Auvik Network Management (ANM) Reviews

We use Auvik to create a graphical representation of our network. It's easier to trace issues when we know what's connected at a glance. Auvik gives us alerts when a device goes offline, and we use Auvik to identify the place in the network path where the issue lies. Was it a core switch? A downstream switch? Was it not a switch at all?

Auvik makes troubleshooting more manageable and the workflow smoother. When troubleshooting an outage or a node that went down, we can immediately identify the problem. It reduces the time we spend troubleshooting, allowing us to spend more time on other tasks, which is a roundabout way of saying it makes us more efficient. I'd estimate that it reduces the time we spend on these tasks by about 30 percent. 

Troubleshooting is just like anything else. You always focus on the tools you use the most or the ones that are the most effective. Auvik is one of the top two we use for specific issues, namely network outages or known downs.

Auvik improves our visibility into your remote and distributed networks. It provides quick visualization, so we don't need to log into any individual switches. We can do everything through Auvik, especially port tracing. We need to see what device is connected to which port. This can be easily done within Auvik.

It also helps us delegate tasks within our IT team. As soon as we locate where an outage lies, we can instantly determine whether it needs to go to a low-level technician or a higher one based on what we see on the network map or alert that Auvik triggers.

It doesn't automatically keep our network inventories up to date because we still need to enable SNMP on the device. But once it's in the inventory, it's easy to manage with the existing devices we already have.

A cloud-based solution reduces our hardware costs because we don't need to deploy a VM for monitoring. Also, we're a managed service provider, so we would have to have an on-prem solution for each client, which would be cost-prohibitive.

I like Auvik's alerts. We can configure the alerts for a specific timeframe, i.e., we can set it to alert us when devices have been offline for a specific amount of minutes. If a device or port is flapping, we can ignore it or allow only the first alert to come in and mute the subsequent alerts.

The monitoring and management are quite straightforward. I rate it nine out of 10 for intuitiveness. During onboarding, we went through how to set everything up. It's a set-it-and-forget-it solution, and we can use templates to move forward with other devices that we add based on our documentation.

Auvik is one of our go-to solutions, depending on the issue. If we see a device go down, we usually get an alert from Auvik or our RMM solution. Auvik lets us trace graphically to know where the issue could lie, reducing the amount of troubleshooting we have to do.

It's a single platform but isn't integrated with anything besides our PSA. I don't think it needs to integrate with anything else other than our ticketing solution. 

Auvik could be more customizable. Also, the network map isn't as clear as it could be. I don't know if it's even possible, but it would be nice if Auvik could pick up on dumb switches. I don't know if that's possible based on SNMP, but if they can figure out a way to do that, it would make our life much easier.

Our organization has been using Auvik for about a year.

We've never had any downtime outside of their regular maintenance windows. They always notify us in advance when there will be maintenance. Even when they're down for maintenance, it's after hours, so we don't notice. 

Scaling Auvik is pretty simple. We just activate SNMP, put the credentials in devices, and we're set once the Auvik collectors are in place.

I'd rate Auvik support seven out of 10. We haven't needed to reach out to them much. I can only recall around three or four times in the past year that we contacted them. They've been pretty good. We have only used web-based support, not phone support. 

Neutral

We were using Nagios, but it was getting too pricey. Nagios also provided more information than we needed. Auvik provides SNMP, which is fine for our purposes. With Nagios, we had to install agents on each node to recognize it. If we could activate SNMP, we'd get more reporting from Nagios when we install the agent, but it wasn't intuitive how to do that. 

Once it was slotted in place, there wasn't much of a learning curve at all, so we saw an ROI right away.

We looked at Zabbix. Zabbix had a free tier, but it had absolutely no support. We went with Auvik because of their support.

I rate Auvik nine out of 10. If you want simplicity, Auvik is probably the way to go.

Zabbix has a free tool, but their paid solution is actually quite expensive.

Auvik is our monitoring solution; we're an MSP, so we use it to monitor multiple medium-sized enterprise clients. It's primarily used by the network team, though other teams log on occasionally. We have five users in our company. 

