DX Spectrum Reviews

We are a service provider and we have a lot of different customers that share a large network. It is a huge environment.

The most valuable feature is automatic discovery.

The event correlation is a helpful feature.

We have a huge environment and we have the event correlation set up. Event correlation only works per Spectrum server, for a huge environment more Spectrum servers are needed and the events are not correlated between the Spectrum servers. Broadcom has the intention to change this.

I have been using DX Spectrum for between 10 and 15 years.

This product is very stable.

Its scalability is very good. It can be used in huge environments.

I have had contact with technical support and my experience has been positive.

The initial setup is of medium complexity. It is not very easy, yet not very difficult.

Some preparation and special knowledge are needed to deploy.

My advice for anybody who is implementing this solution is to first make a plan on how you are going to implement and use it. It is important to know before you configure it, how it is that you want to use it. For example, we have a lot of different customers and they may not want to see the older devices from other customers. As a service provider, it is important to make a good plan on how you want to implement it.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We use this solution for monitoring both service provider networks as well as customer WAN / LAN / VOIP networks, including all kinds of SNMP-based edge devices.

The key solution to be solved is the correlation between all types of messages from all devices. We are receiving more than 1,000,000 SNMP messages a day across many types of domains.

Unifying the solution within our organization created a standard way of working and integration. We needed a centralized redundant solution for all of our domains, which requires an SNMP-based monitoring tool.

We were able to standardize the internal processes across all internal departments, resulting in almost an elimination of non-standard process flows through our organization.

We were also able to standardize by cross-learning from all teams on how we should configure the monitored elements, align the configuration of the monitoring application, and use the solution such that it created a common understanding of the best practices.

By implementing the automatic service incident, a very strong closed loop is created in the monitoring of the domains.

The topology correlation for layers one, two, three, and four significantly reduces the number of false positives (>98% ratio). By using Spectrum, we did not need to configure the network knowledge about redundancy. Rather, it learns the latest correlation between the monitored elements automatically.

By adding the alerting from the Broadcom performance management tools, a comprehensive list of alerts is created.

As a service provider, we added views for our customers to inspect their sub-domain in our whole network, which reinforces a high level of trust within the relationship to our customers.

This solution is missing the in-depth SDN correlation due to the late arrival of Spectrum VNA features and supported SDN networks. The various setups of the SDN networks are not always supported (yet) by the Spectrum VNA engine.

Integration with non-Broadcom AIOps solutions is a known area. We want to make our own choice for the AIOps solution and do not want to be forced to use the Broadcom OI solution by default.

For our size, a redundant based docker platform should be supported for large scale environments with more than 80,000 devices. This will have a very strong positive impact on the effort we need to spend in maintaining our large scale Spectrum solution and the related cost. The time to market for the new Spectrum solution will be reduced dramatically if this becomes available.

We have been using CA Spectrum for more than 15 years.

Stability is good, especially for large scale location redundant solutions with more than 80,000 devices in a single cluster.

In general, the location-redundancy with automatic failover is a myth, except if you are using Spectrum. If you setup spectrum in a redundant setup across 2 location (80 km in between), you can have a automatic fail over time within 10 seconds. This simplifies the maintenance of your setup a lot as well: any component can be switched off for maintenance purposes. The redundant instance takes over within 10 seconds.

Scalability is very good.

The support depends on the complexity of the problem. Because our own knowledge is quite high and our environment is quite huge, problems can be very complex and time-consuming to solve.

We used several solutions prior to this one. The reason we switched is that the combination was causing a problem and we needed to standardize.

You do need a decent level of knowledge to roll out this huge scale solution.

Small, single location-based solutions for 10,000 or fewer devices are relatively simple.

In our experience, the OOTB settings are very usable.

We did implement this using our own in-house Spectrum specialists, which do have knowledge that is on the same level as the first line support at Broadcom.

Our ROI is realized through better NPS and a smaller labour cost.

In general, the license cost will be about 30% of the total TCO for this tool (hardware/support team, OS costs, and OS management). It turned out to be cheaper than other solutions, even those in the public domain.

We evaluated IBM Netcool, different public domain-based SNMP solutions, HP OpenView NNM, and SolarWinds.

We hope that the speed of the improvement and product growth will soon again be at the same level as when this was a CA product.

We actually service providers for CA Spectrum. If we create a solution for a customer with this type of API, we use CA Spectrum to monitor this API.

I have found the cross-analysis feature to be the most valuable. The many alerts you get have an impact on the connectivity, so you need a very good correlation for layer 1, layer 2, layer 3, and layer 4, layered at the understanding of the technology, which locates the spectrum. It's really unique in this type of solution.

We have been using CA Spectrum for over 15 years, I think.

The stability is very good - the best we've seen in the market.

It is very scalable. We scale to up to 50,000 devices or so. That's the sizing we usually pulse. And we haven't had any issues so far.

We thought that because we are not beginners anymore, we have very high expertise ourselves, so we usually take a second-class support approach or we fix it ourselves. But when it's more complex, it takes a little bit more time.

For us, the implementation was quite complex but it's because of the large number of different environments we're dealing with. So it's not the tool, it's the domain expertise. We need optimized implementation.

Time for deployment really depends on the size of the domain. It can be done in half a day, or it can take you up to eight months or even longer. So it depends on the domain complexity. And then it's not building an application itself; you have to design first, and that is the biggest chunk. It costs you eight percent. So if the design is done properly, then the building is already configurated. There are still a lot of app ports that can be done to help us out.

