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NETSCOUT vSTREAM vs NetBrain comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

NetBrain
Average Rating
7.2
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Network Troubleshooting (14th), Network Automation (6th)
NETSCOUT vSTREAM
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (74th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Network Management solutions, they serve different purposes. NetBrain is designed for Network Troubleshooting and holds a mindshare of 1.9%, up 1.8% compared to last year.
NETSCOUT vSTREAM, on the other hand, focuses on Network Monitoring Software, holds 0.3% mindshare, down 0.4% since last year.
Network Troubleshooting
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Deborah Gamelin - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 14, 2022
Good monitoring and troubleshoot capabilities, improves overall network traffic visibility
In my organization, we had 130,000 network devices that needed to be brought into the solution and mapped. NetBrain can handle the scale but the engineers that manage those devices have to go in and update all of them to allow NetBrain permission to poll them. It can get a little stressful for everybody when you're trying to roll out new stuff when you've got other issues that have to be addressed with other devices. In some cases, our devices had no automation at all. One example is the Cisco 3650. Right now, if you went through the inventory list, you see that we have different versions running. Some are on one version, whereas others are on another version. The problem with upgrading them is that they need to be done overnight because we don't want to disrupt any network traffic during business hours. Consequently, it could take us years to upgrade the versions before we can even get them onto these new tools. This may be an internal issue but it's a big one when you have a lot of devices. Even if you had 10,000 devices, it's still an issue. You have to consider the compatibility of the device against the tool, and being able to use certain commands to upgrade it.
MM
Apr 21, 2019
Troubleshooting at the packet level helps us resolve issues more quickly
The solution provides increased visibility during an IT deployment. It enables us to troubleshoot a service when it is down. As we expand our company, more users are using the tool to quickly resolve issues. It helps us and them get to root cause quickly. For example, last week a DNS was not running anymore. We checked the packet and saw that there was a buffer overload. It has cut our overall troubleshooting time. Sometimes it took a month to troubleshoot something that we can now do within days. nGenius has helped increase application or network uptime. The DNS I mentioned is now a better server with more capacity than before, because of our troubleshooting. We see a measurable decrease in mean time to know and mean time to repair. We see that when our customers are using this tool, their stability on the link is getting better and better, every time they use it. Also, we use the solution for unified communication application performance and it helps with uptime and end-user experience. Sometimes the quality of voice calls is not good enough, so we use the Media Monitor to check the quality in real-time.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"A reliable, time-saving tool for providing accurate layer 2 and layer 3 network mappings."
"Enables maps to be drawn out."
"NetBrain is a very simple tool."
"This product has good network monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities."
"Chain management is a good feature. I don't get it on other solutions."
"One of the valuable features is the packet decoding."
"vSTREAM gives us better visibility and reporting about our network infrastructure, allowing for cost-optimization."
 

Cons

"The IP interface brief isn't consistent."
"Each device needs to be configured to allow NetBrain to poll for the information it needs, which can be very time-consuming for a large network."
"The solution could integrate more automation."
"Support needs to improve for the installed product and some of the reporting could be more flexible to provide more complete cataloging."
"It would be nice if the setup was a little simpler. Also, if the solution could provide more training materials for new people coming into our company so they can quickly learn how to use the functionalities."
"I would like for it to have a smaller footprint of the virtual appliance and better performance."
"Room for improvement exists in filtering in the packet decode."
"I would like to see improvements made to the user guide."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing is based on a per-device basis, which means that it can get very expensive if you have a large number of devices."
"The product is expensive, but less expensive than some of the competition and worth the price."
"Licensing is quite expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Retailer
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
No data available
 

Also Known As

No data available
vSTREAM
 

Learn More

Video not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CompuCon, TD Ameritrade, Move Inc.
Metropolitan Police Agency, Banpara, PropertyRoom.com
Find out what your peers are saying about NETSCOUT vSTREAM vs. NetBrain and other solutions. Updated: May 2020.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.