Auvik Network Management (ANM) Reviews

We use Auvik for monitoring and alerting on customer environments.

We lacked visibility into specific aspects of our Local Area Network. Therefore, we required a solution capable of monitoring and alerting us about port activity and other relevant information at the switch level.

Although Auvik does require some experience and knowledge within IT, it is easy to use. Auvik works relatively well with a great intuitive interface.

Auvik's ease of use makes it easy to get to the root of the problem.

Auvik's network map provides a real-time picture of our network as long as the agent is up.

The only waiting time we faced was for the agent's installation and subsequent discovery process. This typically took around 24 hours to ensure it had enough time to identify all network devices.

Before implementing Auvik, we could not readily determine switch outages. This necessitated manual inquiry and on-site troubleshooting. Fortunately, Auvik has cut our mean time to resolution down by 50 percent.

Auvik's reliability is impressive. It effectively alerts us to switch outages and high port utilization, making it a perfect fit for our needs. We are extremely satisfied with Auvik and have no plans to switch to another solution.

While Auvik provides us with good network visibility, there are some features we'd like to see implemented in the future. Specifically, we're looking for an alert system that notifies us when new devices are added to the network. For example, one of our customers experiences recurring issues with an unidentified router appearing on their network. Unfortunately, Auvik doesn't currently alert us when this ghost router appears.

I would like Auvik to alert on IP conflicts. Although it doesn't happen often, we sometimes see duplicate entries for IP addresses.

I have been using Auvik for six years.

We have never had any stability issues with Auvik.

Auvik is highly scalable. We currently use it on networks ranging from small shops with around 40-50 workstations to larger locations with 500-600 endpoints. I am confident that it can easily scale to even larger networks.

I have contacted Auvik's support team a few times and they were consistently great. Their resolution time was super quick.

The initial deployment is extremely easy. If we have an understanding of the customer's environment, the deployment takes five minutes and one person to complete.

The implementation is completed in-house.

Auvik's pricing falls within an acceptable range for us. While management typically handles pricing negotiations, I haven't heard any concerns from them suggesting Auvik's cost is excessive.

I would rate Auvik ten out of ten.

Auvik does most of the maintenance and they advise us before they do it.

I recommend trying Auvik with a trial version if possible, followed by the available Auvik training. While the initial training is not mandatory, I highly encourage newcomers to try the software first to get hands-on experience. This will make the subsequent training, if available, much easier to grasp.

We use it for managing our inventory of assets and for receiving timely alerts from our servers.

Auvik's user interface, interactivity, and ease of use are at an average level.

Its network map and dashboard offer a real-time representation of our network. However, it tends to be quite cluttered.

It enables us to reduce the time spent on setup, maintenance, and issue resolution.

The most valuable features include the inventory management and alerting capabilities.

There is room for improvement in the reporting aspect. Specifically, we would like to receive notifications when individual drives reach full capacity. However, the current system aggregates information for all drives on a server, making it challenging for us. Obtaining comprehensive hardware information from both PCs and servers is also proving to be difficult.

I have been using it for a year and a half.

I would rate its stability capabilities eight out of ten

I would rate its scalability abilities seven out of ten.

Their technical support has been effective, with readily available assistance and help to address issues. Occasionally, the drawback lies in the response that certain features may not be available at the moment, with assurances that they are actively working on it. I would rate it eight out of ten.

Positive

We used Datadog for reporting in the past. We transitioned to Auvik because it provides both functionalities we require at a cost-effective price, combining two essential features into one product. 

Configuring Datadog is more challenging, yet it yields superior reports. On the contrary, Auvik is easier to set up, but its reports are not as comprehensive.

The initial setup was fairly simple.

The deployment time was approximately three or four hours, with assistance from an Auvik representative during the process. Solely, I handled the responsibility from our end. It doesn't necessitate much maintenance.

We recognized its value almost immediately upon deploying it.

The pricing is favorable.

I recommend others have a clearer vision of their goals and assess how well it aligns with their intentions before opting for it. I've spent some time exploring the reporting features, and it falls short of providing all the necessary reports and alerts. Additionally, there are numerous configurations spread across various places, which can be challenging to manage. Overall, I would rate it five out of ten.

