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Nmap vs vRealize Network Insight comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Nmap
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
16th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
vRealize Network Insight
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
19th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (18th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Nmap is 0.6%, down from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vRealize Network Insight is 0.8%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Aqeel Junaid - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers easy-to-use features and helps scan ports
The product's port scan capabilities have positively impacted my company's network management tasks. The OS detection feature has benefited our company's network analysis since it shows me the open ports that are vulnerable. The product helps me get details about the vulnerability in open ports. I have not integrated the product with other tools except for the fact that I have used Nmap in Metasploit. I recommend the product to those who plan to use it for network security and management. The tool provides full scanning of ports. Though there are other products in the market, many of the solutions are not as good as Nmap, which offers a lot of features that are easy to use. I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
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

"It helps us secure the network infrastructure."
"From a functionality standpoint, it's robust and straightforward to comprehend."
"The real-time reporting feature of Nmap is particularly valuable. It generates detailed reports on the source and destination IP addresses, the protocols used, and the types of traffic."
"The scanning procedure includes UDP ports which sets it apart from competitors."
"The best feature of Nmap is that it lets me see useful information about each endpoint in my entire network environment. For example, I can see every single connection of the network as well as each and every port."
"Nmap is easy to use. It's a command-line interface, and the output is quite good."
"It enables us to delve deeper and identify the services and open ports on the system and visualize this information on a dashboard automatically."
"The initial setup was simple."
"Whenever we say "valuable" with respect to the network, it's more towards the security. The firewall rule issues it shows us and the recommendations that we get from vRNI are the most valuable features because they are actually making our network more secure."
"It has enabled us to set up and do application discovery, as far as network traffic is concerned, and set up the appropriate rules that we need to make sure we're compliant with our security frameworks."
"It especially helps with deploying NSX, that you're not having to manually chase down and figure out what you need to do to microsegment VMs. This gives a nice option where you can say, "Hey, this VM, show me what flows are there." I can export it out and then import it as an NSX rule and job done."
"It gives the visibility that was either broken or there in pieces only. This solution provides a unified view of the whole system, back and forth. It has helped to reduce time to value, increase performance, more easily manage networks, and provide deep visibility."
"A lot of time is saved when you use this type of software solution for the network. We have moved systems into the new data center and the servers and systems are much faster because of the very low latency between virtual machines."
"The automation collects all the relationships between servers, allowing us to visualize these relationships and organize the migration into waves."
"The most valuable feature is the visualization. It's really handy to be able to classify network objects as with applications and see the interaction between them."
"We can see everything going on in NSX and get a good picture of our environment."
 

Cons

"The solution should increase the number of features under a free license."
"The solution's initial setup could be better."
"Nmap major operates through the CLI; there's no GUI component, and that's where the challenge is."
"The price is high and could be cheaper."
"One of the drawbacks of the standard Nmap utility is that it does not come with a graphical user interface, unlike a number of other open-source alternatives such as Zenmap."
"They should deliver Playtech's username and password."
"Customization is not very user-friendly in Nmap."
"There could be a specific option to check non-pingable endpoints for the product."
"Since Broadcom acquired VMware, it has been experiencing challenges. Many sales processes are not well defined."
"The IT infrastructure industry is expected to evolve towards a hybrid cloud model in the next five to ten years. In this model, most of the customer's resources reside on-premise within a private cloud setup, such as VMware. Another segment operates within public cloud environments like Azure and AWS, and a portion remains in traditional data centers. There should be seamless interoperability between public and private clouds. AWS and VMware need to work together to make it possible. Whether users interact with on-premise infrastructure or configure resources in the public cloud, the user experience must be seamless."
"After you use it for a little while you become accustomed to it but the layout doesn't feel very intuitive. You have to dig around and find the exact place where you can find the information, where you can actually see your east-west traffic, etc. I would like them to bring that information more to the forefront, instead of having to find it."
"While it's not exactly a feature, what normally happens when we are trying to look at the VM flow portion is - although Network Insight does have options to integrate a few physical switches into it - we can't really get an end-to-end flow of the network. We might be using a few switches that are not supported by Network Insight. That is where they can improve, in the support for more physical switches and network devices."
"It just needs to be more reliable and more accurate. At some point, there are some things where it does not match properly."
"There's enough information there, especially in the visualizations, but I would love to see this in a kiosk mode, where I could have a dashboard for interested stakeholders to see and appreciate what's going on. Then, moving on to a more practical level for our Help Desk, our operations team could benefit by seeing, in real-time, a visual view of the network."
"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'd like to see better support for being able to search the hardware NetFlow data. It ingests fairly well, but you can't tell, in a lot of cases, what source the data came from. I'd like to see more support for picking specific sources. That way you could really make a compelling use case. There are also some difficulties where it can't exactly trace the path between source and destination but if you hit the reverse flow on the same search it shows the entire path."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Nmap is an open-source and free product."
"Nmap is an open-source product. You don't need a license to install it."
"The solution is free of cost."
"Nmap is open source software, which suits us well because we are a manufacturing company and not an IT company, for example. If we were an IT company, we would probably need to pay for extra support or instead go for another software solution. But as it is, we don't have any need for high-end troubleshooting tools."
"I am using the standard free version of Nmap."
"The solution is free of cost, but there are specific services that we have to buy."
"The product's pricing is fine. The licensing options for Nmap include perpetual licenses and volume-based licenses. For perpetual licenses, once you purchase it, there's no need to invest in renewals. And for volume-based licenses, enterprise companies can use it multiple times based on the number of users or devices they need to scan. It's a pay-as-you-go model, similar to how you pay for what you use."
"I am using the free version of Nmap."
"I rate vRealize Network Insight's pricing a seven point five out of ten."
"It's an expensive product because we have a lot of nodes."
"vRealize Network Insight is expensive."
"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."
"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'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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
University
10%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Nmap?
Nmap is mostly helpful during compliance checks. We run the scanner to see how many devices are on our network and find vulnerabilities in those that aren't compliant. We also use it monthly to sca...
What is your primary use case for Nmap?
Nmap is used for network scanning to map the network, identify devices, and assess their status. It helps determine open ports and services running on a particular endpoint or server within an ente...
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?
The sales team often complains about the cost whenever we need to quote vRealize Network.
What needs improvement with vRealize Network Insight?
Since Broadcom acquired VMware, it has been experiencing challenges. Many sales processes are not well defined. They can show a little bit more information because vRealize Network Insight is virtu...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Arkin
 

Learn More

Video not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Lockheed Martin, Eastern Bank Boston, Perspecta, Harris Corporation, Discovery Communication
NTTi3, VCIX-NV, VMware Networking and Security Business Unit, Illumio, CompuNet
Find out what your peers are saying about Nmap vs. vRealize Network Insight and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.