We wanted a tool for monitoring the entire virtualization infrastructure. In addition to infrastructure monitoring, a second use case was application monitoring. At the time we were looking, they had a tool called EPOps through which you could do application monitoring. We also heard about some other components, partner integrations for VMware, through which we could monitor the SAP landscape and storage performance.
There was a team of five or six members. Only one member implemented the vROps, but the visibility was provided to all five of the core infrastructure members. They have been able to use the tool effectively to monitor all the applications from an infrastructure point of view.
We also created an application-specific dashboard, from an infra point of view, which was released to end application teams, so that they can then monitor the performance of their applications: How is the CPU and memory? How is the software: working or not working? It is a one-of-a-kind solution where we have onboarded application teams and given them logins for their specific areas.
vROps also provides proactive monitoring, at some level. It's not practical to keep on logging in to the tool to look at it. So you can create alerts and it will alert you if memory utilization is going beyond 80 or CPU utilization is going above 90. It significantly improves the monitoring, because we are able to act on it beforehand, before the system goes down. It has decreased our downtime by 20 percent. We are more proactive in anticipating and solving problems, and it has also reduced our mean time to resolution for infrastructure by about 10 percent.
We also use it for capacity management, for buying new capacity. It has saved us on hardware costs because we're able to plan properly and we're able to buy the necessary hardware. It has saved us around 50 lakh in Indian rupees [about $70,000 at the time of this review]. And because we are not buying as much infrastructure, the licensing requirements and costs have also been reduced. And it has saved us about 5 to 10 lakh [about $7,000 to $14,000 at the time of this review] in power and other data center costs.
For VMware monitoring, it gives a good amount of data, which can be circled back with the IT hierarchy, or application owner, to have a discussion.
VM rightsizing is another very good feature and capacity planning is something else that I like about it.
In addition, over time it has become more user-friendly. When we deployed, it was only three-years-old. Recently, it has matured enough to monitor cloud infra also, but we have not tried that yet. But it has matured over the time. The GUI has become more user-friendly and it is very lightweight now.
It shows end-to-end visibility for infrastructure: CPU, memory, and all the processes that are running on the server. It will provide you everything. It will provide you some information about applications, depending on the tool capability, but it is not an application performance monitoring solution.
We integrated vROps with vRealize Log Insight, but it was not helpful to me. It was not giving me any good data.
Another area where there is room for improvement is an area which I've not looked at: cloud management and how efficiently it can do it.
Also, while it is able to do VMware management very effectively, if you have any other hypervisor solution, I don't know how effectively it would work. It should scale to other infrastructure also.
We have been using VMware vRealize Operations (vROps) for the last five to six years now.
The product is more or less stable. We may find a database-related issue once in a year because it uses the open source Cassandra DB, so sometimes that does not work the way it should.
Also, high-availability within the product is not so good. They have tried to improve it over the time. We have created a two-node cluster where, if one cluster goes down, the other node will take over. Whenever we have tried, it was not that seamless, and we had to involve their support.
It is scalable. It is easy to scale. We also implemented it in a remote location, where we just had to install a remote connector. All you need is good connectivity.
In a given week we were using vROps three to four times. That frequency has been reduced and now we use it about twice a week. I look at it in my role as manager of IT infrastructure and data center. On my team there are three people and they also look at vROps from time to time. They create VMs. They are database, software, and backup administrators. Above me there is our leadership team that also looks at it on a case-by-case basis.
Technical support is very good, no doubt about it. If you raise a very high-priority case, you will get an immediate response. And most of the people are able to solve the problems. You don't have to roll the case over to the next available or superior agent.
We didn't have any tools before vROps, but it provides a single tool for virtualized infrastructure monitoring.
The initial setup was a complex process, and it is still a complex process. There are too many products: the UI, database, and you have to properly size it according to your requirements, otherwise it does not work well.
Our deployment was a one-year project.
We took a full suite of licenses for all the VMs which we had. And that time we had some 600 VMs. We took two types of licensing, advanced and enterprise, where we were trying to achieve our application monitoring in the enterprise licensing. The advanced was used to create dashboards and other kinds of reporting.
Besides this, we used one more product, VMware Compliance Manager, which they have now stopped. That is one area which they have now integrated into vROps, but we have not tried it so far.
We used VMware professional services. Our experience with them was okay. We thought we would implement way further, with VMware onboarding, but it took a year to complete the project.
We haven't really seen ROI. That was not the idea at the time. We wanted a monitoring platform. Return on investment on such a product is also fairly difficult to calculate.
Over time they have changed the pricing and the licensing model. Five or six years ago, when we took it, it was a very good option. Now, I think I have to reevaluate, to be honest.
