Auvik Network Management (ANM) Reviews

The primary use case is for monitoring networks, traffic, etc. 

The solution provides us with alerts if anything goes down. We have an RMM tool, but if an entire site goes down, then the monitor we use for RMM will also be down and unable to inform us that it can't reach other devices. With Auvik in the cloud, we still get alerted if something goes down, such as a firewall or core switch. We received alerts through Auvik that we didn't get from our RMM tool, allowing us to get ahead of issues with our clients.

The product affects our IT team's availability; it frees up their time by helping them troubleshoot quicker and making them available for other tasks. 

We have seen a reduction in the mean time to resolution (MTTR). Auvik currently plays a small role in that, but once we leverage it more, we expect it will have an even more significant impact. It's more our overall tool stack that helps lower our MTTR.   

The mapping is excellent as it allows us to see where elements connect and got us out of a few binds. I accidentally wiped the configuration of three Meraki 48-Port Switches, and we could see each of the VLANs and their configurations using the solution. We utilized Auvik to see how individual ports were configured, which allowed us to get back up with much less effort than if we hadn't had Auvik.

Auvik provides a single integrated platform, which we integrated with ConnectWise for reporting. As far as viewing from within Auvik, it's a single pane of glass, and that's pretty significant for us, especially for scaling. 

Auvik is excellent for helping us visualize network mapping, especially as we can filter by network devices. We can easily see where all switches interconnect, which isn't as important in smaller environments, but we have a few environments with upwards of 15 switches. It's essential to visualize if one switch goes down, whether it will take down the entire network or if it is safe to take it down for maintenance. We know exactly what will go offline and how important that would be to us. Auvik allows us to hover over specific ports to see if they are connected, which is especially useful if we have to go on-site for troubleshooting. The overall intuitiveness of the network visualization is good, though there could be improvements; SNMP is only on some devices, which can limit our ability to get information from those devices.  

More capabilities in terms of default OIDs, so we can leverage more of the information from SNMP would be good to see. It's been a while since I messed with the OIDs, but the last time I was trying to get additional information from printers, such as the model number. I was able to find that information, but it took a good amount of research to figure out how. I want to see more default capability regarding what information gets spit out from SNMP.

I've been using the solution for five years. 

The solution has always been stable, in my experience.

Auvik is scalable; I never had an issue scaling it. It's ideal in this respect, especially for an MSP.

I've contacted technical support on several occasions, and they are great; they responded quickly and effectively.

Positive

At a previous company I worked at, we used ConnectWise Automate, which wasn't a great solution. It was a hope and a prayer that we got the monitoring portion correct and used whatever we could find, not anything centralized.

The first deployment was relatively straightforward, and the fine-tuning took more learning and familiarity with the tool. The deployment at the company I'm currently with was much smoother as I was more familiar with the product, and it was relatively seamless.

I carried out the initial setup by myself for the most part, and the solution requires minimal maintenance. We go in occasionally to see if there are new devices SNMP has been found on, find out which devices and get them added.

I'm unfamiliar with other network monitoring applications, as I've been using Auvik for so long, but it is one of the more expensive solutions. However, we have used the product to troubleshoot different issues. For example, one of our clients had an issue where their phones were constantly going down, and nobody could figure out the problem. We put Auvik on the network and found a loop in their switches, so it simplifies our lives, increases resolution speed, and makes us look like competent technicians.  

I rate Auvik eight out of ten. 

My advice to others is if you want to know all the details and all the ins and outs of your network, Auvik is the tool for you. It makes visibility easy and shows how everything is interconnected.

Regarding the solution reducing repetitive, low-priority tasks through automation, we're getting there. We don't currently use much automation on the Auvik side, more on the RMM side.  

The solution affected our IT team's global visibility into our remote and distributed networks, and they've been able to use this for troubleshooting. This visibility is more important than our IT team currently appreciates because they need to be more familiar with all the solution's capabilities to leverage it fully. As the tool isn't used to its full potential, its visibility is not as vital as it could or should be. 

Regarding Auvik helping delegate low-level tasks to junior staff, it helps somewhat, but it's another area where we need to utilize the solution's full capability. One other technician and I deal with the alert tickets, and we sometimes send them to our service desk, but we mainly deal with tickets ourselves. We could delegate more, but at the same time, dealing with the tickets ourselves helps prevent issues from growing larger. 

The solution helps us keep device inventories up to date to an extent. We use a combination of Auvik and N-central, our RMM tool. Auvik can get some information that N-central cannot, such as important information from Meraki devices, including serial numbers. The tool can push this information to our PSA, but it also has limitations. Our RMM tool tends to be better for pulling data from desktops and laptops, but in terms of network devices and equipment, Auvik is more effective for inventory purposes. This is another area where we need to leverage the solution more, including focusing on high-value tasks and delegating low-level tasks to junior staff. 

Auvik keeping device inventories up to date helped save us time for network devices but less for workstations and servers. It has helped us out when trying to find out where a device is, as we can utilize the solution's inventory. 

We're an MSP, and we have deployed it to monitor the customer network and environment and make sure that the configurations are backed up and know when things were done.

It's easier to manage than what we used before, and licensing-wise, it's easier to understand what you're going to be paying for and not.

It has reduced repetitive low-priority tasks through automation, especially configuration backups. The time saved depends on the customer and how many configuration changes we make. It's difficult to measure it.

Previously, we didn't have visibility into our remote and distributed networks globally, but now we definitely do. This visibility is important. At this point in time, it's an invaluable piece of what we do. So, it's very important at this point in time.

Automated configuration backups and automated network diagrams are the most valuable.

The one feature we need is that when something goes down, we need a phone call, a text message, or something like that, not just an email alert. This is something they don't do. So, we have another service that does that for us. It would be nice to have that integrated into this, but at the moment, we have a way around it, which is with another partner of ours. It's not like we have to sign up to a new service for it, but it would definitely be nice if we can set up more detailed alerting schedules and things like that. However, we have found a way to make it work.

The automated network maps are really nice. Sometimes, I wish we could make the manual tweak to them because sometimes, it doesn't quite get what the network is like, but overall, it's doing a great job. It's a lot easier than doing it manually. Where it misses the mark is that we would want to make some manual tweaks, which is not possible, but the overall intuitiveness of the network visualization is pretty good.

Auvik helps to keep device inventories up to date, but I just wish it would be easier to sync with our overall inventory software. At the moment, most things live in Auvik. We would like to think it should be possible, but we haven't been able to get that to work. So, there's still some improvement to get there, but overall, it has definitely been an improvement.

Syncing the assets that are in there through a third-party program definitely needs some improvements. There should be better synchronization of its assets to different asset management platforms. The alerting capabilities can definitely use improvements. We use third-party for that at the moment, and then the way they look for performance on network equipment is really heavy on heavily used devices, such as firewalls. It taxes certain equipment pretty heavily when it does performance monitoring. So, the SNMP calling that it does can be way improved.

I have been using this solution for about five years or so.

Its stability is very good.

Its scalability is good so far. We use it for a variety of different customers but not all of our customers. We have about 20 sub-customers in our portal at the moment, and they are across the US with multiple locations in some instances. So, it's deployed in a variety of different ways.

I have interacted with their technical support. I would rate them a seven out of ten. In the beginning, they were way better and closer to a nine. Lately, it's been less.

