VMware Aria Operations for Logs Reviews

My company's clients use the product for monitoring purposes and capacity planning.

The most valuable aspect of the solution is related to its features revolving around capacity planning, which helps users when a new project comes up since a user just needs to put the requirements in the product, and it will notify how many more resources are needed for the project. The tool offers recommendations in terms of informing users which VMs are oversized or undersized, allowing users to efficiently manage the resources accordingly.

From an improvement perspective, I think that though the tool offers integration with other solutions and some dashboards are available, they are not full-fledged ones. Suppose there is a need for the integration of VMware Aria Operations for Logs with Cisco or any other hardware storage solutions, and if a customer needs a single pane of glass monitoring, then such a functionality is not in place as of now. The aforementioned areas of concern can be considered for improvement of the product.

The product's price falls on the higher end of the spectrum, making it an area of concern. From an improvement perspective, the product's price can be reduced.

In relation to the product, the area of cloud operations is a little bit complicated, making it one of the elements where improvements can be made.

I have been using VMware Aria Operations for Logs for eight years. My company operates as a system integrator of the product.

It is a highly stable solution.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine or ten out of ten.

It is a highly scalable solution.

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

My company deals with enterprise customers who use the product with 500-odd VMs.

The solution's technical support takes a lot of time to reply to our queries related to the product, and sometimes, my company is unable to contact the solution's support team directly. I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

Positive

The product's deployment phase is easy.

The solution can be deployed in a day or two.

One architect and one engineer can manage the product's deployment phase.

The solution is deployed on the cloud and on an on-premises model.

My company has experienced a return on investment from using the product as we could reduce 20 percent of the efforts we used to apply in the monitoring area. The solution has also improved efficiency by 20 to 25 percent.

I rate the product's price a six on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive. My company makes yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. There are no additional payments besides the licensing costs attached to the solution.

The product's maintenance phase is easy.

One person can manage the product's maintenance phase, which involves areas like the product's upgrades, updates, and monitoring.

VMware Aria Operations for Logs is a good tool since it is possible to integrate it with all major public clouds. With VMware Aria Operations for Logs, you can adapt to a single solution that offers centralized monitoring on hybrid clouds or multi-cloud environments.

I rate the overall tool a nine out of ten.

The solution is used for troubleshooting in our application. Since we have a lot of components like email components and third-party components, the solution helps in managing the logs, and it helps in correlating the logs between products and in finding the problem in our infrastructure. 

We also use the solution if we want to debug something or if something is not working as expected, and it verifies everything. Also if there is any question about the infrastructure not resuming.

The solution's simplicity, flexibility, and extensibility are valuable features as we can integrate everything in vRealize. We have customers who create

customer agents, to be deployed on every component to be monitored with vRealize.

In vRealize login files, we have limitations regarding log partitions. We are limited to a maximum of five partitions, but in our case, we need more. Is it possible to provide more log partitions? I would like to see more log partitions in the next version.

I have been using the solution for two years.

It is a very useful and stable solution for troubleshooting and for going forward with any issue.

I prefer to talk about connection for Log Insight because vRealize is the expert connection for component logs. So we have a lot of components and plug them into their live Log insight. 

We have a rich VMware ecosystem with many components: the NSX, the SCCs, the data center, and the SQL. So every component we have is configured with the vRealize. So there are over fifty connections to support logs in general Log Insight.

The initial setup was straightforward. The solution was deployed quickly, but we are very specific in our case as we use Boolean Block Infrastructure based on VTS/VCF. Also, the VTS/VCF comes with their live suite, so there is a VN and a second manager for the solution we manage.

I don't know exactly how many technical guys were needed as the file got deployed very quickly, but to manage and configure the solution in the right way, a lot of staff were required to fit exactly what we needed for test practice configuration, and for every component they delivered logs on their licensing side. So the technical guys took some time.

In the case of my clients now, the platform was deployed by VMware. But for me, I deployed it myself many times.

I have not seen any Return on Investment yet. This is the job that the marketing and technical staff have to do.

The licensing cost is charged by VMware.

My advice is to apply for the documentation and to follow the command of the official documentation to use it.

I rate it nine out of ten.

We use Log Insight when a log has been rotated in another product and we can't find it or when we need to locate incidents in the log. It has a log history going back to about six months ago. This is customizable, even on the environment side. Log Insight is used by 10 people on the operations team.

