LiveAssurance Reviews

We use BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance mainly for interrogation and alerting.

We saw the benefits of BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance immediately after we deployed it.

The enhanced analytics dashboard helps us prioritize troubleshooting.

BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance detects potential issues and anomalies before they occur, provided we have set our thresholds. Without defined thresholds, the system may still identify problems, but we will only be alerted after the event. This proactive approach helps prevent issues rather than simply reacting to them.

It provides diagnostic information to help with remediation.

BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance significantly enhances our company's network stability by preventing outages. With over a hundred firewalls integrated into the system, it provides comprehensive monitoring and control, effectively minimizing potential downtime. BlueCat's solution has been instrumental in maintaining a highly reliable network environment, and its value in preventing disruptions is immeasurable.

BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance's most valuable feature is its ability to analyze integrity and perform interrogations, providing alerts based on configurable thresholds. This allows us to tailor the system to our specific needs and receive notifications when critical conditions are met.

To enhance the API's usability, I would like them to simplify the back-end programming experience. Considering that some of our junior engineers have limited coding expertise, incorporating features that assist in query construction or provide clear textual translations of code would be valuable. Additionally, an alternative interface for code writing could prove beneficial for increased efficiency and comprehension.

I have been using BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance for almost five years.

I haven't experienced any instabilities. BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance has been a reliable product.

Customer support is very good, with knowledgeable and eager staff.

Positive

Our team developed a custom monitoring system on Unix servers, utilizing email and pager alerts. Previously, we found Orion inadequate due to various issues and also experimented with SolarWinds and Fluke network tools. Ultimately, we transitioned to BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance for enhanced performance and functionality.

I had no problem with the initial deployment since I was the one that deployed it. However, for someone unfamiliar with BlueCat, it might depend on how well they read the documentation.

I did the implementation myself, with some consulting support for a few issues in the very beginning.

The pricing for BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance is fairly comparable.

I would rate BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance ten out of ten.

We can enable auto-triage but generally prefer manual triage to investigate the root cause of issues. While BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance provides some information, its reliance on external knowledge bases that are not always current necessitates a more hands-on approach in most cases.

BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance requires maintenance for upgrades, patches, and occasional disc cleanup.

I would inquire about the features a colleague at another organization feels their cheaper monitoring and alert solution offers that BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance lacks. BlueCat has been an excellent tool for us, exceeding expectations and fulfilling all our requirements. Although it took three years to secure budget approval for this in-house solution, we have been completely satisfied with its performance.

Attention to detail is crucial, as it can significantly impact your outcomes. Failing to pay close attention may lead to incorrectly set thresholds, which can cause you to miss critical alerts.

My organization comprises a financial institution and a technology company. BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance, an internal service, helps accurately pinpoint issues within our systems.

My team utilizes the enhanced analytic dashboards of BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance to prioritize troubleshooting, enabling efficient triage of system issues that are monitored around the clock.

BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance offers comprehensive analytic capabilities that enhance problem identification and provide exhaustive information regarding issues, minimizing downtime for our organization while ensuring compliance.

BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance helps detect potential issues and anomalies proactively. The system provides email notifications to alert users of potential problems before they occur, allowing for preventative action. This has improved our performance and security posture.

It automatically identifies the root cause of problems and triages them without human intervention, which reduces operational costs.

BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance provides diagnostic information and actionable remediation steps within the visual workflow diagram, enabling my engineers to understand and resolve issues quickly.

BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance has been instrumental in preventing outages for our organization. Downtime is extremely costly, with every ten minutes equating to a ten million dollar loss. Thanks to BlueCat, we have not experienced any downtime in the past two years.

BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance provides excellent analytic capabilities for early problem detection, offering beneficial diagnostic information and actionable remediation steps. Its real-time visibility is a valuable feature for maintaining network health and stability.

BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance does not support all network security devices.

We currently use BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance on-premises, but it lacks the AI capabilities that are becoming increasingly common in modern security products. We would like BlueCat to integrate AI functionality that can provide predictive insights, such as forecasting the percentage of downtime we might experience over the next three months.

It would be beneficial to have a package that integrates Grafana with BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance, as we currently utilize Grafana in our backend systems.

I have been using BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance for almost seven years.

I would rate the stability of BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance ten out of ten.

I would rate the scalability of BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance eight out of ten.

The BlueCat support is great.

Positive

My previous solutions lacked the automation and comprehensive parameter checks that BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance provides. Unlike BlueCat, they also failed to offer the same level of in-depth visibility and required fine-tuning.

The initial deployment was straightforward and took five days to complete. Two people were involved in the deployment.

Support from BlueCat was involved in the implementation.

BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance delivered exceptional ROI, recouping three years of investment costs within the first year of implementation.

BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance is reasonably priced.

I would rate BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance nine out of ten.

We use several monitoring tools, including Grafana, Dynatrace, SolarWinds, and Plastic. These tools provide comprehensive monitoring capabilities, tracking various performance counters and facilitating effective context management.

We have 25 people in our organization who use BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance.

BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance requires minimal maintenance.

I recommend BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance to businesses of all sizes. It saves costs, reduces downtime, and streamlines business processes.

We leverage BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance in an active/standby configuration to proactively monitor the health and performance of our firewalls, proxies, and network infrastructure.

