Graylog vs. IBM Instana

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Graylog
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Graylog, headquartered in Houston, offers their eponymous platform for centralized log management that helps users find meaning in data faster so as to take action immediately. Graylog is available via Enterprise and Cloud plans, but also has a Small Business Plan, and an Open (free) plan with limited features.N/A
IBM Instana
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Instana, an IBM company since the December 2020 acquisition, provides APM services for SOA, microservices, containerized applications and Kubernetes, and cloud native applications, as well as discovery and monitoring for IT assets.
$75
per month per Managed Virtual Server (MVS)
Pricing
GraylogIBM Instana
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Essentials
$18
per month per Managed Virtual Server (MVS)
Standard
$75
per month per Managed Virtual Server (MVS)
Self-Hosted
$93.80
per month per Managed Virtual Server (MVS)
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
GraylogIBM Instana
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
GraylogIBM Instana
Top Pros

No answers on this topic

Top Cons

No answers on this topic

Best Alternatives
GraylogIBM Instana
Small Businesses
SolarWinds Papertrail
SolarWinds Papertrail
Score 8.9 out of 10
InfluxDB
InfluxDB
Score 8.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
PRTG
PRTG
Score 8.9 out of 10
GitLab
GitLab
Score 8.6 out of 10
Enterprises
PRTG
PRTG
Score 8.9 out of 10
NetBrain Technologies
NetBrain Technologies
Score 8.9 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
GraylogIBM Instana
Likelihood to Recommend
7.8
(7 ratings)
8.9
(30 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(3 ratings)
Support Rating
3.6
(3 ratings)
4.5
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
GraylogIBM Instana
Likelihood to Recommend
Graylog
For small companies, Graylog is the best solution possible. It's easy to configure and "just works." Above everything else, it's free. The only thing I hold against it is the fact that it's Linux-based. [This] makes sense because Elasticsearch is Linux-based. But Linux adds a layer of complexity that we don't need for something basic as a logging server. I'm pretty sure that we would have had a logging server years earlier if I had to convince quite a few decision-making people to go ahead with it anyway.
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IBM
I would recommend IBM Instana based on its strengths in automating application performance monitoring, dynamic tracing, and its ability to handle modern, containerized environments effectively. The automatic discovery and mapping feature, along with AI-powered anomaly detection, provide valuable insights for proactive issue resolution. However, I would consider factors such as the organization's specific technology stack, scalability requirements, and budget constraints. Conducting a thorough evaluation, including a trial or proof of concept, would be essential to ensure that IBM Instana aligns with our unique needs and contributes positively to our technology and business objectives.
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Pros
Graylog
  • Graylog does a great job of its core function: log aggregation, retention, and searching.
  • Graylog has a very flexible configuration. The backend for storage is Elasticsearch and MongoDB is used to store the configuration. You have to option to make your configuration as simple as possible by storing everything on one box, or you can scale everything out horizontally by using a cluster of Elasticsearch nodes and MongoDB servers with several Graylog servers pointed to all the necessary nodes.
  • Graylog does a good job of abstracting away a fair portion of Elasticsearch index management (sharding, creation, deletion, rotation, etc).
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IBM
  • Collecting Kubernetes and Infra level logs and presenting in easy to understand visuals.
  • Tracing the end-to-end journey of an event and also categorizing by technology and Endpoints
  • Built-in and custom alerts help to monitor almost all of scenarios without much additional configuration.
  • Ability to create Applications to logical group important flows
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Cons
Graylog
  • Support for more log sources
  • Event alerts/emails - Some cases where unable to separate data from multiple clients, and no easy fix
  • API - Limits results to 10,000 and can cause server to lockup on queries that exceed the limit
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IBM
  • I believe that the "live" option in monitoring does not truly update the status in real-time, thus I must manually update to feel comfortable.
  • The call analysis tool might be improved, third-party resources are restricted, and the pricing is slightly more than competitors in comparable categories.
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Likelihood to Renew
Graylog
No answers on this topic
IBM
Instana has been able to fulfill our all requirement and provide out of box solution for multiple component like AWS RDS Monitoring and real time alerting setup on basis of that. it is also easy to integrate with other open-source alerting and monitoring tools which makes it easier to incorporate into our solutions
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Usability
Graylog
No answers on this topic
IBM
IBM Instana totally alters our monitoring approach since it increases the stability of the system and simplifies the process of problem solving. And since it helps to lower the degree of alert exhaustion that we experience, it is a total game changer for us.
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Support Rating
Graylog
Community support does not give simple straightforward answers; simply search up Graylog Issues and look at some of the responses on the forums. The documentation is your only hope if you are on the free version, as you can NOT purchase only support. The few times I have worked with Graylog Enterprise support they were great though.
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IBM
IBM instana support team is good but when we ask them for support, they keep asking same thing again and again and mostly there is no solution
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Alternatives Considered
Graylog
In terms of log aggregation, the free product fully stacks up with the competitors listed. Full control over the data ingests for flexible configuration. Graylog even better on that front than AlienVault USM because you cannot configure the variable mapping. We haven't used the threat exchange stuff or correlation. But with regex searches, we have created function dashboards that show threat theater pictures of our network based on logs from our firewall.
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IBM
We chose IBM Instana for several reasons, and the most important one is that we didn't have to make changes in our code for nearly all of our applications for it to work. We are happy with the decision we made to use IBM Instana.
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Return on Investment
Graylog
  • Graylog is just less expensive than some other options which meant it fit into our budget otherwise we might not be able to justify a higher cost.
  • Being able to track issues that we normally couldn't track using other tools is a bonus to help us know of any issues we have and can fix before an outage or failure that could potentially cost money.
  • We have had to spend more time than I would like to understand and customize Graylog which has taken time away from other tasks and projects.
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IBM
  • System down time is shortened as our ability to troubleshoot issues goes up.
  • Potential downtime is stopped as we are able to slow down calls/ availability of calls in response to monitoring the dashboard.
  • We are able to react to issues quickly through the smart alert system rather than manual checks.
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ScreenShots