Neutral

We were using LogicMonitor. At the time, LogicMonitor was overly complicated for what we needed it to do and also more expensive.

It was straightforward. We've deployed it at 20 different customers so far, and there was probably one instance where we needed to make some network changes for it to work. For most customers, we needed to add SNMP credentials and things like that, and generally, it just worked. When we get the correct credentials in place, after the collector is implemented, network mapping starts to populate immediately.

In terms of the time and cost to set up and maintain Auvik versus our previous solution, the previous one was also cloud-hosted. So, there was no maintenance cost there. So, it's the same, or it's virtually none because it's cloud-hosted.

In terms of maintenance, it's just set up and go. Auvik takes care of all the software updates, and you don't need to worry about anything. With an on-prem solution, you normally need to do the upgrades and everything yourself. However, some high-compliance customers can't give any data to the cloud providers. If we need to have something on-site, we can't use Auvik. That's the only issue we have, but for everything else, it's an advantage to have it in the cloud rather than to self-host.

We did it in-house. We are the integrator for other customers, and we've done more than 20 installations of it.

We have different people doing different deployments. It depends on the complexity of the network, how many searches we need to add SNMP entries to and gather credentials for, and things like that, but generally, it takes under an hour to set up the site and the collector.

We have definitely seen a time-to-value with this. I don't have the metrics, but I know it does what it needs to, and it saves time.

We have seen a reduction in our mean time to resolution (MTTR), but it's very difficult to know how much because previously, we didn't get alerted or knew of any issues going on. Now, we do, and now, we mainly get alerted before issues become issues. So, we can prevent them from ever cropping up, but it's very difficult to put a number on that.

The pricing is good, but I haven't looked at the pricing in a while. So, I don't know if it has changed or not. As far as I know, the pricing is still where it should be. I have no issues with it.

We didn't look at other solutions. It was recommended by a partner of ours. So, we looked at it. It did what it needed to do, and that's why we went with it.

If you're considering it, just install the trial, and it'll sell itself.

It's pretty easy once you get to know it. It's not that difficult. If you want to get into the advanced details, as with any software, it takes a little while to get used to all the advanced options, but in general, it's pretty easy to use. Its ease of use is important, but more important is that it works if something happens, which it does.

I am not sure about the effect its automation has had on our IT team's availability. It's difficult to say how busy they would be with or without it, but I would think it would have had a positive impact.

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten.

I use the monitoring on a daily basis. I receive the alerts. We have two monitoring software solutions and Auvik complements the other one. We use Auvik to cover the gaps in the other one. We get alerts from both sides.

Working at an MSP, I come across very different networks. No two are quite the same. Auvik makes it really easy for me to get a logical outlay of what switches are connected to what switches and what equipment is connected to what equipment. It takes a lot of the detective work out of the equation for me.

Without a doubt, it has affected the visibility our IT team has into remote and distributed networks. Having everyone in one portal, they click on their client and, as long as we have it configured properly and we're getting that accurate picture, it's absolutely incredible. That visibility is fantastic. We'll hop on a call and the other guy will also log in to Auvik. We can say, "Hey, search for this. Look at this path. The VLAN is everywhere except on this device. What are we going to do here?" It really helps us out with collaboration and brainstorming.

Auvik makes it much easier to trace connections and log in to a switch without having to jump through all those extra hoops. It makes logging into switches accessible for some people who may not be comfortable with that.

The network mapping, the logical layout, is the part that I love the most, showing what switch is connected to what switch. I couldn't live without it. That is the big selling point for me. If somebody asks me a question about a network, I log in to Auvik, 100 percent, to look at their network before I can make any decisions or answer any questions. The overall intuitiveness of the network visualization is excellent. I don't know how I lived without this solution before.

Most people will also use Auvik for one of my favorite functions that it provides, the remote terminal. That's pretty much the preferred way as far as management goes. We still have people logging in to a service locally using SSH and getting into networking equipment. But personally, in the last year, I have really shifted over to Auvik-first management for my tasks.

In addition, we are all about consistency, and having one unified platform is very nice. Familiarity breeds efficiency. It's important to use a unified platform because you're going to know where things are at for all your clients. You're going to know what you're looking for and where your tools are. That's why I've been shifting to Auvik-first to administrate my network devices. I could be at any one of 150 clients in a day, remotely, and Auvik makes it such a breeze because they're all showing up in one platform.

I have a love-hate relationship with the network mapping. Navigating around the map on more complex networks is pretty painful if you're showing endpoints. I know there are filters to knock it down, but sometimes that's not enough. It handles like "early-90s Java."

For instance, I just pulled up one of the clients that I work with a lot. When I get a view of the entire network, it's highly complex. I see a lot of it. When I filter it down to just network items it's great. That sure helps simplify it. But actually trying to get around, for example, if I need to go to the right, I can't quite grab things and move them. It's just not super responsive. 

I would love to be able to use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out on the map, but instead, it scrolls the page, which it's fine. But sometimes it resizes the map too. I have a really high-power system and that map resizing sometimes even chugs my computer down.

In addition, I would love to be able to drag assets and place them where I want to, maybe on a session-by-session basis. Sometimes, if there are a bunch of devices to the left or the right of the core switch or stack or router, the connections blend together. I would love to be able to grab a device or a device group and drag it out of the way a little. It would still maintain the links between the icons, but the ability to place the icons where I want them, spread out a little bit, would be really cool.

I've been using Auvik for just over two years.

I have a very positive impression of its stability.

We had some kind of database error with accounts last year but that was resolved in a reasonable amount of time.  And I do see maintenance banners up for planned downtime, but I can only think of one or two times that I thought, "I really wish I had Auvik, but it's down right now." It's such a rarity so I'm not complaining. 

The stability is very good as far as I'm concerned.

Aside from making the map too big, the scalability is great.

We have it deployed in about 150 locations.

I haven't needed to contact customer support. It's intuitive enough that I've been able to get through it on my own.

I did not use another solution previously. I actually spent a decade saying, "Man, I really wish there was something out there like this." When I saw Auvik, my jaw dropped.

I was not involved in the initial setup but I have installed the agent.

To my knowledge, there is no recurring maintenance. Occasionally I need to move an agent or restart an agent if it stops responding, or restart a server.

Part of the value of Auvik comes from being able to trace connections graphically and visually, rather than having to manually back-trace MAC tables. That alone saves enough time for me.

The only other thing I've ever heard of that is comparable to Auvik is something called The Dude. I looked it up once. I don't get intimidated by technology, but that was pretty intense and I never looked back. When somebody showed me Auvik, it blew my mind because it was pretty much exactly what I'm looking for.

Install it on more than one client, make sure that you have your network scoped properly for scanning, and enjoy. Also, make sure you have your SNMP set up on all your devices. That's the hard part.

Within the last year, we made it a requirement for all of our clients to pay for an Auvik license. This is required software for us, going forward. That's a win.

Although I don't know anything about the pricing, I would definitely say look into Auvik. If the price is right, I understand why our organization has made it required, per client. If I was doing this on my own, Auvik would be a requirement for me as well.

In our organization, everybody uses it and everybody recommends it. Everybody says, "This is the way to go." Everybody hears about the efficiency, ease of use, and what's going to cause the least amount of stress. Everybody here likes it.

