Azure Network Watcher vs vRealize Network Insight comparison

Microsoft and Broadcom are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Microsoft is ranked #41 with an average rating of 8.7, while Broadcom is ranked #34 with an average rating of 8.3. Microsoft holds a 0.5% mindshare in NMS, compared to Broadcom’s 0.7% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Azure Network Watcher

Read 13 Azure Network Watcher reviews

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804 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

vRealize Network Insight

Read 47 vRealize Network Insight reviews

2,191 Views
1,556 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Azure Network Watcher

vRealize Network Insight

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

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vRealize Network Insight and Azure Network Watcher compete in network management and monitoring. vRealize Network Insight appears to hold the upper hand in visualization and intuitive querying, while Azure Network Watcher is favored for its cloud-native integration and connectivity troubleshooting.

Features: vRealize Network Insight provides comprehensive network flow visualization, enhances microsegmentation, and assists in capacity management with natural language queries that simplify application migrations and firewall management. Azure Network Watcher focuses on packet capture, topology visualization, and connectivity troubleshooting, with strong cloud-native technology integration and Azure service alignment.

Room for Improvement: vRealize Network Insight requires better VRB integration and a more streamlined user interface, along with enhanced third-party vendor support and microsegmentation. Pricing and complex setup also need attention. Azure Network Watcher should improve documentation and user experience, strengthen security features, and integrate seamlessly with tools like Wireshark, with a focus on richer visualization and simplified setup processes.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: vRealize Network Insight is mostly deployed on-premises and receives positive feedback for its technical support, although communication issues persist. Azure Network Watcher, a public cloud solution, is easier to deploy in Azure settings, with users praising its responsive technical support, despite facing initial setup challenges and a learning curve.

Pricing and ROI: vRealize Network Insight is seen as pricey but justified by its features, providing ROI through labor savings and efficient network management. Azure Network Watcher, also on the higher side cost-wise, is valuable for large enterprises, with costs more aligned in Azure-based contexts. Both products enhance cost efficiencies, with Azure favoring cloud-native applications.

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To learn more, read our detailed Azure Network Watcher vs. vRealize Network Insight Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Azure Network Watcher vs. vRealize Network Insight

December 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

Azure Network Watcher

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

41st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

vRealize Network Insight

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

34th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (38th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Azure Network Watcher is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vRealize Network Insight is 0.7%, 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 (%)
vRealize Network Insight	0.7%
Azure Network Watcher	0.5%
Other	98.8%

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Bijoyendra Roychowdhury

Program Manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

Network monitoring provides comprehensive analytics while the interface requires further development

The quality of Azure Network Watcher is quite good in terms of the in-depth analysis you can create from these matrices. There are other monitoring tools such as New Relic, AppDynamics, and Dynatrace which provide very detailed network tracing. Cloud providers such as Azure or AWS do not have that kind of GUI-based capability at this point, but using PowerShell or Python, you can develop it yourself. From the GUI perspective, it still needs to evolve in terms of quality and standard, though overall, it is quite good for troubleshooting. Regarding areas for improvement, when comparing to other network tools beyond Azure Monitor or Azure Network Watcher, those tools can identify single failed packets. This level of granularity is not currently possible with cloud providers as they only go to a certain level rather than the granular level needed for deep troubleshooting, though they do provide hints with available matrices.

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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

"The stability is very good. I rate it a ten out of ten."

"The most valuable feature of Azure Network Watcher is using the gateways with the connections. The monitoring is useful for the logs and application insights into the data. The traffic filtering issues when it comes to deploying those applications are helpful."

"The most valuable feature of Azure Network Watcher is the cloud-native application firewall. It is helpful for securing databases."

"The most valuable features I have found are typology, visualization, and capture."

"What I like most about Azure Network Watcher is that it's focused more on the architecture. I also like that it has a packet capture feature that tells you how the packet travels and whether it's exiting Azure, etc."

"The solution is stable."

"I like the visibility."

"The solution is good for monitoring device behavior."

More Azure Network Watcher pros

"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 helps reduce time to value, increase performance, provide deep visibility, and easily manage networks."

"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."

