Security Engineer at Protego trust
Real User
Top 10
Helps with network scanning and the discovery of asset management
Pros and Cons
  • "I like the tool's agentless discovery feature. The tool configures the devices based on the documentation provided. I am also impressed with its auto-discovery feature. The tool also keeps on tracking and finds whatever is in the environment."
  • "I would like to see API management as an additional feature in the tool's future versions. It will give more API security."

What is our primary use case?

The tool helps with network scanning and the discovery of asset management. 

How has it helped my organization?

We faced outages in the data center before implementing Device42. The tool has improved it and helped us with asset management. 

What is most valuable?

I like the tool's agentless discovery feature. The tool configures the devices based on the documentation provided. I am also impressed with its auto-discovery feature. The tool also keeps on tracking and finds whatever is in the environment. 

What needs improvement?

I would like to see API management as an additional feature in the tool's future versions. It will give more API security. 

Buyer's Guide
Device42
April 2024
Learn what your peers think about Device42. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2024.
769,236 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been working with the tool for five months. 

How are customer service and support?

The tool's technical support is very knowledgeable. They helped me with my queries. 

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

What other advice do I have?

I would rate the tool an eight out of ten. You need to use the product for one month and see if it offers the best value for your company. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Cayla Evans - PeerSpot reviewer
Incoming Data Security Analyst at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees
Real User
Top 20
Saved me from having to do a lot of manual work, but the stability needs improvement
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature was the ability to look up the different assets and see the different attributes that each one has, as well as being able to compare them to other assets."
  • "It was hard to know which assets I'd already looked at because if I looked up another asset with a similar name, they would still pop up. I would have to make sure I was looking at the right asset. The search function should be improved."

What is our primary use case?

I used Device42 for security purposes during my internship over the summer. I was tasked with trying to figure out a way to manage and secure the assets that the company I was working for had. We noticed that most of them were actually not secure, and also found out that Device42 was not up-to-date either.

How has it helped my organization?

Because I was using the solution to track our assets and see which ones were secure and which were not, so that we could better secure the latter, just having them all in one place definitely made it easier in some ways.

If I hadn't had Device42, I would have had to manually go through each asset, and that would not have been fun.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature was the ability to look up the different assets and see the different attributes that each one has, as well as being able to compare them to other assets.

It's also very important that the software provides agentless discovery.

In addition, I really enjoyed the dashboards and visuals. It was easy to navigate.

A lot of our assets didn't have information, which either meant someone wasn't keeping things up-to-date or just we didn't have enough information to go on. But for what we did have, the analytics were decent.

What needs improvement?

It was hard to know which assets I'd already looked at because if I looked up another asset with a similar name, they would still pop up. I would have to make sure I was looking at the right asset. The search function should be improved.

For how long have I used the solution?

I used Device42 for about four weeks.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Device42 did crash on me a couple of times. I'm going into the security field and I'm an information systems major, but you can't really be working on a website designed for security and have it randomly crash on you.

What other advice do I have?

This may be very cliche, but do your research on it first. Not every solution is perfect, we all know that. But if it doesn't match your needs, then it's probably useless. Having to go back and redo all the work you already did would be a disaster.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Device42
April 2024
Learn what your peers think about Device42. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2024.
769,236 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Cloud Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 20
Gives us visibility into our on-premises infrastructure, but discovery of Oracle Exadata needs work
Pros and Cons
  • "The Insights+ component is useful for us because it does business application mapping and helps us visualize it. It saves us time because we don't have to hunt for data."
  • "The breadth and depth of the solution's discovery of IT asset information means the system does most of the work, but they need to work on improving the database discovery part, especially for Oracle Exadata."

What is our primary use case?

It's our CMDB for the whole company.

How has it helped my organization?

The way Device42 has improved our organization is that we now have visibility into our on-premises infrastructure. Previously, we didn't have any access to or visibility into it because we had consultancy firms. With this solution, we're able to see what is going on inside. That visibility helps us understand the impact of a problem.

