SolarWinds AppOptics vs vRealize Network Insight comparison

SolarWinds and VMware are both solutions in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category. SolarWinds is ranked #50 with an average rating of 8.0, while VMware is ranked #23 with an average rating of 8.8. SolarWinds holds a 0.3% mindshare in IM, compared to VMware’s 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 80% of SolarWinds users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of VMware users who would recommend it.

SolarWinds AppOptics

Read 9 SolarWinds AppOptics reviews

504 Views
350 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

vRealize Network Insight

Read 46 vRealize Network Insight reviews

885 Views
526 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

SolarWinds AppOptics

vRealize Network Insight

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

vRealize Network Insight and SolarWinds AppOptics compete in the network monitoring and management category. Based on feature offering and network insights, vRealize Network Insight seems to have the upper hand due to its advanced visualization and application rationalization capabilities.

Features: vRealize Network Insight includes comprehensive log collection, network mapping, and microsegmentation assistance, offering deep insights and automation for security. It also features robust network flow visualization and powerful application assessment tools, which make it intuitive. SolarWinds AppOptics provides real-time monitoring, end-to-end performance tracking, and visibility into service-provider networks, complemented by intuitive visualization features such as heat maps and topology discovery.

Room for Improvement: Users suggest vRealize Network Insight could improve integration with other services and provide clearer microsegmentation, also addressing pricing concerns. Enhancements in reporting and application identification are desired. For SolarWinds AppOptics, users recommend better integration and expanded monitoring capabilities. Pricing improvements and a more centralized view would be beneficial.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: vRealize Network Insight is primarily deployed on-premises, supported by strong technical support and VMware Professional Services, offering seamless setup experience. Users report excellent customer service. SolarWinds AppOptics provides both on-premises and public cloud deployment options. Its knowledgeable support staff is valued, though initial use challenges have been noted.

Pricing and ROI: vRealize Network Insight, noted for its high cost due to comprehensive features, offers substantial ROI by enhancing operational efficiency and network management. Its pricing reflects its advanced capabilities in microsegmentation and application rationalization. SolarWinds AppOptics follows a similar pricing model with perpetual licensing, providing reasonable costs and strong value in labor savings and efficiency improvements.

To learn more, read our detailed SolarWinds AppOptics vs. vRealize Network Insight Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds AppOptics vs. vRealize Network Insight

April 2025

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Helped 847,862 peers since 2012

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

SolarWinds AppOptics

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

50th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (48th), Cloud Monitoring Software (34th)

vRealize Network Insight

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

23rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (23rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of SolarWinds AppOptics is 0.3%, down from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vRealize Network Insight is 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Featured Reviews

John Yuko

Assistant Manager ICT - Projects at I&M Bank Ltd

Unique features allow consolidating and combing metrics into a single dashboard, but don't monitor mobile solutions

I would like to see more granular information provided on Unix applications. Also, the integration with Unix services should be a bit more straightforward in terms having an agent to retrieve your credentials rather than having to enter or save them for SSH on SolarWinds. From the outset, we had to set some commands to log into the search console, and they are saved on the solution, which presents a challenge in terms of exposure. The solution is unable to monitor APK solutions completely because we'd then be forced to break down the APK and provide the APIs or go through the source code. They don't have a module that can analyze an application that is maybe under-used.

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NiteshKumar1

Principle consultant at Infosys

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product has a great dashboard."

"I have found the most valuable feature is application performance management."

"The reporting of the solution is very good."

"Some of the most valuable features of SolarWinds are the topology discovery and network performance analysis."

"The sum solution, NTA, and DPA."

"Technical support is always live and they're supportive."

"The most valuable feature is the profiling of the applications for micro-segmentation... It has made the migration to NSX much easier. Most of the sys admins within the smaller silos, they have no idea what ports are needed to run their stuff at all. I am pretty sure the micro-segmentation would never, ever have occurred without it."

"One of the most valuable features is the ability to look at the traffic flows, to look at NetFlow data."

"Also, the ability to troubleshoot all the way across the NSX part of it to the physical and actually watch the packets go through and then see where the bottleneck is or where the interruption is. We run queries on the network flows within the application to find where they are in it and it graphically tells us how the packets are actually going through the system."

"The most valuable feture is NetFlow to help us understand how VMs communicate with each other over ports that are known and ports that are also unknown to us. Our company is a security company, so it's very important for us to know exactly which VMs are doing what at all times."