"The most valuable feture is NetFlow to help us understand how VMs communicate with each other over ports that are known and ports that are also unknown to us. Our company is a security company, so it's very important for us to know exactly which VMs are doing what at all times."

"It helps a lot because, until now, we didn't have 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'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 most valuable features are the packet trace flow and that the view of the whole environment is deep."

"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."

More vRealize Network Insight pros

Cons

"Azure Network Watcher could improve by having other built-in applications. For example, an application to log activities for in and outbound traffic."

"The initial setup and deployment could be improved to be simplified."

"Azure Network Watcher needs to have better documentation and it needs to capture information accurately."

"The solution could improve by limiting the need to clarify the logs. When the clarification is minimized, it is better for everyone involved."

"User experience could be improved."

"The initial setup and initial learning curve could be improved to be easier."

"I still use Wireshark and Azure Network Watcher to get the required data. My team captures the traffic from Azure Network Watcher, downloads it, then imports that traffic into Wireshark to get more details on the number of hits and replies, for example. If you can do that on Azure Network Watcher and have Wireshark built-in, that would make Azure Network Watcher better. If Azure Network Watcher has that functionality where you won't need a third-party tool to get what you need, that would be helpful. I'm also expecting more from Azure Network Watcher. It's more complex than knowing how the IP flows from its source to the destination. The tool also needs more open-source features, such as having some built-in Wireshark that improves monitoring for customers. Sometimes, you encounter a VPN tunnel, network, or routing issue, but finding out more about the blockage is challenging. Is it one hundred percent an Azure issue? Is it a peer issue? You don't get complete information from Azure Network Watcher, so you must use other tools and depend on your strategies to resolve a specific issue. If more features could be added in the next release of Azure Network Watcher, specifically ones you can find on open-source tools, then that would be a plus point for the tool."

"Azure is good, however, the Fortinet GUI is more intuitive and I like it more than anything else."

More Azure Network Watcher cons

"If it had some kind of plugins with vSphere, more effective plugins with Horizon View or other VMWare products, if it had interconnectivity, I think it would be more effective than it is today."

"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."

"The only reason I would not give it a nine or a 10 is for cost reasons. It seems to be one of those things that really belongs as part of the product inherently and not as an add-on. That would be my only concern."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

More vRealize Network Insight cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution is reasonable."

"Azure Network Watcher is a little bit expensive."

"The pricing is good. It's not too expensive."

"Price-wise, I have no information on how much Azure Network Watcher costs."

"I rate vRealize Network Insight's pricing a seven point five out of ten."

"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."

"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'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."

"vRealize Network Insight is expensive."

"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."

"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

17%

Government

11%

University

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

14%

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
Large Enterprise	7

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

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Network Watcher?

Azure Network Watcher is affordable from the perspective of basic costing. It doesn't cost too much at this point unless you are requesting customizable detailed matrices. For the default configura...

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What needs improvement with Azure Network Watcher?

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What is your primary use case for Azure Network Watcher?

The purpose of using Azure Network Watcher is to observe the network flow logs during any kind of troubleshooting. If there is any performance issue or latency issue over the network, we check the ...

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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.

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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...

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Comparisons

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Compared 28% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 12% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

WhatsUp Gold vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 6% of the time

Datadog vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Azure Network Watcher

January 2026

Download Azure Network Watcher product report

Buyer's Guide

vRealize Network Insight

January 2026

Download vRealize Network Insight product report

Also Known As

No data available

Arkin

Overview

Azure Network Watcher is a comprehensive network monitoring and diagnostic service offered by Microsoft Azure. It provides a range of tools and capabilities to help users monitor, diagnose, and gain insights into their Azure network infrastructure. With Network Watcher, users can capture and analyze network traffic, monitor network performance, troubleshoot connectivity issues, and gain visibility into network topology. It also offers features like packet capture, flow logs, connection monitoring, and VPN diagnostics to ensure the smooth operation of Azure networks. Network Watcher enables users to proactively identify and resolve network issues, optimize network performance, and enhance the overall reliability and security of their Azure network environment.

Microsoft

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

Information Not Available

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

Buyer's Guide

Azure Network Watcher vs. vRealize Network Insight

December 2025

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