We performed a comparison between Azure Network Watcher and Plixer Scrutinizer based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Network Monitoring Software solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."We can manage the entire system across the network and troubleshoot the pain points."
"The most valuable feature of Azure Network Watcher is the cloud-native application firewall. It is helpful for securing databases."
"We use the solution to monitor network services. It helps to capture any network issues."
"It provides good visibility."
"The most valuable feature of Azure Network Watcher is using the gateways with the connections. The monitoring is useful for the logs and application insights into the data. The traffic filtering issues when it comes to deploying those applications are helpful."
"The solution is stable."
"What I like most about Azure Network Watcher is that it's focused more on the architecture. I also like that it has a packet capture feature that tells you how the packet travels and whether it's exiting Azure, etc."
"The most valuable features I have found are typology, visualization, and capture."
"I like the visibility."
"The reporting and generating troubleshooting reports would be the best feature; our host-to-host conversation reporting."
"One of the most valuable features of Plixer Scrutinizer is the reporting, particularly how easy it is to drill down into the reports. Another valuable feature of the solution is its overall visibility. It's great. I also liked Plixer Scrutinizer in terms of deployment time and that it's very simple to set up. Once you get the appliance set up and connected, the customer starts to see results immediately, versus other solutions where that could take a while."
"Visualization of the network traffic is the most valuable feature. It allows you to drill into information quite quickly."
"As a network engineer, the ability to identify what traffic on the link is consuming all the bandwidth at any given time, and provide immediate feedback to the business, is the most valuable feature."
"One feature I found most valuable in Plixer Scrutinizer is the very extensive reporting. Reporting is very flexible, though sometimes you need a little bit of support from Plixer Scrutinizer to create custom-made reporting in a very short time. Reporting is a very strong feature of the product."
"It's agnostic as far as what your network gear is. As long as it supports an sFlow, JFlow, NetFlow, some kind of flow monitoring, Plixer will support it very well."
"There are other tools out there that will do what Scrutinizer does. But what I have found with Scrutinizer is that it does it very quickly. I've taken 25 million individual data fragments from the different sensors, and it has graphed that and mapped it and presented a picture within 30 seconds. It has a very efficient database algorithm that I am really impressed with."
"The solution helps to enrich the data context of our network traffic. It allows me to see what applications are most in use on a slightly historical basis, going back a day or week at tops. It allows me to tune QoS or traffic shaping around what's being used. It saves me from having to unnecessarily upgrade, if I don't need to."
"The Wi-Fi side needs improvement."
"Azure Network Watcher could improve by having other built-in applications. For example, an application to log activities for in and outbound traffic."
"The initial setup and initial learning curve could be improved to be easier."
"Azure is good, however, the Fortinet GUI is more intuitive and I like it more than anything else."
"I still use Wireshark and Azure Network Watcher to get the required data. My team captures the traffic from Azure Network Watcher, downloads it, then imports that traffic into Wireshark to get more details on the number of hits and replies, for example. If you can do that on Azure Network Watcher and have Wireshark built-in, that would make Azure Network Watcher better. If Azure Network Watcher has that functionality where you won't need a third-party tool to get what you need, that would be helpful. I'm also expecting more from Azure Network Watcher. It's more complex than knowing how the IP flows from its source to the destination. The tool also needs more open-source features, such as having some built-in Wireshark that improves monitoring for customers. Sometimes, you encounter a VPN tunnel, network, or routing issue, but finding out more about the blockage is challenging. Is it one hundred percent an Azure issue? Is it a peer issue? You don't get complete information from Azure Network Watcher, so you must use other tools and depend on your strategies to resolve a specific issue. If more features could be added in the next release of Azure Network Watcher, specifically ones you can find on open-source tools, then that would be a plus point for the tool."
"Azure Network Watcher needs to have better documentation and it needs to capture information accurately."
"The initial setup and deployment could be improved to be simplified."
"I would like to see in the future if we can troubleshoot as a firewall because it is equipment as a network player and some diagnostics."
"Lacks sufficient security features."
"We couldn't get it set up properly."
"From what I understand it is that the solution is not very scalable in a high volume traffic environment with a large number of flows."
"The solution creates a visual map of a particular location and how the network flows. You need to spend time to generate all those maps. If they could figure out a way to reduce the time needed to generate the maps, that would be great."
"The visual acuity of how it presents data can sometimes be confusing. It takes a bit for people to spin up how to look at the graphs."
"I wish the reporting side was easier to work with, but it does a decent job. I also wish the reporting side was a little more intuitive or they offered more reporting examples."
"It would be useful if there was a way to back up the configuration information. E.g., if you wanted to deploy a new instance or disaster recovery, you could quite easily deploy and restore the config, as opposed to having to restore all the NetFlow data. If there was just a button that said "backup config information", that would be good."
"In Plixer Scrutinizer, scalability is an area with minor concerns where improvements are required."
"There was a price lift because previously the product was privately owned, and now there is some external capital in the organization, so pricing could be lower, though, for Plixer Scrutinizer, there is almost no competition at this price point."
Azure Network Watcher is ranked 34th in Network Monitoring Software with 9 reviews while Plixer Scrutinizer is ranked 48th in Network Monitoring Software with 15 reviews. Azure Network Watcher is rated 7.8, while Plixer Scrutinizer is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Azure Network Watcher writes "Helpful database security, good support, and beneficial cloud-native application firewall". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Plixer Scrutinizer writes "Advanced reporting runs analytics on NetFlow and provides signature-based recognition of problems in the network environment". Azure Network Watcher is most compared with Microsoft Network Monitor, Nmap, PRTG Network Monitor, SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer and ThousandEyes, whereas Plixer Scrutinizer is most compared with SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, Flowmon , ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer, Cisco Secure Network Analytics and PRTG Network Monitor. See our Azure Network Watcher vs. Plixer Scrutinizer report.
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