Auvik Network Management (ANM) Reviews

Our network monitoring solution for our clients' sites is Auvik Network Management. With over 60 sites under our care, Auvik helps us efficiently monitor their network uptime and performance. It utilizes data collection, remote tunneling, and device management functionalities to provide us with a comprehensive view of each network's health.

The interface is reasonable and for the most part, operates as we need.

The network map dashboard offers a near real-time view of our network activity. While targeting specific devices for monitoring can be straightforward once set up, initial configuration may require some effort to fine-tune for optimal results. We are able to see 85 percent visibility into our network.

The benefits of Auvik became apparent within the first three months. It provided us with the network visibility we craved. We could now easily see the entire configuration of an environment, allowing us to quickly assess and understand what we were managing. Onboarding a new client became a breeze. Auvik granted us a complete view of their network, including VLANs. The collector itself was also easy to install.

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

Auvik's GUI is user-friendly and well-designed. While there's room for improvement in some aspects of device targeting, overall I find it to be a positive experience. The device management features, particularly credential management and network discovery, are especially valuable. These functionalities streamline the process of identifying and managing all the devices on our network.

I'd like to see an improvement in how we target individual devices. Currently, we can only target a single device by including it within a large SaaS 32 subnet, which is inefficient. Ideally, we should be able to target specific devices directly. This would allow us to include relevant networks and label them accurately, something that's not possible with the current method.

I have been using Auvik Network Management for two years.

We have only encountered one unscheduled outage with Auvik where their website was done.

I would rate the scalability of Auvik Network Management seven out of ten.

The technical support team is responsive and aims to answer inquiries quickly. However, there may be occasions where they encounter issues that require further investigation. In these instances, we have to escalate for a solution.

Neutral

We switched to Auvik because our previous monitoring software, LogicMonitor, was too expensive for our needs.

The initial deployment was straightforward. Five people were involved in the deployment and it took three weeks to complete.

The implementation was completed in-house.

Auvik's pricing model is good.

Our wireless controllers are monitored by Auvik free of charge.

I would rate Auvik Network Management seven out of ten.

Once integrated with our existing system, Auvik requires minimal ongoing maintenance.

Once you've configured the connectors on the site, be mindful during the connector installation process. Make sure your website URLs are accurate. On the technical side, most data transfers from the beta multi-site can be handled automatically. So, if you encounter any errors during installation, they can likely be resolved easily.

The main purpose was to gain better visibility over our network. We were having frequent short internet outages, and we were trying to gain better visibility as to what could be going on in our network.

We were experiencing these frequent, brief Internet outages, and through the use of the network map, I was able to determine a misconfiguration that we had on our network. Auvik was able to identify there was a path that didn't really make sense and just moving a couple of wires around fixed a huge headache for us. 

We have two branch offices. Both of them aren't exactly a close drive away, however, the alerts that I get from Auvik help me determine if there's something like a device that's down that just needs to be restarted, and I can just direct somebody to unplug it, plug it back in, then it'll fire back up, and they'll be all good to go. That way, I don't have to travel there. It'll help me determine if I need to jump in my car and drive down there or if I can direct someone on-site.

I appreciate the alerts that they send and the customization with them. I have our environment set up so that between our three sites, I get an alert anytime. If we get an Internet outage or device goes down, it really helps gain better visibility as to what's happening with our different branch offices and to know if there's a potential issue that might mean I need to get in the car and drive down. 

I also like the network mapping feature that they have, and I appreciate the configuration and backups as well.

Auvik provides an intuitive interface that supports ease of use. There are a couple of features that I find can be a little bit difficult to figure out how they get working from the interface. For example, if you need to remove a device or add a device and it's not automatically detected, that sometimes can be a little bit difficult. That, as well as changing the IP address on a device. There are a couple of hoops to jump through, however, for the main core processes, it's intuitive.

The network mapping is the most crucial for managing our network performance.

The alerts are another good feature. They definitely give me the greatest insight. I also appreciate the different IP address tracking that they include with it. I like the ability to add notes on the devices right from the dashboard. It really helps provide clarity to the rest of the team if somebody else needs to jump on and see what's going on with the device. They have the history of it right there.

