Centreon vs SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Centreon and SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two IT Infrastructure Monitoring solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Centreon vs. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer Report (Updated: September 2020).
763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"Centreon helps me detect where the problem is quickly. When we resolve a problem quickly, this lowers our overall costs.""What we like about it is that, whereas with Nagios, by design, if you have five or six data centers, you have to open five or six web pages to see what's going on, In Centreon, this is all included in one page, a single site, one dashboard. You don't have to jump from one specific dashboard to the other.""The product is available in ISO image format, ready for deployment. Centreon also has a comprehensive guide and documentation that are simple and easy to follow.""In addition, the flexibility, customizability, and analytics of Centreon's dashboards are all very good. The dashboards help us see the whole network map, and that is quite valuable for us. In addition, the dashboards have helped to improve our visibility and ability to proactively ensure the right data is available at the right time... The flexibility has given us the ability to add in our own monitoring metrics and that has been quite interesting and very useful for us.""Valuable features include the ability to schedule downtime, intensity or depth of monitoring which it does, different plugin packs, Centreon MAP, Centreon BI.""I can't point to one valuable feature. All of Centreon is good.""Another feature we use is Business Activity, which provides us with an end-user perspective when a service is down or isn't working correctly. This is helpful when monitoring the KPIs. When we see a device or server that isn't working, we find the root cause.""You can concentrate and orchestrate several other solutions from other vendors. You can consolidate those solutions all in one place, then maintain and monitor from that single point. This creates ease of use. It is a very powerful solution from this point of view."

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"What I like the most is the bandwidth assessment.""The most helpful feature of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is bandwidth analysis, which lets you see who's hogging your network.""I like that it is able to monitor multiple devices and it's vendor-agnostic.""They have instructional videos and other information available on the site to assist you with learning it.""What I like about SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is that it's useful for analyzing traffic. It also has an application visibility feature that lets you control applications.""It helps us know when a branch is down because it has a graphic presentation of all the locations a node represents.""NTA's most valuable feature is traffic analysis and visibility.""For managing the traffic, it provides you a response about whether the traffic is down, up, or heavy, which is a very powerful feature. It has a good response time. We have been using this solution for many years, and we don't have any problem with this solution."

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Cons
"Release management and quality of testing need improvement, because with each major upgrade we have many issues coming in. Then, it takes several minor upgrades to get rid of them.""I would like them to improve their documentation. When I faced some issues, I was looking for more documentation on the Internet. There is official documentation on Centreon's website, which sometimes is useful. Sometimes it is not very useful, as you cannot find the information or enough examples of configuration. The answer for me was to contact the support, who helped me, but I was not able to find all the information by myself on Centreon's website. A Centreon community or blog would be helpful.""Centreon needs to improve the granularity of the data as well as the graphical data. It would also be better to if there was improvement to the filtering/grouping system as well as the creation of views.""The problem with the reporting is you have to configure the report, and after that, you will have the same report every month, every week, every day. You have to sync it in order to have a great report.""I would like to see an improvement of the communication with big data systems, because Centreon is a monitoring system. In our point of view, Centreon should be a part of a source for a big data system, not a big data system itself. So, it should be easier to add data from the Centreon system to a big data system. For example, it should be able to teach machine learning.""Centreon supports officially 10,000 services per poller. That is not much for larger customers, because this limit is reached very quickly. We use it with three times the limit without any problems, but Centreon says, "Okay, we are only supporting it with 10,000 services." We are aware that increasing the limit has different impacts because they need to support it. However, for most customers, it would be be very good if they could increase the limit of services.""To get it started is a lot of work, since it comes empty. We had to push information into it to make it work.""There are improvements that they need to make to their API. When we're using different systems and we want to disable monitoring for a specific server, we still can't do that through the API. That's something that's lacking."

