Auvik Network Management (ANM) Reviews

Auvik is our main network monitoring platform.

We were struggling to monitor our network hardware for uptime, bandwidth usage, and errors, all while managing firmware updates and configuration changes. Thankfully, Auvik solved all these problems for us.

In our VMware environment, we use a virtual appliance for Auvik. This appliance acts as a data concentrator, collecting information from all our network hardware. The collected information is then uploaded to the cloud by the virtual appliance.

Auvik's network map provides a close to real-time picture of our network.

The network map is user-friendly, though initially, the text can be a bit difficult to read due to its spread-out nature. However, zooming in and navigating different sections allows for easy readability. Thankfully, all the objects are clickable, providing instant access to detailed information for each one as needed.

I took advantage of Auvik's 30-day trial, and within that timeframe, I became thoroughly convinced of its benefits.

Auvik has significantly improved our mean time to resolution. Before using Auvik, troubleshooting network issues could take hours of investigation to pinpoint the problem. Now, with Auvik's features, I can typically identify the cause within just a few minutes.

Auvik allows us to spend less time on maintenance and issue resolution.

The most valuable features for me are network monitoring and alerting. This means I automatically receive an email notification whenever an issue arises, eliminating the need to wait for users to report problems.

There's room for improvement in the interface. While we only have one location, logging in presents a world map designed for multiple sites. This unnecessary extra step to access the information I need could be eliminated by offering an option to disable the world map view.

I have been using Auvik Network Management for one year.

Auvik Network Management is stable. We have not had any problems.

While our current environment handles our needs well, Auvik's easy scalability allows us to seamlessly expand into a larger environment in the future. The multi-site dashboard lets us manage everything from a central location whenever we're ready to grow.

The technical support responds within 24 hours.

Neutral

At my previous company, I relied on a combination of SolarWinds, Lansweeper, and an open-source tool for IT asset management. While Auvik offers a more user-friendly experience compared to these free options, it doesn't provide the same level of detailed functionality as SolarWinds.

The initial deployment was straightforward. The deployment took a couple of days. One person was required for the deployment.

Auvik helped us deploy the system remotely. The on-site process itself was very straightforward: it involved downloading the software, installing it, and then entering information into the interface.

Auvik holds its own compared to other contenders. It's priced fairly, avoiding any underestimation of its value. What truly sets it apart is the per-network device licensing structure, with additional device monitoring included at no extra cost.

I would rate Auvik Network Management nine out of ten.

Minimal maintenance is required.

I am an MSP and I use Auvik to monitor my client's networks.

When we experienced network issues, we simply lacked the visibility to understand the underlying causes. Auvik provided us with much-needed visibility into our network, enabling us to effectively diagnose and resolve problems.

We are using Auvik's SaaS platform with an on-premises connector.

Auvik provides an intuitive interface that is easy to use. The user-friendly interface is helpful when troubleshooting network issues. Auvik alerts me if something being monitored goes offline, allowing me to track it down. Additionally, there are various locations where I can access different pieces of information, enabling me to review audit logs or alerts. This feature is quite helpful.

Auvik's network map and dashboard give us real-time visibility into our network.

Utilizing the network map and dashboard provides a straightforward approach to gaining real-time visibility into our network. While the network map may contain a wealth of information that necessitates further exploration, the ability to visualize the network in real time without the need for Visio development is helpful. With the proper configuration, the network map dashboard provides full network visibility.

Auvik helps minimize blind spots and provides an additional resource for monitoring and tracking network performance. Proactive alerting is crucial, as it's often preferable to have a system notify me of issues before users do. While not always possible, Auvik enables me to be proactive in addressing network problems.

Auvik has helped reduce our mean time to resolution by 50 percent.

Auvik allows us to spend less time on resolution.

The most advantageous feature is the ability to back up the configuration settings on switches and routers. This has been immensely helpful, and I am proficient in utilizing Auvik's premium network monitoring service, Traffic Insight. It provides comprehensive network visibility. Furthermore, I appreciate its integration with my ticketing system, Autotask.

I'd like to see some enhancements to Auvik's network map, including the ability to focus on specific areas without viewing the entire map. This would allow for more granular analysis and troubleshooting. Additionally, introducing security-related features would be beneficial. For instance, implementing abnormal traffic detection would alert us to unusual network activity, potentially indicating a security breach. Furthermore, incorporating baseline snapshots would enable us to compare current network behavior against a standard reference point, facilitating the identification of anomalies. This could be achieved through simple checkbox controls.

I have been using Auvik for three years.

I would rate the stability of Auvik nine out of ten.

I use Auvik for small businesses, and it scales to meet my needs.

The technical support is good.

Positive

We had been using ConnectWise, but it did not meet our needs. When we informed ConnectWise support that we were switching to Auvik, they acknowledged that Auvik was a more suitable solution.

The deployment wasn't as straightforward as I had anticipated, but it wasn't overly difficult either. It required careful attention to the instructions and a thorough understanding of the installation process, making it somewhat more complex than initially envisioned. I would rate the complexity of the deployment five out of ten. I completed the deployment myself and it took a few days.

Auvik's pricing is generally reasonable. However, I have occasionally encountered discrepancies between my expected and actual billing amounts. I haven't been able to pinpoint the exact cause of these variations, but I'm unsure whether they stem from additional service inclusions or unexpected price increases. The lack of clarity regarding my consumption compared to the pricing structure has been an issue. Despite not making any perceived changes, my pricing has fluctuated, and the company has denied any alterations. This has left me perplexed about the underlying factors.

