Zabbix vs vRealize Network Insight comparison

Read 105 Zabbix reviews

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95% willing to recommend

vRealize Network Insight

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Zabbix and vRealize Network Insight are network monitoring solutions with unique strengths. Zabbix has the upper hand in cost-effectiveness due to its open-source model, while vRealize Network Insight is superior in advanced features and integration.

Features: Zabbix is highly valued for automated network and item discovery, scalability, and customizable dashboards. It integrates seamlessly with third-party solutions like Grafana for data visualization. vRealize Network Insight excels in detailed traffic analysis, anomaly detection, and visibility, valuable in complex networks.

Room for Improvement: Zabbix users desire more intuitive reporting functions, improved predictive analytics, and better documentation. vRealize Network Insight users seek enhanced third-party integration, a more favorable cost structure, and improved micro-segmentation capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Zabbix offers diverse deployment options and benefits from extensive community support, though it can be complex to deploy. Professional support is available if needed. vRealize Network Insight is typically deployed on-premises with good professional support, integrated with VMware products but at a higher cost due to its feature set.

Pricing and ROI: Zabbix's open-source approach provides significant ROI with no licensing fees, making it budget-friendly. vRealize Network Insight requires higher investment due to premium features, often priced per device, offering detailed analytics that justify its cost for advanced insights.

To learn more, read our detailed Zabbix vs. vRealize Network Insight Report (Updated: February 2025).

Zabbix vs. vRealize Network Insight

February 2025

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Helped 845,040 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

vRealize Network Insight

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

23rd

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

23rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Zabbix

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

1st

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

105

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (8th), Server Monitoring (1st), Cloud Monitoring Software (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of vRealize Network Insight is 0.6%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Zabbix is 13.0%, up from 11.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

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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ASM Naushad Alam

Network Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Allows any number of customizations but lacks functionality for finding root causes

We have not yet purchased the commercial version so have a lack of technical ability. We do not yet fully know the key points or key features of the solution. We just use what we use along with WhatsUp Gold. Based on our use only, stability is rated a seven 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

"What's valuable to us is the ability to get a view into the virtual space, which is something we haven't had before. Before, it was done by collecting from network endpoints and extrapolating into the virtual environment. Now it's coming directly from the virtual environment."

"The most valuable feature for us is that insight into what our network is really doing - it's a fairly complex network. Not having to go through thousands of lines of network configuration to find firewall ports that were open or closed, for various ports, was very valuable. It went out and found everything we need very quickly."

"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 features are the monitoring and tracking. It's also intuitive and user-friendly. The screen looks exactly the same as the other appliances for VMware, so it's easy to navigate."

"The automation collects all the relationships between servers, allowing us to visualize these relationships and organize the migration into waves."

"It allows us to go from virtual through NSX, up to the core, and see all of that in one pane of glass, it's pretty easy."

"If we deploy NSX it shows us how the workflow will flow in the organization, what the roadblocks are, and what we need to do to overcome those hurdles. When we run this product, it gives us reports which describe problems with physical switches. We work with the network team to get them all resolved."

"vRNI can trace the flow of each and every packet and it is easy for us to troubleshoot all the issues that we do have with the networking. We can trace down the packet to a point where it has been dropped."

More vRealize Network Insight pros

"The pricing of the product is reasonable."

"The resource usage, CPU utilization, disk usage, network monitoring, network performance, and alerting features are invaluable."

"We like the user-interface for this solution, which makes it an easy to use tool."

"The integration with third-party tools and the alerts are most valuable."

"The most valuable feature is the alert and alarm monitoring."

"Zabbix is quite stable once it is set up. We haven't had any post-setup issues."

"Zabbix helps to save time."

"The most valuable feature is the support for monitoring Cisco switches."

More Zabbix pros

Cons

"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."

"I would like to see application identification. That would be cool."

"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."

"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."

"In a very general way, I would like to see an improvement in interoperability with third-party product, from other vendors."

"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."

"The only issue we have is that the solution does not always capture the host names."

More vRealize Network Insight cons

"The dashboard and the graph section could be a little bit more professional."

"The event correlation could be better."

"Having a more customizable interface and dashboard would be an improvement."

"When using this solution in enterprise monitoring, you are able to see that there are some issues with equipment that could be causing a problem. Sometimes you want to make a root command that you do not want to be executed automatically. What we have tried to do is open an SSH session directly from the solution's interface but it is not possible."

"Zabbix is not easy to configure, and upgrading is also an issue."

"The user interface could be better."

"The reports are not great and should be improved."

"Sometimes, the documentation is a little bit written in Estonia – a country in Europe. The language barrier and translation to English can sometimes make it difficult to understand what they're trying to get at. It's just a language thing."

More Zabbix cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"vRealize Network Insight is expensive."

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

"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."

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

"It has brought more money into our company."

"It's an expensive product because we have a lot of nodes."

More vRealize Network Insight pricing and cost advice

"We pay the subscription for support by year."

"I was using the free, Community Edition."

"Zabbix is a free solution but the support contact costs money."

"It is a true open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs."

"Zabbix is an open-source tool, and it's free to use."

"It is open source. If you want to have a subscription or official support, you can pay for it. They have different plans, which are not that expensive. The plans are based on per monitoring server, not per monitored equipment. So, it is not at all expensive, and you can also live without the support if you want a cheaper option."

"It is free, which allows us to reduce costs."

"The product is an open source and free solution."

More Zabbix pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Monitoring Software solutions are best for your needs.

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Comparison Review

it_user174738

IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

May 31, 2015

Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor

I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

11%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

37%

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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?

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.

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...

What do you like most about Zabbix?

The template system in Zabbix is very beneficial as it saves time in configuration.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zabbix?

The cost is minimal. It is literally free.

What needs improvement with Zabbix?

For me, Zabbix is very straightforward. I cannot think of any improvements needed. It's a very mature product. The only issue I can note is that it's Linux-based, and Linux documentation is not the...

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Product Reports

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vRealize Network Insight

March 2025

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March 2025

Also Known As

Arkin

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Overview

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

Zabbix is an open-source monitoring software that provides real-time monitoring and alerting for servers, networks, applications, and services.

It offers a wide range of features including data collection, visualization, and reporting.

With its user-friendly interface and customizable dashboards, Zabbix helps organizations ensure the availability and performance of their IT infrastructure.

Sample Customers

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

1. IBM 2. Dell 3. Cisco 4. HP 5. Oracle 6. Microsoft 7. Amazon 8. Google 9. Facebook 10. Twitter 11. LinkedIn 12. Netflix 13. Adobe 14. VMware 15. Salesforce 16. SAP 17. Intel 18. AT&T 19. Verizon 20. T-Mobile 21. Vodafone 22. Ericsson 23. Nokia 24. Siemens 25. General Electric 26. Honeywell 27. Philips 28. Sony 29. Samsung 30. LG 31. Panasonic 32. Toshiba