I use Auvik for managing my two most complex networks with multiple locations and diverse routing.

Initially, I implemented Auvik to address routing and switching issues. It helped pinpoint and solve those problems. Over time, its bigger value became evident in its ability to efficiently document and discover every device on the network. Auvik has significantly reduced my mean time to resolution. 

It provides crucial visibility into complex switching setups, allowing me to quickly identify which devices are connected to specific switch ports - a task that was challenging with other tools.

In terms of improvement, Auvik could include more customization options and the ability to efficiently manage additional features like printer monitoring.

I have been using Auvik for three years.

Auvik is fairly stable.

Auvik has been scalable in my experience with simple networks, I haven't encountered any limitations. My use cases haven't tested its full capabilities.

Before Auvik, I briefly used Kaseya's Network Glue, which I considered a less sophisticated option. However, Auvik stood out as the best-in-class solution when I compared alternatives. I had known about Auvik for several years before using it and recognized its value in network mapping and documentation, and later appreciating its real-time monitoring and discovery features.

While Auvik offers an intuitive interface, there is a slight learning curve during setup. Once you are familiar with the process, it becomes easier to navigate and manage network issues. Getting started with Auvik requires a fair amount of setup, especially in new environments. Setting up SNMP credentials for each device is time-consuming, particularly in networks with varied configurations. Auvik has a hybrid deployment model, utilizing an on-premise detector. I was involved in the initial deployment, and it was a gradual process over several weeks, addressing switches, routers, servers, printers, and other devices with SNMP.  Maintenance for Auvik is minimal. The main task involves adding new devices, like printers, and ensuring SNMP settings are configured correctly. It becomes more challenging in co-managed IT situations when changes are made independently by the customer.

It is hard to measure the return on investment for Auvik regarding direct revenue. However, it significantly benefits me by speeding up problem resolution and enhancing efficiency.

The pricing of Auvik seems reasonable, especially for setups with complex networks. In cases where networks are more straightforward, it may not be necessary. However, considering the growing importance of compliance standards like PCI and CMMC, having Auvik everywhere could become essential for comprehensive network discovery and cybersecurity.

Auvik provides a network map and dashboard for a real-time view of my network. However, due to the complexity of my setup, the map becomes cluttered and less useful. While it looks nice, the intelligent scaling makes it impractical for anything beyond simple networks. 

Auvik's network map and dashboard attempt full visibility, but they cram too much into a small space. It becomes impractical and buries useful information in the noise. It is unnecessary for simple setups. 

Auvik doesn't charge for monitoring critical devices like printers, servers, and access points. Its primary value lies in monitoring and managing switches and routers, the devices for which they charge. For other devices, redundant monitoring systems are already in place.

Overall, I would rate Auvik as a nine out of ten.

We install the product on all of our customer's endpoints. As an IT services consultant and provider, we depend on it to help us monitor the SaaS applications in use in customer environments. This includes monitoring for shadow IT, but equally important is being able to monitor license usage of approved apps and report that usage back to our customers.

Our customers' environments range from a handful of users to hundreds. Most of them are heavy SaaS users, and most work in at least hybrid environments, if not completely remote. Many of our customers are highly regulated or work with highly regulated customers themselves. All of them have intellectual property they're concerned about safeguarding, as well as customer information. 

This solution is one of a set of tools we use to control and protect these environments. It's one of the most important. Knowing about and stopping data from being stored or otherwise transmitted to unapproved SaaS applications is a primary concern for our customers, as it can cause regulatory violations or data loss and exposure - of both their customers' data and their own IP. It works quickly and proactively, allowing us to prevent these problems.

The product provides important insights into application usage for our customers and for us. Many of our customers are in highly regulated industries, and all of them have concerns about security. Our customers are also concerned about the proliferation of subscriptions they are signed up for. The solution allows us to monitor all of these things. We can provide reporting for audits and as part of our monthly reviews. We can detect and respond quickly to people using unapproved applications. 