We going more for a solidified network so we need some improvement there, based on the current level of support for our network. And a more detailed integration with NetFlow data is important for us as well. I also feel that the CIS lock-based correlation needs to be developed as well. So on a scale from one to 10, I will rate CA Spectrum an eight.

Our customers use the software for network monitoring.

It is a complete and ready-to-use tool. It has many features compared to other competitors.

The product is complicated to use.

I have been using DX Spectrum for around 12 years as a consultant.

I rate the stability of the product an eight out of ten.

We have four users for DX Spectrum. It is easy to scale. I rate the scalability a six out of ten.

It is deployed on the cloud and has an easy initial setup process.

It is an expensive solution compared to other tools in the market.

DX Spectrum's graphical interface is high quality and easy to use. I rate it an eight out of ten.

We are using DX Spectrum as a network management system.

The most valuable features have been the interface and the ability to do equipment management.

The solution could improve by allowing the ability to monitor the network shortly after installing the software and adding an auto-discovery function.

I have been using this solution for more than 10 years.

When we have a high capacity of traffic, we have problems with the stability of the system. This could be improved on in the future.

The scalability of this solution is good enough for enterprise networks. However, for use in the telecommunications industry is does not scale enough. We can configure the systems correctly, but it is not enough for a telecommunication use case.

The support we have been receiving has been really good. They were about to answer all the questions we had.

The installation is straightforward.

The price of the solution is reasonable.

The most important area for us is stability and they need to improve on this for larger use cases.

I would recommend this solution for enterprise networks but not for the telecommunications industry.

I rate DX Spectrum an eight out of ten.

The primary use case of this solution is for Network Monitoring.

The most valuable feature is the availability to put health checks in place not only for the infrastructure but for some of the services that are on top of the infrastructure. This allows us to identify the performance of the infrastructure.

Integration with some other tools, and integration with some Network Packet Broker, need some improvement.

We have been using DX Spectrum for approximately nine months.

This solution is stable. We have not experienced any outages.

It's a cloud solution, so it's scalable.

We have not contacted technical support yet.

We are also using Microsoft Network Node Manager.

The main difference is the availability to do the health-check on not only the devices but also some application services. These are in addition to the infrastructure, and with Network Node Manager, it's more based on infrastructure.

Also, the Drill down feature that DX Spectrum provides is something the Network Node Manager typically cannot do, as well as to drill down on a specific case or on a specific device.

That's also a really good feature of DX Spectrum.

The initial setup was quite straightforward.

The price is very high.

It makes it very difficult with respect to the business because, with any other product, we have to look at a lower-cost licensing model. It would have to be much lower than this one.

It would make sense to have some kind of corporate license with some additional flexibility.

We evaluated SolarWinds and Azure.

We are still looking at other solutions to increase the capacity of the devices that are being monitored with DX Spectrum.

We have a small set of devices being monitored and we are running a project to try to duplicate the monitoring on those devices.

DX Spectrum has been great for us. It's the strongest available, the main problem is the pricing, but it's in accordance with the features.

I can recommend this solution to others who are interested in using it. 

I would rate DX Spectrum an eight out of ten.

Our primary use case is alarm monitoring.

What I like best is the configuration management functionality. I can configure a couple of devices at once, and I can certify the device in the configuration on my own, without depending on the vendor.

I have seen that there are some configuration issues with Huawei devices. Huawei devices are not properly supported, and there are incompatibility issues related to certain protocols.

The stability could be improved.

The rate at which our stability issues are resolved could be improved.

I have been using DX Spectrum for three years.

There are issues with any product, but for issues related to DX Spectrum, we receive upgrades. It can take some time, and occasionally we do not achieve the SLA times, but at the end of the day, we are getting our upgrades to the critical issues.

We do plan on continuing to use this product in the future.

We have deployed this monitoring system for an ISP in Sri Lanka, and there are more than 100 users. It is also integrated with a performance monitoring and management system.

The technical support is of lower quality since the acquisition by Broadcom. At this point, we are not satisfied with the technical support. It should definitely be faster.

The initial setup is straightforward, and the upgrade process is also straightforward.

We handle the implementation and deployment ourselves. Three people are enough for deployment and maintenance. The engineers take care of the implementation and overall administration.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We have been using this solution to supervise all of the network's components, such as our Cisco switches, UPS units, the firewall, DNS, and all of the things that have links with the network.

Good vision of devices problems 

The most valuable feature is the auto-discovery, which is nice because you don't have to do anything to add a new component. It will just supervise the links.

This solution is too complicated to use for us, especially if you have many components. It's too big for us, which is one of the reasons that we will no longer be using it.

It’s Cloud be difficult to upgrade from one version to the next.

We have been using CA Spectrum for five or six years and we are discontinuing its use in two or three months from now.

This is a stable solution and we have had no issues.

We have had no trouble with scalability.

We are moving from CA Spectrum because it is not a solution for us. We are moving to an open-source solution that is less expensive.

The initial setup and maintenance of Spectrum are complex. It is also difficult to upgrade to the more recent version. 

The product, support, and maintenance are all expensive, which is another reason that we are switching to another solution.

This is a good solution and I would recommend it for a big company. However, for a small business like ours, we need something that is less complex and easier to use.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.