I would rate Auvik ten out of ten.

I have Auvik deployed for multiple of my small to medium clients.

Occasionally, Auvik's automated agent upgrades malfunction, requiring my assistance. Maintenance is minimal.

I recommend Auvik.

We have several different physical sites and we run our own network. Auvik has some exciting capabilities for aggregating Syslog from switches and having remote console administration across geographic locations. The solution puts a common off-wall in front of switch management but also makes it easy for us to go in and make changes.

We use the solution across multiple locations and departments.

We use Auvik where we have the most pain points because it's a charge per device brought online model. We use Auvik in a smaller proportion of our infrastructure, around 30% of our architecture.

Auvik provides a simple way to view the current configuration and to view the network monitoring status checks. Auvik allows me to work in a bigger team with a large number of different circumstances happening at once, and share a common source of truth and management platform. It is more of a teamwork tool and a work-from-different-location tool than anything else.

We get more benefits out of Auvik than other solutions depending on specific job roles in the team. The main value of Auvik is the reduction in communication gaps that makes it faster to respond to issues. Our incident response no longer relies on someone logging into a SolarWinds platform or getting a Syslog agent on our system to collect our logs. We no longer rely on someone having to configure a pipeline alert or the SMTP email relay working in order to get an email that wasn't checked. Auvik doesn't do anything that I can't get from a variety of other tools or modified solutions but it does it all in one website that works well.

In terms of instant response, we get alerted about issues faster and with fewer spam alerts. Previously, we didn't configure our alerts as well as we could have. When there is an issue, Auvik identifies it for us and that saves us time. We have proof of network performance, in any case. The ability to quickly run tests and show logging allows us to see if an issue is because of something on our network or from external causes beyond our control.

We purchase other companies or partner with them at different times and work with them in various ways which require us to onboard or allow people to access certain areas on our network and Auvik makes it easier to manage. The solution allows us to have a visual network representation and streamlined demo space of some network features, and we can let people play in a sandbox.

The solution reduces the amount of time we spend on onsite visits, eliminating the travel time and setup time for inspecting the network. Auvik allows us to manage the network remotely in a matter of seconds without the need to leave the building which correlates to more time for other tasks.

Auvik's UI design helps visualize the network mapping and topology of our organization because it provides a nice modern experience, in terms of usability and can be used with any modern browser. Unlike some other solutions with outdated interfaces, Auvik utilizes an appealing dashboard to show us our network and lets us drill down deep.

Our IT team's visibility into our remote and distributed networks globally has been good to date using the solution, but we are not a large company and we have a limited number of sites.

The solution's ability to access our networks remotely has correlated with time for our IT teams to focus on other tasks. Our engineers can save over three hours of their day compared to having to deal with an issue on-site.

The remote console administration stands out as a valued feature. I haven't found another relatively easy and versatile product that is all-encompassing. 

Using Auvik's monitoring and management functions is easy because it is a web-based app. The charge models are based on the number of core network devices we have. We have virtual machines and various items that our charges are based on such as adding a switch or a firewall. We are not charged simply because we have a virtual machine running. We get more visibility into what we're running compared to other solutions. 

The solution's ease of use is the reason we bought it.

The solution can provide a single integrated platform depending on what we want the platform to do. Auvik provides more of an integrated teamwork network management platform than anything I've previously seen. The solution does nearly everything and it does it in a convenient, easy, and accessible way compared to my past experiences with other solutions. Auvik's user experience is very nice.

The solution's intuitiveness of the network visualization is strong and we don't need to spend much time to find it useful.

Auvik's ability to keep our device inventory up to date is a convenient feature.

Auvik can improve by increasing the tech file management capability.

In the past we had a Git server where we made changes to configurations, allowing us to push the changes, and depending on the system, we had the ability to convert the information down to a text file but if there was a problem, we could quickly revert it back. I would like the ability to version control Auvik configurations and potentially automate them by having a type of Gitflow system.

I have been using the solution for a year and a half.

The solution is fairly stable but at times can drop off, or we have collector issues, or there's various service-related downtime. Auvik has a status page where we can check for uptime issues.

I don't worry about the scalability of the solution because it is quite a broad, scalable, and modern platform. 

I previously used open-source solutions that were built at home. I don't know of another solution that is a strong competitive, multivendor, that plays in this space, which is why we ended up using Auvik.

Until July 2021, our organization had a SolarWinds contract, but when the global hack happened, we had to reevaluate what we were using for monitoring and management.

The initial setup was not complex. All we needed to install were collectors and we were able to start network mapping the same day. The deployment was handled by a small team. We have different offices and sites but it does not require a significant amount of time to implement Auvik and get it running on the equipment we need. We need someone that has the ability to use computers for the deployment.

The implementation was completed in-house.

We have found Auvik improves our ability to complete tasks more quickly and improve responses internally. We're not planning on canceling the solution. We find that Auvik is improving our ability to manage remote sites, and we like using the tool.

Auvik charges based on the number of network devices being used. The pricing is fair as long as we are getting use out of the solution.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

We still use multiple applications, but Auvik has taken over a lot more of them and has also taken over areas that we just did not have applications to manage before. There is a nice network flow and analytics information. What we found the most interesting is, if we onboard or offboard a team member, our ability to manage switch configs, check in on issues quickly, and do some Syslog searches, can all be done in one place, behind one login, one permission set making it a lot easier to manage tasks on a daily basis.