We find that it is incredibly easy to install. Early in our use of the product, we worked with the development team and were able to work out a simple process for us to remotely install the tool through our RMM. Doing so is now a routine and fast part of our onboarding process. Management is zero effort on our part.

Overall, the solution gives our customers significant piece of mind, helps them save money, and removes a complication from their business. For us, it's a breeze to use and very dependable.

Reporting is critical for us and our customers. Many need to present documentation of their efforts to protect their data and their IT environment during audits. We can periodically generate reports from the product and store these in a convenient location. These are then at hand during audits, so our customers don't have to scramble to prepare.

Shadow IT monitoring is huge for us since so many of our customers are highly regulated. Being able to quickly detect and respond to Shadow IT usage is incredibly valuable for stopping potential regulatory violations.

Integrating some LLM/AI capabilities into the product that would enable us to use natural language to query the tool and get sensible answers back would be great. Being able to integrate that with Slack or Teams would be even better.

We are always looking for ways to shave time from operations tasks. Even without LLM/AI, being able to integrate some degree of real-time query from a tool like Slack would be very useful. That would eliminate some of the need for us to check the portal and various customer tenants to get the information we need.

We've used the solution almost since it was first developed. It's been part of our toolbox for several years.

We've never run into any issues. The software works and doesn't interfere.

The product is very scalable. We deploy it to thousands of endpoints.

The solution always provides strong customer support.

Positive

We didn't use a different solution previously. We adopted the product early in development, and there weren't many competing products available. Since then, competitors have come out, yet we've stayed with this solution not only due to what it does but due to the quality of the team and company (Auvik).

The initial setup is very straightforward. We've completely automated the installation. The Auvik team is great at helping with this.

There's significant ROI to our customers, both in avoiding the downsides of Shadow IT and in managing their SaaS licensing. Our ROI comes in that we are adding value to our customers' IT and security operations while not incurring significant costs or time to do so.

We feel that the solution is incredibly affordable and fits well into our portfolio of tools. Setup is very easy and has been easy for us to automate. 

There wasn't much else available at the time we started using a solution of this nature. We have looked at other solutions since. However, we prefer to stay with Auvik.

Shadow IT monitoring and SaaS license management used to be uncommon thing. In just a few years, it's become table stakes. Any company not doing this is missing an important part of what IT needs to perform to secure the enterprise and manage costs. This solution provides an easy-to-use and affordable way to do this. I recommend it very highly.

I have 21 different locations in different networks that I have to manage. It gives me the ability to see the devices on the network, to see any troubles, to diagnose and support end-users or get into the network devices that are having issues.

It provides a single integrated platform for everything that I need. I can go and monitor the device, and I can get into the configuration of the device. It's a very powerful tool to have. Having a single integrated platform is very important. I have many tools to use, and to me, the ability to integrate it all into one platform is essential.

Aside from having a unified dashboard, it provides the ability to pick a particular site or a group of sites and see how they are configured and what issue a particular device is having. We are able to drill into that device from this platform, and we don't have to go outside and use different tools to access and get into the device.

It's very intuitive. It's probably the best in terms of getting up and running in short order. I have a team of network professionals who work with me, and we brought them in, and within an hour or two, they had their own dashboard set the way they wanted. So overall, the whole product is intuitive and very easy. It's not difficult.

It has given us a greater amount of visibility that we didn't have before. This visibility is absolutely essential for us. Before that, we would have about four different ways to test. Having it all in one location and one platform is very essential.

The ability to have visibility on a network to see the traffic and the ability to see if devices are misconfigured and if something changes in that configuration, are most valuable.

It's very easy. It's very intuitive. They had me up and running in a matter of hours, so it wasn't a steep learning curve to learn the interface or to learn the controls.

I would like to be able to get a little bit more granularity in turning on and off alerts because I get flooded with alerts. It gives too much information at times.

I've been using it for almost a year.

I haven't had any issues in the year that we've been on it, so it's pretty good.

It's amazing. 

I have not contacted them. 

