegmentation, it's very valuable because it has allowed us to add firewall rules that were specific to what we needed, and not the extra firewall rules that other people thought we needed.

It has allowed us to easily take the physical environment and bring it into virtual and then put together the firewall rules that were needed, not necessarily firewall rules that everybody thought we needed, which were already in the old firewalls. We were able to do that much quicker doing it this way, rather than trying to weed out all the rules that didn't necessarily need to be there.

Troubleshooting-wise, we did have a problem in the environment and it made it easier to find the actual issue, the real issue, not something that we thought was the issue.

The microsegmentation is valuable, especially for this environment.

Also, the ability to troubleshoot all the way across the NSX part of it to the physical and actually watch the packets go through and then see where the bottleneck is or where the interruption is, is valuable. We run queries on the network flows within the application to find where they are in it and it graphically tells us how the packets are actually going through the system.

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.

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.

It seems to be very stable. I don't know how it's going to be when we go into production. Right now, we have a single instance of it, but in production, it has to be a cluster environment and we haven't really tested that part of it.

When it goes into production, it's going to have to scale from this one, small installation to a much larger installation for our purpose. It seems like it will do it pretty easily, but we won't know until we actually do it.

It was pretty easy to install and the documentation for laying it out seems to be easy to follow, design-wise. It was very straightforward.

We've upgraded four times with it and the upgrading was pretty easy as well.

It could be cheaper, of course.

We're not really comparing it to any other vendors. I don't know of anyone that does microsegmentation and whose solution is integrated within VMware's environment

It's a pretty good system if you're doing troubleshooting and microsegmentation. As a troubleshooting tool, it's a level-3 troubleshooting-skills tool and it's very easy to use and very easy to find the information that you need.

I rate it a seven out of ten, only because it doesn't have all the vendors - at least the switch vendors - in there. They only have Cisco, for the most part, and you really need all of them to make it because companies don't just use Cisco for everything.

Our primary use case is to use it do design and for troubleshooting the future.

We have had the product for three weeks now.

We can see everything going on in NSX and get a good picture of our environment.

It is still in our lab environment.

• Its open design.
• Figure out what's being used in our environment.
• Building roles.

The product is slightly complex use, while still being user-friendly. It could use more training modules, as it is not a straightforward product.

It is pretty stable.

The technical support has been good so far.

We've owned NSX for three years and now starting to deploy it, which is why we went with vRNI. We did not even consider another solution to go with it.

The initial setup was simple. It took about an hour.

They are coming onsite in about two weeks.

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

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

Do the training before purchasing. Research the product and its competitors.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: technical knowledge. They need to understand their product.