Log Insight correlates with the VMware product log. It can assemble the logs you want, making it easier to find the output, incident, or keyword you want to search.

Log Insight should be better at dealing with audits and security logs. We use another product called QRadar for that. 

We've been using Log Insight for about five or six years.

Log Insight is stable.

You can scale Log Insight by adding more storage if you want to extend the log archive.

I rate VMware support seven out of 10. 

Neutral

Setting up Log Insight is easy. The deployment time depends on whether you have a single node or a cluster. 

Log Insight is bundled with other VMware vRealize products. The price depends on whether you have the Advanced or Enterprise bundle.

I rate vRealize Log Insight seven out of 10. It is a good option for monitoring VMware products, but I need to set up a management solution for other products, and sometimes it is not free. 

If you are planning to deploy Log Insight, you need to understand the architecture, environment size, and features you want to get from the solution.  You don't want to pay for features you don't need. You also need to ensure your infrastructure is compatible. 

The primary use is for system log collection and analysis. 

What I like most about the solution is the interactive log analysis and then that we can use the analysis to send alerts. 

I think there are a lot of areas where the product could be improved. To start with I would like the capability to do additional customizations, like integrating with third-party products. Every customer that we have is not using Log Insight. For those people who are using Solarwinds or Splunk or any other monitoring tool, there should be an option to forward the logs from Insights to the other products and options for this that we can choose. It would be good to make it so we can start forwarding logs and analysis to other monitoring systems. 

It would be good to be able to increase log retention. They improved log retention in the latest version. Before it was only 30 days that you could keep the logs, but in the latest version, they have increased that limit to a number of months. One thing that goes along with the enhanced log retention is we need to have a lot of space to store the logs. 

So, integration with other monitoring tools and log retentions are things that should be more under user control. We need to have additional storage, fine. That is okay, we have a lot of storage at our data centers and if necessary we can put in additional disks. 

But the license cost is too much. Compared to the storage costs we will have to increase capacity, the license from vRealize will be more costly. 

We have been using vRealize Log Insight by VMware for a few years, from 2014 to the present. 

I think it is a stable solution. 

It is a scalable solution. I can say that I agree with the claims that it can be scaled. It is an awesome product. Organizationally it is able to cover our needs completely. Most likely we have nearly 40,000 fixed logs. There are a lot of things that we can do with Log Insight. 

We used to have HP OpenView monitoring. Then we moved to Centreon monitoring. Then we moved to Splunk. Then later we changed again to using Log Insight. 

The reason for changing finally to vRealize was it based on the fact that we got a vRealize site license site. Log Insight is a part of the vRealize Suite. With this product, we did not need to buy an additional license for log monitoring. 

The setup and installations are very, very easy and straightforward. There is nothing that takes much effort and in that way it is fine. 

The amount of time that it takes to do the installation depends on how big your infrastructure is. If we are going to do a single node, it may take a few minutes. If you are going to do an installation for a cluster using Log Insight, then it might take some additional time, but it based on the number of modes. It total, it may take an average of twelve hours. 

Log Insight does not cost much when compared to Splunk. The license cost for Splunk or any other monitoring tool is too high. Compared to Insight that way — just looking at the license — the vRealize solution is kind of a cheap and better than other products cost-wise. 

My advice to people looking at Log Insight as a monitoring tool is that it is good and that they can go ahead and go for it because it is a good solution. 

On a scale from one to ten (where one is the worst and ten is the best), I would rate the product overall as an eight-of-ten. 

We primarily use the solution for complete log monitoring and management.

We're able to use the solution to analyze all of our logs, for years to come.

The root cause analysis feature is very valuable.

I don't use the solution on a day to day basis, so I'm not sure what specifically can be improved.

We have quite a few licenses, so for us, it isn't too hard to scale. Right now, we only have 15 users on the solution.

Personally, I don't log calls with technical support. We do, however, have an interior team that can assist with troubleshooting.

We didn't previously use a different solution.

The initial setup was easy.

We have our own interior team that handles the product.

The price of the solution is reasonable.

We use the on-premises deployment model. We're also platinum partners.

In terms of advice to others, if they're looking for a basic VMware solution, it's okay. We've tried other options. Log Insight seems to be better than other solutions in terms of very good integrations and working out items to be able to log.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. All of our must-haves are available in this product.

