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NetBrain vs vRealize Network Insight comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

NetBrain
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Network Troubleshooting (17th), Network Automation (5th)
vRealize Network Insight
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (36th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (41st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Network Management solutions, they serve different purposes. NetBrain is designed for Network Troubleshooting and holds a mindshare of 3.2%, up 2.7% compared to last year.
vRealize Network Insight, on the other hand, focuses on IT Infrastructure Monitoring, holds 0.8% mindshare, up 0.5% since last year.
Network Troubleshooting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
NetBrain3.2%
Wireshark15.0%
AirMagnet Survey PRO9.8%
Other72.0%
Network Troubleshooting
IT Infrastructure Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
vRealize Network Insight0.8%
Zabbix5.3%
Datadog3.8%
Other90.1%
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Deborah Gamelin - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President at Asset Track for Cloud, LLC
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.
Shaijith KB - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Specialist at General Directorate of Residence and Foreigners Affairs (GDRFA)
Comprehensive management and detailed reports benefit operations while improvements are needed in support and maintenance
We have Tanzu and OpenShift. We have OpenShift, Canonical, and the Tanzu one. The Tanzu platform from VMware is a Kubernetes platform. We haven't completely installed Tanzu yet; we installed the vROps part. vRealize Network Insight is beneficial because you can control the East-West traffic. vRealize has a component called NSX, which has East-West traffic controlling and micro-segmentation, that is one of the best options, and we have the layer extension, layer 2 extension possible through NSX. If you have anything accountable in any business, even in a candy business, having proper accountability on what you are selling and buying will save a lot. If you don't know what you're selling and buying, you will end up with a loss. My team does not use the flow analytics feature; we have a security and network monitoring team, which is a different SOC team. I am using it as an administrator internally. We perform different tasks including costing analysis, capacity management, and many other things. vRealize Network Insight has a concern about the maintenance part, as it requires a person to monitor it completely. It's not something you install and your report will be generated automatically. You have to work on this properly to get the insights. vRealize Network Automation, vRealize Operations, and vRealize Network Insight are completely related to the network. I cannot say much about these network aspects because I am on the operations side, but overall, the vRealize suite is good for reporting perspective or any ISO-related documentation; this is very helpful. The product is called vRealize Operations Manager, and now it is referred to as Aria or vAria. I am now a Senior System Specialist. We use different metrics because we have multiple departments, and we can monitor utilization and comparisons with the previous year. On a scale of one to ten, I rate this solution a seven.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that you can click once and have a link test, see your network, and get an overall view of your network and its state."
"This tool is exactly what we wanted and needed."
"NetBrain is a very simple tool."
"A reliable, time-saving tool for providing accurate layer 2 and layer 3 network mappings."
"This product has good network monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities."
"Other advice to users considering the solution would be: go with NetBrain."
"NetBrain is very good when it comes to network mapping, as it looks for different assets within the network available, so router, firewall, applications, et cetera, and it gives you the full mapping, asset mapping along with the full range including the firmware software update and all those things."
"Enables maps to be drawn out."
"I would recommend the product."
"If we can get it to provide those firewall rules it will literally save hundreds of man-hours, if not thousands of man-hours."
"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."
"It has really tightened down the security; that was something that we were lacking, and it has also given us deep visibility into our network so 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, and web servers, identify everything that is communicating, and see it all on one product."
"It's user-friendly. It's similar to the GUI that most VMware products are moving to, and the consistency across those makes it easy to switch from one product to another. Also, the search bar at the top is plain text and it helps you, it guides you along with your search query, so that helps. The first day you're in there you can start building actual queries."
"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 initial was straightforward. You can have it up and running in one hour."
"One of the most valuable features is the ability to look at the traffic flows, to look at NetFlow data."
 

Cons

"Netbrain must get AWS functionality done."
"It's okay on the value, a bit expensive for just maps, but makes it a lot easier to see things visually and take it from there."
"If you're comparing NetBrain as an NDR, I would rate it as a four or five, however, NetBrain has a different aspect of looking at things within the network."
"Support needs to improve for the installed product and some of the reporting could be more flexible to provide more complete cataloging."
"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 pricing needs to be improved."
"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."
"When I used the installed product before, I wasn't very satisfied with the support."
"The only real improvement they can make is to add more third-party vendors into the environment, mostly switch manufacturers, because it's really limited to Cisco equipment and there are a lot of companies out there other than Cisco."
"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."
"It can be a bit painful to deploy."
"The solution is very much viewer centric and it would be nice if it would transcend just the virtual infrastructure."
"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 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."
"I rate it a seven out of ten, only because it doesn't have all the vendors - at least the switch vendors - in there."
"After you use it for a little while you become accustomed to it but the layout doesn't feel very intuitive."
 

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."
"They should include the product in NSX because it's important to have it for deployment."
"I rate vRealize Network Insight's pricing a seven point five out of ten."
"It has brought more money into our company."
"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."
"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'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."
"It's an expensive product because we have a lot of nodes."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise41
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for vRealize Network Insight?
In VMware you have to buy a separate license for it. We have VVF and VCF-type of licenses, and if you want to go with this NSX and sort of higher-end professional services, you need to go with VCF....
What needs improvement with vRealize Network Insight?
There is room for improvement as not all cases are getting resolved, and we often do not get L3 support directly, having to go through L1 and L2, resulting in delays that usually are a headache for...
What is your primary use case for vRealize Network Insight?
We have Tanzu, and we also work with multiple Kubernetes services such as Nutanix and Google. We are working on these Kubernetes services on the operations side. For Tanzu, we have several componen...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Arkin
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CompuCon, TD Ameritrade, Move Inc.
NTTi3, VCIX-NV, VMware Networking and Security Business Unit, Illumio, CompuNet
Find out what your peers are saying about NetBrain vs. vRealize Network Insight and other solutions. Updated: May 2020.
890,027 professionals have used our research since 2012.