The network map along with the dashboard gives us a real-time picture of our network. It requires a little bit of leg work to get it up and running if your network environment wasn't already set up for it. However, for the most part, it was pretty easy. Auvik provided a support engineer for the onboarding process, so which made it much easier for me.

We've seen a dramatic improvement in resolution. We've gone from network issues being potentially an all-day affair to sometimes solving in a matter of minutes. The alerts really do help us know exactly where the problem is starting from - for example, if it is just one specific device in the chain or all the way at our first firewall. So it's been a dramatic improvement. We've seen the time to resolution decrease by 50%.

Auvik influenced our operation costs and productivity overall. Just having better visibility of what's going on when there is an issue means we can respond fast. Our users aren't left in the dark or struggling for nearly as long. It just helps us respond faster when there is an issue and helps us see where there could potentially be issues and address them sometimes before they even become a major headache.

Tying in with the IP address and the network mapping could be improved. I've spoken with some of their support engineers before about this as well. One of the areas it struggles with the most is it doesn't always work the best for mapping in DHCP Management. It would be good if your devices were statically assigned or IP addresses so your core network infrastructure doesn't suffer. However, if you want to see where a host is connected to in the network, that's not always the most reliable. Sometimes, getting those addresses reassigned once they get tagged by one device, even if that device no longer holds that address (ANM), can be a little bit confusing. As great as the mapping is, it feels like it's only dependable on the higher architectural levels. It's only truly accurate if everything holds the same same address.

I've been using the solution for a little over a year now. 

The solution is stable. Any time they have to do maintenance work, they tend to do it either off hours or over the weekend. So if you work in a traditional nine to five management cadence, you see very little disruption. I can't recall anytime I wasn't able to access Auvik during work hours. I'd rate the stability ten out of ten.

We have the solution monitoring 200 endpoints. It's at our main headquarters and two small branch offices. We have 100 users. 

It's very scalable. I'd rate scalability ten out of ten. It's very easy to add sites as necessary.

Customer support has been beneficial. When I had questions, especially during the onboarding sequence, they were very quick to respond and get back to me when I was trying to get some clarity over what some of the data I was seeing meant. 

I can open a ticket with their customer support portal, and they were prompt about getting back to me and explaining what I was seeing and being honest about certain limitations of the software itself. They let me know that what we're trying to achieve might be impossible. 

I appreciate that they spell out what they were doing via online webinars where you can jump in and just learn a bit more about a specific feature.

Positive

We did not use a different solution previously.

The implementation was straightforward. They do most of the work for you. You just need to spin up the virtual machine. They've got a config file that you load up, and they're more than happy to have a support engineer get on a call with you and walk you through how to set up the collector. We were able to deploy in a matter of hours.

In terms of maintenance, Auvik handles that for us. They are very transparent about issues and send you notices when they are about to update their services. 

I handled the deployment mostly myself. Two other people helped out a little bit; however, it was mostly about getting it up and running.

We have witnessed ROI. We had the ability to rule out that one outage issue we were having that was causing frequent service disruptions around the office. With that one issue, there were times when employees were unable to do their jobs. Fixing that issue alone paid for Auvik. We've witnessed 30% in time overall. We used to have a lot more outages.

The solution is cost-efficient. I appreciate that they charge by enterprise device, and it's scalable in that way. So, if you only have one firewall and one switch you need to monitor, it's pretty affordable. If you throw in more devices, obviously, your price goes up. It's mainly on our high-level network devices. They don't charge us for monitoring individual access points, and so it feels like you get a lot more bang for your buck, so to speak.

We did look into ManageEngine and PRTG. Auvik was easier to get configured and it was easier to understand the data. Overall, it was more than just user-friendly and had a good price scheme.

I'm an Auvik customer.

