What is most valuable?
Our experiences with Micro Focus SiteScope have been mostly positive as we can easily work with multiple monitors and different types of monitors pretty quickly. There are a lot of out-of-the-box solutions for us through Micro Focus SiteScope, so we don't have to do that much custom coding for the vast majority of requests that we get for monitoring. There are some limitations that we've run into and some problems every once in a while, but they've been relatively minor.
What needs improvement?
In terms of issues with Micro Focus SiteScope, some that we've run into were unintended, for example, extra executions of monitors and some false alerts when there were problems connecting to endpoints or there were issues with the application that sometimes resulted in false positives. We had a few issues with the way time zones were configured when the system time differed from the time indicated during the monitoring, but those were just little things that weren't too bad.
As far as the limitations of Micro Focus SiteScope, the types of scripting files that can be executed are rather limited unless you go to some third-party plugins. These are the areas for improvement in the solution.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've been using Micro Focus SiteScope for six or seven years now.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
In terms of stability, Micro Focus SiteScope has been mostly stable. My company ran into some memory leak issues, especially in its earlier versions, but after it was set to automatically recycle every 24 hours, there weren't many issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
As far as new instances, specifically each standalone instance, I'm unsure how scalable Micro Focus SiteScope could be because there's an upper limit to what it can handle, but in terms of spitting up additional instances, it hasn't been too much of a problem. The horizontal scalability of Micro Focus SiteScope hasn't been a problem.
How are customer service and support?
I've spoken with the technical support team for Micro Focus SiteScope lots of times, and in terms of how good it is, I'd say it's mixed. For example, support is good for simple issues, but for more complex issues, it usually takes a while to get a resolution. A lot of times, my company had to escalate the cases and because it's paid support, you'd expect a little more from the support team.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup for Micro Focus SiteScope is not super complicated, but it does require that you have administrative access to the server where you're installing it and that, in a way, presumes that you do, even if you don't, so you have to keep that in mind. You have to make sure you have certain rights on the server that may be above and beyond the power a user would normally have.
In terms of deploying Micro Focus SiteScope, it could take between one and two hours depending on how fast it can get through the actual installation portion. There's installation, then there's configuration, but the installation takes longer than the configuration. Upgrading, on the other hand, is a little more complex. You really can't do an in-place upgrade. Between certain versions, you have to uninstall the application after exporting a configuration, then install the new version, and then apply that configuration you exported. I've heard that the upcoming, latest version of Micro Focus SiteScope is getting better at that, but this was still a problem even after multiple versions.
What about the implementation team?
We deployed Micro Focus SiteScope through our in-house team, though we did utilize some consulting partners for troubleshooting and case resolution. Nowadays, we do most of the work.
What was our ROI?
In terms of ROI from Micro Focus SiteScope, it's been mostly positive. We haven't had a whole lot of complaints from our end users compared to some of the other products we've had. Though the cost of using Micro Focus SiteScope can be fairly steep compared to Nagios, all in all, when we talk about full-stack monitoring solutions, cost-wise, Micro Focus SiteScope is still on the lower end.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The pricing or licensing cost for Micro Focus SiteScope is often bundled with other things, so the cost for each individual would be difficult to calculate. Pricing could be $2,000,000 a year. My company pays for technical support because it's part of the contract with Micro Focus SiteScope. You buy the licenses, but you're also paying for the support.
With Nagios, it's much more bare-bones as far as paying for licenses and the software itself, and my company didn't have to use as much Nagios support yet in one or two years because there weren't too many problems using Nagios, and it's much more cost-effective, so that's one of the reasons why my company is migrating to Nagios from Micro Focus SiteScope.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We are in the process of migrating most of our Micro Focus SiteScope fleet to Nagios though the two solutions are a little different and they're not directly comparable. There's a lot more work in Nagios in terms of getting monitoring started up. For example, we have to understand the plugins and the number of cases, and we might have to do some kind of work such as going in and writing our plugins and scripts for Nagios to do what it needs to do, but as far as getting a Nagios implementation up and running, it's real simple. We could have a server built and configured within one or two hours, and that's from start to finish. A limitation is that Nagios currently only runs on Unix platforms, so we can't run on Windows, while Micro Focus SiteScope can run on either of the two platforms.
What other advice do I have?
I've used two different versions of Micro Focus SiteScope. I started on version 11.30 of the solution, and now I'm using version 11.91.
The actual number of users of Micro Focus SiteScope who administer and use the application is less than five hundred because my company tends to do most of the work and maintains the monitors as opposed to allowing other teams to do that. The end customers or the people who requested the monitoring and get the alerts from Micro Focus SiteScope are in the range of quite a few thousand, numbers-wise.
What I would tell people looking into using Micro Focus SiteScope is to download the trial, try to dive into it, read the documentation, and utilize the user community forum, which was recently revamped, making it a little more streamlined and easier to search. Honing up on scripting, for example, PowerShell, Perl, etc., could be useful as well.
My rating for Micro Focus SiteScope on a scale of one to ten, with one being bad and ten being very good, is a solid seven. My company is not going to have a chance to dive into the new containerized version of the solution when that gets released, but that might push the rating even further up.
My company is a customer of Micro Focus SiteScope.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
*Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