Auvik helps us manage our clients better, and it's all from one web page, so we can switch between clients easily without having to log into different systems. We can also remotely access their networks, which is handy. 

We previously used multiple solutions for managing our networks and switching to Auvik resulted in time savings of approximately 20%.  

Auvik increased our IT team's availability, especially as we can look into issues remotely and from our phones if we're away from a PC. All our teammates can log into a webpage instead of installing applications on their computers, which is nice from an availability point of view. We have seen time savings in the area of 10%. 

The solution helps us delegate low-level tasks to junior staff; we send alerts to our NOC team, and they help triage some of the lower-level ones. If they can't resolve it, they escalate it to us. The delegation capability is essential, as it saves us a lot of time.   

Auvik helps keep device inventories up-to-date; we can set it to scan the network, and the information updates automatically. It saves about 30% of our time.

The solution keeping device inventories up-to-date helps our teams focus on high-value tasks and delegate low-level tasks to junior staff.   

The best features are the alerting and monitoring. 

Using Auvik, we can remotely access our clients' devices or networks, which is an excellent feature.

The solution also allows us to do backups, check usage, and do SNMP polling for device statistics all in one pane of glass, which is nice.

Auvik's monitoring and managing functions are easy to use, especially as I did some webinars. We need the service, so ease of use is critical.  

Auvik provides a single integrated platform. 

Auvik provides a basic network map, and as long as everything is working correctly, it draws a little topology table, which is a nice feature. 

Auvik helps to reduce repetitive, low-priority tasks through automation, primarily our backups, as that's a repetitive task. From a backup point of view, the solution handles everything, and we only need to verify once in a while, so we have time savings of 90% in this area.   

I want to see improvement around backups; we had a case where we created a ticket for online support, and they were able to set up backups for one of our devices, but they were unwilling to do the same backup script with a different device. The script uses the same code, just a different model number, and the engineers weren't willing to add it to the other model.

We've been using Auvik for about a year. 

Auvik is a stable platform. 

Auvik is scalable, though we have one client with many devices, and it can sometimes be slow to load some of the data.

The technical support is excellent; I've logged several tickets with them, and they always resolved my issues.

Positive

The company previously used an in-house system, but that was before my time. Auvik has been in place since my arrival. 

I wasn't involved in the deployment, and the product doesn't require any maintenance on our end, as Auvik Networks Inc. handles that in the cloud. 

I don't have any insight into the cost, as another department handles that.

I rate the solution eight out of ten. 

To someone comparing network monitoring solutions but concerned about pricing, I'd say Auvik is a good solution, and I recommend it.

Comparing Auvik's cloud-based solution versus on-prem network monitoring solutions, cloud-based is more straightforward and always available, so I prefer it over an on-prem tool.   

Our visibility into remote and distributed networks is about the same as before.

I advise anyone evaluating Auvik to try their POC, as it's straightforward to install and get working.

We needed a solution to monitor all of our systems. We were using another system, but it wasn't up to par. Auvik gives us everything we need plus some. Right now, we're using it to monitor all of our virtual machines and switches. We can do configurations on any of our switches directly through Auvik.

Right now, another engineer and I currently use the solution. We're going to allow other IT staff to view it, but nobody else will have access. There will be another five staff members who will see all of the data.

We're able to have a visual dashboard in one central location, so we don't need to have multiple dashboards. If we're going to configure an API, we can have it displayed on a board for our team to see. We didn't have anything like that before, so the ability to see insights on a dashboard is very important to our organization.

Auvik has saved us 50% of the time we used to spend because we get notifications fairly quickly.

We have seen a reduction in our MTTR. We notice that some of our devices are going offline five minutes sooner per incident than when we would first get reports.

The most valuable feature is the ability to see usage alerts on all of our devices. That's not just from our servers, but on all of our machines and user computers.

The ability to see utilization at one central location is easier than having multiple windows. We couldn't configure alerts on everything because it just wasn't available. Auvik provided the solution for us.

The use of the monitoring and management functions is of a medium difficulty level. With some aspects like trying to filter devices, it's a little cumbersome to type in the product. You have to click and apply it like a filter. When you click on the search button, it automatically populates it. It's a different step, so it's a little cumbersome and slow. The interface is quite slow, but that's likely due to it being on the cloud.

