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NETSCOUT Network & Application Observability vs NetBrain comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

NetBrain
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Network Troubleshooting (18th), Network Automation (6th)
NETSCOUT Network & Applicat...
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (10th)
 

Featured Reviews

Deborah Gamelin - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President at Asset Track for Cloud, LLC
Good monitoring and troubleshoot capabilities, improves overall network traffic visibility
In my organization, we had 130,000 network devices that needed to be brought into the solution and mapped. NetBrain can handle the scale but the engineers that manage those devices have to go in and update all of them to allow NetBrain permission to poll them. It can get a little stressful for everybody when you're trying to roll out new stuff when you've got other issues that have to be addressed with other devices. In some cases, our devices had no automation at all. One example is the Cisco 3650. Right now, if you went through the inventory list, you see that we have different versions running. Some are on one version, whereas others are on another version. The problem with upgrading them is that they need to be done overnight because we don't want to disrupt any network traffic during business hours. Consequently, it could take us years to upgrade the versions before we can even get them onto these new tools. This may be an internal issue but it's a big one when you have a lot of devices. Even if you had 10,000 devices, it's still an issue. You have to consider the compatibility of the device against the tool, and being able to use certain commands to upgrade it.
HT
Newwork And Collaboration Supervisor at Nafeza
Monitoring has improved bandwidth insights and application diagnosis but setup and costs still need work
They need room for improvement about the spare parts. There are shortages in Egypt in their stock. We tried to make RMA for specific parts, and it took a long time. Comparing this to a vendor like Cisco, who provides any component next business day, NETSCOUT nGeniusONE took a long time. This needs more improvement. I believe it is expensive. They need to reduce its budget a little bit. Comparing to other solutions, it is very expensive.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"A reliable, time-saving tool for providing accurate layer 2 and layer 3 network mappings."
"NetBrain is faster, better and level sets the engineering technical sets."
"Other advice to users considering the solution would be: go with NetBrain."
"This tool is exactly what we wanted and needed."
"Chain management is a good feature. I don't get it on other solutions."
"This product has good network monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities."
"NetBrain is a very simple tool."
"NetBrain is very good when it comes to network mapping, as it looks for different assets within the network available, so router, firewall, applications, et cetera, and it gives you the full mapping, asset mapping along with the full range including the firmware software update and all those things."
"One of the valuable features is the packet decoding."
"The stability of this product is ok."
"NETSCOUT nGeniusPULSE has an easier dashboard to manipulate compared to SolarWinds."
"It is an easy-to-scale platform."
"This solution has cut our overall troubleshooting time, sometimes going down to a few hours over what might have taken one to two days to fully troubleshoot an issue, and it has helped to increase our application uptime as we try to keep the five nines."
"If you are looking for a good application monitoring and packet analysis tool, you can strategically use NETSCOUT to get it done."
"The feature that I have found the most useful is the decode of packets. It gives us a variety of information that helps us in figuring out what to look at. The networks are getting really complex, and without the information that we get from Iris Session Analyzer, we couldn't do our job. Its graphical user interface is also very easy to use and intuitive."
"For me, the most valuable features are the dashboards which we use to highlight the overall impact to the customers, and being able to drill down into the nitty-gritty of the customer experience."
 

Cons

"The IP interface brief isn't consistent."
"The solution could integrate more automation."
"Support needs to improve for the installed product and some of the reporting could be more flexible to provide more complete cataloging."
"Licensing is based on a per-device basis, which means that it can get very expensive if you have a large number of devices."
"Each device needs to be configured to allow NetBrain to poll for the information it needs, which can be very time-consuming for a large network."
"Netbrain must get AWS functionality done."
"When I used the installed product before, I wasn't very satisfied with the support."
"It would be nice if the setup was a little simpler. Also, if the solution could provide more training materials for new people coming into our company so they can quickly learn how to use the functionalities."
"The stability depends on who is using the tool, because you only can get as much out of the tool as you put into it. There are a lot of patches for this particular environment, so you have to keep on them. If you lose track of them, then the product is not useful anymore."
"We see it overload once in a while. It doesn't have built-in protection. Therefore, once it gets too much data, it tends to crash. Then, we have to recover it."
"The dependency mapping is good, but I am hopeful that they will build some type of partnership and relationship with ServiceNow. I want to see NETSCOUT partner with ServiceNow so they can leverage Service Now Discovery and Service Mapping to automate the build of the service dependency mappings inside of nGeniusONE."
"NG1 has been stable for a while in our environment - at least we have what we needed. But with nBA, there's a lot of room for improvement."
"There is a timeout feature that we have been asking for awhile."
"I would like more in-depth convergence between all the applications, especially when I look for information through a data mine."
"Sometimes, we can't access it."
"NETSCOUT nGeniusPULSE is not integrated with SolarWinds. They work in different ways."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing is based on a per-device basis, which means that it can get very expensive if you have a large number of devices."
"The product is expensive, but less expensive than some of the competition and worth the price."
"I rate the price of NETSCOUT nGeniusONE a four out of five."
"The biggest problem we have with this product is the expense."
"Make sure you get the low down on your licensing and understand the licensing requirements before making a purchase, especially when it comes to an upgrade. Make sure that it suits your needs before you commit to it. For example, we purchased ATA at version 6.2.1. At that time, the licensing covered everything we need. NETSCOUT comes out with 6.2.2, stating that in order to upgrade, you had to purchase CyberStream licensing. Now that requires some additional funding from both a capital investment and a maintenance cost. That's something that should have been said, "Well, if you want these additional features, you will need to purchase these CyberStreams." Otherwise, we should be allowed to continue on the basic operations as it is now through the newer releases without being stuck."
"It is very expensive, but it's well worth the money."
"I don't know what the cost to buy the solution was, but I doubt if it's a significant part of the budget as far as the maintenance and support are concerned."
"The scalability becomes very expensive quickly."
"Cost is probably the biggest drawback. Compared to some of the newer vendors that have popped up in the space, it's definitely more on the expensive side... [But] it's been able to keep its value, even in the face of the cheaper competition."
"The price is a little high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise52
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
Which is the best DDoS protection solution for a big ISP for monitoring and mitigating?
I would say if it’s an ISP that will build a scrubbing center, Netscout/Arbor is a good solution. In all other solutions, Imperva is a great choice.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NETSCOUT nGeniusONE?
Regarding its high price, I give NETSCOUT nGeniusONE a seven.
What needs improvement with NETSCOUT nGeniusONE?
They need room for improvement about the spare parts. There are shortages in Egypt in their stock. We tried to make RMA for specific parts, and it took a long time. Comparing this to a vendor like ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
NETSCOUT nGenius, NETSCOUT nGeniusONE, NETSCOUT nGeniusPULSE, NETSCOUT vSTREAM, NETSCOUT InfiniStreamNG, Iris Session Analyzer, ClearSight Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CompuCon, TD Ameritrade, Move Inc.
Cerner Corporation
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