What is our primary use case?
We are a managed service provider. We use it for our customers, and we use it internally for our own network as well.
By implementing this solution, like most people who have to manage networks, the first thing we wanted was to monitor and see what is on our network.
How has it helped my organization?
The network map along with its dashboard gives full network visibility.
Auvik Network Management is helpful for our engineers. We are structured a bit differently. We do not, as such, have entry-level engineers on our team. Our engineers already have pretty good knowledge of these things, but it does help them quite a bit. They do use it.
It has helped to decrease our mean time to resolution, but it is hard to compare the numbers. From the time I have been here, we have had Auvik. I do know that we use it quite often when there are issues. It is most likely the first place we check to make sure that the device is offline or to check for any alerts that might have been generated.
Auvik Network Management has helped us quite a bit with the issue resolution. It helps us trace certain things. It tries to map out as best what devices are connected to certain interfaces. In the past, we have used that quite a bit to troubleshoot when certain things were down.
Its user interface is easy when it comes to where things live. Navigating to certain places and things like that is easy. The other part of the user interface is their map, which has not been the greatest. When I had to search for a device using the map, I found that difficult. They have implemented something to address that. It came out a month or two ago, where when I search for a device, it will automatically bring up that device. I can click on it, and then it will zoom into the device, whereas before, I had to go look for it.
What is most valuable?
Being able to terminal into the devices without going anywhere else is valuable. All of it can be done within Auvik.
The backups of the configuration seem to work for the most part. I have not had any issues with them. I have used a couple of other solutions, such as WhatsUp Gold which had a lot of issues with making backups, and so far, from what I see, Auvik just works.
What needs improvement?
Auvik's network map along with its dashboard gives a real-time picture of our network. However, if a device is unreachable, there is no indicator for that, at least from what I have seen. If it is offline, there is an indicator for that, but if it is unreachable, there is no indicator.
The network map is hard to use to gain real-time visibility into our network. We have some bigger sites, and we have all of it in one Auvik site instead of having multiple. If I am trying to look for devices in a particular building, I have to do a couple of different things. I wish there were views that I could save and say, "This view is for this first floor." They do have views, but there is no easy way for me to go and find those views. When you have too many of them, that becomes an issue because they start getting cut off by the pages.
Alerting can also be better. There are limited options. We cannot create alerts that are not there in the system. There are no custom alerts. That might be something that I would like to see more.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for a year and a half.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
So far, we have not had a whole lot of issues with stability. I know that there were a couple of times when Auvik seemed very sluggish and slow, and we did not get any notifications about it. Later on, when we reached out to support, they said that they were experiencing some issues. Over the year and a half that I have used it, that has probably happened twice.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I find it pretty scalable. Because we are an MSP, we are having to add multiple customers. We do not have a whole lot right now; we only have three, but so far, there are no issues there. I do not see any issues there for adding more customers.
How are customer service and support?
I have interacted with their support. Their support is not that great. Usually, I use the chatbot on Auvik's portal. Most of the time, it is very difficult to get a full answer to what I am looking for. They usually have to take it back and research or discuss it with their team. They will send an email for the follow-up, but sometimes, it takes a really long time to get a follow-up email about the resolution. Usually, by that point, I would have already figured out the issue, or the resolution is no longer needed. It could be because we decided not to do that. I cannot remember exactly what type of resolutions those are, but I know that sometimes, it just takes a long time or it does not point me to the right resolution.
In terms of speed, they are pretty quick in answering, but the resolution can take time. I would rate them a seven out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I am not aware of any other product being used in my current company.
I have used alternatives to Auvik in other companies. I have used WhatsUp Gold. I have used Zabbix. I have briefly used SolarWinds.
To me, Auvik has been better in almost everything. Zabbix is a very powerful tool, but at the time I used it, it required a lot of setup. Getting it to work required a lot of setup work. Auvik also requires some setup work, but it is a little bit easier. You just have to get the credentials in. Everything is scanned. The collector does the rest once you have everything in there.
One thing that I do not like about WhatsUp Gold is that you have to install it on a Windows machine. It uses a SQL database to store all of its information, so you have to do upgrades or migrations. I had to do that. It is just more work, whereas, with Auvik, if you need to move something or migrate, you just spin up a new collector and shut down the other one. There is really no impact. WhatsUp Gold also had issues running backups of configuration, whereas, with Auvik, I have not had any issues on that front. The only thing that WhatsUp Gold does better is to allow you to do an SNMP walk on your devices, so you can see the OIDs and all the information that is being pulled, whereas, with Auvik, you do not have any of that on the portal itself.
How was the initial setup?
When I joined the company, Auvik was already in place.
Its deployment is easy. It is more about making sure that all the devices on your network have everything configured. Auvik just takes in whatever you provide. You need to set up new SSH credentials on every device so that Auvik can read it. So far, I have not had too many issues with the setup.
It takes some time to see its benefits after the deployment. I came into Auvik pretty new. At the initial stage, you have all your devices there. They are all being monitored, but once you start getting all the credentials, traffic insights, and Syslogs and you get all the information configured, you start seeing the full benefit of Auvik.
It does not impact the setup of devices at all. I cannot do anything unless the device is connected to Auvik. We need to use the terminal session on that, but not every device is supported in that way. It is pretty limited, but it helps out a little bit on that. In terms of Auvik setup, if we are putting devices in, as soon as the device is scanned, it automatically gets put into Auvik. Maintenance-wise, there is very little required on the maintenance side. The only thing that we need to do in terms of device maintenance is to put the current firmware. If we are going to be implementing a patch, most likely, we are doing that on the device itself. We can terminal in from Auvik itself without having to VPN into the client network.
What about the implementation team?
The number of people required for deployment depends on the environment. It depends on how many devices are on the site and how much access we have. It generally requires two people.
The time taken for deployment also depends on the size of the site. It can take ten hours if we are just straight working and trying to get it set up.
There is no maintenance as such. The maintenance is mostly in terms of cleaning up devices. There can be devices that need to be removed from Auvik because those devices have been removed from the network.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I do not have a whole lot of information on the pricing, but our pricing seems to be okay. Internally, we have not had any issues with it, so we have not had the need to discuss pricing.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to new users would be that in order to have a smooth setup, they need to put in the time to set up their devices. They have to make sure all the devices have proper login credentials, SNMP credentials, and NetFlow setup if you are using NetFlow. After you have all of these set up, it is very simple. From what I have seen from other deployments, when those things are not set up, people seem to think that it does not work. It all depends on the devices.
We used Auvik's SaaS Management product for a month. To me, it seems like a whole separate module. We only used it for a short period for demoing it internally, but I did not see any benefit from having them together. It almost seems like a separate product. Overall, as a product, we definitely liked it. It provided a lot of information. We were testing it internally for our own company before trying to sell it to our customers, but it came back to pricing in terms of whether it was worth it to have this information on our users based on the price. For us, there was not a use case for it. Also, none of our customers have reached out with any interest in having SaaS management. The Auvik rep that I had talked to had mentioned that this came out because a lot of people were asking about it, but none of our customers asked about it. It just did not seem like a product we could push. I would recommend Auvik's SaaS Management product if someone is looking for this type of information.
Overall, I would rate Auvik Network Management a nine out of ten.
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