We use the solution for data center troubleshooting and performance analysis.
Datacenter Product Owner SSE Networkmanagement Quality, Performance & Visibility at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Has good stability and efficient metric analysis features
Pros and Cons
- "It is a scalable solution."
- "Its initial setup process is complicated."
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
The solution is stable and works best for collecting and analyzing metrics data.
What needs improvement?
They should include an application coloring feature for firewall in the solution.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using the solution for 17 years.
Buyer's Guide
NETSCOUT nGeniusONE
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about NETSCOUT nGeniusONE. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
816,636 professionals have used our research since 2012.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I rate the solution's stability a ten out of ten.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have 30 solution users in our organization. I rate its scalability a nine out of ten.
How was the initial setup?
The solution's initial setup process is complicated as multiple managers, applications, and protocols are involved. It takes one or two hours for each device. We require a team of four engineers for maintenance as well.
What was our ROI?
The solution generates a return on investment for us. It works efficiently to find the root cause of errors.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We have a premium customized contract for the solution. So, it has all the features we require. There are no additional expenses.
What other advice do I have?
I recommend the solution to others and rate it a ten out of ten.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:
Director at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Effective risk discovery, high availability, and simple implementation
Pros and Cons
- "The most valuable feature of NETSCOUT nGeniusONE is it helps customer to understand what risks are in their network. For example, if a customer has some wrong configurations. It could cost them some critical services to slow down."
- "NETSCOUT nGeniusONE can improve the detection of what area of the infrastructure could be having an issue, such as an application, server, or network. It needs to find evidence of a fault."
What is our primary use case?
The use case depends on the use case of the customer. For example, service providers will check the subscriber control plan or maybe the user input. However, banking customers might use it for their internet banking service.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature of NETSCOUT nGeniusONE is it helps customer to understand what risks are in their network. For example, if a customer has some wrong configurations. It could cost them some critical services to slow down.
What needs improvement?
NETSCOUT nGeniusONE can improve the detection of what area of the infrastructure could be having an issue, such as an application, server, or network. It needs to find evidence of a fault.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using NETSCOUT nGeniusONE for approximately 10 years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
NETSCOUT nGeniusONE is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of NETSCOUT nGeniusONE can be good but it depends on the customer's budget.
In my company, we have 12 people using the solutions.
How are customer service and support?
Most of the support agents are good.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup of NETSCOUT nGeniusONE for enterprise is simple. It only takes one to two hours to complete. However, the time for the implementation can increase depending on the use case of the customer. For example, there are some proprietary customer applications or they have special network designs. We need to receive more information from customers to discuss it with them to decide how we can fine-tune the system.
For a service provider, it will be more complicated because in one total solution they will combine five or more NETSCOUT solutions inside.
What about the implementation team?
For some customers, we need to work with them to receive many parts, such as some applications, which we will need to speak to the applications team. Additionally, there could be some services we need to monitor in the database, and in this case, we have to contact their database team.
We require more than two people for the deployment and maintenance of the solution.
What was our ROI?
My clients have received a return on investments and have expanded.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I rate the price of NETSCOUT nGeniusONE a four out of five.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to others is if you need a solution to monitor your critical events or critical service based on an IP environment, then you must use this kind of solution
I rate NETSCOUT nGeniusONE a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Reseller
Buyer's Guide
NETSCOUT nGeniusONE
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about NETSCOUT nGeniusONE. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
816,636 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Sales Engineer | Technical Sales | Pre-Sales at SUSE
Has the ability to give insight into assigning the problem, with relevant information, to the correct team
Pros and Cons
- "The ability of the dashboards is useful for discover, mapping and understanding of application behaviour."
- "The initial deployment is tedious and requires a lot of build, deployment and configuration time. Experience is key to a successful deployment."
What is our primary use case?
This solution has been implemented at banks and retailers to focus on network-based application performance management.
Aligning the solution with a visibility layer (taps, aggregation taps, and packet brokers - Ixia and Cubro), NMs system (Sintrex) we were able to deliver information relating to various applications and their behaviour.
Creating an environment where you triage a problem quickly and provide valuable information allows for improved MTTR.
This allows for a cross-silo approach, enhanced visibility, which enhances IT to better service the business.
How has it helped my organization?
We have partnered with Netscout over many years with various solutions - TruView, nGeniusOne, Infinistream, XG, etc.
With the focus on customer-defined applications and triggers we have been able to provide important information to clients regarding their application performance.
It has played an integral part in providing valuable information in a critical arena.
The ability to use pre-defined applications and configure client-specific applications allows for a comprehensive solution that enables all teams within the IT organization.
What is most valuable?
The combination of triggers with the ability to generate alarms.
The ability of the dashboards is useful for discover, mapping and understanding of application behaviour.
The ability to define client-specific applications.