I'm not sure how much of Auvik's automation capability we've really leveraged or how much the solution specifically has. We have some existing systems in place and we use Auvik more as a network monitoring and remote management tool. I don't believe the solution has fully supplanted some of our existing practices. We use Auvik as an additive layer that's super helpful in terms of incident response, client engagement, and making our lives easier.

Auvik provides discovery capabilities based on Mac addresses that can help keep device inventories up to date. We don't use the solution for device discovery and I am not sure how accurate it is. I find the solution very helpful in terms of getting visibility into what the network is doing and what's on it.

We selected Auvik based on a number of factors that made sense at the time including, their charge model which is based on network devices and COVID affecting our locations. We didn't go through a full vendor review process the same way that we usually would and looked for a number of competitors. We saw that Auvik was affordable and fulfilled a business need.

To anyone that is comparing network monitor solutions, but is concerned about pricing, I would advise the amount of time we saved with the solution was worth the money spent. 

I am a big open-source proponent. I've contributed to open-source solutions and used a lot of them. Most of the time open-source solutions are some of the best solutions that we can have. In some cases, there is a clear deficiency versus a commercial solution. Sometimes it's worth paying for a service, a product X because it saves the company money or it meets a compliance or insurance requirement. 

Business reasons can overrule other reasons. One business reason could be that we need a network monitoring, management, and remote administration capability platform so our engineers spend less time traveling between data centers to complete tasks and debug logging systems. Engineers are fairly expensive employees at the end of the day, between health insurance, salary, and vacation time. The business would be more profitable if those engineers were more efficient at their job. 

Auvik can benefit the organization through the reduction of staff required by minimizing the time it takes to complete each task or allowing those engineers to spend time on more useful tasks. Auvik is a helpful product that assists a company that is trying to remotely manage sites across different areas with a team. The solution adds an orchestration layer to that. Auvik adds an application on a modern platform for the management of the devices that we're controlling and makes it less taxing and easier for us to benefit from that.

Auvik's cloud-based solution is convenient compared to on-prem network monitoring solutions.

We sometimes perform trivial maintenance on Auvik for user management in the portal.

I recommend the solution to others. Auvik is a useful platform. 

Our primary use cases are network management and configuration backups. The solution is deployed across 1,500 to 2,000 devices, and we have multiple clients as an MSP. The tool is multi-tenant within our environment and deployed across VPNs and numerous sites. Our clients range from small family-owned businesses to enterprises.

We previously used multiple applications to manage our networks, and switching to Auvik saved us a lot of time; we can troubleshoot two to three times faster than before. 

The most significant benefit of using Auvik is being able to pinpoint where an issue is. With the monitoring we had before, it wasn't proactive or reactive when something went down. It would inform us that something isn't working, but Auvik can tell us there's an issue on a specific subnet, and we can trace through and pinpoint a particular switch that went offline, for example.  

The solution helped reduce repetitive, low-priority tasks through automation, which is another area that's two or three times faster now, if not more.

The product positively affected our IT team's visibility into our remote and globally distributed networks, which is essential for us. We previously had separate tools for different locations, so it wasn't cohesive. With Auvik, we can tell at a glance that there are three devices offline at a site, including why they aren't working from a network perspective. It helps us figure out what's happening quicker, which helps us resolve faster and get back online. That insight is invaluable.

The solution's automation significantly affected our IT team's availability, as it frees up a lot of time for tasks we didn't have time for before. The rapidity and ease of resolution give us time to focus on other areas.  

We have seen a reduction in our mean time to resolve (MTTR) in the area of 50-60%.  

One of the solution's best features is how it helps us visualize our network mapping/topology. It builds the map out automatically as it discovers devices, networks within our network, or different subnets. We can see exactly where devices are in the environment and all their connections. Nobody likes to build out Visio diagrams, but with Auvik, we can take a snapshot of the network map and show it to a client. The network visualization is straightforward, intuitive, and makes sense.  

The automated network topology map is excellent; it shows connected networks, where they're going, and what they're visible on.

The configuration backup is a great feature, as it allows us to compare to previous iterations after changes and roll back if necessary.

Auvik allows us to get into devices through remote tunnels rather than going to the actual sites.

The alerting is another helpful feature, as Auvik gives more timely alerts than other tools. This makes it easier to pinpoint when and what network component goes down.

Auvik provides a single integrated platform for network management, which is essential for us; the fewer platforms we have to jump between, the better.   

Auvik helps keep device inventories up-to-date and find devices we didn't know were there in some cases. This functionality is excellent for helping our teams focus on high-value tasks, though not so much for delegation, as the solution is relatively challenging to learn and understand. 

The solution keeping device inventories up-to-date saves a lot of time because we can find devices we didn't know were there, figure out the network quicker, and identify potential issues.  

To someone comparing network monitoring solutions but concerned about price, you get what you pay for. We've used cheaper and free products, and we use Auvik now. It depends on how much time and energy you have to put into it versus a tool that's ready to use immediately. Our time is valuable, and we don't have enough to fiddle with a solution all day to get it to work or do what we want it to do.  

I want to see improvements to the interface, as it's data-heavy and challenging to navigate. This makes it harder to delegate and have junior staff look around and figure out the solution. A more straightforward interface would be a welcome improvement, whether by making it cleaner or more intuitive.

