Densify Reviews

We leverage Supply and Demand Planning for Virtual Infrastructure to assist in proactive management of resources. By having a realistic forecast of available resources over intervals such as 90 days, six months and one year, we are able to make budget allocations earlier and with more precision.

The Control Console provides a very easy to read dashboard of "too little/just right/too much" resources both for current data and on a historical or predictive basis.

Densify provides our organization with usable recommendations for resizing VM's to optimize its use of resources. It has made the ongoing task of curating hundreds of VM's a much less manual effort.

It has also provided us with impartial and objective justification for resource changes, which is very valuable when working with teams who assume that more is better and faster.

Our team recently had to decide on what approach to take to a hardware refresh of a VMware cluster. We were able to feed several scenarios into Densify and provide a day zero and one year view of what our different options would provide us in terms of capacity. It made the design decisions and discussions regarding purchasing much easier.

Some parts of the interface are rather complex and require a bit of time to navigate, but this has never stopped us as a Densify advisor is readily available to help with our "how to" queries.

Since March 2017.

Our deployment was extremely easy and non-disruptive. The installation of the data collector was simple, and adding each data source was done through a wizard that validated connectivity and authentication before completion.

We have encountered very infrequent issues with connectivity to one VMware cluster to collect performance data. This could possibly be due to an internal issue rather than the product.

We have not encountered any scalability issues. Over the past months, we have ramped up to managing seven on-premise clusters plus two cloud instances, consisting of over 950 guests.

We have received great customer service. The Densify staff have been responsive to both support and feature requests.

The technical support staff have been very helpful. We have received prompt and knowledgeable response to our queries.

We previously used Turbonomic, but found it was over simplified in its filters and viewing current state rather than statistical analysis, and was disruptive when set to automated migration.

We opted for Densify because it makes allowances for brief anomalies and provides recommendations based on sustained shortages or unused resources.

The initial setup was very straightforward for connection to on-premise systems. Connection to cloud resources was somewhat more challenging because it involved manually performing user setup on the cloud provider's console. We had a remote session with Densify when doing this part of the work and setup each cloud instance in about half an hour.

We implemented primarily through an in-house team with the vendor engaged, as needed, to answer questions. The vendor showed a high-level of expertise, not only about their product, but about the platforms being managed.

It is too early to have hard numbers for the ROI. However, in the first few months, we have been able to change VM allocations and avoid the purchase of two VMware hosts, and have avoided the workload of performing the analytics which would have required an increase in head count.

There was some sticker shock, as this is not just another software product to spit out graphs. It provides analytics as a service, which you use to decide what recommendations to act on and how.

We had already evaluated Turbonomic and abandoned it. We looked at other market offerings but did not perform in-house evaluations of them.

Using the reports from Densify will provide us with the "trusted advisor" backing for our own purchase and provisioning decisions.

Though not currently a large user of cloud resources, we are already able to use this to compare the costs of creating new workload at various locations.

Control Console and Reservation Console.

The Control Console is an incredible way to give a quick view of current capacity utilization allowing technical people to drill down quickly and allowing business/management people to get a quick overview of the environment.

The Reservation Console is excellent for new incoming demand to determine placement. These two features seem as though they will have continual functionality into the foreseeable future and can improve processes while saving substantial time.

This product has provided us with a more comprehensive solution that is now replacing nearly all other tools which were previously used in the different platforms and environments within the account. Allowing for homogeneous processes and functionality, streamlining the overall work conducted. Previously, people would have to understand multiple tools to be able to cross platforms, which is no longer the case.

We are currently using a version that is a few behind (v8.3.4 as opposed to v10), so the only improvement I could suggest would be addressed in the newest version. However, in older versions, customized reporting was lacking. v10 includes a new reporting engine utilizing JasperReports, so this is likely no longer a consideration.

Four years.

No, this product is very stable.

No, this product is extremely scalable. The limit to scalability is likely the limit to a company's wallet.

Densify provides excellent support. They are much more of a partner than a vendor. I work with their staff on a daily basis. They are all extremely knowledgeable and ready to help to come to a solution. There is great company culture with them.

This wasn't a business decision made by me, but the switch was made for increased functionality and offering an all-in-one type solution to improve overall capacity and performance management.

The initial setup is straightforward. The Densify team handles the architecture and most of the setup. The different servers interact fairly easily, yet there is a significant amount of tuning and customization that can be done after initial setup.

Densify has licensing setup so you can collect data without licensing. It gives you the ability to collect on everything, then choose later what you would like to license.

I am unaware of another product that offers such functionality in one package.

This product helps significantly with planning efforts and BAU management alike. It's better to get it sooner and start collecting data sooner.

