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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
6.0
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (35th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (41st)
 

Featured Reviews

MW
President at Bitwise Micro
A valuable, impressive, and portable product that saves time and has great scalability and stability
It just saves time. We have run into situations where contractors come in, and they plug in a WiFi device that is handing out DHCP addresses, which affects the rest of the network. To be able to quickly identify from where the problem is originating, you need a network tool that can identify the device that is doing this. It just brings into clear focus the exact issue when there is a problem or outage. When there is a crisis and you've several people wanting to know an estimate of when things are going to be back up and running again, you need to have answers. I have been at places that didn't have a tool like that. I know one place that had an outage for almost a week, and it was craziness. It turned out to be just a bad cable. That's all it was. They were having trouble with their email server, which was an on-premise email server, but emails were taking six hours to appear. The whole problem was because of a bad network cable. When I plugged in the Fluke analyzer, it analyzed and told me immediately that there were transmission errors on this one port from one switch. It told me this within 10 minutes. It is an incredible product.
Shaijith KB - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's worth a shot. Give it a try. Definitely a product worth considering."
"It's a good tool and is pretty simple to use."
"The 10 GigE connectivity and ClearSight are the most valuable features for us."
"The device is easy to use and is effective very quickly; I can plug it into a network and troubleshoot it in 15 minutes and pinpoint problems that would take days to do otherwise."
"The pre-site survey and the AirMagnet site survey help my company in pre-sales and post-sales."
"We use it for all of our predictive Wi-Fi designs, and we get standards reports so we're able to do more of the designs more quickly and more consistently."
"With this product there is no longer a need to spend hours and hours solving problems related to networks."
"The most valuable feature of this product is the sniffer, where we can troubleshoot user connections by identifying the source and destination, to try to get to the root cause."
"It allowed us to set up NSX and to do microsegmentation, without all of the pain points of having to determine each port and each IP address that needed to have access, and which ones needed to be blocked."
"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."
"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 allows us to see how the network devices function as well as to see network glitches or fluctuations or dropping of packets."
"I find that the interface of most VMware products is very similar, which I consider an advantage due to its ease of use compared to other tools like Splunk."
"In large organizations where vSphere / SDDC / Private Cloud deployments have thousands of VMs and network segments that product definitely bring significant benefit in terms of monitoring, troubleshooting and granular details of network deployment and traffic of connected devices (physical or virtual) and last but not least holistic view of your network domain."
"We have seen ROI by using it, as we used to use a few tools combined to get to what we're getting by using this solution now, so we don't have to pay as much support and we don't have to buy three or four tools to do what we need done."
"The benefits are it gives us insight into our network, which we can't get anywhere else."
 

Cons

"With the cost it's hard to justify having more than one in our school."
"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."
"Hardware is unreliable. It's already crashed on me several times."
"I had some problems generating reports."
"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."
"I think everything is OK, except that they integrated AirMagnet already. It's also very heavy, like a brick."
"The reports I got back from the guys I sent to training said the guy spent more time telling stories, war stories and that type, rather than actual training about the product."
"It needs improvement in terms of its efficiency."
"I would like to see more reporting features, more dashboards."
"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."
"The pricing is steep."
"I would like to see them expand the capabilities to infrastructure types other than just VMware."
"The UI, even though once you get to know it, is easier, still it is 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."
"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."
"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."
 

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."
"vRealize Network Insight is expensive."
"The solution has helped us to reduce time, increase performance, reduce costs, and even easily manage networks. We are probably seeing 10 to 20 percent labor savings because we are able to be very specific and focused on what we want to do. It ends up saving the customer money and makes us be more efficient on our cost deliveries."
"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."
"It's an expensive product because we have a lot of nodes."
"It has brought more money into our company."
"We have spent less time investigating network flows, so it is absolutely cost-effective."
"They should include the product in NSX because it's important to have it for deployment."
"I rate vRealize Network Insight's pricing a seven point five out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
11%
Non Profit
10%
Educational Organization
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise43
 

Questions from the Community

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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....
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...
What is your primary use case for vRealize Network Insight?
We have Tanzu, and we also work with multiple Kubernetes services such as Nutanix and Google. We are working on these Kubernetes services on the operations side. For Tanzu, we have several componen...
 

Also Known As

No data available
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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