It has also saved us money because we no longer have to pay the baselines of the contracts with consultancy firms. It is saving us 2 percent, but that is a lot.

What is most valuable?

The features that I have found to be most valuable in the product are the

  • service discovery
  • business applications
  • application mapping between services.

The agentless discovery is very important because I don't have to install agents on every host.

Also, the Insights+ component is useful for us because it does business application mapping and helps us visualize it. It saves us time because we don't have to hunt for data. When I get a request, I go to Device42 and get the data. It saves me the time of writing emails to different people to get the information.

What needs improvement?

The breadth and depth of the solution's discovery of IT asset information means the system does most of the work, but they need to work on improving the database discovery part, especially for Oracle Exadata.

Also, the analytics reporting is very good, but there is a little bit missing when it comes to documentation about custom queries.

Another area for improvement is being able to distinguish the services on the individual machines. There's a lot of data and you can't map it. We need to clear the data. Because there is so much, we're not able to get what we want.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Device42 for almost two years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We haven't tried to scale it. We use the solution across multiple locations, on-premises and in the cloud, and for multiple teams and organizational units. The number of end-users who access the Device42 dashboard in our organization is about 20.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is okay, but the response times are a little bit slow.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

This is our first such solution.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward and very easy. We have the main appliance on GCP, with the agents distributed all around: on-premises and in other cloud environments. The deployment took half a day. I did the deployment myself, and then the networking team opened all the required ports and did the user creation, et cetera.

There is no maintenance required, as far as I am aware, other than making sure it's up to date.

What was our ROI?

We have not yet seen a return on investment.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It's in the top-three most expensive solutions in terms of cost, but it has all the features that are needed. The pricing is okay. It may be a little bit expensive for other companies, but we had the budget. That kind of pricing is normal because the product has a lot of functionalities.

What other advice do I have?

My advice is use it, but carefully evaluate the database side because it does not support a lot of database types.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Technical Officer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Real User
Reasonably priced and stable but the remote connectors need to cover more devices
Pros and Cons
  • "The pricing is reasonable."
  • "If they could make it so their remote connector could do as much as 10,000 devices, that would be better."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use the solution for asset management and use inventory management and asset discovery quite frequently.

What is most valuable?

We haven't been used to it for a long while, however, it's actually essential for our customers. 

Device42 is a really impressive tool. Their discovery seems to be really coordinated, in the sense that we have different types of discoveries we can actually run. That's one unique aspect about them. 

The way they manage the assets, in general, is actually impressive, and the way they recognize, the software is good. 

The fact that you really don't need to put an agent on is helpful. That's really an impressive aspect of the product overall.

The initial setup is easy.

The stability is good. 

The pricing is reasonable.

What needs improvement?

They always say and recommend that we should run one remote connector, and one discovery service for about 500 to 1,000 devices, which actually means the productivity of this remote connector. Even then, probably in different subnets, they'll also advise you to have different connectors. If they could make it so their remote connector could do as much as 10,000 devices, that would be better. Just one remote connector to manage about 10,000 devices and still not reduce its productivity would be perfect. That would be a bigger picture item. Then, we wouldn't need to install or set up more than one remote connector on different subnets. That's one thing they could do to improve their services.

It would be nice if they could add support tickets into IT service management.

For how long have I used the solution?

We've been dealing with the solution for a while. We've been partners for years now, and are quite comfortable with the product.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is quite stable. We haven't had issues with bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze on us. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Technically, the solution scales. The only issue I have with this is that it needs various remote connectors to get as much information as you need. Depending on the number of assets, you can just add connectors and you're good to go.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is okay. I'd rate it at a six out of ten. The device response is quick.

How was the initial setup?

