Works at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Enables our operations to configure monitoring themselves, to react to an issue they've seen
Pros and Cons
  • "One of the most valuable features is that it can be configured by non-developers. It doesn't require development expertise to configure it."
  • "The ITA, the post-incident analytics, could be improved."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for application monitoring.

How has it helped my organization?

The people who monitor the applications, the operations staff, are not typically developers. The operations staff can, by themselves, configure that monitoring to react to an issue they've seen. They get a very short and tight feedback loop where they see an issue and they can incrementally improve the monitoring themselves.

The operations staff have a good understanding of the behavior of the application in real life, so they are best placed to update some of that monitoring and they are able to do that when it doesn't require development skills. You'd normally put highly paid, experienced developers on the call face to monitor it in the middle of the night.

What is most valuable?

One of the most valuable features is that it can be configured by non-developers. It doesn't require development expertise to configure it. 

What needs improvement?

The ITA, the post-incident analytics, could be improved. They know that. I'm sure they're working on it. That encompasses a whole facet, a whole dimension, of the product.

Buyer's Guide
ITRS Geneos
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about ITRS Geneos. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
769,630 professionals have used our research since 2012.

For how long have I used the solution?

More than five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is quite good. It's what I expect. It's commensurate with a product of that flexibility and price point.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We've used horizontal scaling effectively. Horizontal scaling, by having more of it, more systems, and more processes, works quite well. That horizontal scaling allows us to delegate the administration as well. We've not hit scaling problems ourselves, but if people wanted a big, humongous instance, and they used vertical scaling, I imagine they would.

We've not had problems, but I could imagine some people, if they go the vertical direction, would have problems. That's not uncommon with software technology. I was watching a Google presentation last night and they were saying, "If you go vertical, you will almost certainly hit problems, whereas horizontally, you can just keep scaling forever.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support is excellent, very good. They're very accessible, with them being specifically London-based. Unlike if you went for one of the big providers - which, if you did, you would have to be a very big customer, in a top-tier bank such as ourselves, to have regular meetings with them - we can talk with the product managers, we can get our points across. They're accessible. It's good, we're happy.

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

In those days we only used home-baked solutions, but nothing commercial. Someone else made the choice to go with Geneos. It was prior to my involvement. We thought, "That looks okay."

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward. Just put your head down and do it. We got it knocked off in a day. It's fine. It was a long time ago, but it was fine. Straightforward.

My implementation strategy at the time was roll my sleeves up and get stuck in. With it being a practical product, one that you can improve and make changes to, there's not a long ramp to get value out of it. You can get value very quickly out of it. Then you can incrementally build off that. 

You don't need months and years of training to get anything out of it. You can get something out of it, literally, on day one. Then you can increment and improve, as you understand your own requirements, and as you understand the product, and as you mature as an organization.

On all aspects, as you understand more of everything, you can improve your monitoring. So the good thing is you get something out of it day one, you don't need years of training, and then you can build on that.

The deployment was done by just me. 

Once deployed and configured, we distributed maintenance, in that people maintain their own areas. It's not that it requires a certain number of people to maintain it, rather, a lot of different people have input into the rule-setting. Currently, it is just me who maintains it. A very small team would suffice for maintenance.

What was our ROI?

We've seen increasing stability. Given the problems and issues that software invariably has, we've had the ability to quickly react and identify where those faults lie because we've had monitoring. The return has really been our ability to have confidence that things are good and, when things are bad, our ability to work out quickly and focus on where they are bad.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I believe they went back probably another decade. It went back to the very early market-data days. There wasn't much choice at the time, if any. There was open-source software, such as Nagios that we had looked at. There was some open-source software, but nothing really in the sensible commercial space.

What other advice do I have?

It would be sensible to use experienced staff. Although I say you can get up and running with little or zero experience, and then go on the journey yourself, if you want to get up and running quicker, then use experienced staff. It's not essential, you don't have to, but if you have a choice... I don't necessarily mean experienced in terms of the product itself, Geneos.

Use staff that has higher experience in production support and in seeing problems first-hand. They're the ones who will know what to set up and monitor. Use someone who has real-world experience in seeing what those problems are, and maybe even supporting it themselves. They need to be at the call face or inside of the call face, and the daily problems.