We've been using Auvik for about five years. 

The solution is highly stable; I can't think of a time when I tried to access it and it was unavailable. I've seen maintenance alerts and notifications, but we never had an issue.

The product is very flexible and scalable. 

We contacted technical support on a few occasions, and they're familiar enough with the product to answer our questions and solve our issues. 

Positive

We previously used a kind of piecemeal solution; we tried to do SNMP reporting through our RMM tool. We also used a free Linux distro called LibreNMS, Nagios, and SolarWinds.

Libre was too convoluted; it was challenging to set up and obnoxious to deal with. Nagios gave us a lot of false alerts and irrelevant data and required tedious maintenance. Lastly, the company didn't like SolarWinds, so Auvik was our best solution, even though it was more expensive. Auvik does a better job of alerting and presenting relevant data, and I don't know if the other solutions featured automatic backup configuration or remote tunnel access. Most of the competitors didn't have the network topology mapping, or they didn't do a good job of it, but Auvik does that very well, and it's dynamic. Auvik seems like the more complete, refined tool, despite being a bit more expensive or on par with the competition.

I was involved in the initial setup, and it's not as straightforward as some but not as complex as others, such as LibreNMS or SolarWinds. Auvik is somewhere in the middle in terms of setup difficulty. Two or three of us carried out the deployment, as we were the most familiar with the different environments, and the product is lightweight in terms of maintenance. 

The solution was quickly available out of the box; we created the tenant and deployed the collector, which were straightforward tasks. Following the collector deployment, the network mapping began to populate right away. 

To compare Auvik's cloud-based solution versus on-prem network monitoring solutions, we don't have to worry about the backend setup and config issues as much. Other than making sure the Auvik collector is up and running, we don't have to do anything else, which means less maintenance and an easier time for us. 

Comparing the time and cost it took to set up and maintain Auvik versus previous solutions, Auvik took less time to set up, deploy, and fulfill the job we wanted it to. In terms of difficulty, it's on par with other solutions though better than most, and it provides more data, better information, and better results. Auvik also makes troubleshooting straightforward and helpful; LibreNMS was too granular and complicated to operate for troubleshooting.

We deployed via an in-house team, though Auvik Networks Inc. helped us with a few issues. As we tested the solution and played with it beforehand, we were familiar with it when we decided to go with Auvik and didn't feel like we needed outside help.

The price is a little high, and the product could be more cost-friendly. We work with many small and medium-sized businesses, so the cost can be hard to justify. We try to work around that, but it would be nice if Auvik were more cost-effective. Most enterprise-level businesses we work with have their own internal monitoring solutions, whether Nagios or SolarWinds.

I rate the product eight out of ten. If the interface was cleaned up and it was more cost-effective, I'd give it a ten.

It is moderately challenging to use Auvik's monitoring and management functions. It isn't the most accessible tool to learn; there's a bit of a learning curve, but it was fine once we got the hang of it. There are more intuitive solutions, which is why it takes a while to adapt, but it has excellent capabilities.

The solution didn't particularly help us delegate low-level tasks to junior staff because learning the platform isn't as intuitive as it could be. Therefore, it's harder for our junior techs to figure out what's going on, what's relevant and what isn't, so we haven't had our juniors in there much.

From a technical perspective, we have seen time to value with Auvik, though it can be challenging to demonstrate that to the higher-ups with tech solutions. The network topology is an excellent way of showing that value, and so is the remote management backup. It can be impactful when people don't have such bells and whistles to see.   

My advice to those considering the solution is that it may be more expensive than some, but it does a better job than just about anything else on the market. Auvik is more reliable, does an excellent job, and makes life easier once it's up and running. Be prepared to spend some time finding out what is and isn't relevant to your requirements and configure accordingly, which will make your life easier.

We're an MSP. We use this solution for all of our clients. For anyone that has a network more extensive than a switch or two, we install Auvik. We do this to make sure that we're getting the right connectivity and that everything is working as it should. I get alerts whenever something goes wrong, and I can jump in and say for example, "That's there. This is why." And I can tell what is happening. If I'm not on site, I can say, "Plug this port in because whoever was there, just plugged it back into the same switch." 

Having a single integrated platform has helped improve our organization. Ease of use and speed are the most important. I always know that I can go back. I've got a solid monitoring solution within Auvik. I know I can access the solution and get the right information that is updated in real-time.

The solution helps us get ahead of issues. If I see something going on, I can start getting ahead of it before my client notices. I can at least get a heads-up right away as something's going on. It's always better to alert my customer that I found a problem rather than have them call me. There's also a perception of being proactive versus reactive.

Depending on the issue, I have seen a reduction in our MTTR.

I have absolutely seen a TTV with Auvik. The solution allows us to hit the ground running. When we get to a client, it takes me 30 minutes to an hour to absorb what that network looks like and I can start rocking and rolling immediately.

The solution's ease of use for our operations is fairly important. It's wonderful for when I'm going into a new client and I don't want to do discovery. The solution plots out a network map for me. The solution tells me where I've got congestion and additional information that would normally require me to do discovery. Auvik is not as in-depth as for example, ExtraHop but this gives me enough of an overview that I can look at a network and say, "Okay, I know where they're at. Now I know where they need to be," and gives me the first stepping stones to get acclimated to the network. 