"The most valuable features are the packet trace flow and that the view of the whole environment is deep."

"The solution helps reduce time to value, increase performance, provide deep visibility, and easily manage networks."

"It's very user-friendly in the sense that the querying is just regular language like you and I speak or write. You don't need to know any SQL-query type of language to be able to get what you want out of it."

"The most valuable feature for me is the different views that you can get when selecting an application or a VLAN. It shows you the traffic flows. It gives you a visual representation of something that, in text, just may not make as much sense."

More vRealize Network Insight pros

Cons

"I would like to see more integration with other tools that are available on the market."

"The integration with Unix services should be a bit more straightforward."

"The solution should be more user-friendly."

"AppOptics would benefit from having a much more centralized view."

"In terms of the technology, I think they need to put some more advanced troubleshooting into SolarWinds, in terms of AI capabilities. That's the next generation, especially in the cases of APIs which have already adopted AI capabilities into their products."

"The implementation needs improvement. It needs to get modernized with the newer cloud scenario in both public and private deployment models."

"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."

"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."

"I would like to see more interoperability on the firewall and low balancer sides."

"The solution is very much viewer centric and it would be nice if it would transcend just the virtual infrastructure."

"There is room for improvement when it comes to pricing because we pay here in Brazil, and all the costs are based on the dollar."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More vRealize Network Insight cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Since it's a negotiable rate, I would rate the pricing as a five out of five."

"I believe the current licensing cost is reasonable."

"Mostly, it's a perpetual license. We don't have any customers using the subscription right now—it's mostly a perpetual license that the customers purchase. The licensing is based on the number of elements, whereas other solutions are node-based."

"They should include the product in NSX because it's important to have it for deployment."

"It has brought more money into our company."

"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."

"I rate vRealize Network Insight's pricing a seven point five out of ten."

"We have spent less time investigating network flows, so it is absolutely cost-effective."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More vRealize Network Insight pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

58%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

14%

Government

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about SolarWinds AppOptics?

The product has a great dashboard.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SolarWinds AppOptics?

The solution should be more user-friendly.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for SolarWinds AppOptics?

I used the solution for monitoring servers and network equipment.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for vRealize Network Insight?

Broadcom is known for increasing product prices, making them expensive compared to what people used to pay. I liken the subscription model to not truly owning what you pay for.

See all answers

What needs improvement with vRealize Network Insight?

Right now, I do not see a specific area for improvement. My main concern is understanding the intentions of Broadcom, which has acquired VMware. Broadcom should improve by going back to what was wo...

See all answers

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Compared 13% of the time

Zenoss Cloud vs SolarWinds AppOptics

Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 16% of the time

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Compared 13% of the time

DX NetOps vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 13% of the time

DX Spectrum vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 11% of the time

AppNeta by Broadcom vs vRealize Network Insight

Compared 10% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

April 2025

Download SolarWinds AppOptics product report

Buyer's Guide

vRealize Network Insight

March 2025

Download vRealize Network Insight product report

Also Known As

AppOptics, SolarWinds TraceView, Librato

Arkin

Overview

AppOptics is a SaaS-based simple, powerful and affordable Infrastructure & Application monitoring for custom on-premises, cloud, and hybrid systems.

Your business runs on applications, and when they go down or run slowly, it can impact the business in lost productivity, customers, or revenue. To add to the complexity, your IT environment is changing, and workloads can be spread across data centers, and cloud resources. You need to monitor the availability and performance of applications and infrastructure, regardless of where they are, so you can identify potential issues early and address them before they impact users

SolarWinds

VMware vRealize Network Insight delivers intelligent operations for software-defined networking and security. It helps customers build an optimized, highly-available and secure network infrastructure across multi-cloud environments. It accelerates micro-segmentation planning and deployment, enables visibility across virtual and physical networks and provides operational views to manage and scale VMware NSX deployments.

VMware

Sample Customers

TraxoCovea Insurance BTE TechnologyDatarista

NTTi3, VCIX-NV, VMware Networking and Security Business Unit, Illumio, CompuNet

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds AppOptics vs. vRealize Network Insight

April 2025

Free Report: SolarWinds AppOptics vs. vRealize Network Insight

Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds AppOptics vs. vRealize Network Insight and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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