Auvik provides a single integrated platform. It's very important for us to have a single integrated platform because the interface shows us everything: all of our interfaces, switches, servers, and virtual machines. We can see it all in one central location instead of needing to pull up multiple windows.

Auvik helps us visualize the network mapping and topology for our organization. The ability to see all of our switches and what's connected to the switches is very helpful for us because not only can we see the device, but sometimes we can even see the device name. When we have an issue, we don't have to try to find it with an IP because we can already see the name of the device.

The solution helps reduce repetitive, low-priority tasks through automation. There are certain tasks that we know are repetitive, and we can't do anything because of the way that the system is built. We can suppress those unless they are over a certain threshold. There are other notifications that we always look at when they pop up.

The user interface could be a little bit faster, and there should be a legend on the map. Trying to filter devices could be easier. Those are probably the top three improvements I would like them to address.

I would rate the overall intuitiveness of the network visualization an eight out of ten. There are some aspects that could be better mapped out or better described. Some connections are confusing to look at. We don't know why one is yellow and why one is blue. It would be nice to have a legend included on the map.

I have worked with Auvik for about two and a half months.

The stability is top-notch.

It's highly scalable and available because it's on the cloud. As long as the correct configuration is done, it's highly available.

Technical support is very good. Our questions were answered right away. It seemed like they already knew what we were going to ask. Maybe they were just judging the situation by the deployments that they've done.

I would rate technical support as ten out of ten. 

Positive

We used Libre, but it wasn't giving us what we needed. Auvik gives us the ability to monitor the network.

The setup was straightforward. We implemented Auvik out-of-the-box. It was immediately available to use. The moment we connected our entire network, it was up. There were some configurations that we had to do on the backend, but it was pretty straightforward. The moment we connected, it was immediately available.

We required two people for deployment, including an engineer and myself. Our responsibilities were to make sure that our credentials were correct, our host was the correct address, and that we could connect to it. We also made sure that certain settings were turned on.

It doesn't require maintenance primarily because it's on the cloud, so Auvik takes care of that. If there was any maintenance, it would just be with our devices on our end.

Auvik is fairly priced. The cost is what we expected considering network management. The benefits outweigh the cost for us.

We evaluated other options, but they didn't offer what we needed.

I would rate this solution an eight and a half out of ten. 

Comparing Auvik's cloud-based solution to an on-premises network monitoring solution, I would rate the usefulness a ten out of ten. I would rate the interface an eight out of ten. I would rate the speed a six out of ten because when it's local and on-premises, it's faster because it doesn't have to go through the cloud or through Amazon.

The benefit outweighs the cost because we're able to see everything in one central location. It gives us one interface to do multiple functions.

The time it took to set up and maintain Auvik was twice as long as our previous network. With our previous solution, we just connected our devices and that was it. Auvik took a lot more time.

It is used for network monitoring.

Auvik hasn't really improved things for us. We tried Auvik, but it didn't meet our needs.

I found the ease of setup to be a helpful feature. The appliance was quite quick to get running. The fact that Auvik is a cloud-based solution, as opposed to an on-prem solution, meant there was one less thing to worry about. I didn't have to configure another device or provision a server and support it myself. It was easier having it supported by someone else.

The interface is also quite nice. Another part that is very easy to use is the monitoring and management functions. Ease of use is awesome.

The overall intuitiveness of the visualization was very good.

I require the monitoring of Linux devices and it doesn't support them. Although we've done a trial, we're not going to carry on with it. We've already gone with another product.

Also, seeing the topology is quite useful, but it's not really suitable for a large enterprise.

It also wasn't able to inventory everything. We're using Lansweeper, which pulls the serial of every single IP device, but Auvik only seemed to be interested in SNMP. It didn't care about non-SNMP devices. The solution needs to move past just having SNMP. If it could have other ways, like an agent, that would make things easier. The lack of being able to communicate with non-SNMP devices was the issue.

I used Auvik as a trial for a couple of weeks.

It was very stable. There were no outages that I was aware of.

Because it's cloud-based, it scales almost infinitely.