I'd recommend the solution to others. If you're running into any kind of network issues and you don't have a great picture of what's going on, Auvik is definitely the way to go. In the right environment, it can be a great life-saver should you run into any configuration issues. I haven't really even discussed the configuration backups, however, those can be a real lifesaver if you have an issue and need to go back where you have equipment failure and need to transfer that configuration to a new device.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

As the IT manager for our two-building campus, I collaborate closely with our Managed Service Provider to leverage Auvik Network Management for comprehensive monitoring of our network infrastructure, including switches, firewalls, access points, and other typical small business network devices.

We chose Auvik Network Management to gain better visibility into our network, with real-time alerts for any device going offline, while also providing a centralized location for backing up all our device configurations.

While the dynamic map's initial behavior took some getting used to, the UI itself is fairly straightforward. Once I figured out the filters and other controls, I've found it to be quite user-friendly.

The clear network map with hover-over information for nodes and connections has been a big help. It not only visualizes the network layout but also provides details on how the connections function. Auvik's insights helped in pinpointing my VLAN misconfiguration earlier on, making troubleshooting a breeze.

Auvik offers a near real-time view of our network allowing me to diagnose traffic issues based on patterns or user reports. However, it seems Auvik double-counts traffic on our core switch's stacked lag links, making it unclear if we're seeing total traffic or just lag traffic. This is because Auvik reports on the virtual lag ports, their member interfaces, and the switch's stacking ports, which can sometimes be misleading when mixed with regular traffic data. Overall, Auvik is still helpful for monitoring historical traffic trends.

The network map and dashboard offer full visibility of our entire network's health, including any current issues thanks to the integrated central alarm station that displays known outages and potential problems.

While I wasn't involved in the initial deployment, Auvik is a significant improvement over my prior experience with open-source management platforms. It offers a much more centralized view, making it easier to see all devices and their connections.

Auvik allows us to spend less time on the setup, maintenance, and issue resolution. Pulling switch configurations simplifies tasks like replacing equipment or troubleshooting. Having the configuration readily available allows us to see things like traffic patterns, which can help pinpoint issues like port misconfigurations, without needing to delve into switch menus and trace information through tables.

I love that Auvik manages all of the credentials for me. It's incredibly convenient to have both SNMP monitoring and remote terminal access available through the web interface, no matter where I am. This gives me great visibility into my network devices.

It would be useful if network monitoring tools could differentiate between traffic on individual physical ports and traffic on logical interfaces like LAGs or bonded interfaces. Ideally, the tool would also recognize and remove duplicate traffic counts within the overall flow metrics. While solutions like Auvik might not currently offer this functionality, tools like NetBox can be helpful for documenting physical layer connections. It would be interesting to see if Auvik would consider incorporating features to document these physical layer details alongside the logical network configuration, especially for long-term network management within an organization. This could provide valuable insights into how physical infrastructure translates to network behavior.

I have been using Auvik Network Management for two and a half years.

Auvik Network Management is a reliable system with occasional minor login issues that occur infrequently.

Auvik has responded fairly well as we've made changes to our network, but we haven't grown rapidly enough to see it try to scale.

While I wasn't part of the initial network setup, I'm familiar with adding and modifying devices. Luckily, Auvik seems to catch these changes automatically.

Our Managed Service Provider used a consultant to implement Auvik for us.

I would rate Auvik Network Management eight out of ten.

Auvik is generally low-maintenance. While I occasionally verify switch imports and credentials when adding new devices, I haven't encountered any need for regular, active maintenance of the product itself.

Auvik Network Management offers filtering views and adjustable time scales, which are valuable features once you discover them. Additionally, you can manually add devices that the discovery tool misses, such as unmanaged switches, for full network visibility. This covers most of your visibility needs.

We primarily use the solution for traffic insights or traffic monitoring. It's for network management. While we're also using it for managing some of our network devices, the main reason for this was traffic insights.

The network map can provide a full network visibility or maybe just partial - it depends. For me, for my use case, it gives me plenty of visibility and also sends me alerts. I can set up different alerts based on enterprise system utilization and things like that. For my use case, it does pretty much everything I need it to, and it can do a lot more than I'm using it for.

