What is our primary use case?
We're an MSP, and we handle and monitor the network for many different organizations. So, we use Auvik for any client that has on-prem resources such as firewalls, switches, and servers. It's basically for any client that has a physical office.
How has it helped my organization?
We used it mostly for alerting and to have visibility over resources on a network. It's centralized oversight over what's going on.
What is most valuable?
The network map is really good. It gives us a good idea of the topology for new sites as we deploy the software. The ability to remotely connect the network devices is great. If we don't have direct access we can pretty much just do it from anywhere that we have an internet connection to. That's really helpful.
My team does the knowledge training. They have a university, and when we have new staff, they take the Auvik certification course. Otherwise, there is a lot of stuff to do in the solution and a lot of things to see. Without training, people will have to guess their way around it. Maybe they will see some basic features, but to actually leverage it to the fullest, you do need to take the training.
The dashboard and the network map give a real-time picture. It is really good so long as you have the credentials for everything. I don't really have any complaints. I think it's really helpful. It has been a lot of use for us in the past. Regarding things such as suggestions, it tells you where you have devices you do not have credentials for. That's something you can see if you go to the discovery settings.
The benefits were realized pretty immediately. The benefits are very self-evident. The only thing you have to do to see the proper benefits is make sure you have a good setup. It's important to know how to deploy things, which credentials to add, etc. Otherwise, the topology will not be of much use. You will not get the configurations. However, if you have the proper knowledge of how to set this up, it's great.
We do not give our entry-level technicians access to Auvik most of the time. It's usually for tier-two technicians or our network engineers. However, it does help them with the Epic training. Before we are going to give entry-level permissions, we have them take training, and the training gives them a lot of information on the network on how to use the platform.
Auvik helps decrease our mean time to resolution. What's good about Auvik is you can define thresholds where you can close alerts. So, if something goes down, you can see the condition. That definitely helps us take time out of the resolution process and lowers our oral ticket numbers.
What needs improvement?
In terms of the dashboard, maybe seeing on the map, for example, if you have an access point that's connected to switch one, and the access point you do not have credentials for, that could help us make management a bit easier. However, it's not terrible. It's just something to make it easier.
It has a monitoring feature. Besides just monitoring the network, you can tell Auvik to monitor a host name, like a domain name or an IP address on the cloud, and it just pings the IP address and gives you information. I feel like that's something that could potentially be improved a bit. For the service monitoring feature, we can check for port status or cloud ping checks. We can check against domains and against IP addresses in the cloud. That's a feature that has been of a lot of use to us. However, it is a little bit lacking in some features compared to other solutions that we have also used in the past. We used to use another solution, and we wanted to transition this service over to Auvik since Auvik does largely the same thing. However, as we were migrating, we noticed specific features were missing, and we could not add some of the monitoring back into Auvik since there were some technical limitations. For example, if Auvik has an IP address for the domain you want to monitor, and if the domain does not respond, it will take it as the services down, and it's going to trigger the alert at that point. It does not check when giving out a ping request. It checks by just making an HTTP request to the website. However, basically, some websites that we manage do not respond back to ping requests based on safety settings and so on. So, we have to do HTTP checks to check if the service is up. However, Auvik does not support that at the time.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've used the solution for two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Mostly, it works well. We do have some sites that seem to stress the platform a bit. We might have been over the edge when it happened, and that's the only time I have seen performance issues.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It's really easy to scale. Previously, and I'm not sure if this is true any longer, you could not turn a single site over to a multi-site and vice versa. In that case, you may need to delete your current site, or sites, and migrate things over.
How are customer service and support?
Technical support is really good. They are really quick. I have no complaints.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I've also used Datto. However, Datto provides actual infrastructure, whereas Auvik is just monitoring. They aren't quite the same.
How was the initial setup?
Setting up the solution is not difficult. We just have to make sure we have credentials for everything on the network. However, that's something that comes from our clients. As long as we have the credentials, it's pretty quick to set up. We had everything set up in about two weeks.
However, if someone is not tech-savvy, they will see many unfamiliar terms. If someone has knowledge of API integrations, they'll have an easier time.
We tend to need two people for each deployment. Someone will take care of provisioning and collecting, and someone will do the technical setup within the platform.
There isn't really any maintenance needed. There may be alert tuning. Auvik does come with a lot of alerts that are already pre-built in. Some we disable, some we modify, and some we just create from scratch.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I do not handle the licensing aspect of the solution.
What other advice do I have?
I'd rate the solution eight out of ten with my biggest complaint being the documentation and knowledge base, which is difficult to navigate.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: MSP