I didn't need to contact their technical support. The documentation was quite good. It was quite easy to get going.

Our current product was out-of-support, so we were looking for alternatives.

The initial deployment was very easy. We used the VMware template. It took under an hour after the collector was implemented for the network to start to populate. The actual deployment took about 20 minutes.

We deployed it in a test network. Obviously, we were not going to let an unknown product loose on the entire enterprise network.

It was just me involved in the deployment and there was no maintenance required.

If you're a small company, Auvik is probably quite reasonable. But we've got 500 servers, so pricing suddenly became a lot more of an issue. There needs to be better bulk pricing for it.

We evaluated Nagios and Spiceworks as well. We decided to try out Auvik because we were looking around and wanted to try everything we could.

Make sure that all your devices are SNMP-capable before implementing it.

Auvik was quite good at what it did, which is monitoring SNMP devices, but it didn't have enough there to monitor an IP generic device. If it wasn't SNMP, it didn't really work. It needs more agents and more monitoring methods.

We're an MSP, so we function as the IT company for multiple clients, and we primarily use Auvik for monitoring and troubleshooting network issues. It's deployed across various locations, from small to medium-sized businesses, plus one school system.

Auvik improved our organization by allowing us to stay on top of issues with our clients. It alerts us in a timely manner and allows us to react proactively. In many cases, we get alerts that something is going on before the client realizes it.

The solution affected our IT team's global visibility into our remote and distributed networks, which is helpful. It's great because we can access the Auvik portal anywhere in the world. The visibility it provides is essential, especially for our technicians and engineers working from home.  

Auvik helps us keep our device inventories up-to-date, as it pulls in all the devices on the network and sorts them. We can filter by Mac address, IP address, type of OS and more. This helps tremendously in helping our teams focus on high-level tasks and delegating low-level tasks to junior staff. Most low-level alerts go to our junior admins, which allows them to develop experience and learn the product.    

Auvik keeping our device inventories up-to-date helped save us time and allowed us to find devices we didn't know about when onboarding a client.

We have seen a reduction in our mean time to resolution (MTTR), primarily because our customers don't need to call us; we get alerts and tickets through our ConnectWise portal when Auvik detects an issue. This speeds up our time to repair because we are alerted of problems almost immediately and can start working on a solution.    

The topography and historical data are excellent; the latter essentially allows us to see back in time, which is helpful as users don't always report issues promptly. The ability to go back and look at historical data is a good feature.

It's easy to use the monitoring and management functions; everything is intuitive and self-explanatory. The feature set is more important to us than ease of use, as we work with many intelligent people. However, ease of use is helpful for our level one help desk personnel, who aren't used to using network tools like Auvik. In addition to being intuitive, the ease of use flattens the learning curve for our less experienced employees.   

Regarding Auvik helping to visualize our network mapping/topology, it's elementary. It places devices logically in a topology that's easy to understand. We can collapse and expand elements, making it easy to find information and devices in the system. I rate the tool ten out of ten for the overall intuitiveness of network visualization. Everything is worded perfectly and makes perfect sense to anyone working in the IT field.     

We have seen time-to-value with Auvik; it helped us on many occasions when our clients had network problems. It assisted us in ironing out those issues.  

The performance could be better; it gets a little clunky and slow-moving at times, and I wonder if that's due to the VM or if it's just the nature of the tool.

Another issue is the solution sometimes signs users out at inopportune times without warning. I'll be working in one window perfectly fine, and I would have a second session open in another window, which can time out and force me to log back in, even though I'm still logged on to the platform in another window. That can be frustrating.

I've been using the solution for about six years. 

The stability is excellent as long as the network, VMs, and hardware are suitable. Running low-quality equipment would affect the stability and user experience.

The solution scales well. Once you reach around 2,000 devices, a second device is required on the network to offset some of the performance issues that come with that, but it scales easily. It would just be a second OVA running on a box.

The technical support is excellent and very quick to respond. They helped us with an issue concerning performance hits in some equipment due to the frequency of the scans Auvik was running.

