Densify Reviews

Densify's ability to aggregate multiple on-premise vCenters and multiple cloud accounts, gives it a level of visibility not found in many places. Outside the obvious capacity recommendations and optimizations, the filtering and views provided by this aggregation have been invaluable.

Because of the placement optimizations, our organization has seen fewer incidents of poor performance due to resource contention.

Densify's on-premise history gives it a solid skillset to build upon in the cloud. Unfortunately the tools and mechanisms which really came to maturity in the cloud, and were not mainstream on-premise, are still not implemented. These are features, such as auto-scaling, application load balancing, containers, etc.

More than five years (back when it was called Cirba).

The Linux deployment was not conducive to automation. We had no issues deploying to Windows servers.

The only stability issues we ran into stem from vCenter databases needing reindexing. The performance issues didn't seem to be specific to Densify, but the queries made by Densify were the only ones impacted, as the vCenter administration was fine.

With the more recent releases (9+) there have been no scaling issues. Vast improvements in the way Densify audits the vCenters have reduced the number of servers needed, and improved performance.

Customer service has been quick to respond and has always followed up.

Among the best software support that I've worked with. Very attuned to our needs and priorities.

We did not previously use any other solutions, but we did evaluate several before deciding on Cirba (Densify)

Initial setup was straightforward, however our typical deployment uses automation to build out servers. This install is not automation friendly. We have not had to reinstall on these servers, other than patches and upgrades, so this hasn't been a huge issue.

Out in-house capacity management team worked through this with Cirba (Densify).

Not applicable.

Setup cost is negligible, as it scales fairly well.

Pricing/licensing can be a net negative if you action on the recommendations and optimizations provided.

Yes, TeamQuest, CA CAPMAN, and others.

They've worked with us and when issues have arisen, they have not hesitated to bring in high level technical resources to resolve them. I'm pleased to have such an attentive software vendor to work with.

The features and capabilities which we are using right now that are driving the most value are the analytics within the public cloud. If we go out and optimize workloads internally, we get greater density, more use out of our assets, but there's not a real financial savings in terms of green dollars, maybe cost deferrals, and things of that nature.

If I know a VM is running hot or has too many resources, I do not necessarily know if this is production or nonproduction, or if it supports a critical revenue generating application vs a sunset application that has little business value, etc. Integrating ITSM/EA applications with Densify data is extremely powerful and provides true business context. As this is communicated to leadership, we stop talking in terms of a VM or cluster and now about the risk/opportunity of the business service.

For the public cloud, it's green dollars from day one. If we can go out and if we're paying, as an example, a $100 a month to Amazon and we're able to right size or modernize the workload and we're able to save $50 a month, that's true $50 of savings back to us.

In terms of reducing risk, the way the product works is that it pulls in utilization data and then based on the analytics coming out of product, will give us recommendations. We'll then review those recommendations, validate them, and we vet them internally. We then work with application owners. If there are risks in the environment, meaning that the incidence does not have enough resources, we're going to see performance issues from an application perspective. That is going to impact our overall workflow as our end users are going out there and using tools and application internally.

One example would be going out there and reducing overall risk in performance issues. Another example would be, as I mentioned before, if we over provision or over allocate resources to instances where what we're getting is the performance we require, however, we're overpaying for those resources. It's no different then, if you or I go out to Verizon or AT&T and ask for 10,000 minutes a month and we only use 300. The tool will come back and tell us that we can operate with 1,000 minutes as an example, save 90% on the contractual rate and not run into any issues. That's where we're really using that product today.

In terms of integration, the tool has great data. However, it's not always meaningful because the true business attributes of how most Fortune 500 companies operate are not maintaining in one tool, they're in a school of many tools. I would say more are seen with integration to other tool sets and to add business contacts would probably be my one recommendation.

My comments were in regards to ITSM or EA integration. As an example, if I know a VM is running hot or has too many resources I do not necessarily know if this is a production or nonproduction, supports a critical revenue generating application vs a sunset application that has little business value, etc.

Integrating ITSM/EA applications with Densify data is extremely powerful and provides true business context.

We've been a customer of Cirba, which has been rebranded as Densify, for the last four years.

There were no stability issues at all.

In terms of scalability, it is working as expected. We've never had any down time issues or performance issues with the tool itself.

To be honest, technical support is phenomenal. Anytime we've had an issue, we've had the lead developer, the service expert on a call with us the same day going through the issue and creating an internal ticket to go out and remediate it and remediation has typically been the same day or week.

We did not use a solution before this one. We originally brought Densify in for what was called P to V, physical to virtual transformation. As the technology evolved, we started to use it more for optimization of internal resources. That then pivoted to really focusing on using it for external resources.

The initial setup was really point and click. We didn't have any setup issues at all. Once you put your private keys and passwords in, it grabs the data. Again, we're pretty intimate with the tool, but it's very straightforward.

We looked at a few other vendors to see what they're offering and their capabilities. To be honest with you, we also looked at, just natively, what could we do better ourselves. We did evaluate both native capabilities, as well as other competing vendors to see what they offered.

Before you select any tool, make sure that you have good internal processes to action the recommendations. Again, back to the cell phone example, if I go out to my customers and tell them that they can save X number of dollars a month or a year and they're not ready to action the recommendations, the product is not going to benefit anybody. Make sure that you have internal processes. That's really the primary constraint I see with any tool. You can bring it in. It has good data, but if you're not ready to use that data, it's really useless to bring in the tool.

I think they're doing a great job. They're adding capabilities every quarter, every release, and we're pretty excited about the future for this company.