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Centreon vs vRealize Network Insight comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

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

Centreon
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
24th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
21st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (20th)
vRealize Network Insight
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
21st
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
17th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Centreon is 3.2%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vRealize Network Insight is 0.5%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Caulson Chua - PeerSpot reviewer
With fewer staff resources, we can identify and address issues before the system goes down
Centreon's most valuable features are preventative maintenance and cost-efficiency. Everything is monitored, and we get a log before the system fails. We have an opportunity to fix the issue and avoid downtime. The dashboard is user-friendly, and the solution provides good reporting and visibility. The layout is straightforward. You can click on the drop-down list to select the server you want. The anomaly detection feature helped us reduce our average resolution time by 30 minutes to an hour.
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

"Valuable features include the ability to schedule downtime, intensity or depth of monitoring which it does, different plugin packs, Centreon MAP, Centreon BI."
"The most valuable feature is the monitoring of servers and networks, because we have a lot of them and need to maintain control."
"The product is available in ISO image format, ready for deployment. Centreon also has a comprehensive guide and documentation that are simple and easy to follow."
"We have all our tickets inside Centreon in real-time and can monitor a lot of ELP and CLN in real-time for application purposes."
"You can concentrate and orchestrate several other solutions from other vendors. You can consolidate those solutions all in one place, then maintain and monitor from that single point. This creates ease of use. It is a very powerful solution from this point of view."
"E-mail alert notifications are valuable."
"It is decentralized, which is better, because you can reduce the load from a single system. Also, you get a better view because it's more independent. Then, for the management, it's nice because they have one central system. With that, they can manage all the other systems, as well. This means they don't have to configure each system by system. They can configure it from one single interface."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that most of its plug-ins are free."
"It provides deep visibility into what is happening with traffic and helps us manage our network."
"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."
"It especially helps with deploying NSX, that you're not having to manually chase down and figure out what you need to do to microsegment VMs. This gives a nice option where you can say, "Hey, this VM, show me what flows are there." I can export it out and then import it as an NSX rule and job done."
"The most valuable feature is the visualization. It's really handy to be able to classify network objects as with applications and see the interaction between them."
"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."
"One of the most valuable features is the ability to look at the traffic flows, to look at NetFlow data."
"The initial setup was straightforward."
"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."
 

Cons

"I would like them to improve their documentation. When I faced some issues, I was looking for more documentation on the Internet. There is official documentation on Centreon's website, which sometimes is useful. Sometimes it is not very useful, as you cannot find the information or enough examples of configuration. The answer for me was to contact the support, who helped me, but I was not able to find all the information by myself on Centreon's website. A Centreon community or blog would be helpful."
"Centreon is actually missing an easy way to create a trendline for the metrics. Actually it is possible to create it, but you need a good knowledge of math, Centreon, and RRD."
"There are improvements that they need to make to their API. When we're using different systems and we want to disable monitoring for a specific server, we still can't do that through the API. That's something that's lacking."
"I would like to see more plugins. That is something it needs. There is also room for improvement through dynamic thresholds, or self-discover thresholds. I would also like to see a discovery feature that could map the whole network environment and automatically suggest things."
"The most important issue is the capability to interconnect with other systems. It already exists for some of them. For example, the Stream Connector is something we use to populate data in another system. This kind of facility for connecting should exist for all products that it makes sense to have connected to a monitoring solution."
"Centreon technical support is only available during Central European business hours. When it comes to critical business solutions, there should be a 24/7 hotline that customers can rely on."
"Opening a ticket on the website of Centreon can be difficult for my colleague, but not for me because my English is good. However, my colleague doesn't speak English well, as our company is in Quebec and our first language is French."
"Currently, we have to go through all of the different templates and take a look at how the template is configured, and how specific parameters may change across different templates with different precedents, megatons, etc. It's a lot of work and involves trial and error. I wish they could simplify the process."
"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."
"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."
"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 IT infrastructure industry is expected to evolve towards a hybrid cloud model in the next five to ten years. In this model, most of the customer's resources reside on-premise within a private cloud setup, such as VMware. Another segment operates within public cloud environments like Azure and AWS, and a portion remains in traditional data centers. There should be seamless interoperability between public and private clouds. AWS and VMware need to work together to make it possible. Whether users interact with on-premise infrastructure or configure resources in the public cloud, the user experience must be seamless."
"The only issue we have is that the solution does not always capture the host names."
"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."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Centreon is an open source product. Thus, there is no need for licensing."
"They only sell four hour slots for support, so if you have just one question, then you need to pay for four hours. Or, you need to wait until you have enough questions to fill those four hours. They are not flexible in this."
"You purchase a package. You have a support contract (there is also a platinum support contract) and it is per module. That means you have to pay, e.g., for the MBI module or the BAM module. Or, if you want to save a lot of money, you can pay for IMP, which is the complete package."
"It's quite expensive when you use the Enterprise version, but if you compare it to other providers, it's more like a middle-of-the-line product. It's always good to have a price that is lower, but I would say the price is okay because we get very good support and if we have any other issues we can always contact them. There has never been a time when I didn't get help from them."
"It is perfect and very cheap if you are a little company or startup. After that, it is quite expensive for a big company."
"The pricing works out well for us, given our environment and where we are."
"The pricing starts at around 5000 euro. However, this depends on: Your environment, the size of your host, how many hosts you have, how many remote pollers you have, and if you want to use the Monitoring Business Intelligence or Centreon MAP functionalities."
"Centreon is always available to develop new plugins when needed. The most important thing is that their maintenance account yearly subscription fee includes the fact that they will maintain the new plugins that you requested them to deliver."
"They should include the product in NSX because it's important to have it for deployment."
"We have spent less time investigating network flows, so it is absolutely cost-effective."
"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 has brought more money into our company."
"It's an expensive product because we have a lot of nodes."
"I rate vRealize Network Insight's pricing a seven point five out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Centreon?
Centreon's most valuable features are preventative maintenance and cost-efficiency. Everything is monitored, and we get a log before the system fails. We have an opportunity to fix the issue and av...
What needs improvement with Centreon?
The issue my company has with the tool stems from the fact that it didn't give an on-time response to us. The product collects the information, but it fails to send them via SMS, WhatsApp or Telegr...
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?
The sales team often complains about the cost whenever we need to quote vRealize Network.
What needs improvement with vRealize Network Insight?
Since Broadcom acquired VMware, it has been experiencing challenges. Many sales processes are not well defined. They can show a little bit more information because vRealize Network Insight is virtu...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Arkin
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Airbus, Bollore, BT, Canal Plus, Kuehne Nagel, Limagrain, LVMH, Oberthur Technologies, Orange, Darty, Addax Petroleum, Plastic Omnium, Auchan, Valeo, Saint Gobin, Clarins, Hugo Boss, JC Decaux, French Government (Defense, Justice, Environment, Agriculture), OptiComm, Thales, Zeiss.
NTTi3, VCIX-NV, VMware Networking and Security Business Unit, Illumio, CompuNet
Find out what your peers are saying about Centreon vs. vRealize Network Insight and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.