We're in the healthcare industry and in our organization we have what we call a "backup machine" to be used in emergency scenarios. Should there be a brownout or internet service provider disruptions or any major catastrophe, we can move digital charting to paper charting for a certain duration of time. We have the Auvik probe installed on those backup machines, and it sends feedback back to the main Auvik dashboard where we monitor such things as ISP latency, devices on the network, and certain network elements like switches and access points.

We also have a probe sitting in one of the servers in the data center and it performs a similar function, helping us review our network infrastructure within the data center and to see where potential bottlenecks are, at what times of day, and to analyze trends.

We use it for basic troubleshooting as well because you can see everything on the network within a particular facility. At sites that don't have Cisco Meraki within the building, we use Auvik to isolate which ports' devices are connected to and for general troubleshooting. If, for example, an uplink port on one of the switches goes out, we can see, "Oh, that was port 26. Please switch it to port 25." We can duplicate configurations from one port to the next port and make sure that the facility is up and online.

It's been a very useful tool for us.

We can automate alerting systems based on certain criteria. For example, if a switch is undergoing high CPU usage or access points show high CPU or memory usage, we'll get the alerts for those and address them accordingly.

Auvik also sends us a text message whenever one of the internet circuits goes down, as we have a main fibre circuit at every building and a coaxial backup. That helps us ease the burden in switching over the necessary connections or the tunnels back to our centralized data center.

In addition, the network discovery capabilities are very insightful, coming from our previous situation where we had absolutely nothing. They have made us aware of certain switches within certain parts of the building that we may not have known existed. They have also helped because in our industry we're built by acquisitions. Oftentimes, we find an acquisition has an IDF and MDF in a particular building. With Auvik installed, we might find there are two more switches around that building. Sometimes these switches can be in the ceiling, but even being able to isolate what port they're connected to, disconnecting them, and finding where these items are has been extraordinarily helpful to us.

The solution has ultimately improved the response time of our help desk team when troubleshooting issues. It has also helped to identify older equipment when doing a refresh. We've been able to find 100-meg switches and old Cisco switches that are in places that we didn't anticipate they would be. We have also been able to isolate key pieces of the infrastructure within a building, pieces that needed to be replaced to provide a more friendly user experience.

Another benefit is that the automation of network mapping enables our level-one network specialists to resolve issues directly, and frees up senior-level team members for more important tasks. Our level-ones have read-only access, but that allows them to see the different topologies, see where things are connected, and then help facilitate a solution, either remotely or with the help of onsite personnel. It's kind of like having Cisco Meraki insight without actually having Cisco Meraki. While we only use Cisco Meraki gear at our HQ location, which provides us a high level of insight within one portal, Cisco Meraki is fairly expensive and it's not something that we can afford to put into every building. Auvik provides us with all the features that Cisco Meraki might have to offer within one pane of glass. 

The solution also automatically updates network topology, although it requires SNMP to be enabled on a particular network device. So when we're provisioning things that are going out, we have to pre-program that information into the switch and make sure everything is compatible. But once it's in place, it provides us the same level of insight that the previous network device did.

Also, in the cases where we've used it for resolving issues, it has reduced our MTTR. We're using it more as an insight tool. We don't have a lot of network-related issues within the environment, but in the instances that we have used it for resolution, it has helped us resolve the issues a lot quicker, on the order of 40 percent quicker.

It helps us to put out fires before end-users even know there is a problem, especially when it comes to internet service provider latency on a particular circuit. It alerts us to high bandwidth usage or increased latency and allows us to flip the connections from fibre to coax in anticipation, and then dispatch a fiber technician to resolve the issue on the primary line. All that can be done without any user noticing an impact at the facility level.

We use Auvik's TrafficInsights feature in the data center, but not the facility level. TrafficInsights is really the most beneficial within the data center because that's where high bandwidth is going and that's where it's most important to know exactly what's going on at all times. It shows us network bandwidth usage without the need for expensive, in-line traffic decryption, and with the projects that we currently have on our plate, that's incredibly important. We're currently transitioning data centers right now, and being able to isolate what traffic is going where and what's taking up the most bandwidth helps us put in certain traffic shaping rules. If something were to potentially impact at the facility level, we can get ahead of the curve and make the appropriate changes as necessary.

TrafficInsights also helps show where our system is experiencing performance issues, because we're using fibre optics within the data center as the backbone for everything. Whenever we're moving virtual machines, it helps isolate which ports are experiencing the most usage. We correlate the ports that are used to the host machines themselves and determine what virtual machines are reliant on the host that's using the most bandwidth, and we then see what services are impacted from there. TrafficInsights enables us to prepare ourselves to minimize end-user performance impact. We make changes based on what we see through TrafficInsights. It's a useful feature for doing exactly that. It allows us to maintain a steady level of performance within the data center.

There are also the automated, out-of-the-box device configuration backups which have saved me quite a few times. The ability to back up a configuration from a firewall and have it housed in one central location where we can get the backup config and restore it to a new device, should a firewall or a switch blow out, decreases our restore time significantly. We don't have to figure out which rules, traffic shaping, or port-forwarding were on the switch, or what was on the firewall. We confidently know that the backup being pulled from Auvik is the most recent one.

Typically, before we had Auvik, when a firewall went out, it would take us a full day or a day and a half to turn around another firewall, to make sure it would be plug-and-play. With Auvik, that time has been reduced to a few hours. That's what it takes to procure the actual equipment and get it sent out, because we just pull the backup, restore it, and send the equipment out. No one from our networking team is then working, via tickets, to discover what was on the device previously. It's all in one place. If it's local, we have the building up and running within two hours of equipment configuration.

It's hard to say how much the device configuration backup saves us because every scenario is different. But if we're paying someone $45 an hour, instead of 12 hours of their time we're only using four hours of their time.

The alerting feature has been a very key piece for us, especially in the data center because we manage it ourselves. It gives us special insights into how certain projects and migrations are impacting the center of our operations, out in the field. Within the data center, we have an RDS farm that all the users from the facility connect to. Whenever something may be slow, we can look at the alerting and it helps us troubleshoot whether the issue is at the facility level or at an infrastructure level.

Also, the audit logs it provides are very detailed and can be tailored to our needs within the organization for things like management audit logs and user activity. The TrafficInsights have been really helpful.

The deployment of the probe onto a particular device could be improved. That usually requires one of our level-two people to step in from the help desk team. It would be much better if it were a click-and-go deployment. What I would like to see in particular is the ability to download an MSI builder for a probe for a particular building. We would simply double-click and install it onto the machine and have it work. Having to roll through with the entire API key is a little time-consuming.

I have been using Auvik for about two years now.

We've never had issues with it until recently when we started to see a lot more maintenance come up because the dashboard might be unavailable. But its uptime is about 99 percent.

Scalability is dependent on cost because they charge by network elements. In some of the nursing homes we handle, it's very cost-effective because they only have three switches, a firewall, and about 20 access points. But in larger facilities that have three or four IDFs, it becomes a little bit more costly because you have the additional switches and access points.