An example of Auvik's ease of use for our operations for an existing customer is if I receive an event that needs to be worked on, whether I'm onsite or not, I can call my client and say, "Hey, if you're seeing network issues, we just caught a couple of alerts." These alerts may or may not be an issue but it's good to have that in our back pocket to say, "Okay, something else is seeing this. " It's another set of eyes. We're a small firm and we can only be in so many places at one time.

The solution provides a single integrated platform. Although the solution doesn't do everything that I would want network-wise it is good enough. For what we pay, Auvik does the job we need it to do.

Auvik keeps our device inventories up to date.

This is the first solution we deploy at every location. We bring out a machine we call a data collector, and we put it in their network, get on DHCP, and it starts to scan immediately. The solution is absolutely fantastic.

Auvik is a fantastic network monitoring solution. When I look just for something that's really focused on network, for the price, Auvik can't be beaten.

The one aspect that I dislike about the solution is that there is no current way to export diagrams. If I want to take this and say, "Okay, here's my network map," I cannot export that network map to Visio and make edits or add notes if I need to on the diagram. Those are the aspects that are really missing for me. Not every product has everything I want. But what Auvik's support has told me, is that it's in the pipeline.

The only area that I dislike about the solution is the lack of exportability. That would be a wonderful feature to have.

The exportability of the information is really where I see the big value, and the other area is when network changes occur. One thing I would like to see is the option of an automated backup shortly after a configuration has changed because Auvik monitors the configs. When it sees a new config or I move five ports from one network to another, Auvik picks up that there was a change. The solution knows that it happened, but it won't back up at that time. The ability to do rollback would be wonderful. If something breaks I will have options, "Okay, here's your latest config. Here's the previous config, do you want to roll back?"  Juniper offers that in their OS automatically and it is beautiful. This would be a wonderful update.

I would like a little bit more of a deep dive because Auvik uses flow data to update what type of traffic I'm seeing which is pretty good but it's not a hundred percent. What I'd really love to see as well, is an offering of a small appliance to do this type of work, to wash packets. 

The exportability of data and network maps can also be improved. One thing that Auvik does well is tell me how long a switch is under maintenance for. For example, if I have a switch, and everything gets pulled up into my portal for the client, I take the serial number, it goes out to Cisco or HP or whomever, and it will tell me how long that switch is under maintenance for. That's invaluable. I know that I have one source of truth I can go and look at and say, "Yeah. Hey, that switch is still good for another two years."

I have been using the solution for around two and a half to three years.

The stability is rock solid. I haven't had any issues.

The solution has done everything that we have needed it to do so far. I can't complain about the scalability. 

Any problems I've had were resolved by the technical support team. Auvik's technical support is email support first, which I'm not happy about, but I understand that that's the way they work. I haven't had an issue that was so critical that I needed the situation resolved immediately.

Positive

Previously, we used Symantec RMM. We used a couple of other items for a while, and finally, once we got onto Auvik and I showed my business partner the power of Auvik, he said, "Yeah, this is what we're going with." Literally within an hour, he said, "You just made up my mind."

The initial setup was not bad. We installed an agent on our data collector, gave it the name of the client, and told it what networks to start looking at.

The implementation was completed in-house.

What is good about Auvik is that it is a monthly spend versus a CapEx. That tends to be a bigger driver, especially for a small environment. Using a product like Auvik and having the same visibility that any tech can walk into and, assuming they've got a decent networking background, can look at it and go, "Oh, yeah. Here's what it is." With this, my client that has 15 switches doesn't need to worry if something happens to the main infrastructure person. 

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

There are certain aspects that I've had little issues with, but nothing that couldn't be resolved by support. I can't be an expert on every product. I've got ten different switching vendors I work with and have to learn the syntax. As long as I've got SNMP and I can get Telnet, who supports most of the major vendors out there, Cisco, Juniper, and Brocade. I am very much in favor of the product and the discovery capabilities therein.

Depending on the vendor, the solution reduces repetitive, low-priority tasks through automation. Cisco, Juniper, or Brocade, have CLIs that Auvik can get into and do backups automatically for me, which is a need but is repetitive. Auvik does configuration backups but overall, that's the big area the solution automates for me. 

We're a regional player, we definitely have visibility to our environments.

The visibility that helps our IT team focus on our networks is fairly important. Visibility is the first building block that we have for every single client.

Auvik's automation has not necessarily affected our IT team's availability. The solution does configure backups for me, but if I wasn't using Auvik, I would be using something else to do that. For what I am using automation for, the solution is pretty freaking awesome.

We're a smaller firm, and all of our guys are in senior positions. As we move along, Auvik is going to be watched and managed by lower-caliber staff who can raise the flag and run it up to somebody as needed.

If I need to get a listing to my vendor, say, "Here are the serial numbers that I need to renew maintenance on for next year," I can't just take that and export it out of Auvik. But overall, the solution does make my life easy because I can just copy the serial numbers and give them to my vendor, whomever that may happen to be. 

Auvik as a cloud-based solution covers enough compared to an on-prem network monitoring solution. It does a good enough job, without being on-premise. The solution is fairly lightweight and it's fairly innocuous. Auvik doesn't cause any problems on the network, it sits there and receives. Auvik is a very good passive solution.