We used a SolarWinds product. We used some rather rudimentary, built-in network tools. Obviously, there is SNMP, and we would use that through other means, but having it all essentially integrated into Auvik makes a big difference for us in terms of time and ease of use. Switching to Auvik saved us probably 20 hours a week.

It was very straightforward. There was very little in there that did not make sense. I had a great trainer that came in, and we did maybe two or three sessions, and then we were off and running. 

The name of the contractor is Darrell Norton. He works for Sedona Technologies, so we're contracted with them. We met with Darrell and then we went around installing the agents. He assisted with that. We did a lot of that remotely, and then, once the agents were installed, we started building the networks. So, in terms of me getting into the backend and programming, I did none of that.

After the collector was implemented, the network mapping started to populate
almost instantaneously. Each site took maybe 20 minutes at the most, and then it started giving us the information. It was amazing. I was pretty impressed. In terms of the full deployment, we were up and running in one or two days. We had 23 different geographic locations. They were not on one campus, so that was pretty impressive. 

I can't compare the time and cost it took to set up and maintain Auvik versus our previous solutions. It was probably the easiest deployment I've seen. With the other solutions, I spent a lot of time. I had to spend an enormous amount of time doing the configurations and programming, whereas, with Auvik, it was almost a plug-and-play.

For the maintenance, including myself, there are three associates. We all spread those duties out. We don't have anybody designated as the network administrator, so it's me and two other people who spend the most time with it. It's a daily function. In the morning, I get in, and I look at it. If I don't see anything wrong, I move on. It has made our jobs a whole lot easier.

We have absolutely seen time-to-value with Auvik. Getting in there and being able to see what that network is up to at any given moment, what the issues are, and being able to address them right from that platform has been a huge time saver.

We have seen a good 15% reduction in our mean time to resolution (MTTR). 

They're very competitive on the pricing front. They may not be the least expensive, but they're certainly not the most expensive. They're right in a sweet spot. For our organization, at least, it was right within the budget.

We were using the SolarWinds product, and I went through demos of probably a dozen or more. We had CrowdStrike and others. I sat through probably a year's worth. I spent a year evaluating different products before we settled on Auvik.

To those evaluating this solution, I would advise making sure that they have full control of the network, they understand all the devices, and they have the administrative capability to get into managed devices. We discovered a few that we hadn't known about, which provided a challenge. They also should be aware that there may be privacy concerns for some people because the system does take over and look into things. They may need to put controls on before they deploy it. I know that it goes in and gathers the configuration data, but I'm not sure how much personal data that is. I don't watch that part of it, but that would just be my top-of-mind concern. It's so powerful and it can take so much control. What's it looking at?

I'm very impressed with the product. I don't have any complaints. I wish I had it several years earlier. It would've been a lot easier. We've been through a number of acquisitions. So, taking on new different networks was a chore before. If we had this at the onset, it would've been a piece of cake.

We haven't yet utilized the program to its full potential. The most automation I see is getting the alerts, but we haven't yet designated tasks in that automation. So, there's still some manual work. In other words, we get the alert, and then we have to go deal with it. We don't have an automated dispatch or anything to any particular person.

I am sure Auvik is helpful for keeping device inventories up-to-date, but we use something else. We're still getting our feet wet with the product. The more we use it, I'm sure it would be valuable for that. I can go in and see all the devices that are reporting on the network, so in a sense, it does help us to keep device inventory up to date, but I'm sure there's a better way we can use it.

In terms of comparing Auvik's cloud-based solution versus on-prem network monitoring solutions, as long as I have network connectivity and I have internet, it's great, but if I'm in a situation where I don't have connectivity, it doesn't help me.

I would rate it a 10 out of 10.

I'm a technical team lead managing other engineers and specialists for several clients. I utilize Auvik for strategic discussions, escalations, and support tickets. I'm on the backend trying to coordinate responses to outages, feature requests, etc. 

We use multiple applications to manage our network. Auvik is our network mapping and discovery tool that creates alerts in our ticketing system. We use ConnectWise Automate and that suite of products for ticketing. It's not like Auvik is a ticketing help desk system with remote control, but it can do just about everything from a monitoring standpoint. We still use AppNeta for board mirroring or finding latency in network traffic.

