Google Stackdriver Reviews

We use Stackdriver for real-time log management analysis, it provides cloud log in a fully managed service for the GKE requirements. We also use it to collect messages, some events,  metadata and the like from cloud. I'm the director and function head of risk and technology change, and we are customers of Google. 

The solution has improved our organization by reducing latency and also monitoring the costs of GCP usage by using the logging and monitoring features. We've been able to look at it and see the optimal size of infrastructure and figure out costing. That's a good site outcome, other than the regular application monitoring that we get.

Stackdriver provides visibility into the performance uptime and the overall health of the cloud applications that we have.

I think given it's a new application, a new solution on the block, operations documentation could be a bit better. It took us some time to get up and running with it. It would have been helpful if they had provided some migration tools. For example, you're never going to get away from Genius. We have to do most of the work manually. The tools would have helped us to migrate scripts from other well-known software products and other management tools for Stackdriver. A helpful feature would be for them to improve cost transparency. 

We've been using this solution for the past six months. 

I believe the solution is stable, we haven't had any problems. 

The solution provides observability at scale which is good. For now, we're still in pilot mode but plan to increase usage in the next phase. 

We switched from Genius to Stackdriver because we went from an in-house platform to Google Cloud providers. We needed a performance solution that was on cloud. 

The initial setup is not complex but it would have been better if they had a few tools to help migrate off the Legacy platforms that we use. Deployment took a few weeks and we did it ourselves. 

If you're moving to GCP, then Stackdriver is the right way to go. However, if you're moving to a different platform that's not GCP, Stackdriver may not integrate with it well.

I would rate the solution higher but because we had some initial hiccups I would rate it an eight out of 10. 

The features that I have found most valuable are its graphs - if I need any statistics, in Kubernetes or at a VPN level, I can quickly get the reports.

As far as what can be improved in Stackdriver, on the application side, if I want to track any round-trip or breakdowns of my response times, I'm not able to get it. My request goes through various levels of the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and comes back to my client machine. Suppose that my request has taken 10 seconds overall, so if I want to break it down, to see where the delay is happening within my architecture, I am not able to find that out using Stackdriver. It can give me the utilization reports, and other network traffic information, but it is not able to provide me answers in detail at a request level. That is why I have to rely on some other APM tools.

It would be better if they could provide the round-trip of the response time at a request level because on an overall basis it gives the traffic, transactions per second, etc. if any drops happen, what could be the reason for the drops? Suppose I have a Kong, Kubes,NAT and VPN. With these kinds of things, If any drop happened, it will show me that the drop happened, but it will not give me the reason why it got dropped.

I have been using Google Stackdriver for around six months.

Google Stackdriver is good because when you are using the GCP, there is no need to rely on any other monitoring tools, it gives the majority of the reports. But when you're stuck with any issue, and the team needs to do fine-tuning, it is a little difficult to analyze, especially while performing the load or stress tests. If everything is good, then you can get the reports. However, when something happens, they have to improve reporting.

On a scale of one to ten, I can give Google Stackdriver an eight. 

As I said in our previous discussion, we are finding it difficult to develop the breakdown of the round-trip at a request level, especially pertaining to the response time. That's why if any drops happen in the network layer, it would be good if it could find out and then come up with some reasons, various reasons, potential reasons, why that drop happened and where the drop happened. Also, at the VPN level, there is a replay issue happening. Suppose the request is coming multiple times, we'll call it a replay issue. So to monitor the replay issue, if they would provide any specific functionality it would be good.

We have some projects on the Google Cloud Platform and we are looking into how we can use Stackdriver to monitor our workloads.

The most valuable feature is the multi-cloud integration, where there is support for both GCP and AWS. 

The APM functionality needs to be improved.

It is difficult to estimate in advance how much something is going to cost. Often, you don't know how much it costs until you are finished.

We have been working with Stackdriver for less than one year.

My impression is that this is a stable solution because we have only had a few minor problems.

Stackdriver is very scalable.

The technical support is good and I found them to be very helpful.

The implementation involves setting up the correct metrics, which is something that needs to be properly researched and tested.

The cost of using Stackdriver depends on usage.

My advice to anybody who is implementing Google Stackdriver is to explore what metrics they want to use.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

While we are satisfied with the overall performance, in certain cases we must add additional metrics and additional tools like Grafana and Dynatrace. 

We would like to improve the application log. Most of these logs are derived from Grafana and not from Google Stackdriver. 

The application locker should be addressed. 

We have been using Google Stackdriver from the beginning, since 2019. 

Google's technical support is very good.

In addition to Google Stackdriver, we use Dynatrace, Grafana and Kibana.

We use all of these solutions in a complementary manner, for different purposes. 

The cost could be lower. When it comes to the cost component in cloud, it is problematic that we are only in a position to know how much we must pay upon arrival of the invoice after 15 days. 

Google Stackdriver is all about activity. If one switches from, say, Grafana or another performance and monitoring application, it takes time to adjust one's expectations. All the items desired are present, but these must first be configured. 

I rate Google Stackdriver as an eight-and-a-half out of ten.