We performed a comparison between Microsoft Active Directory and SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Active Directory Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The product is very stable and flexible. You can also integrate the solution with other products like mail solutions."
"The solution is user-friendly, and I like using Microsoft products. I think there is no other choice for Active Directory. Microsoft Windows Server Active Directory is the best."
"It is a stable solution."
"The solution is easy to install and has good reliability."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Active Directory is the ability to search for computers and users. While I do not have administrative privileges to reset passwords, I can view user information such as department, and communicate with someone who can make the changes."
"The user-friendliness of Microsoft Active Directory is a valuable feature."
"It is very user-friendly."
"Active Directory plays a focal point in security management, encompassing aspects like credential management, lifecycle, dynamic provisioning, and the network infrastructure of customers."
"The features like trends, capacity planning, recommendations, and diagnostics are the main items I focus on for added value."
"The application dependency feature identifies issues between applications and servers or within the network where the application is hosted. It highlights related problems, whether related to packet processing or other issues, enabling the creation of alerts and reports accordingly."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is the network devices' performance monitor is the best."
"I find it to be a strong product suite, particularly when you need a comprehensive monitoring tool."
"The solution has good alerts. Notifications are sent via email to technicians. You can filter the kinds of alerts you want to receive as well. It's excellent."
"SolarWinds is a very stable platform compared to others on the market."
"SSL Certificate Monitoring and Expiry Alerting"
"I am impressed with the tool's AppStack feature which mainly helps us in the identification process. This feature can give an overview of the fault and help us identify the issues for performance degradation. Instead of looking at multiple places, we can look at a single place to identify the issues."
"It could be more stable."
"The solution needs to be simplified to navigate."
"The product's premium support services could be less expensive."
"Typically, it depends on the customer's situation. If the customer operates in smaller locations where most PCs are in a common location, we usually aim to consolidate the directory infrastructure for easier maintenance. However, for distributed setups spanning multiple countries, configuring multiple sites becomes necessary and more intricate to handle. Our objective is to minimize the number of sites, simplifying operations for IT administrators and reducing errors. Mistakes in Active Directory can be costly for organizations, as disruptions can occur rapidly. Moreover, when it comes to hybrid single sign-on across various applications, Microsoft hasn't put forth significant effort. Single sign-on has become a challenge for many customers who utilize diverse solutions beyond Microsoft products. While implementing single sign-on is relatively straightforward in the Azure cloud, it's considerably more complex when dealing with the local Active Directory. This presents a big challenge for many of our customers."
"Microsoft Active Directory fails to provide MFA. MFA, which is also known as multi-factor authentication on top of the password and username, is what I would like to see in the product's future releases."
"UI is not very user-friendly."
"The product must provide remote password reset features."
"There has been a change in the layout of the user information. Previously, I had to go to properties to view the information, but now it is displayed directly below the search results. It takes some time to get used to."
"Reporting is the only thing with which we currently have challenges. They have this in two ways. There is the report writer, which is the backend, and we also have web reports, which are on the console. So, they have removed the report writer for the backend reports, and we are making use of the web console, but most of the users are not finding it very interesting to use the frontend reports. I would like them to bring back the report writer. That's the key area within it to improve on the reporting. If they can bring back the report writer, then most users will actually be comfortable. I have some customers who are trying to export their report to an Excel format, but it is not possible because they said any report that has been done from the web console cannot be exported to Excel, but most of the customers need to export their reports to Excel. That's one area they need to work on."
"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve the server monitoring and the web application monitoring features are not good. Microsoft SCOM has better server monitoring."
"It should also be easier to upgrade SolarWinds. AppDynamics is harder to deploy but easier to upgrade. So AppDynamics takes a lot of time and effort to install, but you can upgrade it in minutes. SolarWinds is the opposite. It's easy to deploy, but upgrades take forever. To date, nobody can complete it on time, so the production environment is sitting idle."
"A lot of times, we have to do a lot of manual cleanups."
"The tool's AppStack needs to improve in the storage monitoring part. It should also include an analytics and recommendation approach. If I have found a fault in a server or application, I would like to know what caused it and how do I recover from it."
"Mapping interactions between systems."
"The product does not explain why a problem occurred."
"Support for the IBM Mainframe is needed."
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Microsoft Active Directory is ranked 5th in Active Directory Management with 36 reviews while SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is ranked 8th in Active Directory Management with 38 reviews. Microsoft Active Directory is rated 8.6, while SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Microsoft Active Directory writes "A solution that easily merges with cloud-based ADs and provides superior data security". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor writes "We use this product for base and application monitoring. ". Microsoft Active Directory is most compared with PingFederate, Fortinet FortiAuthenticator, Microsoft Entra ID, ManageEngine ADManager Plus and Auth0, whereas SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is most compared with Azure Monitor, Dynatrace, AppDynamics, Prometheus and Nagios XI. See our Microsoft Active Directory vs. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report.
See our list of best Active Directory Management vendors.
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