Auvik is a total package for network discovery that completely meets our needs as a company. I don't see us leaving Auvik for some other network discovery tool. It's a one-stop shop where we can dive into each of our client's networks, and we have quite a few. I don't know precisely how many we have. It's fewer than a hundred, but it's too many to do LAN diagrams in Visio. 

The solution has reduced repetitive low-priority tasks because it collects the SNMP information for us and alerts us when servers go offline. We can see connectivity in the network from a bird's eye view without the need to dive into the firewalls and switches. Auvik saves us from having to create manual diagrams, and I can export all the data about a client's network, so I don't have to gather all of that myself.

Given our number of clients, we would probably need another full-time engineer if someone had to keep track of all of this on their own. It's roughly equivalent to a human working full-time for an entire year. That's one less person we need for all that, and Auvik reduces human error. 

The visibility Auvik provides is critical because it's part of our onboarding process, giving us a high-level overview so long as the client doesn't change the SNMP default values. We can immediately see what a new client is working with as soon as we get off again into their network.

Auvik has improved the team's availability by about 75 percent. Before Auvik, we used a different tool to scan, but it provided only a one-time snapshot of the network, whereas Auvik provides mapping in real-time. 

It's probably one of the first tools we introduce to new hires in our network operations center. Auvik is intuitive and offers hints. You can type a vendor name or an IP, and it's immediately accessible at a high level. Of course, there's depth to the product that takes time to develop. Junior engineers can quickly get a look at it, start learning how SNMP works, or configure it on devices and watch them appear in Auvik.

We use Auvik when we're doing strategic planning for clients. It helps us find servers, hosts switches, correct serial numbers, etc., so we can do warranty lookups and that sort of thing. It's important. We primarily use it for information gathering to see a visual network diagram mapping and get tickets.

It's hard to say that one feature is my favorite, but I like Auvik's ability to map networks using SNMP. It maps the network, so I can look at all the devices and set them to provide alerts or automatically create tickets when outages occur. If clients need it, I can export all of the data into an Excel spreadsheet.

The monitoring and management functions are easy to use. The network visualization is also intuitive. Ease of use is crucial because many of our help desk specialists and entry-level people need to navigate the solution, so it's vital to have simplicity in standard high-level searching. A single integrated platform is essential to stay in line with our best practices.

The search could be slightly more intelligent. If I type in "Dell" and put an extra "L," Auvik doesn't give a suggestion, "Did you mean 'Dell?'" I have to fix that. That's a minor thing.

Also, if I select a specific device and apply it as a search filter, it shows me the device, and I have to click on it to see it at the bottom of the page. Otherwise, it just stays on the discovery. When I close the device, it remains on the switch displaying the diagram. I have to click the home dashboard to get back to the way it was.

When I remove the filter, it should take me back to the home dashboard. After I add a filter, select a device, and apply it as a search filter, I think it should pop up if there's only one. When there's only one device in the filter, I find it somewhat annoying to need to click it to dive into that device. If I remove the filter, I would prefer it return to the home dashboard. It's a minor irritation at times.

I've used Auvik for more than five years, close to eight. 

Auvik is solid. I have never experienced an outage. Auvik has downtime, but they provide notice well in advance. The maintenance window tends to be at times that won't impact me. The most recent maintenance window was on Dec. 3 at 7:00 AM Eastern, which is 4:00 AM Pacific, so it didn't affect me at all.

I don't see a limitation to the scalability.

Before the company adopted Auvik, I used Visio to create my online diagrams by hand.

I wasn't involved in the initial setup, but deploying the collectors is easy. Another person handles the onboarding process, but the network maps are populated within a day or so. I've never heard anyone say, "Hey, it's taking a long time for Auvik to get going." They say Auvik is up, and I see the map is there. 

I rate Auvik 10 out of 10.

I was looking for a solution that we could use to catalog and keep track of our inventory. I thought about using Auvik in our lab environment to see how it would work for tracking inventory in a production setting.

Auvik's ease of use has bettered our operations by allowing us to add or remove platforms as they get added in or get deprecated, improving quality of life.

