vRealize Network Insight Reviews

It's not just on the networking side that we use it. We use vRealize products in our product data, in developing software, as a managed cloud provider. We use vRealize Network Insight as part of our product, which can later be used by the support team to check all the problems which are arising in the network itself. We use software-defined networking, SDN. That's one reason we are using it.

In terms of its performance, we are still in a beta version of our product itself. We are not using it greatly in production yet but we will be using it in two or three months, down the line. There are network flows that we need to know about, if there are any anomalies in the network itself - depending upon the network that our team has deployed. That's the reason we use the vRNI tool, to look into all these parameters.

We also use it for a few performance parameters, depending upon if there are any configuration issues in the network that we have deployed. vRNI has given us a few recommendations on how we can actually set up our firewalls.

It saves us on our SLA times because we are getting directly to the troubleshooting points. That is one of the main things that we are benefiting from. Whenever we have problems with our environment, we are able to solve them a bit sooner than we might otherwise have been able to. These benefits are directly connected to monetary benefits. It has helped to reduce time to value.

While increased performance depends upon what we are using in our networks, Network Insight is more towards how we actually see the entire network as a whole. Performance is mostly determined by what physical parts we are using in the network. While vRNI does not exactly increase the performance, we can better use the network we do have.

Finally, it provides deep visibility.

It has its own UI where you can actually see all the problems. It can directly list all the problems that we're having in the network. Not only that, but it also gives us recommendations on how we can troubleshoot issues. That helps us to go to the problem in the network and not look around at a hundred places to actually troubleshoot a single issue. That's one of the most common use cases we have, troubleshooting the problems in our network.

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. 

I also think it is intuitive and user-friendly. I've been using this product for a long time now. If you look at the UI, you see how user-friendly it is. It has a lot of features in it and it has a lot of options that you can go through. Everything that you actually need to know is covered in the product.

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.

It is quite stable. We haven't had any downtime with it.

We have not tried to scale it yet.

The implementation is quite straightforward. We were able to go ahead and install it with the plans and recommendations that were provided.

We have also upgraded it. There are two proxy platform VMs when it comes to Network Insight. In the newer versions what I discovered is that you can directly install it through the UI, so it's a little automated. In the older versions, we had to do it from the CLI. So this is a new feature in it.

I would recommend the product. I don't think there is any other product like this on the market right now.

I rate this product at seven out of ten because the product is great but there are still a few more improvements that can be made to it, as I said above. It could have more physical devices integrated and supported.

When selecting any type of vendor, our most important criteria is support.

It's mainly for monitoring so that we can design our NSX firewalls.

Previously, we had no idea how the dataflow worked. We knew how all the applications and servers worked, but we never knew how the dataflow was happening. vRNI provides more insight into the dataflow.

It definitely saves times because we are not using this for performance monitoring and not really for monitoring for troubleshooting.

Dataflow. We tag our virtual machines and then we try to find out the traffic between the web server and app servers, and the traffic between the Dev servers and Prod servers, so that we can build the firewalls around them.

We just started using it so I don't really know a lot of the features yet.

The stability is good. It has never crashed.

I haven't tried to scale it yet.

We had the VMware Professional Services team when we started with our NSX project. They helped us set this up and familiarized us with how to use it. They were helfpul.

If you have a VMware suite and you are going to use NSX, then I would definitely recommend vRNI.

I rate the solution at eight out of ten. I'm still getting familiar with it. The UI, even though once you get to know it, it's easier, still it's hard to figure out by yourself. You have to go read, watch videos. It has a lot of data on it. So that is an issue.

The primary use case is for tracking flows within the data center and it has worked very well.

It has given us much better insight into how we're deploying and how we perform after we deploy. It has also definitely helped to reduce time to value, and definitely helped provide deep visibility.

We tend to rely on vROps for the monitoring aspect, the performance piece of it, but that's because we're particularly focused on capacity right now. I expect to run the two in parallel when we're in a more operational model, where I will have the day-to-day folks deeply involved. Right now, it's still primarily run by engineers.

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.

It's intuitive and user-friendly. It makes perfect sense to somebody familiar with the VMware world.

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

We've had no issues at all with stability. It has been solid.

Scalability is still untested by us.

The team has used technical support, although I am not familiar with the outcomes. We've generally been happy with VMware support across the board, so I can't imagine the experience has been different for this product.

We came to the conclusion that we needed to invest in a new solution by working with the VMware team. It was not an impulsive decision by any means.

The best ROI is "sane deployments." It's not intuitive, but it has actually helped us keep the number of deployments down, and we definitely get placement right the first time much more often.

If you're VMware shop, investigate this deeply because it makes sense to live in the ecosystem.

The use case is to get insight into the network, how many resources are being used. We look at the GUI and see what kind of traffic flows are happening east-west, and who is talking to whom, and how much bandwidth is consumed. That can even give us some idea about capacity planning.

It gives the visibility that was either broken or there in pieces only. This solution provides a unified view of the whole system, back and forth. It has helped to reduce time to value, increase performance, more easily manage networks, and provide deep visibility.

• The netflow
• The information flow
• Who is talking to whom, top-talkers
• User-friendly

I would like to see them expand the capabilities to infrastructure types other than just VMware.

So far it has been stable. We are not using it to a stress-test level yet, but it seems stable.

We are not using it at the full-blown scale, but for the limited scale, it works well. It's fast, it's not slowing down.

Technical support has been pretty good.

We used multiple other tools before. And even now, it's all in parallel. We have different tools running in different domains.

This provides a holistic view. The other computer tools provide certain pieces of it. This has a more holistic approach, the big picture.

