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Graylog vs VMware Aria Operations for Logs 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

Graylog
Ranking in Log Management
18th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Aria Operations for ...
Ranking in Log Management
16th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Graylog is 6.6%, up from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Logs is 1.2%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Log Management
 

Featured Reviews

Andrey Mostovykh - PeerSpot reviewer
Real-time analysis, easy setup, and open source
We stopped using it for analytics because of its price, and at the moment, we are using it mostly for log centralization. If you use it with high traffic for analytical purposes, as well as for the logs, the infrastructure costs are unbelievable. Graylog is a great product backed by Elasticsearch as the storage and query engine. It is just an interface on top of Elasticsearch and some Elasticsearch management. The indexes that are kept in Elasticsearch are managed by Graylog software. Elasticsearch is a decent product, but it's very infrastructure-heavy. It requires lots of resources, and if you make a mistake with provisioning, you are likely to not get a cluster back. We had a couple of outages like that, and we hated that. So, we ended up over-provisioning resources just to avoid such situations from happening. If you have a whole team trying to fix the Graylog instance for two days, that's a bit too much. That may be my Norwegian take on it, but the engineering resources are expensive. It's better to just provision the infrastructure. Overall, the product is great, and the features are just fine, but the infrastructure cost is what is killing it. The infrastructure cost is the main issue. I like the rest. If the infrastructure costs could be lower, it would be fantastic. I'm not sure if they can improve the infrastructure cost with the way Elasticsearch is. If they keep using Elasticsearch, maybe there are some opportunities there, or they can support other backends with cheaper storage. They could have a different backend to replace Elasticsearch or do some tweaks to Elasticsearch to reduce the costs. There could be partial parsing of logs or parsing on demand so that when you write data through Graylog to Elasticsearch, it doesn't need to crunch in every detail requiring that much CPU.
LarsChristensen - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient troubleshooting with precise log filtering and an easy setup
The tool could benefit from improved filter settings and dashboarding. While there are dashboards available, they are often created by community members and may not work after updates. It would be beneficial to have a roadmap for these dashboards to ensure consistent functionality. It would also be advantageous if the tool could process even large amounts of data faster, though this may be more related to data movement challenges rather than the software itself.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution's most valuable feature is its new interface."
"I am very proud of how very stable the solution is."
"The best feature of Graylog is the Elasticsearch integration. We can integrate and we can run filters, such as an event of interest, and those logs we can send to any SIEM tool or as an analytic. Additionally, there are clear and well-documented implementation instructions on their website to follow if needed."
"We run a containerized microservices environment. Being able to set up streams and search for errors and anomalies across hundreds of containers is why a log aggregation platform like Graylog is valuable to us."
"Open source and user friendly."
"I like the correlation and the alerting."
"This had increased productivity for the dev and support teams, because we are directly notifying them."
"Everything stands out as valuable, including the fact that I can quantify and qualify the logs, create pipelines and process the logs in any way I like, and create charts or data maps."
"The root cause analysis feature is very valuable."
"The events are notably more descriptive, aiding in security and event analysis. We've also integrated Sky Collector, providing valuable insights and solutions for troubleshooting."
"One of the things I like about it is its interface. When it comes to generating reports on VMs and stuff, it's very quick. This is very handy for the technical team, who need to generate reports quickly. So that's really good."
"The ability to narrow into a specific time to filter heavy hitters and anomalies is extremely valuable."
"Our current costs are too high, and this tool will help us to better optimize our infrastructure."
"It is a highly stable solution...It is a highly scalable solution."
"It is a very useful tool if you have a VMware environment."
"We are using it because we have a VMware product. It has its own built in dashboards for VMware products, and that's a good thing."
 

Cons

"With technical support, you are on your own without an enterprise license."
"Its scalability gets complicated when we have to update or edit multiple nodes."
"Graylog can improve the index rotation as it's quite a complex solution."
"I would like to see some kind of visualization included in Graylog."
"I would like to see a default dashboard widget that shows the topology of the clusters defined for the graylog install."
"I would like to see a date and time in the Graylog Grok patterns so that I can save time when searching for a log. I like how the streams and the search query work, but adding a date and time will allow me to pull out a log in a milli-second."
"Graylog needs to improve their authentication. Also, the fact that Graylog displays logs from the top down is just ridiculous."
"Dashboards, stream alerts and parsing could be improved."
"Technical support should be improved."
"From an improvement perspective, the tool needs to be made more user-friendly."
"The monitoring landscape is getting bigger. When it comes to infrastructure monitoring, we need more visibility. VMware needs to integrate more related applications and third-party products. That would make it more appealing to an audience beyond the VMware team."
"The pricing of the solution could be improved."
"The tool is expensive."
"The solution isn't user-friendly for admins."
"The solution is a very good tool, but it has a lot of limitations. One of the main issues is around how you define your retention policy, for instance, in Log Insight. It doesn't have it. You can't define a log retention policy. You also can't define the destination or location for your logs. All of the logs are in one index or one bucket."
"Log retention should have more options for user control."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If you want something that works and do not have the money for Splunk or QRadar, take Graylog.​​"
"Graylog is a free open-source solution. The free version has a capacity limitation of 2 GB daily, if you want to go above this you have to purchase a license."
"​You get a lot out-of-the-box with the non-enterprise version, so give it a try first."
"I use the free version of Graylog."
"I am using a community edition. I have not looked at the enterprise offering from Graylog."
"We're using the Community edition."
"We are using the free version of the product. However, the paid version is expensive."
"Having paid official support is wise for projects."
"The product's price is reasonable, but when it comes to SQL licensing, it's a bit expensive."
"I rate the product's price a six on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"Pricing is good because it is part of the suite package. It comes in a bundle for us."
"I think it is a reasonably priced product."
"It is not cheap. But it is worth it."
"Pricing could always be lower. If it were free, I would be more satisfied."
"The pricing has been updated recently."
"The license cost for any other monitoring tool is too high compared to this product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Government
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Graylog?
The product is scalable. The solution is stable.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Graylog?
We are using the free version of the product. However, the paid version is expensive.
What needs improvement with Graylog?
Since it's a free tool, I don't have much to say. Troubleshooting is important to me. The initial setup is complex. I hope to see improvements in Graylog for more interactivity, user-friendliness, ...
What do you like most about vRealize Log Insight?
The events are notably more descriptive, aiding in security and event analysis. We've also integrated Sky Collector, providing valuable insights and solutions for troubleshooting.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for vRealize Log Insight?
One major advantage of VMware compared to Splunk is pricing. VMware is licensed based on hardware rather than the amount of data, making it much cheaper. Splunk, often paid by the terabytes, become...
What needs improvement with vRealize Log Insight?
The tool could benefit from improved filter settings and dashboarding. While there are dashboards available, they are often created by community members and may not work after updates. It would be ...
 

Also Known As

Graylog2
vRealize Log Insight
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Blue Cross Blue Shield, eBay, Cisco, LinkedIn, SAP, King.com, Twilio, Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Wildlands Adventure Zoo, Medic Mobile, IBM, Seventy Seven Energy, Baystate Health, Osis, Oxford University, Columbia University, Siemens, Cardinal Health, Ashdod Port, Vasakronan, Sydney Adventist Hospital, University of Derby
Find out what your peers are saying about Graylog vs. VMware Aria Operations for Logs and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,997 professionals have used our research since 2012.