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OptiView XG [EOL] vs vRealize Network Insight comparison

 

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

OptiView XG [EOL]
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
vRealize Network Insight
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (23rd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (23rd)
 

Featured Reviews

AA
We use it for network discovery, fiber testing, and checking the packet status. It scans the network for problems.
* Make sure that you know what you're doing. * Make sure you know where to do the plugins. There are multiple Ethernet ports. Know which one you want to be part of the network, which one you want for management, etc. Sometimes they interchange those things if they don't pay attention. They just plug everything in there, and then you get screwed up. * You need to know what SFP you're going to use for a 10-Gigabit and a 1-Gigabit port. Those are important things. But again, you have to pay particular attention to those things, or else you will not get any results.
NiteshKumar1 - PeerSpot reviewer
The tool's configuration is easy and artifacts are easily accessible through professional services and the web
The product is highly regarded, and many customers have been using it along with other VMware products like vSphere and VMware vCloud Usage Insight. However, recently, there's been a trend among customers, especially those using VMware for a considerable period, to explore the potential of migrating to the public cloud. The common concern among these customers is how the VMware products will perform in the public cloud environment. Migrating instances from VMware to different platforms is not easy, especially when dealing with many instances across multiple customers. Customers are keen to maintain the functionality of their existing VMware products but prefer to run them on the public cloud instead of on-premise servers. Our clients for vRealize Network Insight are enterprise businesses. I rate it a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Gives us the ability to see our network."
"It is a very valuable tool. It goes out and does a discovery, which is a great process of it. You could have something like a rogue DHCP server, and it will identify it, and then you can see to which switch port it is connected. It is quite an impressive tool. I really liked it because you didn't have to install an agent on anything. It would just go out and do its discovery. For me, that's great."
"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 gradual way the Network Insight shows you all the relevant information about your networks. It's pretty good. You can really dig deep deep inside and see where the problem is, where it comes from, what you have inside, how did you configure it. Also, it has alerts so you can have pretty much quite a big overview about your network. This is really something good."
"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."
"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."
"We haven't had any complaints about the stability of the solution or heard of any issues. None of our clients have mentioned running into bugs or glitches. There haven't been crashes."
"By doing dependency mapping, it makes migrations more efficient. There are less outages that require engineers to spend additional hours troubleshooting the migration failures."
"The most valuable feature is being able to easily see the path that the VM traffic is taking, what ports are in 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."
 

Cons

"Its price can be improved. Their support can also be improved a little bit. In terms of features, it did everything I wanted it to do. With more features, I would have to start installing network agents or something else, and I don't want to have to install anything. This was the value for me about this device."
"I would like a built-in tap feature which doesn't interfere with the network, and it allows you to see what is happening there."
"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."
"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."
"After Broadcom acquired VMware, I would rate their support at five or less in many cases. It's difficult to find necessary documentation, open tickets, and get support."
"Support could be much better."
"In a very general way, I would like to see an improvement in interoperability with third-party product, from other vendors."
"There is room for improvement when it comes to pricing because we pay here in Brazil, and all the costs are based on the dollar."
"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's enough information there, especially in the visualizations, but I would love to see this in a kiosk mode, where I could have a dashboard for interested stakeholders to see and appreciate what's going on. Then, moving on to a more practical level for our Help Desk, our operations team could benefit by seeing, in real-time, a visual view of the network."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its price was a bit excessive. The device that I had died. It is under warranty, and they want $20,000 for another one. I just don't want to spend that kind of money, so I'm trying to find an alternate solution. They have annual maintenance on it, which probably was 10% a year, so it all starts to add up."
"It's an expensive product because we have a lot of nodes."
"We have spent less time investigating network flows, so it is absolutely cost-effective."
"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."
"I rate vRealize Network Insight's pricing a seven point five out of ten."
"It has brought more money into our company."
"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."
"They should include the product in NSX because it's important to have it for deployment."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for vRealize Network Insight?
Broadcom is known for increasing product prices, making them expensive compared to what people used to pay. I liken the subscription model to not truly owning what you pay for.
What needs improvement with vRealize Network Insight?
Right now, I do not see a specific area for improvement. My main concern is understanding the intentions of Broadcom, which has acquired VMware. Broadcom should improve by going back to what was wo...
 

Also Known As

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Arkin
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

XG is used in all industries. Example customers include: Republic National Distributing Company, Titelive, CitiGroup, Los Angeles Unified School District, Saudi German Hospital, DeKalb County Schools, Valdosta State University, The Everett Clinic, Bio-Reference, Miami-Dade Library, Mitel, Borsa Istanbul, Cimarex, Air National Guard Lowndes County, High Point City, Carrollton City Schools, Kern County, Pruitt Communications and Bosch Group.
NTTi3, VCIX-NV, VMware Networking and Security Business Unit, Illumio, CompuNet
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