The solution was able to integrate with most of our platforms. There were a couple of vendors that were not added in yet, but it wasn't an issue.

It would be beneficial having a single integrated platform for our organization but no solution is able to fully integrate with every vendor. We work with what we have.

If I can deploy the solution into production, it would be beneficial because we can also upload documentation to the Auvik page so we can have quick access for our support team. If our organization leverages Auvik to pull down documentation on the specific vendors as well as just our internal processes, workflow, and troubleshooting approach, Auvik would improve our organization.

Auvik helps us keep our device inventory up to date. After adding all the necessary information, the quickest way I could see the code versions running was by querying the SNPs.

In the long run, the time Auvik would save us quickly pulling the information required to keep our inventory up to date would be a lifesaver. 

Using the monitoring and management functions of Auvik is easy. The solution is straightforward to set up. It communicates well with the SNP and some of the cloud platforms via API keys.

I like the view Auvik offers to help visualize the network mapping/topology for our organization. When we have a large deployment with tens or hundreds of devices, the view can get a little cluttered. The fact that the view is there and we can zoom in and zoom out still makes it valuable to see how things are interconnected and laid out.

I am sure that if we moved forward with the solution it would affect our IT team's visibility into our remote and distributed networks globally, but for evaluation purposes, I was the only one using Auvik.

The fact that Auvik can be accessed anywhere is a good benefit. Not having to use a VPN to access the solution is advantageous. If I'm at a customer site or I'm on vacation, and I need to pull information up because I get an email or a phone call from somebody at work, having Auvik is beneficial because it is cloud-based compared to on-prem network monitoring solutions. 

Auvik mostly supports large vendors such as the Cisco Aruba networks, Meraki, and Extreme Networks. They have the ability to tie into Meraki's dashboard, which is a subsidiary of Cisco. We're using some of the Ruckus hardware. If Auvik can add in some of the smaller vendors to be able to work with their products or even Extreme Networks' cloud platform, that would be beneficial for our organization. 

I have been using Auvik for a couple of weeks.

It is stable and we have not encountered any problems.

I added a Meraki platform with 20,000 access points to test Auvik's scalability. The platform accepted the additional access points without issue and was able to handle the additional load.

The technical support was good. They responded quickly to my question and helped me resolve the issue.

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward. I had to set up a VM in our network that acted as the collector of the data. I didn't read the directions well enough myself and tried to install Auvik on a newer version of Ubuntu. Once I realized my error I moved the solution back down to the correct version and it was up and running within a few minutes. 

The deployment took around two hours. We deployed the solution in a single location for one of our departments to conduct initial testing and proof of concept.

The implementation was out-of-the-box and completed in-house.

It seems that the pricing is a little higher than some of the other solutions, but it also offers more value and data. The pricing shown on the website goes up to 40 devices and for anything higher, we are required to contact the vendor.

We also evaluated PRTG Network Monitor.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

We need a better system for tracking inventory and assets in our production world. Currently, we have an Icinga instance that is not suited for this purpose.

The biggest challenge I faced with Auvik was configuring SNP for devices that did not have it pre-configured because some versions need to talk to the crawler or collector. Once configured, we can add as many devices as we can and view the data Auvik feeds back to us.

We mainly needed a tool for managing or monitoring our firewalls and switches. We do have other tools for general server environment monitoring and applications monitoring, but they are not as good for managing and monitoring firewalls and switches. We specifically needed monitoring and management of firewalls and switches for our data center environment.

It provided the ability to track down the changes in the firewall and the ability to have centralized visibility into our networking stack. We are able to compare and correlate functions from one environment with another environment, which is helpful when we upgrade the code or the framework in one location. We can compare how the stats were previously, and we get to know whether the new code is doing anything funky or if we are seeing any issues. It allows us to compare sizes that are running on the older code and sizes that are running on a newer code. We can see if there is any difference in the CPU usage, RAM usage, or the utilization of the firewalls themselves.