Since we don't have a lot of networking issues within the building itself, Auvik is being used as a general guidance tool, and to help the level-one help desk technicians troubleshoot a couple of things a little bit quicker, figure out where items are attached, and help the onsite maintenance director swap a cable or something of that manner. Our use of Auvik will be expanded based on acquisitions. If we bring on a new nursing home, we'll configure all the equipment into our network ahead of time and it will be plug-and-go. We'll just pay for the additional licensing for the network devices.

The first couple of times that I tried to get in contact with the tech support, they were very responsive. With every third-party vendor, wait-times can vary, but the tech support has always been good. I have recently noticed a little bit of a slower response time.

One thing that would be nice would be for them to reach out to us once in a while to check in and see how things are going, rather than only being reactive. A little bit more of a proactive approach would help. Outside of that, I haven't had any issues with their support or their customer team.

Overall, I would rate their tech support at nine out of 10.

We used to use OpenNMS for WAN connectivity purposes but with Auvik we were able to replace that. As far as backups go, we used to use an in-house-built solution for automating an SSH protocol into the firewalls and doing manual backups from there. But that took time to maintain. Auvik has consolidated those two things in one place. And the additional features of network insights for an entire facility is something that we didn't previously have. Auvik is saving us $3,000 to $4,000 per year in licensing costs.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. From start to finish, it took us about five days to have the entire environment up and running. We're a fairly small team. For organizations that have more dedicated team members, such as a NOC team and a server team, it would probably be a lot faster. But we were all filling in for those roles.

Our implementation strategy was simply to make sure that we had the different sites built out within the Auvik collector, entering in the IP information for each site, and then installing the probe facility by facility.

There was a time where it was a little confusing to get set up, but Auvik really helped to bridge that gap in knowledge by providing training to our end-users, meaning me or someone on our help desk team. They gave us more in-depth information and helped us to really understand the product features and to ensure that we were using everything to the best of its capabilities within our circumstances.

We have 10 users of Auvik: three system administrators, two level-two help desk technicians, and about five level-one help desk technicians. As a cloud-based solution, once it's deployed, unless we're making certain IP schema changes, it doesn't require much maintenance at all from our staff. On occasion, a backup machine needs to be replaced and we have to reinstall the probe. But outside of that, it's really click-and-go. The Auvik probe will pick up on a new subnet too. It's all available within the dashboard itself. You can literally turn off the old subnet and turn on the new one and begin scanning those elements just like they were before.

We did it on our own.

We've seen ROI in terms of the time that Auvik has saved us in the instances where we've had configurations that needed to be cloned, for example. I don't want to say the product is stale, rather it's insightful. You get from it as much as you want to get out of it. For us, the insights, manageability, and troubleshooting go a long way because we're saving man-hours.

When it comes to time-to-value, the setup time is fairly easy and the network discovery is very helpful. 

Because we had nothing previously, it's a very valuable tool. Having everything in one place, enabling our teams to react faster, decreasing the time to resolution, as well as identifying weak places within the infrastructure—it's hard to put a value on all that it gives us.

It has saved us a considerable amount of money, given that everything had to be done manually before, such as FaceTiming with a member of the facility and trying to get a physical view of a particular issue. Just having a central pane of glass that easily identifies various pieces of information goes a long way. We're saving tech time which can ultimately then be better spent supporting the organization and end-users. As far as infrastructure planning and rip-and-replace go for certain network technologies, it's provided much better insight and we can plan for which network switches actually have to be replaced. There are cost savings there because if we've got gig switches here and we're only looking to replace 100-meg switches, we can really drill down and know what we need ahead of time, going into a particular building, when we redo some infrastructure.

The solution is billed per network device, so there are devices that are not subject to billing in your environment, such as dumb switches because they have no higher reporting protocols. If you do have those, Auvik won't report on them in the same way. It won't give you port-based or traffic-based analyses.

There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

We initially looked at SolarWinds and, thankfully, we didn't go with that product. Its setup time and configuration were pretty extensive and we never fully finished it after putting about 10 days' worth of time into it. As much as I'd like to say some good things about SolarWinds, it really wasn't for us because of the lack of communication and support that I got from them in helping to set things up. Ultimately, we steered away from that product.

The biggest pro for Auvik is its ease of deployment. It was as easy as I've personally seen a setup of this type of solution to be. It has an abundance of features and functionality. The only con is that the install is a little bit more tech-intensive as far as time goes.

The biggest lesson I have learned from using Auvik is that every organization should have something like this. From our perspective, it isn't very expensive, although in smaller organizations it might be considered more of a luxury. But every luxury has its benefits. All the aspects it helps us with make it phenomenal. It's definitely a "need," not a "want."

I would advise making sure you have a very good, thorough count of the SNMP-enabled devices you have within your network. Also, be cognizant of whether you have any non-managed switches because you can't really get visibility into them. 

Also, make sure that you have full control over your network elements within the environment. We had a couple of switches that we had to factory-reset to get back into them, because there were lost credentials. Assuming that your infrastructure and your documentation are good, you really shouldn't run into any terrible issues. If you're sound on documentation, credential handling, and credential guarding, this tool will be very easy for you to implement. And if your infrastructure is pretty sound and everything is consolidated, this will be a phenomenal tool.

I used to work at a managed service provider, and we needed a network topology mapping solution and discovered Auvik. So, we tried it out, and then we used Auvik until that MSP was bought out. I left the MSP world and became a network engineer at Greater Nevada Credit Union, where I'm now.

We pretty much use it for topology mapping. We use it for mapping out the network and then monitoring the availability of the network infrastructure devices. There is also alerting whenever there are problems. So, we basically use it for monitoring, alerting, and troubleshooting. We also use it for configuration management and automated backup.

It is a managed solution, so they handle all of the platform upgrades and all that stuff. We have got whichever version they have got.

It alerts us whenever there are problems, such as a site is down, an individual device is offline, or there are performance issues. So, it provides alerting and assists in troubleshooting when there is not a site-wide or a network-wide issue.

When they started it, Auvik was intended to be an MSP-focused tool. So, you set up different networks in Auvik as if they are distinct entities or different companies. I've deployed Auvik such that it treats all of our different locations as different networks, even though everything is basically tied together in one big wide area network. The net effect here is that network discovery is so effective it discovers all of the same subnets over and over again across all different networks that I have configured in Auvik. It normally wouldn't be a problem in an MSP world because those networks are not connected to one another. It is kind of an annoyance for me, but it really just kind of highlights how effective it is. Its discovery mechanism is very effective. I haven't had too many scenarios where Auvik didn't discover a particular subnet. It mostly just boils down to whether or not we've configured the network correctly so that something isn't just like a hidden Easter egg. 

Prior to Auvik, we weren't tracking any kind of KPIs relative to the network, performance, uptime, etc. There wasn't even the ability to do that because there just wasn't a solution in place. Now that we've implemented this platform, it has given us the ability to do so after our IT organization reaches that maturity level. The ability is there, and the data is there, but we're not there yet. So, it has given us the ability to track those kinds of KPIs. Beyond that, given that we are a 100% Cisco network, it very simply tracks contract status, support status, and all that stuff. I can very easily run a report and confirm the software and the firmware version that all of the devices are running to make everything consistent and get all of our switches and routers on the standard software version. We're approaching that templatized network look. It is one of the things that I could have done manually. I could physically log in to every device and figure out what they're on and then go through the upgrade process. Now, it's a little bit more simplified because I can just run one report and see that everything is on different versions. I can then standardize the version across the board.