The traffic insights are excellent. It's amazing how it works. There are really well built features on it. It's not a very common feature that you see in a lot of these network management tools. It's a game-changer. 

The setup is amazing. Most of the work is automatic. You just set it up, and then it just does its own thing.

The interface is pretty straightforward. The dashboard is there. There are some advanced features as well. 

They walk you through everything. If you need some help with something, like, navigating or something, they'll help. They provide ongoing support. If I need to find out anything about any feature, I can just set up a call with them, and they will walk me through it. 

The ease of access is pretty straightforward. I had used the solution in the past, but not as much. Maybe just to check a device's status here and there, but not to the point of deploying and using it heavily. However, then I found out about the traffic insights and the other features they offer. We bought some licenses internally and deployed them to our team sites, and now I use them much more. It's not very intimidating. The navigation and layout are easy.

The network map gives a real-time picture of the network. If you have a network set up right, it gives you a nice overview. 

The map I use is usually when I'm deploying a new site. That's when I try to make sure everything is there. I get a real quick overview to make sure everything is adapted - instead of going down into inventory and going through each single line item. Instead, I can just look at the map. 00:08:53 Speaker 0

I saw the benefit before implementing it when I was doing my research. Auvik was one of the very few solutions that had the features I was looking for. That's why I signed up for the trial. Immediately, I knew it's what I was looking for. Once you sign up for the trial, they send you an invite for a call to go over everything.

The meantime to resolution has improved. Let's say you have just one source of visibility on your network where you are relying just on your controller or something like that; then, of course, it will take a lot longer to get to the issue. Auvik shows all the nodes or all the devices online, and it makes it much faster to resolve these issues. 

Auvik allows me to spend less time on setup, maintenance, and issue resolution. The setup is especially well thought-out. You just create a site and install a collector, and it does most of the work. It searches for networks and asks if you want to add them.

It sometimes lags, especially in larger deployments. There's a little bit of an issue there where if you're trying to open the Auvik network map, however, for the most part, it's pretty straightforward. It works pretty well.

Recently, I have noticed they are having some issues with the cloud instances where it was causing some issues. It could be more responsive.

For traffic insights, if there is a way to export or automate exports, that would be something I would love to see, especially in the traffic insights. 

I started using the solution in November, 2023.

I'd rate stability eight out of ten. We had an issue earlier this year, however, other than that, it's been solid. 

I'd rate scalability ten out of ten. It's easy to add more sites. 

I've called technical support twice. Both times, they were pretty responsive and knowledgeable, and they resolved my issue immediately. The engineers are great.

Positive

I've used a couple of alternatives, including PRTG. There may have been better performance, however, nothing provided the amount of insights. You can really narrow down the data.

The initial setup was really easy. They have a nice knowledge base as well. It's really streamlined. They also have device-specific configuration help as well. If you want something particular, they have guides for that.

In our case, we're using a lot of Ubiquiti devices, and they have a knowledge base specifically for that, which allows you to see more information. There's documentation for Cisco, for Juniper, et cetera. 

I handled most of the deployment myself. We're often adding sites and for the most part, we can have a site done in less than half a day. It might take an hour or two to get it up and running. If you have a bunch of sites to do, it will obviously take longer. 

The pricing is great. For some organizations, it may be expensive if they're managing every single device. However, it's priced pretty fairly.

Part of it is modular, so you can make it as extensive as you want, and that depends on how much management you are doing. If you are managing a lot of devices for CI,it can get expensive. They only charge for managed devices. Any critical device I'm managing, I'm paying for. However, I'm only managing physical devices on my sites. I'm not managing non-critical devices. 

I'm a customer.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We use Auvik for network troubleshooting and monitoring.

We needed more visibility into the networks we manage. Auvik's automatic network mapping was something that helped us visualize the Management Network. The benefits were immediate. We quickly identified a few problems and resolved them quickly. For example, some links were slower than expected, and we remedied those issues fast.  Without, Auvik we would need to spend more time troubleshooting.