I think it's going to form quite a key element within a number of areas for deployment, deployment release, change management, and for managing our test environments. I have a lot of ideas how we can incorporate the technology with integration to our other systems to leverage what we have and what they deliver.

I would say that the initial thing is that it provides us with a technological basis to expand capacity management beyond Excel. It provides the basis that we can springboard off to achieve areas we could only hope for before.

So far there are a few areas. It seems that the mechanism for integration is, it goes so far but I think there could be some standard integration to normal remedy service now etc. I think that should be out of the box.

The reporting; we've seen that some of the functionality from an earlier version has been dropped in the current version that we have (v.9.3) and they're looking to put that back because one of the main functions that we see is the ongoing reporting to other systems.

Also I've just been looking at the new reporting interface that they have in version 10 and, as I've seen with a number of other companies, they are very self-focused shall we say, instead of delivering the data to maybe one or two or three standard BI platforms. I know they allow you to do that but you've got to do it. It would be good to have a working example of where they already work with whatever platforms exist, QuickView or whatever platforms, but we'll be working on that anyway. They'll be able to give those examples in about a year's time.

15 days.

The only problem we've got at the moment is latency between the application server and the database server but I suspect that that problem, there is a blazing irony here, that we've deployed server to improve our optimization but the fact is it's been deployed and the cluster's not optimized and I think that is causing a problem with the system working. The system has to heal itself, heal its own cluster before it can heal others, as it were.

No, I don't think so. I don't think scalability is an issue, but at the moment we are based only in our central datacenters, so if and when we connect to our many remote sites, then we'll see how it works.

Very happy, I think that we have excellent support. I think that they are patient with our incompetence. I think they're excellent.

No, this was the result of a pre-study that I ran comparing this solution with other solutions taking input from additional industry resources and our own evaluation and my own basis, what I was aiming to achieve. Densify were deemed to be the best for us at the time and they still are, for now.

Both. I think set up of the application and the system itself was straightforward. Connection to the data sources was a little bit more complex getting everything there and then. It's the configuration aspect which I think will take probably six months or so to get sorted. That's not a problem, we entered it with open eyes.

I think to bring on board the technical teams such as VMware and the power teams and whoever's systems you are augmenting. I think we maybe could have done that better. The problem is the functionality can be seen as competitive functionality to existing technologies and the technological teams, the teams that manage the technologies, guard them quite jealously. I think it also requires top-down leadership. I don't think it's something that you should try to put it in from, say, the middle tier of management and just through force of will, force it to go in. It would be so much cleaner if it was a top-down and, if all of the potential was understood, if it wasn't just looked at from densification or pure capacity management.

It has a lot to offer as a central analytical area. For instance we're looking at it for usage based chargeback and linking it back into our business navigation systems. That is not even toted as a benefit of the system but it should be.

There are a lot of areas, and this is not unusual that people get fixated on, companies get fixated on, the area that they came from, without really taking a step back and appreciating what potential impact they can have on business as a whole.

There a lot of good features. One would be the automatic rebalancing of the environment. That was one feature which helped. With that, we could improve our efficiency of our VMware infrastructure.

The second thing is analyzing the workload factors of each and every virtual machine, and then build on the analyzing workload patents. Densify helped us to improve the performance of the software by changing the configuration, like a bump-up or a bump-down of the infrastructure. This, again, helps improve customer satisfaction, if the VM is poorly configured, from a CPU memory or a storage point of view.

And it also helped if this particular working machine is oversized and is not utilizing the resources which are allocated to it. We could bump down the configuration, and thereby improve our efficiency and the capacity management of our environment, so those were the key things.

Plus, the overall recording mechanism is a positive.

Then, when we started with this product, we were in a project deployment model, or rather we were ramping up the infrastructure. We were migrating products from the current workload to the new workload. And one of the features that helped us was to understand the capacity based on the incoming workload. So, we were able to model the incoming workload into the infrastructure and identify how the environment would look after the new workload was added into. So Densify was able to help us with modeling and resource planning.

It simply helps me analyze my infrastructure relatively easily. The data that we get from it is very phenomenal. It also gives us the ability to look at the future modeling of our environment, which helps in terms of planning the capacity, planning. If our workload is going down, we can reduce our infrastructure baseline. If the workload is increasing, we can increase the baseline, and it helps us define that. Also, it helps us optimize the overall infrastructure.

Densify works basically on the VMware infrastructure optimization and we have the VMware infrastructure in place. Our motive was to perform at capacity management, as well as the optimization of our infrastructure. So, in that sense, Densify helped us to properly identify bottlenecks and improve the overall performance and optimization of our environment.