I recommend the solution. This is a good product, it's easy to set up, and just give it the once over. I think that it's one of these solutions that can really add value. Depending on the size of your network, it might be small enough and it might be the right size to help you get your hands wrapped around it. I haven't seen the solution in an environment of more than 500 users. That is my scale limit on Auvik, but I know that the solution goes further. The smallest environment in which I have seen the solution used was in a doctor's office that had three switches.

We implement Auvik for our clients as a network monitoring solution. About 20 engineers use it, including me. We also have a business analyst, a systems admin, a capacity planner, two vice presidents, and a couple of data scientists.

Auvik is deployed across several departments. Organization-wide, we have 20,000-plus endpoints, but Auvik is monitoring a tiny subset of that, so about 2,000 more or less. 

Auvik has saved a lot of time. Network monitoring and analysis tasks that would sometimes take a few days to accomplish can be completed in only 15 to 30 minutes. It has reduced our mean time to resolution by about 25 percent. 

Auvik has streamlined the way we put out tickets. The user interface makes it easier to communicate analytics and helps us filter out devices. It gives us robust visibility into our infrastructure in a single pane of glass. I have all the information and link data I need to troubleshoot any issue with the networks. The ticketing information Auvik provides offers some good opportunities for automation. It also allows us to automate data collection through the use of collectors.

Auvik has shifted IT teams to a shared model. so we can have all of the equipment and information mapped out accordingly. The other nice thing is that we can customize Auvik. For example, one department might focus on information extraction for query development, while another group is focused on layer topology and working with firewalls. Auvik lets you drill down based on the different types of appliances or shift toward programming if needed and root cause analysis. Auvik handles the four Ts—topology, telemetry, traces, and time—well.

Our IT team is working really around the clock. It's almost to the point where this automation has made it possible for normal users and businesses to accomplish their day-to-day tasks without any failover. Auvik is also more accessible to our low-level staff, who are looking for more functionality within the user interface as opposed to customizable development. They can get recommendations through the Auvik interface if there's a problem with the configuration or hardware. The junior analysts can review the historical data and live information to draw conclusions.

Auvik is crucial for keeping our device inventories updated. I can try to gather the system uptime for different types of devices and get something like NetFlow data. It works like a packet sniffer with real-time data factored into it. The higher-level staff members use Auvik in conjunction with another tool in the tech stack. They may also want to shift this in terms of data transfer assessment. To compare it with another tool, Splunk has a cloud migration app that helps look at how organizations use cloud-to-cloud, cloud-to-ground, and ground-to-ground. With that assessment model, there's a focus on the total cost of ownership. Similarly, within Auvik, that's like an area of opportunity in terms of assessing the architecture being created for how it can be deployed.

I've found the topology mesh graph helpful, and I like the other features that factor into my work with Kubernetes. The solution is intuitive. When someone gets started with it, there are out-of-the-box solutions to accomplish tasks, so a new person doesn't always need to check the documentation. When they log into the tool, they can quickly fix a few areas and get everything running.

The monitoring and management functions are effortless to use. The process is pretty straightforward If I need to connect to an external appliance. Sorting out role-based access control is easy, as well.

Auvik has a single integrated platform with collectors and API functionality, which are crucial. It has application and network performance monitoring tools, with something to bridge the gap between the two. Auvik integrates network, application, and infrastructure monitoring. 

I would like to see Auvik have some more documentation with a typical CM solution like Splunk. I want to see more examples of things like configuring port forwarding for firewalls. In addition to collecting data from different types of appliances, I would like to customize more of the metrics for each appliance.

More encryption and data security features would also be helpful in case I have some confidential data coming through. Password management and encryption for specific datasets would be interesting. Auvik has this ticket functionality that could be used to construct pre-built workflows.

I would like to see Auvik add more features to help clients who work with cloud providers like Microsoft Azure. In Azure, they have templates within Azure Resource Manager. There are templates for 1,000 use cases that people can deploy, and they do some stuff around infrastructure as a code.

Auvik should go in that direction by integrating ARM templates where somebody can look to see SVKs, command interface, virtual machines, data stores, service management, etc., and try to take that on in terms of continuing with a declarative syntax. I find that some areas of infrastructure code could work nicely. They could construct playbooks like GAML files that could work alongside more with an Auvik.

I've been using Auvik for about two years.

Auvik is stable. There are occasional service disruptions, but they are quickly resolved.

Auvik is relatively scalable. Auvik provides a lot of rich analytics that can be translated into insights for SecOps, systems engineering, and capacity planners.

I rate Auvik support a ten out of ten. Their support staff is proactive and always ready to assist.

Positive

I've worked with Stack State, Splunk, Dynatrace, and LogicMonitor. Our department was tasked with looking for innovative ideas. We're a large enterprise, so some departments work with different tech stacks. Other departments might have a tool and try refining it for their analyses. We have Splunk and Dynatrace, but the use cases vary slightly based on their responsibilities. If I move from one department to another, I might be working with different tools.

Setting up Auvik is straightforward, and it took about two months. We started working alongside a larger team and began ramping things up. Our deployment strategy involved ensuring the data was populated throughout and figuring out which dependencies I needed to install at the same time.

I would say setting up Auvik is slightly easier than most other solutions. Splunk took quite a bit of work, but it ultimately paid off. Auvik is also a powerful solution, but it does not require much effort to get it running. After deployment, there isn't maintenance on our side. We get service notifications from Auivk based on a particular type of cluster. 

Folks in the market for a network monitoring solution often think Splunk is relatively expensive, so many are looking for a cheaper alternative. Some network monitoring tools are free but have tiers if you need a customized solution. 