The initial installation is easy. Where it gets complex is when you're configuring the environment for the customer. The initial installation, therefore, is really straight up. It's just handing the IOS to the virtual machines, and you're good to go. It's the subsequent configurations on the platform, where you have the platform, and there's configuring, you're discovering assets, et cetera, that's when it gets difficult.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I'm a reseller.

I'm more on the technical side and don't really handle billing and payments. Therefore, I don't have any details on licensing or costs. 

That said, my understanding is that it is cheaper than other enterprise products on the market.

This solution would work best for organizations with 1,000 to 2,000 devices. However, large organizations, that may have 10,000 or 20,000 devices may not be best suited to this product. 

What other advice do I have?

Most of the organizations, especially the financial institutions here in this country, are always on-premise. That includes our organization. 

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: reseller
PeerSpot user
Security Engineer at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Automatic, continuous IT asset discovery is key to our operation; when changes happen they are pulled in
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution's automatic IT asset discovery and inventory functionality are top-notch. The thing I like is that it's open-source. If I need to change them — and they've given me links on GitHub to have them — I can go and change them to pull exactly what I want, as frequently as I want."
  • "A con for Device42 is that Kubernetes integration is lacking. You pay for 10,000 spot licenses and if you're spinning up a Kubernetes cluster, or four or five or six Kubernetes clusters like we do, you're going to have 5,000 or 6,000 nodes in each of those, doing different types of business things."

What is our primary use case?

We have a pretty unique use case, one that isn't used by a lot of companies. We have Azure, AWS, as well as Google Compute Engine in the cloud. We want to have all of those in one central station. That's why we're using Device42, so that it can track all of our IPAM in one place.

We have it on-prem in our data center.

How has it helped my organization?

The fact that the solution provides continuous asset discovery is key to our operation because we treat our instances like cattle, not pets. If something breaks in the build or along any step of the way, or something just stops responding, normally we just shoot it and spin another one up. So we have to have something that notices that something remotely changed, and that can then pull that back into the records inside of Device42.

The solution's CMDB, ITAM, and DCIM features absolutely create a single source of IT truth in our environment. That's why we use Device42; because that is what we have to have. When I worked at Bluehost, we were using Act! tables and they were really painful to use as a source of truth because they were never kept up to date. Device42 is much easier to keep up to date. And because of the way it works, and the reports that it has, we all trust it as our IP address management tool. It's the best IPAM tool out there.

And deployment of the solution has definitely increased our security posture because you can only secure what you know about. If you don't know about it, you can't make sure that it's secure.

What is most valuable?

The discovery is the most valuable feature. Device42 has remote connectors that will go out and look for the changes. You can run Nmap. You can do one-way DNS zone syncs and that's pretty important. Those are the things that are really quite strong for Device42 to report back on your infrastructure.

The solution's automatic IT asset discovery and inventory functionality are top-notch. The thing I like is that it's open-source. If I need to change them — and they've given me links on GitHub to have them — I can go and change them to pull exactly what I want, as frequently as I want. 

Also, I can show this to CEOs, and they understand it. So the front-end is awesome. 

Once you get the reports done

  • the monthly device add-on trends are awesome
  • the changes are awesome
  • the IP statistics, device statistics, and your building's statistics are all really good.

What needs improvement?

A con for Device42 is that Kubernetes integration is lacking. You pay for 10,000 spot licenses and if you're spinning up a Kubernetes cluster, or four or five or six Kubernetes clusters like we do, you're going to have 5,000 or 6,000 nodes in each of those, doing different types of business things. And those don't flow in and out. Yes, you can purge them — they do have a purge function — but the way that that works for security purposes leaves a little bit to be desired. I want to keep track of those for a security solution. If there were a compromise, it would be nice to have that rather than have it taking up some of your spots. Something that's missing is Kubernetes-based statistics so you can get a peek inside your clusters there.

Also, the reports are a little clunky, they could be better.

