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vRealize Network Insight pros and cons

Vendor: VMware
4.3 out of 5
943 followers
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Pros & Cons summary

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

vRealize Network Insight offers intuitive natural language querying and effective visualization features which enhance user understanding and monitoring capabilities.
It facilitates detailed visibility into network flows and interactions, playing a key role in security compliance and network troubleshooting.
The tool is pivotal in the setup and management of NSX and microsegmentation, simplifying the access control within network environments.
vRealize Network Insight helps organizations to streamline network management, reducing manual efforts and increasing operational efficiency.
It supports comprehensive tracking and analysis of network data, assisting companies in maintaining robust network security and performance analytics.

CONS

vRealize Network Insight needs more interoperability with third-party products and vendors, especially beyond just Cisco equipment.
vRealize Network Insight's integration capabilities with public and private clouds could be improved, especially in relation to interoperability with AWS and VMware collaborations.
There are expectations for vRealize Network Insight to provide deeper analytics into packet inspection and trace flows, utilizing machine learning to detect potential threats.
vRealize Network Insight's compatibility with various infrastructure components and network devices, including physical switches, should be enhanced.
There is a need for vRealize Network Insight to offer more descriptive application awareness, providing detailed insights into applications, users, and related analytics.
 

vRealize Network Insight Pros review quotes

SM
Aug 29, 2018
The ability to use the natural language query and see the visualization is quickly intuitive, and it works very well.
SO
Sep 2, 2018
One of the most valuable features is the ability to look at the traffic flows, to look at NetFlow data.
RS
Sep 5, 2018
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.
Learn what your peers think about vRealize Network Insight. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.
SeniorEn151a - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 5, 2018
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.
MG
Sep 3, 2018
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.
Javed Koor - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 7, 2023
The best feature of this application is its ability to capture everything within the same application, as well as capture all the traffic.
DP
Sep 5, 2018
It allows you to see traffic that you couldn't otherwise see, which is traffic within your Layer 3-bounded network, meaning east-west traffic. It's hard to get that any other way.
BF
Sep 5, 2018
It has really tightened down the security. That was something that we were lacking. It has also given us deep visibility into our network. We can really get down and see all of the traffic within the data center, between the VMs, between the applications, database servers, other application servers, web servers. We can identify everything that is communicating, and we can see it all on one product.
Enterpri525c - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 2, 2018
The solution is extremely intuitive and user-friendly. When you log in to the application you are presented with a dashboard that is very reasonable for an initial user, and you can then customize it to your specific needs. But for all the data that we've found, we've only had to go through two or three drill-downs to get into that information.
LH
Aug 29, 2018
I like being able to see the flows coming in and out of the product. In terms of monitoring network flows, we use it to verify whether or not different servers/applications should be communicating with each other.
 

vRealize Network Insight Cons review quotes

SM
Aug 29, 2018
I would like to see more interoperability on the firewall and low balancer sides.
SO
Sep 2, 2018
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.
RS
Sep 5, 2018
When we talk about those micro-segmentation rules, there's an Export function. It is very macro-segmentation oriented instead. So if you choose an application, it will find the tiers within that application and say that it's communicating on, say, port 80 to a separate VLAN. There might be 200 machines in that other VLAN. You don't want to open port 80 at all of them. So we need a lot more granularity in those suggested firewall rules.
Learn what your peers think about vRealize Network Insight. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.
SeniorEn151a - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 5, 2018
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.
MG
Sep 3, 2018
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.
Javed Koor - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 7, 2023
The only issue we have is that the solution does not always capture the host names.
LH
Aug 29, 2018
It needs to be a little easier to use and to understand the information it's putting out. That would make it more helpful. If you're not a network person you need to understand things like network policies and concepts. If you gave it to a regular admin, it would be nice if it were easier for them to pick up what is going on, understand the flows and whether or not stuff should be talking to each other, as opposed to just port groups and IP addresses.
reviewer1353651 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 15, 2020
The solution is very much viewer centric and it would be nice if it would transcend just the virtual infrastructure.
PB
Mar 9, 2023
There could be some deeper analytics into packet inspection and trace flows. It could use some kind of machine learning to look at Layer 7 traffic for potential malware or corrupt packets.
BC
Aug 29, 2018
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.