It automatically updates our network topology. There are certain things that we have to do as dictated by the NCUA. We are a credit union, and the NCUA is the federal regulatory body that oversees our operations. When we get audited every six months or so, the NCUA basically has a long list of things that they check. They'll say, "Are you performing configuration backups of your network devices?" I would say that we do, and they would ask me to show it to them. For that, all I got to do is bring up Auvik and say, "Here's the device. Our entire network is managed by this platform, and here is an example of a configuration backup for a particular switch. Here is every configuration that has changed since the platform was implemented." Directly above that pane in the browser window is the topology. One of the other things that they ask about is if we have network topology diagrams to which I say that we have but not in the traditional sense. Once upon a time, most folks just manually maintained Visio diagrams of how the network was physically and logically connected, but you just can't rely on those because of the network changes. In a network of this size, probably not a single day passes when I don't make a configuration change. The help desk folks also go and deploy a new workstation regularly, and Auvik automatically discovers those new devices and automatically updates the maps. So, it is a living document at that point, which makes it useful because it is always accurate. I don't have to manually go in and add a new device. 

It has decreased our meantime to resolution primarily because I'm notified of problems much quicker. Previously, if there was a problem, a user would call the help desk to look into it. If the help desk wasn't really sure about what's going on, they escalated it to the network guy. I then looked into it and said, "Oh, I see." Now, instead of that, I'm getting a notification from the tool at the same time a user notices a problem, and then I start looking into it. By the time the help desk hits me up, I'm like, "Yeah, this should be good now." So, in that capacity, it has definitely improved the meantime to resolution. It has probably cut our resolution times in half.

It helps us to put out fires before people/end users even know there is a problem. There have been some scenarios where it has alerted on things, and there was no perceived impact by the end-users. If there was a failed power supply in a switch that maybe had redundant power supplies, we would get a notification that one of those power supplies has died. We can then proactively replace that failed device before the spare tire blows out, and the network goes down.

We're a credit union, and we've got an online banking website, ATMs, ITMs, etc. We have another department that handles all of those member or customer-facing technologies. Previously, if there was a network outage somewhere, it used to be that they were basically unaware of it until they started getting reports that members are calling in and saying that the e-branch is down, and they can't log in to the e-branch. That team does not use Auvik, but I have included them in the outage alerting. So, they get an email when a branch goes down, or there are problems. They don't get notifications for high broadcast traffic, but when there are obvious problems, they get a notification. For example, when a site goes down, we know that the ITMs aren't going to be working, and they're going to get notified at some point by members, but Auvik would have already sent them an alert saying that the XYZ branch is down. So, they can already anticipate that there are going to be ITM issues because the whole site is offline.

It provides automated, out-of-the-box device configuration backups. These are just compulsory administrative tasks for the stuff you rarely need, but if you ever need it and you didn't have it, you're in a big problem. It does the automated backup, and it does it so reliably that I've never manually managed configuration. If I was doing that manually, it would probably take five minutes per device to do a configuration backup. Across a hundred devices, it would be 500 minutes a month. So, it saves me a fair amount of time. It also saves me needing to employ somebody to do a very repetitive task. This is what technology does. It replaces dumb functions so that humans can go and do things that are not so easily automated. The device configuration part also saves money, but the only reason that it saved money was that it was something that we weren't doing before Auvik. We were not spending money to backup configurations because we were not really backing up configurations. So, it didn't really replace anything. It just implemented something that needed to be done but wasn't being done.

It enabled us to consolidate or replace other tools. We got rid of the managed service provider and saved approximately 100K a year, and it replaced SolarWinds and Uptime. Uptime was another platform similar to Auvik, but it was nowhere near as feature-rich. We're paying around 17K a year for Auvik, and SolarWinds and Uptime combined were probably in the neighborhood of 25K a year. So, it has saved around 8K a year.

It is useful for configuration management and automated backup. It is one of my favorite features because it is low-hanging fruit, and it is easy to accomplish, but on a network where we've got infrastructure devices in hundreds, it is an arduous task to keep on top of. Auvik does it all automatically, so that's probably one of my favorites because it is important, and it just does it automatically. I don't even have to think about it.

It is incredibly easy to use. That was one of the things that helped motivate. We were basically told that we couldn't use SolarWinds anymore, and we had to adopt something new. I already knew Auvik, but considering that I'm the only network engineer here, the simplicity of the platform was important so that the rest of the IT team could use it to find information. It was important to have an interface that was intuitive and the information that was accessible and usable by folks who weren't networking nerds.

Given that you can deploy it so quickly and so easily, its time to value is very quick. I can start getting meaningful information out of it almost immediately.

Sometimes, we get requests for exporting a map of the network. I can export a map, but it exports it as a PDF, which is basically just like a drawing. There is no context. When you're looking at the map, you can hover over things and you can drill in devices and see all kinds of information, but when you export it to a PDF, it is just like a flat image. It is a picture of it, and if you don't know what you're looking at, it doesn't necessarily make any sense. This may be something that has already improved. The exportability piece was one thing that was kind of like a gripe, but it is not all that important. If NCUA wanted to see proof that we have network topology diagrams, I can just show them the tool. Worst case scenario, I can give them read-only access to log into our Auvik tenant, and then they can see for themselves all of that stuff.

Currently, with Auvik's support, I'm troubleshooting some of the information gathered on Cisco devices through SNMP V3. Auvik is not able to pull some of the important information that it uses to draw the map, which is kind of shocking because it is Auvik. So, it is their platform, and it is monitoring Cisco devices, which are obviously very prevalent in the world. Auvik is having a hard time gathering such important information over SNMP V3, which is a networking standard, and on super popular device brand and model. They're actively working with me on that piece. It seems that network device management using SNMP V3 could use a little tuning.

I probably started to use it in 2016 or 2017. 

It is very stable. There were occasions where I got a notification that Auvik failed to pull a device for its configuration information to see if there was a change, and then, it'll magically resolve itself after 15 or 20 minutes. So, there were some instances that made me wonder why that happened, but, generally, it has been very stable. I don't know if I've ever seen an Auvik outage.

It is super simple to scale. To add a site, we deploy all of the equipment. After the equipment is deployed, I deploy a collector at that new site, and we're off and running.

The only folks that use the platform are in the IT department, but we've also got another department in the technology wing of the organization. This department handles all of those member or customer-facing technologies, such as online banking website, ATMs, ITMs, etc. They do not use Auvik, but I have included them in the outage alerting. So, they get an email when a branch goes down or there are problems. The cybersecurity team also uses it a little bit, and we also have our systems engineers, who actually manage the server infrastructure. There are probably about 15 users across those different roles.

It is being used everywhere across the entire network. There is nowhere to really increase its usage. As things change, they may warrant increasing its usage. There are probably some opportunities to increase the use with TrafficInsights and things like that. 

Aside from the ticket that I'm working on right now, I didn't have to reach out to them too much. So, the jury is still out, and we'll see how they do on this. They haven't given up and are still looking into it. So, for now, I would give them a solid eight out of 10.