Finally, the comprehensiveness of the asset discovery is not perfect, but that's part of it being open-source. The scalability, the time that it takes to get things inside, could be faster.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using Device42 for about seven years. At Bluehost, a company I used to work for ages ago, we brought it in and I started using it there. It was in one of its earlier releases. We were buying other companies and that's when I started using Device42.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's very stable. We've never had a problem with Device42, and we've used it quite heavily.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Nmap is the de facto standard. But Nmap is still slow. If you wanted to look at 10,000 different IP addresses and get a little bit of information from each of them, it would take a little while, unless you multi-fitted them. There's a new tool out called Masscan. I've taken it and written a middleware so that the Device42 stuff uses Masscan now. That would be something that would really help Device42 scale much faster, in the discovery-specific portion of its tool.

For what we're doing, the scalability hasn't been an issue. We knew a lot of people were going to be using it. We have people from all over the world — from three different places in India, seven different places in the United States, and a bunch of people in the European Union —  working on this at the same time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

How are customer service and technical support?

The technical support is fantastic. We wanted to bring in a whole bunch of information from NetBox. We wanted to basically seed Device42 from the information we kept in NetBox, and they made that very easy. It was very helpful.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used NetBox. We switched to Device42 because it's better.

What was our ROI?

Device42 is not that expensive. To have something that has all of our IP address scheme in there, something that is up to date and current, is a huge ROI for our organization. The ROI is very high.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

At Device42 they were really kind. We were working through the licensing agreements this year and they said, "Hey, we'll open this up for you if you'll give us your feedback." They're willing to make something work, and they are working on a solution that will work better for people who are using Kubernetes.

We follow the Kubernetes lifecycle. Every quarter they release a new one, and then end-of-life every six months. Our development is a little bit ahead of that, so we're testing things, bringing them up, spinning them down, for QA. And that uses quite a bit of address space, so the licensing thing is my only, "Hey, guys, you're not super-hot on the licensing."

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I've used NetBox, MyIP, and RackTables. I've used quite a bunch of these other tools out there, and honestly, Device42 is the best. The others don't compare to it. It is so much better.

I, myself, and people in roles up to the VP, looked at a whole bunch of options, ones that they've used in the past. Together, we came to the conclusion that, for pretty much any commercial company — and this is really the takeaway — that would rather focus on making money than spending a whole bunch of time fiddling with different databases, different underlying hardware; any company that wants an app that will get up and running, the very best thing to do is to get Device42.

What other advice do I have?

Just choose Device42 first.

Device42 hasn't reduced the time spent managing IT assets in our company because it has given us a better look at all the assets. It has created some work for us. But once we're done with all that work, I think it will go down.

I give it a solid nine out of 10. If it had a way to better work with Kubernetes and the pricing was different, it would be a 10.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Network Engineer at Despegar.com
Real User
Continuous discovery displays new racks after installation, but some devices are not discovered
Pros and Cons
  • "The solution's agentless approach to asset discovery is very important for us because installing agents on physical or virtual devices is not easy in our company. We have to escalate these kinds of things to different levels of security. Not having to install agents makes it easy for us."
  • "While the automatic IT asset discovery is great, the first time using it can be confusing when you are configuring the SNMP. I don't remember for sure but I don't think it said "SNMP community," it said "password". The first time I used it I was thinking about communities but the tool said "password," and when you say "password" in SNMP you are thinking about SNMP version 3. This is the only thing that is confusing, although there were some devices that were not included in the discovery."

What is our primary use case?

In the beginning, we were looking to use it as an IPAM device but we saw all the benefits in having control of the assets, the racks, and how the physical servers are connected to the switches. We set up our data center with all the racks inside and all the devices inside the racks. 

So at first, we used it for IPAM, but after that we constructed the building with the rooms and the racks. So IT inventory is the second purpose of this tool. We use it to track how VLANs and our different virtual devices are connected and to inventory VMware and Xen virtual machines. 