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"I'm expecting to see a little bit more artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms. They need a bit more sophistication in that.""SolarWinds' technical support is ok, but it could be faster and more knowledgeable.""It can be complex to set up and configure.""It is a scalable solution, but it is costly to scale. Therefore, I would rate scalability at eight out of ten.""An area for improvement in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is application visibility because some applications aren't being recognized correctly. You can see applications such as Facebook and YouTube, but SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer needs to have more visibility into more applications. Currently, SolarWinds fails to detect more powerful applications, such as Zoom and Teams. If SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer can recognize every application and be able to report on each in terms of bandwidth, then that would be good. This is what I'd like to see in the next release of the solution.""This solution does not do a very good job when I am trying to look deeper into my internal network, in particular with respect to individual ports.""One area that we struggle with is the price. Because the price of this solution is so high, we are largely unable to introduce it into the local market, and only the banking sector has the means to afford it.""The Atlas module that is used for building the network map is very bad."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "It's quite expensive when you use the Enterprise version, but if you compare it to other providers, it's more like a middle-of-the-line product. It's always good to have a price that is lower, but I would say the price is okay because we get very good support and if we have any other issues we can always contact them. There has never been a time when I didn't get help from them."
  • "In terms of licensing, you have to think through if the components that need licensing are really needed. For example, the Map module: If you don't need a map to be shown, I don't see a point in paying for those licenses, if you just use it a couple of times a month or a couple of times a week... You can use the Centreon free version and get the main features. The licensing part is, I would say, only for bigger customers who have the option to pay more and who really need those kinds of modules, fancy reports, etc."
  • "For more complex tasks, we use prepaid support days and ask Centreon to come onsite."
  • "Centreon is an open source product. Thus, there is no need for licensing."
  • "The pricing is acceptable."
  • "They only sell four hour slots for support, so if you have just one question, then you need to pay for four hours. Or, you need to wait until you have enough questions to fill those four hours. They are not flexible in this."
  • "I think Centreon's pricing is fair, especially given the criticality of our system. They were cheaper than the other solutions. The licensing terms were pretty straightforward. I believe it was based on the number of hosts."
  • "The solution is very effective, despite the low price."
  • More Centreon Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "For our environment, we pay approximately $25,000 USD yearly."
  • "The licensing for this solution is based on the number of nodes."
  • "The price of this solution is exceptional."
  • "While the pricing is fair, it could be better."
  • "The pricing is reasonable."
  • "We pay yearly, and we are happy with its price."
  • "We have licenses for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer. In terms of pricing, its license is not that expensive versus other tools such as HP."
  • "Pricing for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is very high. I have a customer that needs the solution but doesn't have the budget for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer because the problem is that you can't use the solution only. You have to buy requirements such as the SolarWinds NPM first, and some companies don't have the budget for all the required components and modules. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer can cost up to $10,000, and some customers don't have that budget. Another product has all the modules that SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer has, with a very low price, that can be a replacement, which is ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer. PRTG is another solution that can replace SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer."
  • More SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Centreon's most valuable features are preventative maintenance and cost-efficiency. Everything is monitored, and we get a log before the system fails. We have an opportunity to fix the issue and avoid… more »
    Top Answer:Centreon is a free open-source platform, but customers who need more advanced functionality can pay for premium scripts and plugins.
    Top Answer:I think Centreon's security could be improved by leveraging AI. That's where things are heading in the industry.
    Top Answer:I have worked from 1973 with all kind of systems in large enterprises across the world. And have experience with all kind of software in monitoring from infra to end to end, it depends on the… more »
    Top Answer:The product is not too expensive. The license is renewed yearly. When it comes to support for NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, it might cost extra. Usually, we pay for support each year, and it lasts for one… more »
    Top Answer:In terms of improvement, it can be complex to set up and configure, and the user guides provided can also be complex, especially when dealing with certain configuration aspects. Improved SQL… more »
    Ranking
    Views
    8,098
    Comparisons
    5,140
    Reviews
    5
    Average Words per Review
    1,019
    Rating
    8.2
    Views
    1,884
    Comparisons
    1,229
    Reviews
    12
    Average Words per Review
    456
    Rating
    8.1
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Netflow Traffic Analyzer
    Learn More
    Overview

    Centreon is an all-in-one IT monitoring solution that is a network, system, applicative supervision, and monitoring tool. It is free and open source, and one of the most flexible and powerful monitoring softwares on the market.