When I joined this organization, they didn't have much for monitoring the network, but they had already purchased SolarWinds licensing. When the SolarWinds breach happened, we got a kind of edict from the NCUA to discontinue any relationships that we might have with SolarWinds. So, I said, "Okay, not a problem. I know Auvik." We adopted Auvik, and we've been using Auvik since then.

Its initial setup was very easy. The configurations were already in place on our network devices to allow management over SNMP. All it took was to deploy the tool and then give it the necessary information to begin the network discovery. After that, it just started populating information. So, it was very easy.

Auvik doesn't use anything in terms of how it interacts with the network. It doesn't use any proprietary stuff that you really have to learn. It uses the same protocols that everything else uses. So, there wasn't any complicated platform-specific stuff that we needed to get in place to make it work. Deploying the tool is as simple as installing software or spinning up a virtual machine. It took us about a day. It was very quick.

Its setup was much quicker than other solutions because you don't have to set up the front-end. All you got to do is deploy little collectors. You don't have to set up the interface you interact with or set that server up. That's usually the part that is a real pain because you have to spin up your own servers, and you got to install the software and give it enough resources. The interface is clunky and slow, and you've got to tune the virtual machine. That's obviously applicable to any hosted service, but that was definitely a contributing factor to the speed and the ease of deploying it. It was like everything is there, and you just got to start plugging your information into it and let the collectors discover and plug it in for you.

In terms of the implementation strategy, with Auvik or network monitoring tools, we, sort of, have two different approaches. The first approach is that we can deploy it so that one collector or one group of collectors monitors the entire network, and we have one map that shows the entire network. Prior to working at GNCU, I was working at a managed service provider, and GNCU was one of our customers. I had done a lot of project work for GNCU, but they were not a managed customer. So, we didn't deploy our toolset on their network, and therefore, we didn't have any visibility. However, in order to do some of the project work that I was planning for them, I needed that kind of information. I needed topology, and I needed to know subnets and things like that. So, we temporarily deployed Auvik back then into GNCU's network. We just deployed the collector, and let it discover the entire network. We gave it about a day to go and do all that discovery and draw the whole map out. After that, I kind of realized it was clunky because the map was so big. It was detailing the network that spans around 30 different locations. 

Another approach is to break each site down into its own network instead of doing one big network map. This is the approach that we followed when we implemented it at GNCU back in December. In this approach, each site is its own customer, which made the map for each site much smaller. It also made it much easier to navigate and see the things that we wanted to do. So, in the end, this was the approach that we ended up using. It is nice that you have that option instead of having just one way.

In terms of maintenance, it is like a platform. We don't maintain anything there. The only thing that we do is that when we make changes to the network or deploy a new device, we need to go in and make sure that Auvik discovers the new device, and it is able to log in, make a backup of the configurations, and start pulling it over SNMP. The platform itself requires zero maintenance.

In terms of the impact of this level of maintenance on our operations as compared to other solutions I've used in the past, with SolarWinds, when a new version came out, we had set it in a way to kind of automate it to an extent. When an update was available, we would upload it manually, apply it, and make sure that everything was working. It wasn't overly arduous. There were patches, modest updates, and stuff like that. For full version upgrades, a lot of times, it was easier to just deploy a new server, install the new version, and then get it set up. We don't have to do that now. It is almost like a thing that you used to do back in the day before SaaS solutions.

We implemented it ourselves.

We have not done an ROI. I also cannot quantify exactly how much it has saved because I don't remember exactly what we were paying for SolarWinds, but it is similar to what we were paying for SolarWinds. When we were using SolarWinds, after we had got it deployed and configured the way that we wanted, we probably wouldn't have ever gone back to Auvik, despite me knowing it and liking Auvik. That's because we had already made the investment in that platform, but then the breach happened, and we had no choice. So, there wasn't a meaningful saving in switching from SolarWinds to Auvik. 

Prior to me coming on board, GNCU had kind of outsourced the network part to two different organizations. One of those organizations just did the monitoring and management piece. They were charging us about 100K a year for that managed service. By implementing Auvik, we basically duplicated what they were doing, which has a very measurable impact. I didn't have access to their platform, so I needed something that I could use to monitor and manage the network. So, by getting rid of that managed service provider, we saved approximately 100K a year.

Their licensing model is basically per managed device. You pay X amount per managed device, and managed devices are limited to switches, routers, firewalls, and wireless LAN controllers. So, the only things that we pay for are our switches, routers, firewalls, and wireless LAN controllers, but there are orders of magnitude more devices that Auvik manages that we don't pay for. It also manages servers, workstations, and phones. Auvik will gather KPIs from anything that is connected to the network if it can be managed via a standard like SNMP or WMI. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

Auvik doesn't nickel-and-dime. SolarWinds nickel-and-dime you to death. Everything has a different license, and you needed that license for every device, no matter what it was, down to even the interface level. It was ridiculous. Auvik does it monthly. So, it is per device and per month with the option to pay annually at some percent savings, which is what we do. We pay annually right now. It is something like 17K dollars a year.

Auvik might have even been a little bit more expensive than SolarWinds, but that was only because we had not added some of the things that Auvik did to the SolarWinds licensing. So, eventually, the SolarWinds product probably would've been a little bit more expensive if it was like an apple to apple comparison in terms of features.

I had checked ThousandEyes. I had also checked Cisco DNA Center, which was more costly, and the network was just not there yet. Some of our devices don't support management via Cisco DNA Center. So, we were not there yet. Someday, I'd like to be able to get there, but for what we needed, Auvik was just the easiest answer.

I would advise others to check it out. It doesn't hurt. They give you a two-week free trial. You can kind of just say that you want to try this, and then, you try it. There is no haggling back and forth with sales. They give you access to the platform for two weeks. For us, I had done the trial just to get it implemented, and then, they extended the trial for us free of charge for another two weeks so that we could get all the approvals in place to adopt the platforms and start paying for it. They make it super easy, so try it out.

The automation of network mapping has enabled junior network specialists to resolve issues directly and freed up senior-level team members to perform higher-value tasks, but it is not because of the tool. It is because of the proficiency level of our team. We don't have junior network staff. There is just me. Our help desk folks are our junior staff, and it is just not in their wheelhouse yet. It goes back to that organizational operational maturity. We've got like the help desk that helps the end-users, and then we've got the engineers who deploy and are kind of like that highest escalation point. It kind of goes from zero to 60. They check something out there, and the help desk will get a ticket saying that it must be a network thing. It just comes right over to me. I'll try to use those opportunities as a teaching opportunity to show, "Hey, log in to Auvik, and then you can see here that the device is online. We've got some other monitoring tools that we use as well for workstations in virtual infrastructure to see that it is not a network issue, and here's how you can dig through Auvik to see it." It increases the proficiency level of our staff. The tools kind of assist with that change and with them improving. A network engineer can tell the help desk guy until he is blue in the face about how things work, but when you have something to kind of visualize, you can look at metrics and performance indicators. It, kind of, helps in providing a little bit of context to the topics that I'm talking about, and then, they can, kind of, use those things. So, the proficiency definitely is improving, and the tool helps with that.

We have not used the TrafficInsights feature. We have a cybersecurity team, and they have a tool called Darktrace, which is TrafficInsights on steroids. It has got some AI or machine learning built into the platform, and it does some really gee-whiz stuff. Because of the presence of that tool, I haven't gone into configuring TrafficInsights yet. It is on my list of things to do because it is just convenient to have all of your data that you might want to access available in one window, as opposed to having to log into another device and learn how to use another device or another tool. So, eventually, I'll get around to that TrafficInsights so that the information is available.