Auvik has helped our junior technicians solve more tickets. We've encouraged them to use Auvik, which enables them to navigate a network visually. I think they would have trouble without that visualization. 

Auvik's visual mapping and search features have been very useful. We can locate precisely where each device is on the map. The network map provides a real-time picture of the network that offers total visibility. 

The interface is good, but it can be sluggish and difficult to use on a small screen. I usually need a large screen to navigate it when monitoring more complex networks.

Also, the points on the network map will sometimes shift. They will be connected one way, but they will be connected a different way after I refresh. This doesn't happen often, but when it does, I question the reliability of our network map. 

We have used Auvik for nearly two years.

I've never seen Auvik crash, so I think it's 100 percent stable.

Auvik scales to where we need it to be, so it's perfectly scalable.

I rate Auvik's support seven out of 10. We contacted them about an issue with the mapping. The problem was complex, so it took a while to resolve.

Neutral

Before Auvik, we had another tool that was difficult to implement, so it wasn't deployed in many places. We also used UniFi's built-in network mapping, but that requires you to use only UniFi hardware. Auvik can integrate multiple vendors and do the same thing across the board.

Deploying Auvik was straightforward. It has an agent and uses SMP for the devices. We already had SMP enabled, so it was easy. We did it in-house, and it took about two months to fully deploy. About eight people were involved, including Auvik's support. It doesn't require any maintenance aside from onboarding devices. 

Auvik's pricing is decent. I forget exactly how much we pay, but we've never been dissatisfied with the value we get from this. The licensing model is palatable to us. I haven't looked at the licensing too closely, but I believe Auvik only charges for some devices, not based on the number of endpoints at each site. 

They also have an add-on product called SaaS Management. We did a demo but didn't purchase it.  While it's useful, I think there are too many drawbacks. We thought it was a little expensive and didn't feel we could get enough value from it to justify it. It was interesting but somewhat invasive and a tough sell to our customers. Considering the potential invasiveness and price, we decided not to deploy it. 

I rate Auvik eight out of 10. Auvik has a very short learning curve, so you can jump in and start using it.

We set Auvik up on several of our sites to monitor different devices, including computers, printers, and the network. We used it to collect data to see what's going on in our network.

I wanted to try it out to see if we could have all of our devices managed in one place.

The reporting that they have available was good. The options to customize the reporting and the depths to which the system worked were helpful.

The interconnectivity and ease of use were good. It's not very confusing. It's pretty well laid out and easy to understand.

The network map in the dashboard gives you a real-time picture of your network. It did a really good job of showing you an overview of everything.

Our networks weren't weren't very large, so we had no issues with the network map.

Overall, it gave you a pretty deep in-depth view of what was going on. 

We did see the benefits of Auvik immediately. It started pulling data within minutes of implementation. 

It actually did empower us to be able to solve problems more quickly and to stay on top of them and be more proactive rather than reactive.

It helped with our mean time to resolution. We noted a 50% decrease.

The solution allows us to spend less time on setup, maintenance, and issue resolution. 

With the time savings, I've been able to work on other projects and have been busy with other issues. 

We might have encountered a bug. We notified Auvik when we had an issue with every single installation of their controllers. Using the normal uninstall process was not able to remove any of the controllers from any of the devices. 

I just started using Auvik. I went through the free trial just to test it out to see if it would be something that we could use at our organization. I've used it for 14 days.

I haven't had any stability issues. Other than factors that were outside of the control of the controllers, like the Internet going down with the ISP, it was up the whole time. 

The scalability felt clean. It was easy. If I need to add more sites, it is really simple. 

While I didn't contact support directly, they had a support specialist who had multiple Zoom meetings with the sales team. One of their support specialists or engineers jumped on the Zoom call and asked me about the uninstall problems that I had. They walked me right through the process of uninstalling it, however, I had to go into the registry to do it. It was a little bit more complicated of a process than just a normal uninstallation.

Positive

We do use Ubiquiti. It's similar. However, it only deals with Ubiquiti devices. 

The initial deployment was easy for me. Since we had multiple sites, it took me a couple of days. 