But the main purpose is IPAM and inventory of the physical devices. In the case of networking devices, we are using SNMP, and with virtual devices we use an administrator-user to check different aspects of the ESXi in VMware.

The solution itself is a virtual machine over a SAN server and it's running in our data center.

How has it helped my organization?

We were working with Excel sheets and they were not automatic and were difficult to administrate and update. It required manual work every time we needed to add new hardware or new virtuals. With the automatic discovery in the tool, we have been able to leave these Excel sheets behind.

The continuous asset discovery is great. For example, a few months ago we installed new racks with new servers and, with automatic discovery, all the new racks are showing inside the tool. The people who have a password to get into the tool can check what kind of hardware was installed and how many virtual machines are inside the servers. That's great.

The solution's CMDB, ITAM, and DCIM features create a single source of IT truth in our environment. For us this has had a very good impact. It's easier for our managers and others who consume this tool. We can show to the rest of the teams how things have become more visible throughout the company.

Device42 has also saved us a lot of time, not necessarily in managing the devices but in collecting the devices. And with the inventory tool, we discovered that we have a lot of old things configured in the devices. That saved us a lot of time because, for example, we had old VLANs around that had been forgotten. With the tool, we can discover which devices have old configurations and we can remote to them and remove these configurations. If we didn't have the tool, we might have to go into each, device by device, numbering in the hundreds or thousands of devices, and check if they have this configuration in them. But with the Device42, we have this information in a few minutes. A task that might take two or three hours a day can be achieved in 40 minutes.

In security, we can check specific things that have to be configured in devices. While the security team is not 100 percent involved in the project, they have started to use the tool to check different security things on the networking devices. With the inventory check, they can see if a specific configuration in various routers has already been configured.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the part that enables us to draw or build our rack and represent all the devices and interactively click on a physical device to "see" inside it. We can see the virtual machines inside a given server and all the details about them, with the storage connected to them, etc. From a global, data center perspective, you can see the rack and you can click and see all the virtuals running inside. That's a cool thing.

Overall, the automatic IT asset discovery is very comprehensive.

The solution's agentless approach to asset discovery is very important for us because installing agents on physical or virtual devices is not easy in our company. We have to escalate these kinds of things to different levels of security. Not having to install agents makes it easy for us.

What needs improvement?

While the automatic IT asset discovery is great, the first time using it can be confusing when you are configuring the SNMP. I don't remember for sure but I don't think it said "SNMP community," it said "password". The first time I used it I was thinking about communities but the tool said "password," and when you say "password" in SNMP you are thinking about SNMP version 3. This is the only thing that is confusing, although there were some devices that were not included in the discovery.

For how long have I used the solution?

If we count the PoC time, we have been using it for about one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

For us, it's very stable.

There were some problems at the beginning because the Xen server was not supported. We started with VMware, but we were migrating from that where to Xen. But the problem lasted for two days and then we fixed it quickly.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We haven't reached the solution's limits. The solution's collectors give it very good scalability because you can separate the manager from the collectors.

We continue to check its capabilities. We plan to expand to another, small data center, a location with, say, 10 racks, with a rack dedicated to communications — such as a firewall, router, and switches — and the rest of the racks for servers. Expansion depends on the plans of our regional offices in other countries. The idea is to test if we can install info-collectors in these offices to give us information about their assets. We are planning these kinds of projects. Maybe we can expand our usage in this way.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is very good. The support person we talked with was very kind. For example, we opened a ticket for a specific case and the support person who took the case explained more than we asked about. That was good.

How was the initial setup?

The setup was easy. We are used to using these kinds of tools — not specifically inventory or IPAM tools — but we have installations of solutions that collect things and give us information. So for us it was very easy.

The PoC was ready within one week, where the data was in the system and we got information from it. In production it has taken more time because we have different kinds of devices and every device or every brand requires a new configuration. For example, HPE enclosure devices take a lot of time to configure, although VMware was easy to configure as were network devices. But when you move to a new brand you may have more complex tasks to do.