If there is anything that Auvik has taught me, which is also one of my general rules of thumb, is that when something is not working as expected, it is not necessarily a problem related to that thing. For example, if it is a problem that I'm having with Auvik, usually it is not indicative of a problem with Auvik. Similarly, it is not necessarily a problem on the network that is impacting users. It tends to point to something not being configured correctly on the network. It kind of highlights our own mistakes.

For an advanced network operations center, Auvik is very easy to use and super easy to deploy. It is intuitive, and its features are very useful to an extent. When it comes to a more advanced network team, there are things that Auvik doesn't do. Doing those things would make it awesome, but they would just make the platform more complex and probably less easy to use. So, for the fundamentals, Auvik does a fantastic job. Once you go beyond the fundamentals, Auvik still does a pretty good job, but there are some things that I would not be surprised that the platform will never do. That's because it is not intended to be Cisco DNA Center. It is intended to be a broad platform that supports everything to a degree. 

For an unsophisticated or a very small network team, I would give it a nine out of 10 because of ease of use. A managed service provider is a good example because the folks who consume the product are not network specialists. They primarily used it for backup, mapping, KPIs, and assisting in troubleshooting. For mid-range organizations, it is a solid nine. For advanced networking teams, it is probably a five because it is not going to give you all the information that you want. It is not going to do all of the things that you might want it to do, but the things that it does, it does very well.

Our use cases are around network monitoring. That was our biggest challenge.

The most important thing to me has been the benefits around visibility. If I don't have visibility then I can't report on things and the tool doesn't work.

And when it comes to reducing repetitive tasks through automation, it has absolutely done so, for example, through the backup features and functionality. Also, from an auditing point of view, it has greatly helped us because we now don't find ourselves in a situation where we have to figure out who did what and when. It sends out reports on a user basis, meaning we know when a user was logged in. Those are all very cool features and functionality.

With the reduction in repetitive tasks for my team, at different levels, time has been freed up. Another factor in saving time is definitely due to the improved fault finding we can do now. Because we have a network map, when something goes wrong, such as what couldn't communicate with which device, it saves us good chunks of time.

The network monitoring and backups of specific devices are really impressive. We've seen very good responses from our staff regarding the backup functionality. You can add a product, such as a switch and, once the product is added, it backs it up for you.

The ease of use of the monitoring and management functions depends on what level of engineer you are and how you perceive it, but to me, it's quite simple to use and user-friendly. The overall intuitiveness of the network visualization is about eight out of 10. That aspect is actually quite good in the product. There are small tweaks and improvements that can be made, but overall, it is really good.

It also does change-tracking, which is a big aspect for us. If someone makes a change on a device, Auvik will report on it for us.

In addition, it helps keep the devices up-to-date. At a minimum, it gives us a monitoring feature on the versions of the devices. If it can't auto-update, the key here is visibility. As long as we have that visibility, there's a lot we can do with that info. The visibility saves us time.

And while it's not a single, integrated platform for everything, because I still use some of my other network tools to complete some other tasks, Auvik is a comprehensive platform.

I would like to see some improvements in some of the reporting functionality, meaning I'd like to be able to deep dive more into the reporting.

The reporting is still being scaled and built out and I would love to see some additional products being added to the stack. For example, Auvik covers certain types of firewalls, but I would like to see more enterprise stuff added to the stack. These aren't exact examples, but it may cover Sophos and FortiGate but not Palo Alto.

I have been using Auvik for about six months.

So far, I have found it to be quite stable. I haven't found the cloud provider to be offline and I haven't found that I was unable to log in to the cloud portal yet.

This is a quite easily scalable solution because it's a cloud platform. It's an easy rollout and the solution should be able to scale very simply. It shouldn't be difficult to scale out if we want more agents or more installs. It would be quite quick.

We have it deployed in a few different locations.

I haven't needed to contact their technical support yet.

We use different vendors' products and they have been troublesome or quite challenging. We did not have something that can do proper network monitoring around the devices themselves. We needed something that can scan the network, find the switches and devices, assign licensing, and then monitor them from there on out.

We're in the middle of transitioning, so we are still using the previous solution. It's a mix of SolarWinds and Darktrace. Those are two of the two bigger ones. This is a process, which means we won't jump to Auvik only and not use anything else, but we're finding it to be a great tool when integrated into our stack with the rest of the tools. We're definitely finding value in it.

Auvik is priced in the middle tier. We have customers using bottom-tier products and those who use what I wouldn't say are necessarily higher-tier products in terms of functionality, but more extensive products. For the way that it's deployed, where the pricing only affects certain devices—meaning there are some free devices, so that you don't pay for everything—it's quite nicely priced in the middle. It's not an overpriced product, but it's also not a very cheap product. It is in a good range of pricing.

If someone is concerned about pricing, in most cases the functionality makes a strong use case and it mostly trumps the pricing. Generally, functionality wins. If you give me a product that works really well and it's a little bit more expensive, I'll take it. It doesn't make sense to sacrifice functionality for pricing.

We didn't really evaluate other options. In our specific case, Auvik came recommended by one of my friends, so we started a trial and then used it from there. I wasn't necessarily looking for just this type of network tech. It was just a happy coincidence.

As for our team's visibility into remote and distributed networks globally, it has helped us somewhat. My team has started really integrating the product, but they've deployed it on a smaller scale at this point. It's not deployed on such a large scale yet.

Auvik, as a cloud-based solution, versus on-prem network monitoring solutions, is quite simple and intuitive to use. The cloud-based aspect is actually a very nice touch since some vendors require you to have an appliance onsite that they communicate with. It's very useful that it's a cloud-based application from an ease-of-deployment point of view. With no onsite appliance, there are fewer dependencies.

My advice would be to review and focus on the features and the functionality of the product. Don't necessarily, off the bat, just look at the pricing and say this is very expensive. With some customers, the first question is always, "What's the price?" without our having even said a word about the product. Take it for a test drive first, before you look at the pricing, so at least you know what you would be getting for that price.

We primarily use Auvik for network monitoring and occasionally to remotely access some devices. It helps us monitor clients with a multi-site setup. We can monitor the network and overall network connectivity. The configurations of the devices we monitor are synchronized into IT Glue for documentation.

Auvik was part of the company's toolset when I joined as an engineer, and we have been perfecting it. We had a couple of big clients when I started. Everybody was under one site even though there were multiple sites. There was a site-to-site VPN and more. For some projects I worked on, we got directions from Auvik's account managers on how to implement multi-site within Auvik properly. That helped us manage these individual sites efficiently without creating too much burden.

Auvik's alerts notify us about an outage before our clients call us, so we can tell them that we're already on it when they call to say their internet is down. It gives them a sense of comfort and trust. Auvik is also crucial for any troubleshooting. If a device is down and we can't get to it from one way, it's always helpful to have another look through Auvik to start troubleshooting from the outside.

The cloud-based platform gives us ready access to necessary information without the need to go through additional steps to remote into a client site. Otherwise, we would need to set up a secure tunnel through a site-to-site VPN. Auvik makes it more convenient. 