Initially we talked about some custom reporting, wherein our customer expected certain reports on a few areas, like how the storage is allocated, how the network performance is doing, and how the network utilization is happening for a virtual machine. So we wanted that reporting functionality and we have given that feedback to the team.

It's close to one and a half years now. We started using it the first half of 2016.

No, for the simple reason that you're using it as a Cloud, as a service model, and so that was not an issue at any time.

No, because when we started utilizing the product, our workload was relatively small. Over a period of time, we have grown in every aspect, such as the number of servers and the virtual machines. From that point of view we have not had a challenge with the scalability. I think it will be able to sustain more durability and workload, probably for the simple reason that we're using it software as a service model. And we're not using the product as a compromised model because that is something else maybe that would drive us here.

We have regular meetings with the Densify team to monitor our environment. Initially, they were very helpful because we were new. We wanted to understand the old application and the product, so we had a lot of interactive meetings initially. And then, after product utilization became stable, we scheduled regular meetings.

We did not use any other solution, and then we learned about this solution. But before we decided to use this product, we compared it with other possible solutions.

Overall, the Densify solution was very simple from my perspective because we didn't have to do much to implement it. We just needed one small server to install the Densify connector which holds the data, and the other thing is we needed was the correct permissions given to certain users. And the connectivity has to be there with Densify's back end infrastructure, but that's the part and parcel of any environment. But if we had gone with, say, a VMware product then we would have had a lot of difficulty or a lot of challenges and problems implementing the solution. So, from my perspective, the installation was very simple.

Cost is always involved, but then I feel that this solution is better than other products that we have. Everyone has a different way of defining the cost, an effectiveness matrix. From my point of view, we were looking for certain solutions, to meet certain requirements, and this product helped us attain goals.

We compared the product with VMware's native product, that is vROps, and we found this product to be more intuitive and requiring less effort to put in to utilize it; the VMware product product had a big-time learning curve for us. Of course, the deployment cost was there as well as the learning cost and, of course, a lot of other factors were there, the timelines and everything. Whereas, with this product, the software as a service model, it could be implemented very quickly, very easily, and then we could rely on the recommendations which come from Densify.

From my perspective, this product is really good, and we are not even using each and every feature. But my advice would be, if somebody is looking for a solution for capacity and optimization of VMware infrastructure, this is the right product. It does not require any technical skills to implement the solution.

The features which are most important:

• The ability to increase server density inside of my environment, which has helped me drive reduction in costs.
• The features to identify risk or bottle necks in my environment that help me avoid operational incidents.
• Lastly, the feature to do the personnel management and resource planning for my forecast and outlook of the incoming workload.

The first benefit (of improving density) helps with my operational budget; it has given me the ability to reduce my capital expense for supporting existing workloads as well as future workloads.

The benefit to identity risk really helps avoid potential problems which could eventually result in outage or service degradation inside of applications.

Areas for improvement are:

• A closer integration to the service management processes.
• Being able to correlate the systems which are at risk with systems that report performance incidents.
• Maybe a tighter integration with my CMDB processes, so all resources are appropriately tagged -- based on the CMDB representation.

Service management level integration is probably the biggest area for improvement.

Since 2015, so around two years.

No, we have not had problems with stability.

We went through a good exercise with the Densify team to appropriately size the environment based on our needs and on how big our environment was, and we have not had any issues with stability.

We did not have any problems in the area of scalability. We have a very large server population and did not have any issues with scalability.

The tool provided the architecture for scaling horizontally with our volumes and our different locations very well.

I give them a strong nine out of 10 as they're the industry experts in their domain.

I spent a lot of time with their technical support upfront. They maintain a regular cadence with me, so we have an ongoing relationship. I'm in constant contact with them, and that's more proactive than reactive.

We (previously) used a combination of internally developed tools and some industry available tools.

We switched to Densify because it gave us a more complete end-to-end picture of the environment and really became the system of truth across all of our environments versus having to aggregate information from many dissimilar systems.

No, it was very straightforward.

We had preparation for our deployment, some planning sessions, and everything went just as expected. It was very straightforward.

Yes. We looked internally, developed capabilities that we had which were not market available, and were supported by my organization.

We looked at some products from other organizations, but none of them provided everything for all these different server types inside our environment.

Densify gave us a complete solution rather than having us have five different solutions where we had to stitch data back together from multiple sources.

I think the best advice is plan ahead.

We did this, a little proof of concept ahead of time, so that we could learn before doing our mass deployment.

Planning was everything, so by us having accurate planning, I think this was the reason behind us not having any problems.

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.