In the past, our network device monitoring lacked the ability to run custom commands on remote systems and create metrics and alerts from their output. BlueCat fills that gap by uniquely allowing custom monitoring to any system. Previously reliant on agent-based systems or SNMP, we now have the added capability of remote command execution, enabling us to monitor any device based on any data point, significantly expanding our monitoring capacities.

Our built-in DNS server monitoring tracks changes to DNS settings and latency for firewalls, eliminating the need for separate setups. This out-of-the-box functionality has even revealed valuable insights we hadn't considered. While pre-configured alerts are available, the system also offers extensive customization options, allowing us to tailor alerts to our specific needs and take full advantage of its flexibility.

BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance filled a unique gap in our organization. While we lacked built-in redundancy for our systems, BlueCat offered several valuable use cases. For instance, it allowed us to monitor application performance metrics at any data point level, reducing incidents due to noisy SNMP alerts. Previously, limitations in remote health metric monitoring existed, but BlueCat provided the missing piece. This comprehensive monitoring capability means there's always a command available to retrieve any metric-based alert.

It proactively identifies potential problems and anomalies before they happen. By analyzing historical data, it generates pre-emptive alerts to warn of issues before they become critical. For example, it monitors configuration files for changes that might cause corruption, detecting these issues before they impact system performance. Additionally, the upcoming version 8.4 offers even more advanced anomaly detection by analyzing trends in data points, rather than just single values. This allows it to identify deviations from normal usage patterns and potential problems that might otherwise be missed.

BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance has been instrumental in preventing major outages by increasing our detection of security threats around critical firewalls, like those protecting Visa transactions and customer analytics platforms. This proactive approach has saved us significant time by identifying potential issues before they escalate, preventing lengthy detection and investigation processes.

It saved us around 50 percent of our time.

BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance automates several tasks to save engineers time. It automatically identifies potential problems and triggers pre-defined commands for investigation, eliminating the need for manual troubleshooting. Additionally, it monitors the standard deviation of collected metrics, automatically detecting anomalies without the need for engineers to define specific thresholds for each data point. This automation reduces human intervention and ensures faster issue identification and resolution.

BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance offers visual workflow diagrams that combine diagnostic information with clear, actionable steps to resolve issues. Pre-built alerts come with built-in remediation plans, but these can be customized to fit specific needs. This ensures Visa can leverage both standard solutions and tailor them to their unique requirements. Visual workflow diagrams incorporating diagnostic information offer several benefits. Firstly, they provide deeper insights into the issue at hand. Secondly, they function as a step-by-step guide for our operations team, acting as both a reference and training tool for new members. This eliminates the need to consult separate documentation, saving valuable time. With these workflows embedded within alerts, the team can immediately investigate and remediate issues, improving efficiency especially as our team expands and welcomes new members.

BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance has been instrumental in preventing outages for our organization on multiple occasions. The software proactively identified potential issues through interface usage analysis, including memory and CPU bottlenecks. This early detection allowed us to take corrective actions and avoid service disruptions.

The most valuable aspects of BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance are remote commands, a core functionality for us, and automated remediation options. These features allow us to create pre-defined actions based on triggered alerts. For instance, after an alert triggers, we can automatically run a set of investigative commands, providing our operations team with additional information tagged to the incident. This eliminates the need for initial manual investigation and streamlines the process with automated actions based on the trigger. Additionally, the comprehensive metrics and graphs provide valuable insights for industry-specific analysis.

We would greatly benefit from expanded BlueCat integrations, particularly through a robust API ingestion system that allows for custom integrations with other systems. Ideally, this would include a user-friendly message queue system that facilitates communication between BlueCat and any external system via APIs.                                              

I have been using BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance for five years.

Our stability, particularly regarding hands-free maintenance, has significantly improved since upgrading from version seven to eight. While we previously encountered some stability issues, we've nearly fully recovered since the update.

I would rate the stability of BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance nine out of ten.

BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance can handle our current workload of around a thousand devices, including physical and virtual firewalls. While scalability limitations exist for deployments with multiple geographic locations beyond two, our current single active/standby setup is more than sufficient. Even with a user base exceeding 50 spread across locations, the scalability of BlueCat Assurance offers significant headroom for future growth.

I would rate the scalability of BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance nine out of ten.

While we utilize Datadog's remote checkup for on-premise devices rather than the cloud-based BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance, technical support has been very responsive in addressing any system issues with our monitored servers, promptly notifying us and requesting any necessary changes.

Positive

The initial deployment was straightforward and took a few weeks to complete. Two people from our end and one from BlueCat were involved in the deployment. 

We have seen a 30 percent return on investment.                                                                                                                        

BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance meets our budget requirements.

I would rate BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance eight out of ten.

Our organization has roughly 50 BlueCat users, and the software is deployed across two data centers for redundancy.

BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance requires less maintenance than we anticipated. It functions fairly autonomously, but when occasional issues arise, its support team is very helpful in guiding us through the necessary resolutions.

I highly recommend BlueCat Infrastructure Assurance. It stands out in the market by consolidating network monitoring methods. Currently, we rely on a mix of agent-based, SLMP-based, and command-based monitoring across various systems, which is cumbersome. BlueCat uniquely offers a unified approach, eliminating the need for redundant tools. It provides in-depth visibility, encompassing both SLMP and agent-based monitoring, for faster issue detection. A Proof of Concept is highly recommended to experience its capabilities firsthand.