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Datadog vs vRealize Network Insight comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

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

Datadog
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
3rd
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
188
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (1st), Log Management (3rd), Container Monitoring (1st), Cloud Monitoring Software (1st), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (7th)
vRealize Network Insight
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
23rd
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
23rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Datadog is 5.9%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vRealize Network Insight is 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Kevin Palmer - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful log aggregation and management with helpful metrics aggregation
Datadog provides us value in three major ways: First, Datadog provides best-in-class functionality in many, if not all, of the products to which we subscribe (infrastructure, APM, log management, serverless, synthetics, real user monitoring, DB monitoring). In my experience with other tools that provide similar functionality, Datadog provides the largest feature set with the most flexibility and the best performance. Second, Datadog allows us to access all of those services in one place. Having to learn and manage only one tool for all of those purposes is a major benefit. Third, Datadog provides significant connectivity between those services so that we can view, summarize, organize, translate and correlate our data with maximum effect. Not needing to manually integrate them to draw lines between those pieces of information is a huge time savings for us.
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

"The selection of monitors is a big feature I have been working with."
"Log management is a great way for me to identify changes in behavior across services and environments as we make changes or as user behavior evolves."
"Going from viewing a metric to creating a monitor alerting on a metric is very easy."
"Datadog is providing efficiency in the products we develop for the wireless device engineering department."
"The most valuable aspect is for us to have everything in one place."
"We have a better grasp of what is occurring during the deployment cycle. If something fails, we have an idea what has failed, where it has failed, and how it failed to better mitigate the situation."
"Several critical dashboards were created years ago and are still in use today."
"Datadog infrastructure monitoring has helped us identify health issues with our virtual machines, such as high load, CPU, and disk usage, as well as monitoring uptime and alerting when Kubernetes containers have a bad time staying up."
"It has really tightened down the security. That was something that we were lacking. It has also given us deep visibility into our network. We can really get down and see all of the traffic within the data center, between the VMs, between the applications, database servers, other application servers, web servers. We can identify everything that is communicating, and we can see it all on one product."
"The most valuable feature is being able to easily see the path that the VM traffic is taking, what ports are in use."
"Also, the ability to troubleshoot all the way across the NSX part of it to the physical and actually watch the packets go through and then see where the bottleneck is or where the interruption is. We run queries on the network flows within the application to find where they are in it and it graphically tells us how the packets are actually going through the system."
"It allows us to see how the network devices function as well as to see network glitches or fluctuations or dropping of packets."
"I like being able to see the flows coming in and out of the product. In terms of monitoring network flows, we use it to verify whether or not different servers/applications should be communicating with each other."
"The best feature of this application is its ability to capture everything within the same application, as well as capture all the traffic."
"The graphical interface of this environment is so good with all the views, the graphics, and everything in them. It's really easy for me. It doesn't need an engineer to work on it. It's easy enough that anyone can get into the environment and look for issues or look at how communication is going on across the VMs. It's pretty much straightforward."
"It's a very powerful, very manageable product."
 

Cons

"Datadog could improve the flexibility with AI and ML concepts. This will allow customers to be more leveraged towards publishing."
"Network device and performance monitoring could be improved, as we've faced some limitations in this area."
"Their security features could be improved. We looked at their Security Monitoring feature but it was early in its development. Datadog are just getting into the security space so I'm sure this will improve in the future."
"I would love to see more metrics or analytics in IoT devices."
"It lacks consistency in the APIs."
"The pricing is a bit confusing."
"The product can be improved by allowing the grouping of APIs to add variables. That way, any API with a unique ID could be grouped together."
"The Log Explorer could be better. I don't think it has log manipulation as Splunk does."
"In a very general way, I would like to see an improvement in interoperability with third-party product, from other vendors."
"There are some random glitches in the Web UI, but they are usually pretty cosmetic in nature. I don't really seem to use any browser other than Chrome with it. I also get some weird errors from time to time on the hardware NetFlow Collectors, where it doesn't sync data."
"The product is slightly complex use, while still being user-friendly. It could use more training modules, as it is not a straightforward product."
"It just needs to be more reliable and more accurate. At some point, there are some things where it does not match properly."
"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."
"I want to be able to monitor a network flow that is approximately two weeks back, but I haven't found an easy way to do this."
"vRNI needs more remediation where it hooks into NSX."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"At my last company, we did see ROI, specifically around response time. We could get to mission critical things that were down and losing revenue on immediately. So, the product paid itself back."
"It has a module-based pricing model."
"Licensing is based on the retention period of logs and metrics."
"The pricing came up a bit compared to their competitors. It is not that the price has risen, but that the competitors have gone down. They keep adding more features that I would have expected to be baked in at a more nominal price. I have been increasingly dissatisfied with the pricing, but not enough to jump ship."
"Sometimes it's very hard to project how much it will cost for the monthly subscription for the next month when you add certain features. Having better visibility of the cost would give a better experience."
"The pricing and licensing through AWS Marketplace has been good. It would be nice if it was cheaper, but their pricing is reasonable for what it is. Sometimes, for their newer features, they charge as if it's fully fleshed out, even though it is a newer feature and it may have less stuff than their other items."
"While it is an expensive product, I would rate the pricing level at four out of five."
"Datadog does not provide any free plans to use the solution. When I start with a proof of concept it would be sensible to have a free plan to test the tool and check whether it fits the requirements of the project. Before the production stage, it is always good to have a free plan with some limited features, number of requests, or logs."
"They should include the product in NSX because it's important to have it for deployment."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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
Educational Organization
32%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Any advice about APM solutions?
There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...
Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?
With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several times lately using the dashboards we have created with Datadog; they are very good c...
Which would you choose - Datadog or Dynatrace?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Datadog or Dynatrace network monitoring software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Dynatrace. Dynatrace offers network ...
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

No data available
Arkin
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Adobe, Samsung, facebook, HP Cloud Services, Electronic Arts, salesforce, Stanford University, CiTRIX, Chef, zendesk, Hearst Magazines, Spotify, mercardo libre, Slashdot, Ziff Davis, PBS, MLS, The Motley Fool, Politico, Barneby's
NTTi3, VCIX-NV, VMware Networking and Security Business Unit, Illumio, CompuNet
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog vs. vRealize Network Insight and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.