It's definitely worth investigating. You need to look at the environment, but it's worth the time to look into it and see if it fits with your purposes.

We use it to capture the logs from the network and then build and figure out the policies for microsegmentation. In addition, if anything goes down, it captures the logs.

We have it integrated with vCenter and NSX Manager. It captures the logs from there, and then it updates the logs. From there we can figure things out. Also, we can make a bubble and then we can figure out the grouping.

It helps a lot because, until now, we haven't had the tools to figure out the micro level, VM-to-VM kind of traffic; that was not in the current environment. We could not figure out VM-to-VM communication from the other tools. This is the tool which gives us end-to-end transparency.

It has helped reduce time to value. It helps us to troubleshoot, to know exactly where the problem is.

I like the automation part. For the network, it can capture the logs and we can do automation from there. We get all the logs whenever we want and it keeps the logs for a month or so, so we can just go in and figure out what the issue was, as much as one month back.

I want to see more in terms of microsegmentation. As of now, I can see the rules, but they are not in a readable format that I can convert to microsegmentation and can fit into NSX Manager. I'm looking for that kind of feature.

Also, while it is user-friendly for the virtual part, it is not as friendly for the physical part.

We have not had any outages, any crashes.

We are using about 400-plus hosts, so it is capable of a big scale. We haven't scaled up beyond that, but it is good.

Technical support is very helpful.

We did not have a previous solution. We just implemented NSX recently, so we just installed vRNI along with that.

For Network Insight, the setup is very straightforward.

I would tell a colleague who is looking into this or a similar solution that vRNI is a great tool because, without it, it would be impossible to manage the operations part.

I rate vRNI at eight out of ten. For the other two points, I would need more regarding the microsegmentation part. It doesn't give me the clarity I want. It captures a lot, but it doesn't give complete clarity. That is something I am looking for.

When looking for a vendor, support is the main criteria.

• Provides us a map of what's going on - on our network.
• Allows us to start microsegmentation.

The benefits are it gives us insight into our network, which we can't get anywhere else.

It's helping us to scope our firewall rules.

Maybe improve the fonts.

It's really stable.

It's very scalable.

No.

We were not previously doing something else. When we were going to NSX, we knew we needed to do this. This is just part of our movement towards that.

I was involved in the initial setup. It was really straightforward.

In-house.

Look at the following:

• Stability
• Interoperability with what you own
• Price.

For this, really nobody. Just VMware.

If they have VMware, and they're gonna stick with it, then this is probably the tool they want to look at for their network flow.

Just know what your network is and what you intend to do in terms of segmentation. Know your network, know your environment.

Our primary use case is to use it do design and for troubleshooting the future.

We have had the product for three weeks now.

We can see everything going on in NSX and get a good picture of our environment.

It is still in our lab environment.

• Its open design.
• Figure out what's being used in our environment.
• Building roles.

The product is slightly complex use, while still being user-friendly. It could use more training modules, as it is not a straightforward product.

It is pretty stable.

The technical support has been good so far.

We've owned NSX for three years and now starting to deploy it, which is why we went with vRNI. We did not even consider another solution to go with it.

The initial setup was simple. It took about an hour.

They are coming onsite in about two weeks.

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

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

Do the training before purchasing. Research the product and its competitors.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: technical knowledge. They need to understand their product.

From the time that it was available, we've been using it for various reasons and it's been proven quite successful in our virtual portfolio products, especially in the VMware environment. While we don't use the solution per se, we do sell it to clients and offer support.

It's normally deployed in the virtual blinds mode, within our customer base. Then we take that as part of one of two of the things we do. We use it as a baseline and an assessment enabler to enable the assessment around the network typology. Users get a lot of value. They can see which application is talking to which application through which virtual machine, through which virtual switches, et cetera. Then users can take that information and meet with the client or their team and then remediate the environment so that it is more optimal. The best traffic routes and flow can be found and optimized. That's two of the typical use cases. One is for assessment and one is for optimization.

Thirdly, users can operationalize their teams or customers so that they can use it themselves going forward.

The analysis part of the network insights is very useful for us and our clients. It gives us the most value. I like it in terms of getting the typology and in terms of learning which application is talking to which application, et cetera. The assessment component is the best part of the feature.

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

Beyond that, I can't speak to any features that may be lacking. I don't work on the product on a personal level. I only get feedback from my engineering team and through them I have a bit of an understanding of the product.

We've been using the solution since inception. 

We haven't had any complaints about the stability of the solution or heard of any issues. None of our clients have mentioned running into bugs or glitches. There haven't been crashes.

I personally haven't tried to scale the solution, so I can't speak to how easy or hard it would be.

Our engineering team has contacted technical support many times. From what I understand, they are very, very good and responsive and usually find the solutions to your problems quite easily.

The initial setup of the solution is very, very straightforward. New users will find it quite simple to set up.

According to our deployment teams, as long as they have the right access to the environment, and they've created the right ports it just takes a couple of hours. The deployment is quite quick.

We are a reseller of VMware. We're known as a principal partner and we have the highest level of partnership agreement an organization can have with VMware.

Our organization is quite a large organization that deals, and we have many various different business units concentrating on specific enterprise applications.

In terms of advice I would give to other companies, my personal opinion is that they shouldn't waste time, especially if they know what they want, and start moving towards a cloud consumption-based environment. Network insight is critical. Without that, you're going to introduce additional latencies and problems into your environment that you don't want. So, as a first step to your cloud journey, you have to have a good view of your network environment - especially with your applications and how they are talking to all the other applications. It is critical. I think it's a must-have.

I'd rate the solution eight and a half out of ten.