Solarwinds Review
February 22, 2016

Solarwinds Review

Erron Walter | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor

We use SolarWinds on a day to day basis. It's important to monitor all our WMI, SNMP servers, router switches and AP's. Whether it's drives, CPU, ports or applications NPM, NCM and SAM are essential for monitoring and reporting for our entire network.

Pros

  • Good interface and and user friendly for setting up alerts.
  • Fairly easy to navigate and set up groups.
  • Vast variety of alerts and custom alerts to create.

Cons

  • SAM leaves something to be desired.
  • No way of drilling into your node and seeing what apps are currently being monitored by that node.
  • NPM, NCM and SAM are almost completely separate from each other.
  • POS - thresholds for drive capacity are critical. Whether it's a terminal server or database server or exchange server, if a drive fills up and stops over a weekend much time and money is lost.
  • POS - Prompt alerts and escalation levels to make sure the right person knows about the issue or downtime.
  • Neg - SolarWinds sometimes is a little shaky with custom scripting.

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Feature Ratings

Application monitoring
8
Database monitoring
5
Threshold alerts
9
Predictive capabilities
8
Application performance management console
7
Collaboration tools
8
Out-of-the box templates to monitor applications
7
Application dependency mapping and thresholding
8
Virtualization monitoring
Not Rated
Server availability and performance monitoring
8
Server usage monitoring and capacity forecasting
8
IT Asset Discovery
Not Rated

Using SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor

5 - Applications Engineering, Desktop Engineering, Network Engineering
2 - It doesn't take rocket science to set up or use SolarWinds. You definitely need to know and understand how networks work and function with servers, vlans and switches. I would say learning some of the powershell to really get your alerts going is key when setting up the alerts and monitoring.
  • Drive Monitoring
  • Down nodes
  • Crucial applications
Again some of the interfacing could be better. Mostly because I like how alerting and monitoring are set up. My biggest issue is with SAM and it doesn't really tie in with the rest of the system.

Evaluating SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor and Competitors

  • Prior Experience with the Product
I had used SolarWinds previously. When I went to another company I used another monitoring product that just was not as good as Orion. Setting up your nodes, alerts and thresholds were much easier to manage using SolarWinds.

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Implementation

  • Deciding [what] we wanted to alert on
  • Try to set up custom monitors
  • Trying to minimize the amount of alerting that can come out of SolarWinds

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Support

We talk to a initial person and they may not be specialized in what we are trying to resolve. They then have to call back or have someone call back after that person is free from working on another issue with another customer.
ProsCons
Kept well informed
Support cares about my success
Escalation required
Difficult to get immediate help
Slow Initial Response
No - Most of the issues we face we are able to fix ourselves or find on Thwack.

Using SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor

There are good things about NPM and NCM, but SAM is almost a separate entity from the rest of the system.
ProsCons
Like to use
Feel confident using
Familiar
Inconsistent
  • Setting up of the main interface home page
  • Setting nodes up for alerting
  • Applying app monitors
  • Scripting for alerts
  • Trying to view app monitors while drilling into the node

Upgrading SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor

Yes - and I have never had an issue while upgrading SolarWinds.
  • Bug Fixes
  • Interface upgrades
  • Incorporated tool sets
Yes - You get a better product and support with paid service

Comments

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