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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
16th
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
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Graylog is 6.4%, up from 5.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Logs is 1.1%, down from 1.5% 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 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."
"Allowing us to set up alerts and integrate with platforms we already use, such as Slack and OpsGenie to alert users of these errors proactively, is also a very useful feature."
"One of the most valuable features is that you are able to do a very detailed search through the log messages in the overview."
"What I like about Graylog is that it's real-time and you have access to the raw data. So, you ingest it, and you have access to every message and every data item you ingest. You can then build analytics on top of that. You can look at the raw data, and you can do some volumetric estimations, such as how big traffic you have, how many messages of data of a type you have, etc."
"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."
"We have scaled from a single machine installation (a VM with a Graylog + ES + MongoDB) to (2 Graylog + 2 ES + 3 MongoDB). This was done smoothly with a minimal impact on logging."
"Real-time UDP/GELF logging and full text-based searching."
"It is a highly stable solution...It is a highly scalable solution."
"The most valuable features are log centralization and long-term retention for logs."
"We use the on-premises version of this solution for log analysis and to find details about certain issues."
"The most valuable feature is server virtualization. It's been very useful."
"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."
"The solution's simplicity, flexibility, and extensibility are valuable features as we can integrate everything in vRealize."
"The root cause analysis feature is very valuable."
"The ability to narrow into a specific time to filter heavy hitters and anomalies is extremely valuable."
 

Cons

"There should be some user groups and an auto sign-in feature.​"
"When it comes to configuring the processing pipeline, writing the rules can be very tedious, especially since the documentation isn't extensive on how the functions provided for these rules work."
"More customization is always useful."
"More complex visualizations and the ability to execute custom Elasticsearch queries would be great."
"We ran into problems with Elasticsearch throwing a circuit-breaking exception due to field data size being too large. It turned out that the heap size directly impacted this size in a high-throughput environment, causing unexplained instability in Graylog. We were able to troubleshoot on the Elasticsearch size, but we should have been able to reference some minimum requirements for Graylog to know that our settings weren't sufficient."
"I would like to see some kind of visualization included in Graylog."
"Dashboards, stream alerts and parsing could be improved."
"Graylog can improve the index rotation as it's quite a complex solution."
"They should improve their web interface to make it more user-friendly."
"The solution should be more user-friendly. The user interface and dashboard could be simplified."
"The tool is expensive."
"Log Insight should be better at dealing with audits and security logs. We use another product called QRadar for that."
"Integration with other vendors is something that could be improved, they could add more vendors."
"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."
"What I'd like to improve in vRealize Log Insight is the licensing model. VMware provides vRealize Log Insight along with the VMware Cloud Foundation, but customers who would like to go for the native VMware would have to procure vRealize Log Insight separately. Today, vRealize Log Insight is offered on two different licenses, one is based on the number of VMs, and the other is based on the number of physical codes on the machine. If VMware can provide a bundle offer for customers who procure more than ten licenses, where you can have an option to run, for example, three hundred machines on vRealize Log Insight with no extra cost, this would encourage more people to adopt the solution. What I'd like to see in the next release of vRealize Log Insight is for a cloud option to be available, which would be a pay-as-you-go licensing model that would allow me to pick and choose what I'll monitor. For example, I have one thousand and three hundred critical servers, and the seven hundred servers for basic development, I don't want to monitor on vRealize Log Insight today, so I should be able to pick what I need to monitor on the solution and only pay for that specific instance. If VMware can apply these changes, it would help VMware customers to procure more or adopt more of vRealize Log Insight even in smaller projects."
"It's great for VMware, but it would be good if they had third-party logins."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Having paid official support is wise for projects."
"I use the free version of Graylog."
"Consider Enterprise support if you have atypical needs or setup requirements.​"
"It's open source and free. They have a paid version, but we never looked into that because we never needed the features of the paid version."
"We're using the Community edition."
"We are using the free version of the product. However, the paid version is expensive."
"​You get a lot out-of-the-box with the non-enterprise version, so give it a try first."
"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."
"The pricing has been updated recently."
"It is not cheap. But it is worth it."
"The product's price is reasonable, but when it comes to SQL licensing, it's a bit expensive."
"I think it is a reasonably priced product."
"Pricing could always be lower. If it were free, I would be more satisfied."
"I rate the product's price a six on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"I am not sure what the exact cost is. However, I believe the vRealize suite costs $2,500.00 per year."
"Pricing is good because it is part of the suite package. It comes in a bundle for us."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Government
8%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
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?
When it comes to configuring the processing pipeline, writing the rules can be very tedious, especially since the documentation isn't extensive on how the functions provided for these rules work. P...
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?
The solution could be cheaper. VMware comes with a lot of packages, however, it remains too expensive.
What needs improvement with vRealize Log Insight?
The tool could be cheaper. VMware has a lot of included packages, however, it remains too expensive. The price is my first point of concern.
 

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: March 2025.
842,010 professionals have used our research since 2012.