When we did the PoC, we focused on it as an IPAM solution. In the PoC we saw the benefits of the hardware inventory. So we changed plans in the middle of the PoC. When we focused on IPAM at the beginning, everything looked fine, it was quick. But when we saw that the inventory is available in this tool we moved the PoC toward the hardware inventory. So the deployment took more time than we planned because of the change of plan.

What about the implementation team?

We did it ourselves.

What was our ROI?

We have seen ROI because it saves us a lot of time, and time is money.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

For our budget it's okay. It's not an expensive tool, although we are not used to paying for software because we are using a lot of open-source software. But within our networking budget, we needed an IPAM and it was easy for us to justify this kind of tool, given its cost.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated KiwiTech, but only for IPAM. We also checked out some free tools.

The main advantage of Device42 was the ability to have IPAM and another solution in the same tool. The rest of the vendors had different tools for different purposes. There were different KiwiTech tools for IPAM and for hardware inventory. It's not easy to administrate four or five tools. It's easier to administrate only one tool. This was an important advantage for us. Also, the discovery process was very easy with Device42 and more complex in the other tools.

What other advice do I have?

Test it. You may discover that tools that you hadn't thought about. As I said, we tested it only for the IPAM, but we saw that we also needed the hardware inventory. If you do a PoC, you may discover that you need other features that are part of Device42.

The biggest lesson I have learned from using this solution is to stop using Excel sheets. That was number-one. And the visibility that we have made available with Device42, to the rest of our company, has had a very positive impact on our team.

In terms of the automated asset discovery, we have had to configure and customize some things because, for us, some aspects of the virtual machines and the physical devices are important and these were not reflected in the inventory. Since then, everything has looked good. We achieved visibility of all the parts that we need to see.

There are five administrators using Device42 in our company. These five participated in the development of the solution in our company from the beginning and they maintain it. There are also three networking guys, two sysadmin guys, and the rest of the technical area's team members are users, including security and security compliance users.

I would rate Device42 at seven out of 10 because we need to fix it to find the devices that are not discovered.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
DC Lead Engineer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real User
We know exactly where our comms rooms are, what they're called, and what's patched into them
Pros and Cons
  • "The continuous asset discovery is good because it means not having to manually input all the small data, such as IP addresses, leases, etc. It helps and saves us a lot of time."
  • "If I want to delete an asset from a cabinet it does take a while. And if I'm doing it in bulk — say, for example, if we have one cabinet that has 20 servers in — if I want to remove all 20 servers, I have to do them individually, which is a bit time-consuming. If there were a way that I could just bulk-remove everything from there, that would definitely save some time."

What is our primary use case?

We mainly use it to keep an inventory of everything, because we've got 77 offices and data centers globally. We use it mainly to keep track of assets we have in cabinets and the like. Also, some of the other teams use it for the auto-discovery and license renewals. Device42 tells you when a license is about to expire on a server. 

I'm sure there are a lot more uses but because I work in data center management, and from my side we mainly use it just for inventory. We're aware of exactly what we have, where it is, whether it's powered on it, whether it's in service, etc.

How has it helped my organization?

Before Device42, the company didn't have any kind of asset management software at all. So if there were to be a fire in an office, for example, and we would want to make a claim on insurance, we would have had no idea what, exactly, we had in that office. Now that we have Device42, we're integrating every single office into it so we know exactly what's where. That's a huge improvement.

It has also reduced the amount of time spent on managing our IT assets. It has probably halved the time it takes to do the management side of it.

What is most valuable?

I think the auto-discovery is very good. It works well. I don't use it too much myself, but from the feedback I get from other teams — they use it a lot — it seems to work really well. From what I understand it's very comprehensive because it picks up everything: all the IP address ranges and locations, as long as we've input the devices correctly. It is very comprehensive and picks up a lot of stuff.