    Centreon Features

    Centreon has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Supervision of hybrid infrastructures, from one end to the other
    • Open and flexible architecture 
    • Open-source solution, downloadable for free
    • Filtering capability in GUI interface
    • Proactive end to end monitoring
    • Easily configurable and simple to handle
    • Dedicated dashboard widgets
    • Scalability
    • Independent application for monitoring
    • End to end reporting with actual logs

    Centreon Benefits

    There are several benefits to implementing Centreon. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Single platform, multi-user rights & access: Centreon is designed with built-in ACL, allowing enterprise users access to the monitored data on a need-to-know basis.
    • Smart data-mapping for customized macro & micro views: Centreon provides real-time custom views in multiple screens with graphic-rich data mapping, which also enables monitoring operators to act and troubleshoot from a distance.
    • Ready monitoring intelligence & reporting: With Centreon, you can easily generate reports of essential operational KPIs by using pre-configured templates, and add reports as needed by exploiting the dedicated monitoring data warehouse.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by Centreon users.

    PeerSpot user Thor M., CEO at a tech services company, says, "The single-pane view provides us a view of all of our network infrastructure, and it is one of the most important tools that we use to see the status of our customers' networks. It provides a nice benefit when it comes to helping align IT operations with business objectives. The top-down views, dashboards, and business context reporting are things that are nice to have because you want to be able to show the customer that everything is working, that problems have been addressed, and that you're providing value.” 

    Thomas C., Managing Director, Canada at Eva, comments, “The most valuable feature of the solution is the flexibility, the ability to integrate all kinds of equipment. As long as something has an IP you can monitor it. What we try to achieve all the time is not only saying a company's system is available, but to give additional data on the performance of the equipment. So the flexibility is what matters the most to us, where we can script everything. Centreon has a lot of Plugin Packs, meaning they support, by design, a lot of devices. And on top of that, we have the ability to add our own scripts and do whatever we want and display the data as we want in the central dashboards.”

    Marcilio L., President at ITS Solucoes, expresses, "The dashboards are valuable because they ease troubleshooting and viewing. It becomes easier to locate the source of a problem... The dashboards make it easier to communicate with our clients. They don't want to see the alert console, they want to see a beautiful dashboard representing their network and their business and to watch it in case something is wrong in their environment."

    Florent Q., Network Engineer at a computer software company, mentions, "The most valuable feature is that we can manually configure everything we need. After it comes inside the interface of Centreon, you can display it. Because the interface is quite user-friendly, you can manually configure the configuration very deeply, which is very pleasant and useful because you can monitor and see everything on your service list, dashboard, or MAP. The most useful feature for me is that you can create your own plugin and monitoring query."

    SolarWinds Netflow Traffic Analyzer enables you to capture data from continuous streams of network traffic and convert those raw numbers into easy-to-interpret charts and tables that quantify exactly how the corporate network is being used, by whom, and for what purpose.
    Sample Customers
    Airbus, Bollore, BT, Canal Plus, Kuehne Nagel, Limagrain, LVMH, Oberthur Technologies, Orange, Darty, Addax Petroleum, Plastic Omnium, Auchan, Valeo, Saint Gobin, Clarins, Hugo Boss, JC Decaux, French Government (Defense, Justice, Environment, Agriculture), OptiComm, Thales, Zeiss.
    Oceaneering International, Asia Pacific Network Information Centre, 335th Signal Command, Immofori
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company33%
    Logistics Company22%
    Comms Service Provider11%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Government11%
    Financial Services Firm9%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company29%
    Financial Services Firm18%
    Real Estate/Law Firm6%
    Retailer6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization62%
    Computer Software Company6%
    Financial Services Firm5%
    Government3%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business42%
    Midsize Enterprise21%
    Large Enterprise38%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise58%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business32%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise56%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business9%
    Midsize Enterprise66%
    Large Enterprise26%
    Buyer's Guide
    Centreon vs. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer
    September 2020
    Find out what your peers are saying about Centreon vs. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer and other solutions. Updated: September 2020.
    763,955 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Centreon is ranked 10th in IT Infrastructure Monitoring with 5 reviews while SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is ranked 6th in Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) with 14 reviews. Centreon is rated 8.6, while SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of Centreon writes "Great ready-to-use connectors and integrations with excellent visual dashboards". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer writes "Good real-time traffic reports, but uncomfortably high pricing and mediocre support". Centreon is most compared with Zabbix, PRTG Network Monitor, Nagios Core, Icinga and Datadog, whereas SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is most compared with ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer, Zabbix, Cisco Secure Network Analytics, SolarWinds NPM and Wireshark. See our Centreon vs. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer report.

    We monitor all IT Infrastructure Monitoring reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.