It's arguably a more significant security risk in some ways. However, from the perspective of a managed service provider, it's more accessible to have a single pane of view for all our clients from the cloud-based portal. The initial setup and configuration are more straightforward. You don't need to pick a server or use many resources aside from setting something up in the portal and installing the Auvik collector. It certainly simplifies things.

It increased our visibility into remote networks since we can't be everywhere simultaneously. We don't need to deploy separate tools internally, which reduces the workload. It helped us improve network visibility in conjunction with our other toolsets.

As a managed service provider, we have multiple clients, so it's crucial to have visibility into their networks and our own. We have Auvik set up to cover our critical infrastructure. When the tool is set up correctly, it hums along pretty well. We can relax and let Auvik do the monitoring and documentation. It can gather the information or at least confirm it. If something changes, Auvik can pick it up. It does a lot for us.

Auvik helps keep device inventories updated. We have a couple of toolsets. For example, we have remote monitoring and management agents on servers. Auvik and some other tools can update the documentation automatically if one of the engineers forgets to do it after we change something on a server, such as an IP address. It provides another check for us and a general reminder, "Hey, this was updated. You should update the documentation for it because it looks different."

I like the ability to remotely access devices securely. The multi-site setup has also been useful. Once we learned how to set that up, we could customize each site and push out common information like SNMP credentials from the parent site to other multi-sites. The automatic network layout is excellent, and the overall monitoring is also beneficial. 

Auvik's monitoring and management features are relatively easy to use, but it depends on what you work with daily. When I started, there were features I didn't know about until somebody told me, "Set it up this way, and you could just monitor the internet connection as a whole." I didn't know that existed until somebody showed me. The basics are easy enough, but the advanced features require some training. 

They added two-factor authentication to access some of these devices remotely. It was a significant step forward because someone with access to Auvik has a lot of power. 

The network visualization is nice. We have some large clients with many devices, so the initial visualization might be overwhelming, but we manage that pretty well. There are some devices that we don't need Auvik to monitor. We lower the noise from workstations and printers because we have a separate toolset for that. However, it does get a little cluttered when you have a lot of servers. It was just a matter of getting used to it. I don't know if any platform has figured out how to do that properly, but it's pretty intuitive.

The solution integrates with our ticketing and documentation system. We use Auvik as our primary network monitoring system and alert system if something goes down. It provides a lot of benefits by putting everything in one place. Having a single integrated platform simplifies the process of looking. We don't need to go to multiple vendors and look at everything or have several windows and applications open. We also use PRTG to provide network monitoring for some of our clients, and that's more on the internal side. Auvik is good at monitoring anything outward-facing.

There have been times when our SNMP community strings were incorrect or weren't updated for whatever reason, and Auvik kept trying to scan them. Changing it was a pain, and there wasn't a way to extract that from Auvik. I understand there are valid security reasons why we wouldn't want to do that sometimes. In those situations, we had to recreate those community strings and reapply them to various devices.

Maybe they could implement a way to do that securely. It could be restricted by the role a person has within the organization. For example, perhaps a junior engineer wouldn't have access, but it would be available to a supervisor, manager, administrator, or higher-up. 

I have been using Auvik for a little over a year.

I haven't heard any complaints about Auvik's stability or performance degradation. Auvik has scheduled maintenance windows, but they're transparent about when they will be. It hasn't impacted us. Reliability is crucial because Auvik is part of our service to our customers. We've had issues with a few vendors where they've gone down or had quality issues that affect our services and reflect poorly on us.

Scalability hasn't been an issue so far. There is one thing to keep in mind, and it's probably less of a scalability issue with Auvik itself. However, we've learned from working with large clients that having multiple Auvik collectors is best. It would be best if you strategized about how to distribute the collectors throughout your servers and put redundancies in place. 

I rate Auvik support a ten out of ten. The knowledge base articles are pretty thorough. Once, I had to look up how to confirm SNMP credentials or set up SNMPv3. Auvik's team is excellent. Our support and account managers have been responsive and helpful. 

Positive

I rate Auvik a ten out of ten. I recommend planning and going through the steps to evaluate this. It's a powerful tool with an extensive suite of features, and the support is there if needed. Auvik has good people working there. 

Going back to the SNMP portion, you need to plan how to design and implement the solution, especially if you have a multi-site situation or are monitoring many devices. You need to plan for scalability and collector distribution.

We use Auvik to manage our network devices and get alerts about what's happening on our systems. We've deployed it across our showroom office network. We have 140 devices.

We're discovering devices we weren't getting previously. For example, we can monitor printer status and be more aware of what's happening with our printers. It's given us visibility that we didn't have.

It's essential because we don't have a dedicated IT team to manage our network. In addition to our IT infrastructure, we need to monitor smart office devices like the cameras and ensure all our devices are online. The ability to monitor this is massively valuable for our potential clients and us. 

We plan to use Auvik to keep our device inventories updated, but I haven't set that up yet. However, it has already populated a list of devices we will keep up to date. We didn't have that list previously. 

The best feature is the ease of setup. Auvik immediately scans and finds everything. It automatically connects to multiple devices with a single set of credentials.

Managing the platform seems relatively easy. I've only used it for a few days, but it's far easier than the previous product we were using. It gives us a single integrated platform, which is crucial for our business model because we provide solutions for others. The network visualization makes rough sense. There are elements that I find tricky to get my head around, but I think might be because it's all new to me. 

I say it's fairly clear, but obviously, it needs me to spend a little bit more time maybe grouping things together and things like that to make sure we've got the correct devices that things are mapped incorrectly.

I'm still undergoing the trial period. My only complaint is that I still don't understand what the license cost will be. More transparent pricing would be massive. In terms of functionality, it's head and shoulders above our previous solution.

I have only been using Auvik for about a week.

Auvik seems more stable than our previous solution. 

The scalability seems good. I placed a collector on a relatively low-power machine, and it doesn't seem to be struggling on the network. Everything seems fine.

We previously used Domotz, but we switched because it required us to run a device on the network that took another device off the network for some reason. I began looking at other solutions to see if they all had this issue. I stumbled across Auvik and decided to try it out.

One of the issues we face is that some of our customers won't allow anything to leave the site, so it has to be on-prem. That's one reason we chose Domotz. However, that caused problems with our network. We prefer a cloud-based system on our network because I work remotely more often than not. On-prem and cloud solutions have advantages and drawbacks. Some customers need an on-prem solution, but I prefer a cloud-based one.

Deploying Auvik is straightforward, and I did it myself. You install the agent, add credentials, and click okay. After you deploy the collector, the network map populates in under a day. I deployed it in the evening, and everything was there the next day. 

When comparing prices, you should consider how long it will take to set up and configure. A cheaper option might not be completely deployed for months. We don't have tons of time to do these things. The most important aspect is how fast we can get it running. How good the software is, and how quickly we can start using it effectively.

There was no visibility prior to setting it up on pricing. Having set it up, their pricing seems fair. It's definitely more expensive than what we're paying at the moment.

I rate Auvik seven out of 10. It seems fairly simple so far, and we haven't had any issues. However, I haven't used it extensively enough. It's expensive, and it would need to be mind-blowing to justify the cost. 

My advice to future users is to ensure you get your credentials together before starting the setup.