Also, the continuous asset discovery is good because it means not having to manually input all the small data, such as IP addresses, leases, etc. It helps and saves us a lot of time.

The DCIM makes everything easier. If we need to do something remotely, or if we need to get an engineer out to a comms room somewhere, we can tell them exactly where it is, what it's called, and what's patched into it. It ensures that people don't make mistakes.

What needs improvement?

The overall speed could be improved. Sometimes it's very slow to do certain functions. General navigation is quick but if I want to delete an asset from a cabinet it does take a while. And if I'm doing it in bulk — say, for example, if we have one cabinet that has 20 servers in — if I want to remove all 20 servers, I have to do them individually, which is a bit time-consuming. If there were a way that I could just bulk-remove everything from there, that would definitely save some time.

Also, I know there is a function where you can add cables in Device42, as in you can say: So-and-so port on this server is connected to this port on that server, for example. But that's quite a drawn-out process, trying to use the spreadsheet just to add a single cable. I think that could be simplified a lot. You could just have a column for the device name, the port, and the end-device port. If it could be populated that way it would be a lot easier. At the moment, the spreadsheet that you have to use to add cables has a whole bunch of columns which I think are irrelevant and shouldn't be there.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using Device42 for about 18 months now.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is good. There have been a couple of times where it's been down for maintenance, but it's never down for too long. 

I believe Device42 has some software where it clears out old or redundant stuff after a while. We've had it happen that things we put into cabinets have suddenly disappeared. However, I'm not sure if this is actually a Device42 issue. It might be somebody on our end doing something wrong.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

From what I understand, it's very scalable. It's very easy to scale up on it as well. But it's more the app team that would know that kind of stuff. I deal more with the DCIM stuff.

It's being used very extensively in our company. As I said, we've got 77 offices globally and about half of them have been populated fully in Device42. The rest still need to be audited, so we are going to be increasing the usage of it. It just takes a bit of time.

How are customer service and technical support?

Technical support is excellent. I've used it a couple of times and it is really good. They always reply very quickly and they always give you a very simple way of doing what it is you need to. I would give technical support a 10 out of 10.

What was our ROI?

We have seen ROI with Device42. It might not be easy to see but, for example, when we have had stuff go down we now know exactly where it is so we can fix it a lot quicker. Before, we might not necessarily have known and would have had to do a lot more searching. There's definitely a return on investment in that sense, but I can't really put a monetary value on it.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Before Device42 we trialed dcTrack for a little bit, but it was over-complicated in terms of usability. You would really need to do a training course on how to use it properly, whereas Device42 is a lot more user-friendly. So we ended up going with Device42 because a lot of people in the company do you use it. It's not like it's a select few people. Most people have access to it: the server teams, the network teams.

Device42 is user-friendly in terms of navigating through all the pages. Everything's very simple. If we want to find out, for example, what we have in a comms room in Bahrain, we just click on the Buildings tab, scroll down to Bahrain, and it will have the comms room on there. We can then have a look. Whereas with dcTrack, doing that was a lot more complex.

What other advice do I have?

Be very thorough with it. Make sure you put in everything you need to put in and make sure the auto-discover function works properly.

The biggest lesson I've learned from using Device42 is the importance of keeping it up to date and taking out redundant stuff. Especially with the auto-discover, if I've decommissioned something but not taken it out of Device42, the auto-discover will still think something is there and that creates a bit of a problem for us internally.

In my department, there are only two of us in data center management. But the whole network team use Device42, as do the whole server team, as well as security and the app team. Company-wide, some 150 to 200 people have access to it. I'm not sure how many of them actually use it often; probably about half that number. 

In terms of updates — as in if we get new assets coming in or coming out — that's mainly my thing. In terms of the monitoring side of it, that would be the network team. They use SolarWinds, which is linked and will alert them if any device has gone down and that is linked to Device42.