If required, you can view up to a millisecond of what the behavior of the application is.
The ability to give insight into assigning the problem, with relevant information, to the correct team.
Detailed reporting that can be built with various perspectives and metrics.
Various dashboards can be built to service various applications or security teams.
What needs improvement?
The initial deployment is tedious and requires a lot of build, deployment and configuration time. Experience is key to a successful deployment.
It is critical to work with the network team to understand how the data flows across the estate to ensure that you tap, aggregate, de-capsulate, de-crypt, and de-duplicate correctly.
From these points, you need to ensure that the logical strategy and configuration suits the correct reporting and visibility as to ensure that you get the most out of any potential logical context.
It is also important to ensure that you spend time to understand the applications you want to profile and work with the application owners to ensure that everything is aligned correctly.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using this solution at multiple clients for many years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
In general, the stability is good, but we have had one or two incidents where specialized support was required.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution can scale in most directions, bandwidth, hardware, virtual taps, etc.
How are customer service and technical support?
We have a good relationship with the vendor. They are always willing to help, but due to the complexity of the environment solving problems can take some time.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We have previously made use of nMetrics, Spyke and older versions of the Netscout product range and still make use of ExtraHop Reveal (x).
We do however try to fit the need of the customer to the best solution and the vendor they prefer.
How was the initial setup?
Initial setup and configuration is complex and tedious and requires a methodical approach with experienced engineers.
What about the implementation team?
For complex implementations, we rely on the vendor for more support.
What was our ROI?
The return on investment is directly linked to the deployment, configuration, and management of the solution.
If you make it a priority, you will experience good ROI.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It is important to spread the cost across the various IT silos as this solution works as an umbrella to provide information to all teams.
Try to target major aggregation points in your network to deliver the best potential data to the solution. You can from that point start to target specific areas to resolve specific issues or gain particular insight into certain areas.
Do not forget applications traverse North-South as well as East-West and in layers of those. Think about your typical WAN breakout, Layer 2 connections, Virtualized environments, and servers supported by back-to-back connections (eg. web server supported by DB server, with a direct connection).
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Sintrex Flow Module, ExtraHop Reveal (x) - the reason we went with nGeniusOne was because the client has that they require a specific solutiion that NetScout answers, already deployed other Netscout solutions or that they had a specific function in mind (eg. InfiniStream tagging)
What other advice do I have?
It is always important to understand the problems you are trying to solve, what insight you are trying to gain and that this is a solution for the business, not just a specific IT silo or team.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: We make use of the NetScout platforms to help solve customer problems.
Network Engineer at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
It helps us with uptime and eases our experience
Pros and Cons
- "The speed that you can get from the top of a problem all the way down to the packet layer of troubleshooting analysis."
- "The product is a little complicated."
What is our primary use case?
We use this to investigate various network anomalies, application performance issues, and anything that somebody can't seem to solve in our environment.
How has it helped my organization?
As the network team, we get engaged when somebody having a problem with an application, and they have run into so many walls that they've come to us. The network team typically manages this from top to bottom, so we use it to troubleshoot.
This solution helps us get to the root cause. Most recently, we had a third-party vendor who was experiencing trouble. They said it was our problem, trying to determine if something was wrong with the SSL connection. They spent some time looking at it, like days or weeks even looking at this. When they came to us, and said “Can you get a packet capture? Can you tell us what is going on?” We were able to identify it in about a minute.
We use this solution for unified communication application performance. It help us with uptime and eases our experience. There are user experiences that we've been able to get to the root cause of very quickly using their tools. We have found QoS mismatch and different anomalies in the QoS configuration. We have used this to troubleshoot and find issues, where we could explain exactly why a client was behaving the way it was. It might not be necessarily security, but technical.
What is most valuable?
The speed that you can get from the top of a problem all the way down to the packet layer of troubleshooting analysis.
The dependency mapping might be one of the best pieces of the product. We have not leveraged it as fully as we can, but it is an extremely powerful piece.
What needs improvement?
The product is a little complicated.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been using it for a long time, since 1998.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is a very stable product, if it's properly implemented. Anybody who is using the product should probably use Professional Services to implement it properly.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It's very scalable.
How are customer service and technical support?
Technical support is superior among most of the support centers that I have dealt with.
How was the initial setup?
Our environmental is complicated. So, the initial setup was a bit complex, but it was as simple as it could have been made.
What about the implementation team?
We used NETSCOUT Professional Services years ago.
If the single pane of glass can be effectively implemented, it is very powerful. However, if you're not working with NETSCOUT closely, this is a little difficult. Overall, it is a very good pane of glass to provide customers.
If you are going to do a deployment of this product, you should use NETSCOUT Professional Services or have an expert.
What was our ROI?
For common issues, we have seen a measurable decrease in mean time to know (MTTK) and mean time to repair (MTTR).