Auvik's pricing model is bundled and flexible. If I need to monitor more endpoints, I have to pay a higher premium. I can estimate how much a typical network has in terms of endpoints and billed devices and break down what else is needed, like a hypervisor or more workstations. Auvik bills based on the aggregate count of billable devices. I can export the billing usage and compare that to the total cost of ownership. 

We also looked at Devo. We felt that Devo didn't offer much of an advantage over what we had already built or what we could do together with Splunk. We thought it didn't make sense to retrain our whole team for a solution that would not add much to our existing setup. We've also looked at a ticketing solution called SysAid.

I rate Auvik a nine out of ten. If you plan to implement Auvik, I recommend getting started on deploying the tools soon, so you can get the full value. You might also want to look into the certification program. 

We are using Auvik specifically for monitoring network devices. We are an IT company that's focused on network integration and monitoring for our customers. We use Auvik to monitor routers, switches, firewalls, load balancers, and other network devices.

If there is an alert, we can just click on it in the email, and it redirects us to the Auvik page where we can see what's going on with that device. That makes it quick to find what's going on in the network.

And the visibility into remote and distributed networks globally was one of the reasons we moved to Auvik. The cloud platform means our team can work from home and it takes seconds to access a customer's network to see what's happening. We don't have to deal with VPNs and go through something on-prem. That has saved a lot of time. You access Auvik and you are good to go. Everything is there.

It also helps keep device inventories up to date so that we can pull this information and have it ready. There is no need to engage someone to have them reassess the inventory or split inventory into categories. You already have all the categories and you can just export the information. For example, when we want to renew a support contract with a customer and we need to know their inventory, we can use Auvik to export it and we are good to go. It saves us 90 percent of the time it would otherwise take.

The first feature that I appreciate is the topology drawing in real time. If our NOC wants to troubleshoot, they can go to the topology map and see that this access point is connected to that switch via that specific port. And when something changes in the topology, it's dynamically updated.

The network mapping is such a great tool. We have some customers for which we manage access points and switches. The management platform for those products, like Meraki, shows you topologies on their cloud dashboard. But if you look at the topology in the Auvik, it is much better with colors. It shows Layer 1 and Layer 3 connectivities and provides you with a view that has a look and feel that is better than what the vendor itself provides. Its overall intuitiveness is excellent.

The backup feature is also important. Once we have access via SSH to devices, Auvik will detect if there are any changes and will back up the configurations.

And using the cloud ping feature, it will monitor WAN circuits. It sends a ping and alerts you if anything goes wrong with your WAN. It will also give you the speed and the round-trip time.

Comparing Auvik to SolarWinds and other platforms, it is pretty straightforward when it comes to monitoring. The people we recruit in our NOC learn how to use Auvik very fast. It's a core element for our NOC service. Before, we were using legacy vendors for NMS. When we moved to Auvik, things became more flexible and easier. We can onboard people easily when it comes to learning how to use Auvik to do monitoring for our customers.

It also provides one pane of glass. You can do the things you want to do in one place. Your NOC team can access and look at the alerts, check all the backup configurations, see the status of the devices, et cetera. It's one place to look at everything.

We would like them to make the alerting more customizable. We had a conversation about this yesterday. We want to be able to access more fields.

I have been using Auvik for about three years.

It's stable.

It is also scalable. We plan to increase our usage of the product.

We use it across multiple locations and we are at about 600 endpoints.

Their technical support is great overall.

But recently, we got a little bit frustrated. Two weeks ago, we were able to access the support chat via a small button on the bottom right side of the screen. Now, that button has gone away. I'm not sure if it is a limitation of my browser and I tried to find out about it on the internet. But it has become pretty difficult to access support right now, as long as there is no chat button available. Before, it was great. We need the support button to come back.

Positive

We tried other vendors, including SolarWinds, but you had to host those solutions in your data center and maintain them. Auvik is cloud-based, and it's a new way to think about monitoring. It gives us simplicity and enables a multi-tenant philosophy.

The cloud is a trend. That is what the world looks like now. Everything is cloud-based, making it easy to access, wherever you are. With on-prem solutions, you have to maintain your stuff, such as VPNs with your customers to collect information. Cloud-based stuff is great.

The initial setup to install a collector takes about 10 minutes. Within 10 to 20 minutes after that, you can have your topology built. Of course, you have to configure the devices to the SNMP, so it can grab the information. The whole process to get a rock-solid topology will take two hours or so. You have to engage the customer to do additional configuration on the devices. But if they have that configuration done ahead of time, it won't take more than one hour.

Most of the time, it's just me doing deployments.

As for maintenance, because it's cloud-based, Auvik maintains it on a regular basis. I notice every weekend that they have something to do, but it doesn't disturb us. We are not maintaining the solution.

For the first deployments, we had someone from Auvik who supported us. We learned in real time with someone who was an expert in the product. After that, we just replicated what he did and added more things as we went forward.

Our ROI is in saving a lot of time in terms of onboarding. When we want to engage a new customer, we can do that in about 10 minutes. With the legacy stuff, we would have to spin up a VPN and maintain it. Now, we just put in the Auvik collector and we are good to go. It starts scanning and collecting information.

The pricing of Auvik is good. If it could be less, that would be even better, but as long as they offer free devices, that is great.