After deployment, I'm not aware of any maintenance needed. 

I handled the setup by myself. I didn't need the help of any integrators or resellers. 

The pricing is a bit more on the higher end. If you are paying by device and you have a hundred billable devices, the pricing can get high pretty quickly. 

Based on the overall usefulness and ease of use, I'd rate it seven out of ten. However, we are already suffering from a bug, which knocks off a few points. 

I'd advise new users to read up on the setup process and familiarize themselves with the way the system collects data and what's required on all of the devices in order to properly pull the data. 

We primarily use it to monitor our clients' networks. We are also using it as a monitoring tool for some of the clients for whom we manage VMware clusters. We are utilizing Auvik log gathering and alerting. It is like a poor man's VMware monitoring tool.

Auvik's network map along with its dashboard gives us a real-time picture of our network. It is nice. I like how it changes. Based on how big your screen is, it expands to fill in the free space, and as it understands the environment better, it gives you a nice topology. You can see that this device is connected to that device through this port and everything else. It gives you a lot of information in a very clean, concise manner.

The network map does get cluttered if you have a very large environment and you are not tearing it down to smaller sites or smaller chunks. I know early on when we started using it, we would have clients who had MPLS connections, so we were scanning all seven sites in one Auvik site. It was definitely unwieldy because of the number of devices there. Once you get an idea of how you can search and filter, it gets a little bit easier. In our experience, it was better to start creating multiple sites and breaking out each of our clients' sites into a sub-site. Even then, some sites were quite large, so we had to delve into it. It can get messy, but it is something that we worked through.

It gives you full network visibility assuming that you are setting up your devices correctly because, with the bad data in, you are going to get bad data out. You need to get into all your switches, firewalls, and everything else and make sure that SNMP is configured correctly. You need to ensure that your logging is pointing to the right IP and that creds and other things are correct so that Auvik is able to ingest the data correctly. Auvik can then provide a good map of what it is seeing and where all your devices are. It is definitely not a quick and easy setup if you have a fairly large environment. If you have an environment where maybe you have never set up SNMP, there is a little bit of heavy onboarding, but once it is in and Auvik is collecting the data, it is a good product.

We could see its benefits within days of having all the environments configured correctly, sending logging data, and having SNMP configured correctly. Within days, Auvik was able to collect the data, connect to all the devices, and see how switches were connected back to the core and how the traffic flowed. We started getting good data and performance metrics on port speeds and things like that fairly quickly. It was pretty quick.

We are still rolling out access to the solution for different levels of our support team. Those who do have access to it have found it beneficial to be able to see the data that they would not normally have access to.

Auvik has helped to decrease our mean time to resolution. We are not tracking that per se, but for the few issues that came up, we went to Auvik to review performance metrics. That minimized the amount of time it took to resolve whatever we were looking at because we had the data given by Auvik. We were not blindly trying to figure out what was going on by using a device's features.

Auvik allows us to spend less time on the setup and maintenance of the solution and less time on issue resolution. For some of the clients that we have brought on and utilized Auvik with, there has been a little bit of onboarding. We had to go and change SNMP settings or just enable SNMP, community strings, etc. We had to repoint the syslog so that it is pointing to the Auvik collector. There has been onboarding time there, but in the long run, because of the data that we get out of Auvik, it reduces the amount of time it takes to look into issues. So, there is a wash and probably a net positive, where we take less time to deal with issues because of Auvik than the time it took us to get it set up.

I love the ability to remote into network gear such as switches and firewalls directly from the Auvik dashboard. We do not have to get into a jump box or VPN to a client. We can get a nice, secure terminal session straight to any network that we are monitoring and managing through Auvik. I can access that directly from the Auvik dashboard. That is probably one of the biggest benefits since we got it. It saves time. We do not have to look up passwords for a random jump box in a client's environment.

Most of the past frustrations have either been resolved or were more about how I was trying to figure things out. They were not necessarily an Auvik problem. I have been pretty happy with the usage. I have not come across a pain point that was a deal breaker.