It has cut the troubleshoot time on many issues. It has cut some problems from days to hours (or less).
It has helped increase our application/network uptime.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
It is a little overall pricey and expensive, but you get what you pay for.
What other advice do I have?
We haven't used it as much for IT deployments, but we do use it occasionally after a deployment to troubleshoot when somebody is having problems with their deployment.
I'm looking at their nGenious Visibility-as-a-service to try and leverage product. The struggle that most of people have with it: The product isn't all we do. We're not just looking at NETSCOUT all day. If you have somebody that you can dedicate to NETSCOUT, it would be an incredible investment. However, most companies don't, so I'm looking at their nGenious Visibility-as-a-service because I'm in the position where I know I can get more from the product.
It is a great investment. The product is superior, but it's difficult to manage, keep current, be in front of, and be proactive with it.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Senior Staff Engineer at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
It benefits us by finding situations in our networks that we don't know exist
Pros and Cons
- "It helps us get to the root cause quickly. It helps us find massive error codes, then we drill down on that error code, knowing that is the source of our problem."
- "The technical support could improve a bit with quicker responses for early on questions. What I think are simple questions are taking a long time to get answers to."
What is our primary use case?
Detecting network issues which aren't obvious, more than just node alarms.
How has it helped my organization?
It benefits us by finding situations in our networks that we don't know exist.
It helps us get to the root cause quickly. It helps us find massive error codes, then we drill down on that error code, knowing that is the source of our problem.
What is most valuable?
It is on the wire. We see everything: all the packets.
I have a positive impression of the single pane of glass view. The feature is nice. Everything is structured around a drill down, starting with one pane, then drilling down.
What needs improvement?
It is a good product with a few limitations. It is so complex and takes a bit of training to figure out. We need better training, so we can take this complex solution and implement it more easily.
Change the font size on the grid in nGeniusONE so the names of the grids will all fit on the grid tiles. The font is so large that you can't see the name.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is mostly good. However, we just had an outage.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We haven't scaled much. Talking to other customers, it sounds like it scales well.
How are customer service and technical support?
The technical support is mostly good. They could improve a bit with quicker responses for early on questions. What I think are simple questions are taking a long time to get answers to.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We wanted visibility that we did not have with our tools at the time. We had an Ericsson type solution, which we added this solution to.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was complex. It was hard to know what to tap and how to tap. We are still wrestling with TAPs and light levels, then filtering.
What about the implementation team?
We deployed the solution in-house.
What was our ROI?
This solution has cut our overall troubleshooting time by several days. It has helped increase our application/network uptime.
We have engineers spending less time troubleshooting the network. That has to have some return on investment.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
NETSCOUT was sitting on the wire. The other vendors that we looked at were taking flows from network nodes instead of sitting on the wire, and we liked the wire better.
What other advice do I have?
NETSCOUT is a good product, but you need to spend the time training-wise to figure it out and make it useful.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Network Engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
The product is efficient, but the learning curve is very steep
Pros and Cons
- "This solution provides us with increased visibility while conducting IT deployments. E.g., if we have devices which have overloaded or links which have saturated, then this tool tells us exactly what is going on with that link or device. Very few tools do it at this level for things like DDoS."
- "We see it overload once in a while. It doesn't have built-in protection. Therefore, once it gets too much data, it tends to crash. Then, we have to recover it."
What is our primary use case?
The primary use case is troubleshooting.
How has it helped my organization?
We were able to find working hardware, which we were not able to do it with any other tools.
This solution provides us with increased visibility while conducting IT deployments. E.g., if we have devices which have overloaded or links which have saturated, then this tool tells us exactly what is going on with that link or device. Very few tools do it at this level for things like DDoS.
The solution help you get to root cause quickly.
What is most valuable?
It provides very low details. I can't get this low of level detail from any other tool, down to the packet level.
What needs improvement?
They can improve the UI. For example, with all modern tools, they generate a shared URL, like a Slack URL. Somebody clicks and they see the exact same thing as you. With this tool, if you want to tell somebody how to get to your view, you have to give pointer steps.
The single pane of glass is a decent effort, but it is not how things are done these days.
It is not a good monitoring tool. It is more like response tool for us.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We see it overload once in a while. It doesn't have built-in protection. Therefore, once it gets too much data, it tends to crash. Then, we have to recover it.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability becomes very expensive quickly.
How are customer service and technical support?
The technical support is excellent.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was complex. There are a lot of things that you need to configure together. There is not one push button. You have to feed a lot of data into the initial configs before it starts working.
Do your research before you jump in. These type of solutions take a long time to build. Spend a few months doing the research before you jump into it, because once you start and get the project going, it's very hard to roll back or switch off.
What about the implementation team?
We worked directly with NETSCOUT for the deployment.
What was our ROI?