Positive

We evaluated some trial solutions for other network management tools, and they didn't fit us. SolarWinds NPM was a resource hog, and it wasn't cloud-based, so we ended up going with Auvik because of the ability to use it in the cloud.

We primarily used the in-built networking tools from each vendor. Switching to Auvik saves us about 20 hours because we can see all the relevant data and manage the networks from a single pane of glass.  

The initial setup was straightforward; it consisted of deploying an OVA which searches for the Auvik instance in the cloud and locks it in once authorized. It's between three and five steps, so it's quick to get up and running.

After the collector code was implemented, our network mapping started to populate almost immediately. However, we had SNMP set up, which needs to be done ahead of time for network devices. The solution pulls in devices and connections via ICMP based on the network it discovers. It may draw in limited details initially until the rest of the details are set up, but IP-based devices are pulled in very quickly. 

In terms of time to set up and maintain Auvik, it's about the same as other tools. It's all about the underlying network configuration. It didn't take much time because I ensured the network was prepped for any potential security monitoring tools we put in place. I didn't have to go in on the back end and set anything up because it was all waiting to go.

The solution requires a little maintenance on the VM side. Performance-wise CPU and RAM maintenance can increase performance. Other than that, the tool essentially runs itself. 

I can't speak to the cost; I'm an engineer. Auvik has a subscription-based pricing option, and the other solution we evaluated had high upfront costs. 

We evaluated Orion and WhatsUp Gold and found that Auvik works much better for us because it allows us to have all our clients in a single plane of glass under our company. With the other products, we would have to set up separate instances at each site and manage them individually from onsite.

I rate the solution eight out of ten. 

Auvik provides a single integrated platform, though that's not as important to us as cost, ease of use, and support, in which the solution excels. We're intelligent people who work with different platforms, as our clients don't have cookie-cutter set-ups at every location. If Auvik weren't a single integrated platform, that wouldn't be much of a hindrance for us.

We haven't used Auvik's automation capabilities.

Auvik's cloud-based solution works as well or better than on-prem network monitoring solutions. The cloud solution depends upon the internet connection at the opposite end but logging in remotely to manage on-prem tools faces the same challenge.  

It works as well, even better. But of course, your Cloud solution is dependent upon the internet connection at the opposite end, so your mileage may vary. But you're still limited by that with on-prem solutions as well, if you're logging in remotely to look at those tools. So it faces the same challenges as the on-prem solutions.

Our use cases would be mapping our network automatically, monitoring events to get stats and trends, spotting any impending issues before they get noticed by our users so we can address them, and doing device reconfiguration. 

Auvik automatically updates network topology. Our network team members in our operations all dig it. It is just something that makes finding devices easy, e.g., if you don't necessarily remember where it is, the IP, and so on. Especially if something needs to be reconfigured, it makes it really easy to go to the LAN or network in question, find the device, remotely get into it, and then make whatever necessary changes.

The goal is to have Auvik help us put out fires before people or end users even know that there is a problem. That hasn't really happened that much, other than power outages where we can get somebody en route, which makes us look like we know what we are doing.

It is kind of a toss up between its nice interface and ease of deployment. 

It is pretty easy to use for the type of product that it is and what its use case is. Anyone who is going to use such a thing generally should have a fair bit of knowledge about networking, devices, etc. 

Auvik is excellent when it comes to its network discovery capabilities. It has good stats. We can look at our network and visually see what is going on, if there are any issues, and just the entire topography of how it is laid out. It generates the network map automatically, so that is not something we have to go do. It just lets you see things, maybe not necessarily at a glance, but close to it. 

We were able to trim down and get a decent signal-to-noise ratio on notifications and events, because these devices generate a ton of telemetry. Otherwise, it's like things are always crying, "Wolf!" That has been a problem, not just in this niche, but other categories as well. If you get too much stuff that isn't anything to look at, then you will quit looking at it.

The automation of the network mapping enables junior network specialists to resolve issues directly, freeing up senior-level team members to perform higher-value tasks. They can see if it is something as simple as a power issue in a wing of a building. This lets them pick the low hanging fruit. Then, if a configuration needs a more skilled person, they can easily escalate it.