They can maybe provide some more best practices or guidance around how large a network should be. They can provide some cutoff points, such as, if you have 30 network devices, you might want to chunk that into a smaller subset or site. They can help you better plan and design how to create your Auvik sites, especially if you have a large environment. Most of our client environments are less than a dozen devices, but we have come across a few where they have had 60 switches. It has been interesting dealing with so many devices and seeing all the data that Auvik can provide with so many devices in one single pane.

It has been about a year since I have been exposed to it, or maybe a little bit longer.

I have never experienced any lagging or crashing with the product. With the amount of updates and the communication that they have about when they are doing updates or when they are having issues, it has been easy. Everything is well communicated. They do a good job with it. I have not experienced the product crashing on me or something like that.

The scalability is pretty good because right now, we have maybe 40 or 50 base sites in our environment. A lot of those base sites are multisite sites. We probably have 60 to 70 total sites that we are managing through Auvik. There have been no slowdowns or hiccups. Everything has been good.

I have contacted their support. There was a problem trying to get a device recognized in the dashboard or send data to the dashboard. It might have been a networking issue, not necessarily an Auvik issue, but they were helpful from what I remember.

The quality of their support was good. It was not necessarily a system-down type of scenario. It was not a high-priority ticket that I put in, but from memory, they responded in an adequate amount of time to the question I was posing. For the scenario, their support was good.

Positive

I have not used any similar solution. The closest thing I have used would be Meraki, but that is Meraki-centric. It is not something that you can use with anything. That would probably be the closest thing to the single pane of glass and seeing how everything is interconnected. It is a hard comparison because the Meraki dashboard is made for Meraki software. I like Auvik a little bit better just because it does not necessarily matter which network equipment is there. With Auvik, we are utilizing clients that have multiple kinds of network hardware such as Aruba, FortiGate, Cisco, etc. They have anything and everything. Auvik has been very good at giving us that guidance into what is going on in the environment.

It is cloud-based with on-prem collectors at all of the different client sites. There is usually a service installed on a virtual machine somewhere unless we have a physical management device in their environment, and then we put the collector on that. Aside from the collectors in the actual environment, the service is cloud-based.

Its initial deployment was easy. There is obviously a learning curve when you get new software. It took us a while to understand all the features and abilities that Auvik provides, but the initial standing up of the site, getting the collector spun up, and adding network devices was pretty quick. It probably took thirty minutes.

The implementation took a couple of days the first time. Now, when we bring on new clients, the time depends on how large an environment is, how many switches and other devices are there, and whether they have already configured SNMP across the LAN. On average, a normal new client takes 8 to 16 hours to stand up, set up the Auvik sites, get collectors posted, and start ingesting data after setting up all the settings on the switches to point to the collector. It is a decent amount of time. It is not too much, but it is not necessarily super quick.

We did it all in-house. A few technical people from Auvik assisted us, but I do not believe we pulled a third party in on it.

For a new client that we bring on, it is usually a one-person job. We assign a tech, and they get it going. It is simple enough that a single engineer can handle it unless you are organized a little differently, and then I could potentially see multiple people being required. Generally, a single person who understands Auvik management and dashboard has basic networking skills, can go in and change SNMP settings, and set up logging can easily handle it on his or her own.

For us, it has been good. I do not get too much into the pricing side. We are an MSP, so we have a number of clients, and we are utilizing Auvik as a way for us to be able to better manage and support our clients. The more clients we bring into Auvik, the better the pricing, so we have been happy with how it is.

There are critical devices in our network that are monitored by Auvik at no charge. That is why we have been using Auvik for some of our VMware cluster management clients. We can add VMware servers to the Auvik dashboard and get basic monitoring and up/down alerting by utilizing Auvik, but we do not pay for them because they are not network devices. That has been a nice additional feature. We have way more network devices that we are monitoring, but being able to add those in and not having to worry about additional costs has been nice.

The data you get out of Auvik is only as good as the data you put into it. So, you need to make sure that you are scanning the subnets that you need to scan. Ensure that you are scanning everything in your environment, you have all your devices configured for SNMP, and you have syslog set correctly out the gate. That will set you up for the best usage of the product and get the best data out of it.