In our data center, we have too many physical servers and too many hosts. We are not properly optimized. We are implementing this solution and other virtualization to provide us with the best way to place different workloads with the goal of optimizing the environment.

We are using this solution in our data center.

Our current costs are too high, and this tool will help us to better optimize our infrastructure.

The dashboard needs to be improved because this is what I need to monitor my infrastructure.

We have been testing this solution for two months and we plan to fully deploy it next year.

We have not contacted technical support specifically for this solution because we are still just testing. However, we have been using VMware for 15 years and the technical support has always been perfect.

We are currently in an evaluation stage where were are choosing between VMware and Turbonomic. 

For the past 15 years, we have been using VMware for virtualization with ESX, vSphere, and vCenter. We are satisfied with VMware, and we already have this infrastructure in place, so we think that this VRealize Log Insight will be the better choice between products.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We are using it for troubleshooting. We centralize the log information from the VMware products. When we need some troubleshooting or we need to locate some information, it is a central point to check reactively. 

I think having better training options would be an improvement. Paid or free it does not matter, but it is complex to find good training material for vRealize Log Insight. It would be helpful to have an easy way to access some kind of material or if VMware would integrate with the clients who use vRealize Log Insight in a different format.

I have been using vRealize Log Insight for a few years now.

vRealize Log Insight has been running without any issues.

It is possible to increase the scalability of vRealize Log Insight. We have around fifteen administration users currently using it.

We have used technical support and we have had some issues with the knowledge base and faster service.

The initial setup was straightforward and I did not have any challenges.

We use an in-house implementation and it took around three days to deploy.

Pricing is good because it is part of the suite package. It comes in a bundle for us.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate vRealize Log Insight a nine out of ten.

We integrate VMware for our customers. Our customer requested Log Insight, and we tested it. Log Insight is for logging the system to provide more information aside from alerts and anything related to the testing environment. It makes the environment more manageable through a single pane of glass.

Improved manageability is the main benefit.

It gives the customer a quick overview, so they don't have to dig. There's a clear dashboard with many sensors in a single space. He gets a helicopter view of his environment, but he can investigate further if there are serious issues. It's pretty user-friendly.

I would like to see more tutorials or at least an introduction video from the supplier, so you can become proficient and get the most out of the solution. You might not get the full benefit from a logging or reporting solution because you might not have a particular tool enabled. You could leave something out of your analysis because you aren't aware of it or you don't know how to set it up. 

I've worked with Log Insight for a year.

LogInsight is stable, but sometimes it's somewhat sluggish because it has to gather the information. It should be no problem if you deploy it on the right platform and have all the requirements in place. 

LogInsight is scalable. You can update it, and it's straightforward. 

VMware technical support is excellent.

LogInsight is user-friendly and straightforward. I rate it 8.5 out of 10 for ease of setup. After deployment, maintenance isn't a challenge so long as you keep it updated. You may need to update the software to stay in line with the upgrade roadmap, but the rest is fine.

LogInsight's licensing model is a bit complex. Runecast's licensing is more straightforward. On the other hand, licenses for just about anything is expensive, but ultimately it comes down to a return on investment. LogInsight's price is worth it in the long run. A proactive approach in the world saves you a lot of money by preventing catastrophes. 

Still, the license cost is a pain point for the customers. From a sales perspective, our challenge is to persuade the customer to see it as a long-term investment.

We also tried Runecast because we wanted more features to present to our customers. Log Insight is more about reports, while Runecast gave us additional reporting capabilities. 

This was for testing purposes only. We offer VMware, so we're always looking for the latest tools, and we test them for about four months. I have no preference for LogInsight over Runecast. It depends on what you want from the intelligence you're gathering from your system. The more intelligence you have, the easier it is to be proactive about your decision-making. 

Each solution has what the other one lacks.  Runecast is better for some situations, but LogInsight might suit you better in others. It depends on what you need, but both are good. They are not interchangeable. LogInsight is a bit more costly. 

I rate LogInsight seven out of 10. I give it a seven because it isn't easy to scale, and the cost is too high, but it's a good product overall. 

Customers should have a test environment to keep abreast with the latest software available in the industry. They can evaluate it and check themselves as well. Partners like us can help them make the right decision, but it's useful for customers to have their own test environment.