We looked at LogicMonitor at the same time. But we had a salesperson from Auvik who demonstrated more features. In the end, we saw that the solutions are pretty similar, but we picked Auvik.

While I didn't check the price of LogicMonitor, Auvik is cloud-based and you have to pay a monthly subscription. But what you gain is that it will monitor servers and APs, et cetera, for free. It's a subscription and not a one-time fee like SolarWinds and other legacy platforms. For instance, we have some customers with 20 switches, two controllers in high-availability mode, and 200 APs. We get monitoring of those 200 APs without paying for it. We just pay for the switches and controllers.

I would recommend Auvik.

We use it for insight into an entire network, all the devices on it, and for monitoring their health. We also have it hooked into our ticketing system for automated ticket generation from any of the devices that we need to manage.

The benefit is the ability to monitor and react to issues on devices that we manage. I've existed in this organization for eight years and it has scaled up tremendously. That wouldn't have been possible without a tool like this. That has been the most powerful part, the ability to scale up an organization from managing a couple of hundred endpoints to tens of thousands of endpoints.

It also definitely clears out a lot of repetitive tasks, reducing them by between 20 and 30 percent. It helps us attend to issues much faster, scaling up the availability of our entire team by a lot. They're not spending time doing things that are manual and unnecessary anymore. Our team is 10 percent more available. And with Auvik, there has clearly been a reduction in our MTTR, in the 20 to 30 percent range.

Another advantage is the visibility our IT team has into remote and distributed networks. That's pretty important, although it depends on who we're talking about on the team. It primarily impacts the more senior network engineers. It's definitely helpful for them. So the importance of the visibility it provides, overall, is somewhere in the middle range.

It's helpful for delegating low-level tasks to junior staff. They don't have to have the education that would typically be necessary for understanding individual products. It does some of the heavy lifting for them and presents things in an easy-to-understand way for someone who is not necessarily as technically inclined as they would otherwise have to be. There are a lot of tasks that we wouldn't give to our junior techs if we didn't have a tool like Auvik.

And the fact that it keeps our device inventories up to date saves us time. That's a use case I didn't mention, but it's a huge piece of what we use Auvik for.

I like the user interface and the fact that it generates a map automatically of any network that you are trying to manage. That's pretty valuable, as is the ability to hook it into all the devices and keep an eye on their health.

It's a really useful tool for visualizing network topology mapping. When I first started using it, it definitely wasn't as powerful as it is now. There were some issues with it performance-wise and with how it mapped things, but now it's become very useful, with a very accurate visualization of what's occurring on a system or network.

It also has a single web console and it integrates with other tools. That's very important because it's pretty cumbersome when you have a bunch of consoles that you need to go to. Being able to narrow it down to as few consoles as possible is definitely paramount.

It's very intuitive. It does a good job of showing you individual nodes on the network and their relative positions to one another, with pertinent details on each node, all in one location. And it provides easy accessibility to drill down into each node and get more specifics on them.

There is some difficulty using the monitoring and management functions of Auvik. If I were to rate it out of 10, I would say it's a seven or eight, on the "difficulty" scale, to set it up properly and in a way that's useful. It's not outside of a normal difficulty range for a tool like this, but there is definitely an amount of overhead required there.

The user interface could be tweaked in a few different ways to make it a little bit more intuitive when it comes to navigating through the menus. 

Also, getting remotely connected to managed devices could be a little bit smoother. Sometimes, it's a little bit cumbersome trying to do that. If they could streamline the facilitating of remote connections to network devices, that would be an improvement.

I've been using Auvik for about six years.

I've only had a few hiccups here and there. The stability is an eight or a nine out of 10. It has been pretty reliable.

It has really done great in scaling up according to our needs.

In the company that I'm with now, we have it deployed in up to a couple of thousand networks and to a lot of different devices. I don't know what the specific device count is because we've come to a point where we've handed that off to a specific automation team that is there to manage Auvik and a couple of our other tools. There is a lot in our Auvik system right now.

I've had contact with their technical support multiple times. I would rate them an eight out of 10.

Positive

We used multiple applications for managing our networks, or no applications at all, which was something of a mess. It's definitely helpful to unify a lot of different tools in one spot. Switching to Auvik has saved us 15 percent of our time.

Because Auvik is ubiquitous, it's useful for a lot of different network devices. Before we had a tool like Auvik, I'm not even sure that a tool like this existed in the managed services industry. We would use either the vendor-supplied tools for managing specific vendor network devices or something muddled together out of Microsoft's software, like Excel or Access, to try to manage everything.

Overall, the setup is pretty straightforward. It's just time-consuming to get it set up to a point where it's maximally functional. It's not complex, though.

We're continuously rolling it out to clients as we pull new clients in and build out new networks. Once the Auvik code is implemented, the amount of time it takes before network mapping starts to populate depends completely on the network side. It has varied over the last six years that I've been using it, but it doesn't take longer than I would have expected.

I've seen value in the product, absolutely. I don't think that we could operate as a business on the level that we do without something like Auvik. It's done what we needed to do and it hasn't caused us any reason to start looking for any other solution to replace it.

When comparing network monitoring solutions, if there is concern about pricing you really need to assess where you're at in your company and decide how much value a platform like this would bring to you. Sometimes, it's not always apparent how much time you're actually spending on the types of tasks and functions that Auvik can provide. 

Check the knowledge base articles because they're very helpful, and don't be afraid to use the forums as well because the people are very responsive there.