We have seen a measurable decrease in mean time to know (MTTK) and mean time to repair (MTTR).
This solution has cut our overall troubleshooting time.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The license becomes cost prohibitive very quickly.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We always use a mix of different tools, and NETSCOUT is one of them.
One advantage that NETSCOUT has in the market is a very broad range of products. They cover a whole range of 11 products, where other vendors tend to be specialized, with a more narrow field. So, NETSCOUT is a good end-to-end vendor.
What other advice do I have?
The product is efficient, but the learning curve is very steep. Also, the technology feels a bit outdated.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Systems Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
The single pane of glass view makes life simpler
Pros and Cons
- "With the Vprobes, we quickly identified issues on the application servers, which we normally couldn't, where it usually would be a full circle round between our NOC and server people."
- "I would like more in-depth convergence between all the applications, especially when I look for information through a data mine."
What is our primary use case?
Our primary use case for NETSCOUT nGeniusONE is to monitor what is coming in and out, then distinguish where we have problems in our network.
How has it helped my organization?
With the Vprobes, we quickly identified issues on the application servers, which we normally couldn't, where it usually would be a full circle round between our NOC and server people.
This solution provides us with increased visibility while conducting IT deployments.
We have seen a small decrease (10 to 20 percent) in our overall troubleshooting time.
What is most valuable?
The sessions, where everything is graphically displayed out, which allow people in our NOC to quickly figure things out.
The single pane of glass view makes life simpler.
The dependency mapping provides quicker analysis and quicker resolution. We are able to pinpoint problems quicker online.
What needs improvement?
I would like more in-depth convergence between all the applications, especially when I look for information through a data mine.
It has a lot of what I like to use, but some features are not there yet. It is sometimes even going down to older protocols still getting used in the world right now.
They need to improve using voice other SIP.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using this solution for at least six years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is good, so far. We are probably five nines up.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is definitely scalable, as long as we do things right.
How are customer service and technical support?
The technical support has been superb, so far. We have a sales engineer who works directly with us. He has been awesome.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
The biggest reason for the switch that we're going through right now is that it is a Solaris box running old C++ code. That definitely needs to be replaced, as that technology is dead. This is more of solidifying a two-vendor solution to make life easier for people working on troubleshooting.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was straightforward.
What was our ROI?
We have definitely seen ROI.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Network System Admin at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
For VoLTE, it provides visibility into network operations
Pros and Cons
- "From the standpoint of VoLTE and related things, it's providing visibility into the network and how it operates."
- "Our biggest area of concern right now, supporting the applications, is that while NETSCOUT does a good job of monitoring the network and the applications, we need more visibility into system health and performance monitoring."
What is our primary use case?
Network troubleshooting is our primary use case.
How has it helped my organization?
nGeniusONE provides us with increased visibility while conducting a deployment. I'm not on the IT side, I'm on the carrier side, but it provides that increased visibility for us.
From the standpoint of VoLTE and related things, it's providing visibility into the network and how it operates. It has also improved our ability to troubleshoot end-customer issues.
What is most valuable?
One of the valuable features is permanent user perspective, getting to the one pane of glass, so that they can use one tool for multiple purposes.
What needs improvement?
In terms of the single pane of glass view, NETSCOUT has many tools. I think NG1 provides that single pane for a lot of things, but users are still using several different applications within the NETSCOUT realm of applications, and more integration would be helpful.
Our biggest area of concern right now, supporting the applications, is that while NETSCOUT does a good job of monitoring the network and the applications, we need more visibility into system health and performance monitoring. We need something that will monitor the tool that monitors the network.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Stability, for us, has been an issue but, to some degree, I think that's from a standpoint of capacity. People are wanting more from the system than what we originally deployed it for, so it's pushed it to its limit. As a result, we're deploying additional capacity.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It seems to be scalable. We have a pretty big installation. Once we get capacity in place, I think it will resolve a lot of our issues.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
The main driver was VoLTE, but also getting to a single pane of glass, so that we can have one tool to monitor end-to-end performance. Before nGeniusONE we used Empirix and we still have that solution in place today for some things.
How was the initial setup?
To some degree, the initial setup was complex because of the nature of the application. But, as things go, I wouldn't describe it as any more complex than anything else.
What about the implementation team?
We worked directly with NETSCOUT.
What was our ROI?
I don't have access to the numbers to give a black and white answer, but I think that our company will get that return on investment over time.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I didn't get to choose. I support what the business chooses. I've supported several applications in this area, and my experience with NETSCOUT has been positive to date.
What other advice do I have?
I've been speaking to people who were having some technical issues with our NETSCOUT deployment, but when it works it absolutely helps us get to root cause more quickly.
I would rate it pretty close to a ten out of ten. It's a very complex application and system, and the support from our NETSCOUT resources has been stellar.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Buyer's Guide
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Updated: November 2024
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