It's a single pane of view. There is a single dashboard, and you can add multiple sites and multiple users to it. You install collectors in different areas, but the management is from a single location. Everything is cloud-based. So, you can access and do monitoring from pretty much anywhere. The beauty of it is that if you have multiple physical locations across the continent, you can see the networking stack on one single page. This single integrated platform is very important for us. The most important factor for us was that this platform is cloud-based. If we were hosting it in a single physical location, it would have been hard to be accessible by other locations. Having it in the cloud and being able to see everything in a centralized location was super important for us because in the case of the old or other tools that we had in the past, or we still have, we need to log into a different tool or different console to see the information, and it's hard to correlate all of them in a single location. Auvik gives that ability. We can compare the states and the information from a firewall located in the east of the US and a firewall located in the west of the US, which is super helpful.

It is nice to be able to visualize the network mapping/topology for the organization. You don't have to do anything. You add the subnets and the VLANs you want to be scanned. As long as the collector can access those subnets, it is done fairly quickly. It depends on how complex your network is, but it can take less than 30 minutes to map everything and give you a visualization, which is pretty nice. Otherwise, it could take you hours to stay up-to-date with the charts of your networking topology because the topology changes from time to time. With Auvik, you can see every node, every switch, and every firewall. You can see how they are connected. You can visually see how your network is and what you have. The best part is that it adjusts on the fly. If I add a new switch, the topology would adjust, and the new switch will be there. If I take out a switch or create a new branch, it will automatically show that. It's really nice and easy for the day-to-day understanding of where you are, but it's also very important when you have a new network admin, and you need to get them up to the speed of your network. In the past, we had to pull out various diagrams and explain what we have and then figure out whether all the diagrams were up-to-date, whereas now, we can just show the dashboard, and they would understand that. I would rate it a 10 out of 10 in terms of the overall intuitiveness of the network visualization. It's really intuitive. From what I was able to see, everything was correct. It's not that you get raw data and some visualization and then you need to work with it or adjust it. It connects everything. From what I was able to see, everything was pretty correct in the diagrams.

It has helped reduce repetitive, low-priority tasks through automation. Previously, we were doing daily backups of the firewalls, but now, we don't have to do that part. That has been a help. The automation of the backups was helpful. 

It has significantly improved the visibility into the networking topology. It can see the access points, and it can see pretty much everything on the network. It can detect servers and physical hardware as well. It has significantly improved our visibility. This visibility is not the most important aspect, but it's definitely important and significant to have this visibility and know what you have in the topology.

It keeps device inventories up-to-date. We can quickly search and find out the devices we have or check what we have. That part has been really helpful. Instead of tracking in an Excel spreadsheet, we can search the inventory in Auvik.

It has definitely saved time to do other tasks. Some of the daily tasks that we had to do are now done by Auvik. With Auvik, our team spends less time checking things, getting dashboards, and pulling up reports.

We have multiple applications and tools to manage and monitor various aspects of the networks. Auvik has saved us a few hours a week. When you have three or four different tools, you need to take information from each of those tools and then get some insights out. With Auvik, we log into a single location, and we get all the information. It has been time-saving for sure.

Few of the features are valuable. One feature that is the most valuable for me is that after we added all of our firewalls, every time we make any configuration change in the firewall, it creates a backup and retains the change history for months. We can see and find out when a change was done and what was the change. The best part is that if we want to compare the current config with the config from two weeks ago, the tool pulls up both config files and tells us what the difference is. If something is not working today, instead of asking around who made the change, what was changed, and how things were two weeks ago when everything was working, we can just pull both configs, check them out, and know what exactly the problem is and investigate.

Auvik is a cloud-based solution, and it definitely has advantages over on-prem network monitoring solutions. We don't have to manage anything on-prem, and we don't have to patch the backend. We don't have to allocate resources for the management console to work, and it's accessible from anywhere. We don't have to back up the virtual machine or the appliance because everything is managed by Auvik. We really like that part. You definitely need internet connectivity to send all the logs and data to Auvik. If your internet goes down, then technically, you don't have visibility at that time, but then, you likely have a bigger problem than being able to get the data.