Also, any time we do an audit of IT assets, the results are updated in Device42. We try to maintain a complete record of exactly what we have, although that's proving a bit difficult in certain offices which are harder to get to. We have offices in places like Ecuador and Chile and we're having to rely on people onsite, but there isn't always an IT presence there. We're having to rely on general office staff to try and give us an audit of what's in there. So from our side it might not be fully comprehensive.

I would rate it at eight out of 10. It's very good but it's not perfect. Nothing is. I'd probably give it a ten if it were quicker at doing certain things or if certain functions were more simplified. But it's a very good product.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Sr. Infrastructure Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Makes it easier for me to figure out if I have room and/or power in a cabinet to rack servers
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable part is the ease of use. There's no training involved. It's pretty simple and straightforward."
  • "My biggest problem with the product is the upgrades. First, we have to do them manually and second, not this last time but the time before that, we actually had to build a new VM to deploy the solution again. We had to back it up and then restore it to the new version. That was inconvenient."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for asset tracking, cabinet modeling, data center modeling, and we use it for asset disposition and to keep track of our spare parts.

How has it helped my organization?

It makes it easier for anyone to find an asset in a cabinet and it makes it easier for me to figure out if I have room and/or power in a cabinet to rack servers.

It has also reduced the time spent managing our IT assets by a good 40 to 50 percent. We have also used the solution in conjunction with audits of our IT assets and, in that context, it saves a lot of time when everything's right there at your fingertips. I would estimate that it saves 50 to 60 percent, in terms of time, when doing audits.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable part is the ease of use. There's no training involved. It's pretty simple and straightforward.

I also like the inventory functionality. I don't know that we're using it exactly how it's made to be used, but it works for us.

The asset discovery goes out and finds new devices and puts them under Unknown Devices, and then we go in and have to fix it and change it to what it is. It works really well. The fact that it's continuous is convenient. We don't have to worry about it. It just works.

What needs improvement?

My biggest problem with the product is the upgrades. First, we have to do them manually and second, not this last time but the time before that, we actually had to build a new VM to deploy the solution again. We had to back it up and then restore it to the new version. That was inconvenient.

I would also like the ability to bulk-delete. The application is great, for the most part. There are just a few little bugs and quirks that are annoying to me.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using Device42 for almost five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have no complaints. It's still working.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

My boss loves the fact that he can run API commands and get information that way. He's a huge API-guy, so he loves it.

How are customer service and technical support?

I've used Device42's technical support. It's okay.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

They had something called Rack Monkey. It was the most trivial program I've ever seen so that's why we looked for something else.

How was the initial setup?

In the beginning, I didn't really know a whole lot about it, so it was a little complex. But once I got a good understanding, it was very intuitive.

We were up and running within a couple of days and when I reached out for some assistance, Raj Jalan actually called me. He's the CEO of the company and it was really nice to get that kind of support.

Our implementation strategy was to get it up and running as fast as possible.

What about the implementation team?

I deployed it myself and there are two of us who maintain it. One guy on the network team does all of the discovery stuff and I'm a senior infrastructure engineer.

What was our ROI?

I would think we have seen ROI with Device42. It saves us time every day when we need to look up stuff. I can't put a price tag on it but it's very useful.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated other options but that was quite some time ago. We chose Device42 for its ease of use and quick stand-up.

What other advice do I have?

My advice would be "do it." It worked for us. Made my life easy.

You get what you pay for. It's a good product and I enjoy it and we don't mind paying for it.

I, myself, don't use the IP discovery a whole lot. One of the guys from our network team uses that. I know it helps them a lot. Similarly, with the Application Dependency Mapping, I know my boss has looked at it a couple times. I can't really say that we use it, but it's there. It's a great function that gives us a very good view of our network.

There are 2,500 to 3,000 users who have access to it. They're mostly just adding and updating inventory. When they deploy a new server they go in and give it a name and add stuff into it.

As far as I know, we don't have any plans to change things. Device42 is our solution.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Device42 Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: April 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Device42 Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.