We looked at SolarWinds and BMC. One of the primary reasons we went with vROps was that we had a large VMware infrastructure. Also, at that time, the dashboards were very good. Also, at some level, it was an agentless solution. In all the other cases you had to install an agent in the end VMs. But because vROps is tightly integrated with VMware, it monitors without agents. That was a factor. Cost was also a factor.
My advice would be to look at it holistically, meaning look at what you want to achieve in the final endgame. Also, evaluate a couple of products to get a feel for them and which product suits you. In addition, create roles within your company, because this needs dedicated attention when you implement it and attention to sustain it. There should also be alignment with an application team or leadership team when implementing this kind of solution.
We're primarily using the solution for incident management. We use it for ticketing for end-users. We are using also all the functionality around change management, release management, and this year we implement project management and software license management. We also make use of the analytics.
The analytics are very good.
The solution offers very nice incident management.
The overall functionality of the product is excellent.
The change management is helpful. They have an agent that we installed in every single asset. We have the inventory for all assets automatically.
Contract management is very valuable for us as an IT department, as we have the information for every single computer across the company.
We are starting to use the project management aspects right now. We have different projects and we have all information in the same solution, in the same place. It makes everything more centralized and easier to access.
The user interface is very nice and the solution is easy to use. You don't need to be an expert in order to navigate around and use the product. You don't need to read a lot of manuals in order to figure everything out. It's pretty intuitive.
While we're just starting with project management, I foresee some limitations with it two or three years down the line. The functionality we will likely need just isn't there right now. It's still very, very basic in terms of the offering.
For example, measuring progress can be tricky. If you finish the sub-tasks and not the main task, it doesn't calculate the project's progress correctly.
It would be nice if there were some standard KPIs around, for example, performance or support. It would help with budgeting.
The product should look at BCM or ServiceNow and see if there are features that would make nice additions. It would help them stay competitive.
We started using the solution 36 months ago. It's probably been close to three years.
The stability of the solution is quite good. We don't have crashes. It doesn't freeze. there aren't bugs or glitches. It's reliable.
The scalability is okay. However, if you have more than 100 or 200 agents how the performance will be.
We had started with five, then with 10, then with 15 and now we have 20 or more. We don't need to report or to ask that they increase the capacity planning or anything of that nature. It was very transparent and so far very easy for us to scale up.
We may increase usage in the future.
Technical support has been very good. Their response times are very fast - faster than other competitors. We haven't really had any big problems with the product at this point. Therefore, we haven't really used them that much. However, we are quite satisfied with the level of service they provide.
While I haven't used a different solution at this particular company, I have used other solutions in the past, such as BMC and ServiceNow.
Freshservice is more stable and easier to use. It's also less expensive. It may not e as big as other offerings, however, for small and medium-sized organizations, it's quite good.
The initial setup is pretty straightforward. It was not overly complex. We didn't run into too many issues.
We constructed everything and handled the setup was in one day. Three days later we had to start with all the functionality and the implementation for the entire company including the change management process, the training, etc. Everything was done in less than one month.
We didn't need a consultant or any type of expert in order to handle the implementation. We handled everything ourselves.
The pricing information is on their website. It's my understanding that their Pro Plan, for example, is around $89/month.
There aren't additional costs on top of this. The price you see on the website is the price they charge and the price you pay.
We're just customers and end-users.
I'm not sure of which version of the solution we are using. They recently changed the names of their services. While we were previously using what I believe was called Enterprise, which is now called Pro.
We may continue to use, not just this solution, but other Freshworks options in the future. We've recently asked the company to put together webinars for our company to learn more about their offerings.
I'd recommend this solution. In fact, I already have - to other CIOs. The pricing is very straightforward, and the solution is easy to use. It's not overly technical.
Overall, I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten.
We are using ScienceLogic primarily for monitoring our infrastructure, a few specific services like Citrix, and a few websites and their publication. We have private cloud deployments as well as on-premises deployments.
It is very easy to configure because we are using an agent-less version. You can very quickly implement a collector for monitoring device servers.
It doesn't have the complete application-level topology. It could have service topology and business service monitoring.
I would like to see how business service monitoring will function with agent-based installation, and how flexible and business-oriented it is for service modeling and service infrastructure. I have a lot of experience in using business service monitoring, service topology, and service hierarchy functionalities in similar products from BMC and Micro Focus (OpenView), and I want to see how these functionalities will look like in ScienceLogic.
We have been using ScienceLogic in our company for four to five years.
It is stable.
Scalability looks fine, but we didn't have to extend it so far. We haven't looked at our possibilities regarding scalability.
We have opened tickets, and their technical support has always resolved them successfully.
The initial setup was straightforward.
Its price could be lower, but for what you pay, you got a lot of value from its features and functionalities. Customers always want a discount or a cheaper solution.
I would rate ScienceLogic a ten out of ten. It is a pretty good and well-done product.