It takes significantly less time and effort to set up and maintain Auvik versus our previous solutions. With the previous solutions, we needed to get somebody trained. Somebody had to go and watch tons of videos to understand how to deploy the solution and how to properly install and configure it. With Auvik, we just provide the executables to somebody, and they just install it. We then go to the console and the data starts to come there. It's way easier and faster to set it up.

They can improve its monitoring capabilities for the physical servers or operating systems. At the moment, they do have some visibility. Even though you don't buy Auvik for monitoring your servers, and it is more for network monitoring, it would be nice if they can do end-to-end monitoring so that you don't have to use a different tool for operating system monitoring. You can get all the information from Auvik.

I have been using Auvik for about three months.

It has been very stable so far. I don't see any issues. I'm not concerned about its stability.

It can scale. I don't see that as an issue.

We have various firewalls and switches in HA. We have various models and vendors. We have a three-layer topology. We have a core layer, a distribution layer, and an access layer. All that is visible and monitored from Auvik.

Their technical support has been good. They come up with solutions, and they are there to help. I'm happy with the experience so far. I would rate them an eight out of 10.

Positive

We used PRTG, and we used Nagios. We used these two recently. They were more for monitoring. They didn't have the capabilities of management. They weren't keeping backups, and they weren't alerting us where there was a new firmware update. They also did not have the topology visualization.

Both of them were on-prem solutions. So, we had to have a system or VM to install them. We installed PRTG on Windows. We needed a dedicated box to run it. They weren't cloud-based, and they weren't highly available.

I deployed it, and I worked with my network engineers to set it up properly. I started the initial deployment or initial installation of the collectors, and then my team took over. I worked with them to deploy it in multiple locations. It was straightforward and pretty easy to deploy. You need to do some configurations to add everything, but the initial configuration is straightforward.

We just downloaded the out-of-the-box solution and just clicked on next, next, and next. We haven't done any customization. It took about 30 minutes initially because I added a few subnets. It took 20 to 30 minutes to get the diagram. Initially, you get some data depending on your network. We have a fairly large network, so it took about 30 minutes. It is awesome to get that information in 30 minutes.

It was pretty straightforward and easy to use for firewalls. You set up a connection to the firewall, and then everything pretty much works on its own. Some tools require you to learn for weeks before you figure out how to deploy. Auvik, in that regard, is pretty easy. We had a little bit of a challenge adding the switches just because we have specific switches, and they communicate with the firewall on a specific protocol. There was an API or a way to add them up, but we just didn't know how to add them up out of the box. Auvik's support was able to help us out fairly quickly, and overall, it was an easy and smooth deployment.

We did it ourselves. I don't see a need for an integrator to do it because it's straightforward.

It doesn't require any day-to-day maintenance from our side. Everything is managed by Auvik. They run the updates and the patches. The only thing that you need to do is that when you add a new device, you need to provide a new password, or if you change the password, you need to update that in Auvik. Other than that, there is no maintenance.

I would like it to be more cost-effective or affordable. It's not the most expensive one, but it's also not the cheapest solution out there. You pay month to month. It is what it is. It is not for everyone, but it depends on what you're looking for in your budget.

To someone comparing network monitoring solutions but concerned about pricing, I would say that Auvik is not the cheapest solution out there. You pay per device you monitor, but there is value in it. If you monitor the key systems and components, then you can make it cost-effective. If you want to monitor every single switch in your environment, it certainly won't be a cheap solution. You need to evaluate what you need to monitor. Do you need to have every switch? You can have maybe the top-tier switches and get all the information from those. You don't necessarily need to have every switch monitored because it doesn't really distinguish. You pay the same price whether you are monitoring your core switch or your access switch. To make it more cost-effective, you need to pick and choose what you want to monitor.

We've evaluated FortiMonitor from Fortinet, but it wasn't a good fit for us. We also evaluated LiveAction. That was also not a good fit for us.

I would advise giving it a try in the trial period, adding all the devices you have on the network, and seeing what value you are getting. I would also advise assessing what you need to monitor and what you don't need to monitor because you pay per monitored device.

I would rate it a nine out of ten.