It is pretty good in terms of ease of use. Over the last year or so that we have used it, it has improved here and there, not drastically, but in terms of little annoyances that I cannot even think of right now. It is definitely easy to understand once you go through basic training for how the dashboard is laid out.

I would rate Auvik Network Management a solid nine out of ten.

I have used Auvik on our local network and our remote network over VPN, and I used it to look for physical devices automatically on our networks.

The main benefit I'm seeking from Auvik is automation. I want to automate the process of pulling resources from our network. I am trying not to do things manually. I would also like to pull information from cloud systems, but I can't do that now. 

It doesn't take long to set Auvik up, and it accurately maps all my network devices. It's rare for a product to simply work the first time. The trial was super easy. I turned it on and let it go. It told me where I had to add login information, and then it just worked, so I think it's pretty good.

I haven't used Auvik in production, but I've been testing it by disabling devices to see how the network map updates. It updates very quickly, so I know immediately when something goes down. Based on my limited testing, I can say that it's ready to go if I put it into production. 

Auvik is effective at scanning the network. It pulls information from devices automatically using the devices' login credentials, creates a network diagram, and displays the network logs. Interestingly, Auvik can manage hardware life cycles. You can see which devices are reaching the end of their lives.  It does a built-in audit, but the solution's strength is automated discovery. Auvik does this really well.

Auvik is easy to use. It's probably one of the best. The network map is something that has been undervalued in these solutions. They're often a secondary thing that network admins are left to build out on their own, and they don't work properly. With Auvik, the network map updates quickly on its own automatically, so it's quite helpful. When there's a problem or disconnection, you know, somewhere, it shows up right away. 

The network map updates in real-time, and I quickly started to trust that it's showing the correct information. It's constantly updating. It's easy to use and set up. You don't need to maintain it. It maintains itself. If the hardware in the system is disconnected or disabled, it continues to update the map.

Auvik only covers the physical network devices. It doesn't include remote apps working in the cloud, but I'm hopeful that they'll have that at some point. It maps virtual machines and physical devices but not low-level cloud systems. 

I've done a couple of trials with Auvik. I did a trial about a year and a half ago. I just did a trial for a few days last week.

I haven't had any issues with Auvik's stability or seen anything weird about performance. Network scanning could be hard on a network, but this has been consistent and reliable so far. 

We monitor some large systems, but for our trial, I only gave it access to about 50 devices. We monitor about 2,000 in total. 

I rate Auvik support nine out of 10. During my last trial, I asked them for help, and they remotely connected to my Auvik instance to provide help immediately. I didn't need help this time. 

I've used many network monitoring solutions over the last 30 years. Auvik's biggest advantage over the others is the easy setup. As soon as you install it, Auvik asks for some basic credentials and starts scanning. it just works. That's pretty rare. The interface is clean and easy to use. 

The only disadvantage is that it doesn't capture cloud activity. To be fair, that's outside their wheelhouse. That isn't a capability they advertise. It's more like something I would like to see, but it's not really what they do. So it's kind of unfair to request that.

Auvik's time-to-value was extremely good. Other solutions require a lot of manual work and config file setup. I spent considerable time determining the connections between devices, and often the connections aren't configured correctly on other systems. Auvik sees the interconnections between devices quickly and correctly.

Deploying Auvik was straightforward, and we completed the setup in under 20 minutes. Our network has a few parts. There are local and remote components. There are also some remote connections, so we had to pivot the remote subnets. Within an hour, we had the local and remote networks, including network devices, firewalls, etc. 

I am not familiar with the details about Auvik's pricing. I know that there are billable devices and some that aren't billable, which are displayed on the dashboard. You need to see all the devices to get the full picture of what the network is doing. It's all part of the network. If something is missing, it won't work properly. 

I rate Auvik eight out of 10. When deploying, you should have all your network credentials ready. That's all it needs. Make sure whoever is installing Auvik has access to all the systems you want to monitor.