There are a couple things that you need to do, and then Auvik provides automated, out-of-the-box device configuration backups. It backs up the configurations, and that has been awesome, which makes it possible and practical. Otherwise, it is really difficult because we would then have to go from device to device, get it to spit out its config, copy it to the clipboard, paste it to a file, and organize it all. That is all now automatic, which is great.

Generally, once stuff gets configured, it is fine. Previously, it was a matter of remembering to get the copy of the config and save it someplace. Depending upon the workload, sometimes that got put on the back burner. Now, because of this solution's automatic, out-of-the-box device configurations, I don't worry about it.

I would like firmware/software updates for hardware, for at least switches and routers. I already have the feature request in, and it is on their list of things to try and do. Cisco stuff has been notoriously and historically kind of a pain to do, and that is what we use primarily. So, that would be a wonderful thing to get, as it is a device-by-device process. It would be nice to be able to get through that at least in a less fiddly way. It is a pretty manual process now.

We have been using it for a little less than a year.

It is very stable. We have had one very minor incident with logins. They had that resolved in 15 minutes to half an hour, tops.

There is almost no maintenance required from our staff. Compared with other solutions that I have used, the level of maintenance affecting my operations is much better with Auvik. I feel like I can trust it a little more than some of the things that I configured myself. I just never had the time to polish those other solutions out the way that they really needed to be done.

I haven't run into any issues with it. I suspect it could handle multiples of more devices than we have in our network. It doesn't seem to break a sweat. Hopefully, they have enough scalability on their end that it won't impact us unless other customer stuff impacts us.

The technical support has been great.

We have used different open source things, like Nagios, but they were just so configuration heavy. We basically got rid of them. We didn't have anything in a while prior to getting this solution, but now we have Auvik. I do kind of miss having that early warning system, but I just didn't have the time to configure anything, because that is a very non-trivial thing for a lot of those systems. Having sufficient time to be able to spend on it, that was really the problem. This alleviated that completely.

I happened to run across an ad somewhere, and it's like, "Hey, I want to look at that. If this solution is half as good as it claims to be, this might be for us," and if it was at a reasonable cost.

The deployment was very simple. The network discovery accuracy was great. Other systems like this that I have worked with required a lot of configuration. This did not take much effort at all. The initial deployment was quick. We had something kind of up and running in an hour, if that long.

Auvik has decreased our mean time to resolution. Luckily, we have a pretty stable network; we don't have a lot of issues. However, it can be trivial to just get to a device. For example, if we have to change a port setting or something on a switch from a printer to a phone or VLAN assignments, it is now quick and easy. Assuming everything goes well once you get to the device, it probably cuts the, "What was that device IP?" thing down by 80%.

We have saved more in time and efficiency than any hard monetary savings.

It took us just a few days to get a return on value from the whole implementation.

The pricing is by device. We have 75 devices, which is a little more than we really need. With school and volume discounts, it is still a little over $16,000 annually. Our WiFi access points are not being billed, but all our switches and routers are. 

Usually, I'm cheap. We are a school so I have to be cheap. Therefore, when there is an open source solution, I am usually reluctant to look at commercial things. Now, with a little more leadership support as well as technology becoming more mission-critical than ever before, it is part of the deliverable to produce an educated student. So, they are willing to invest more. It wasn't crazy expensive, but in the past, it would've been a hard sell. 

In addition to Auvik, I also looked at SolarWinds and HPE OneView, which was breathtakingly expensive. We mostly went with Auvik because of its ease of use for non-technical people. The ease of its configuration and deployment was big. Those were huge factors. We have added so much technology of all sorts in the last year or two that mental bandwidth has become an issue. For example, how much time can I even hope to spend on a given project, which might suffer greatly from mental interruptions.

This solution has stopped me from looking at other stuff. 

I don't want to really add any more complexity to our environment, but if we do, it'll get picked up and mapped automatically. So, once we get the device online and configured, it will just show up.

Auvik has been really handy. I really can't say enough good things about it. I have just been really impressed with the quality of the product, support, and training. It just works well.

I see a lot of value in Auvik. I was really happy with it very early on. I would rate this solution as 10 out of 10. I can't say enough good things about this solution.

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.

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.