Don't use a developer in the back room who just gets a problem ticket every so often, but someone who is involved in the firefighting so they can see the real problems that you're trying to solve. Those real problems include having issues being picked up in a timely manner, and what's needed to quickly focus on where the problem is. Someone in a back room who receives a problem ticket isn't going to understand all the processes that have been followed to raise that problem ticket. You need someone at the call face who sees all the arguments between the different teams, each one saying, "It's not my problem." They need to see people scratching their heads and thinking, "I don't know where this comes from." All those real-world problems.

To sum it up, use someone who has real-world experience in dealing with production support first-hand, or in direct sight of first-hand. I feel that quite strongly.

In our organization, the solution is extensively used, and we're happy with that coverage. It's used across seven business divisions. We have a complex licensing arrangement. The number of users is in the hundreds. We don't have plans to increase nor demise. It's stable, it's serving a purpose, and we're happy with it.

It's always dangerous to give a solution a ten out of ten, because it can strive. And a seven is pretty neutral. It's got an area where it could improve, in the IT analytics, so I'm going to give it an eight because there are two steps for improvement to get that IT analytics done.

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
it_user456552 - PeerSpot reviewer
VP, Lead Software Development Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
We use Geneos to provide a business view of the IT infrastructure using its data to produce reports and dashboards.
Pros and Cons
  • "The NetProbe carries over 100 samplers which are capable of monitoring hardware, OS, and the application layer."
  • "I would like better access to the data that is being collected."

How has it helped my organization?

I have implemented Geneos to improve business, management, engineering and support operations.

  • We use Geneos to provide a business view of the IT infrastructure using its data to produce reports and dashboards that are ready for business management to view
  • Management use Geneos to measure various stats on operations performance to ensure business and technical targets are being met.
  • Engineering teams use Geneos for capacity and performance management
  • The Ops teams use Geneos for process, log file, middleware, database, and custom application monitoring.

What is most valuable?

The Geneos monitoring solution is a mature industry standard monitoring solution, and is present in over 90% of the invest banks in the city. There are many reasons why it is the professional's tool of choice.

  • The NetProbe carries over 100 samplers which are capable of monitoring hardware, OS, and the application layer.
  • The NetProbe is a very light weight process typically uses around 0.3%CPU as it is written in C/C++ so no fear of it hogging your low latency machine resources.
  • When it comes to custom monitoring the probe offers an easy to use open interface known as a toolkit sampler which is very simple to use or for more sophistication and control there is also an API.
  • It is cross platform and will work on many different types of architecture such as Solaris, Linux, HPUX, AIX, and Windows.

What needs improvement?

I would like better access to the data that is being collected. ITRS are addressing this by using a KAFKA API interface to the gateway. Access to the data provides the ability to summarize, aggregate and correlate events and in many cases predict outages.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We had no issues with the performance.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's been able to scale for our needs.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

10-10

Technical Support:

It's excellent, and by far the best third party support we get.

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

No

How was the initial setup?

I have implemented Geneos for several banks and each implementation is different. The customers' requirements determine how the implementation is done.

What about the implementation team?

In house

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

Pricing and licensing is based on the requirements.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I have looked at other products but they fail right at the start – these other products use Java or Pearl and this is not what I want running on my machines. As this product was written in C/C++ it does need many files to run or a complex environment to setup.

What other advice do I have?

Keep the implementation as simple as possible.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
ITRS Geneos
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about ITRS Geneos. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
769,630 professionals have used our research since 2012.
it_user494049 - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Vice President at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
If an alert persists for an extended period, it has the capability to fire multiple levels of escalation email or actions.
Pros and Cons
  • "ITRS can define rules to alert when certain parameters that you monitor breach a threshold. Rules can be configured to fire recovery actions automatically to clear the alert"
  • "I would like to see ITRS integrate its setup editor with a SVN to check-in setup XML after major changes."

How has it helped my organization?

ITRS helps us to identify a lot of production issues proactively. E.g., ITRS alerts for a critical process memory that grows beyond the configured threshold limits. The limits are set to alert before the process crashes. This allows support teams to recover the process in a controlled manner (usually a planned restart before the process crashes).

A State of the World dashboard that we built gives a bird’s eye view of the entire production environment. These dashboards are displayed on big screens that are monitored by support teams in multiple locations. This helps us to monitor mission-critical components more effectively. FKM plugins can monitor huge logs in real-time for errors/exceptions and other keywords. Alerts are triggered immediately when an exception is logged.

As far as I know, ITRS does not have integration with any version control system. ITRS monitoring configuration is defined in a setup xml which gateway reads on start up (setup.xml). When you are working on a major monitoring set up, you will have to make a lot of changes in the xml. ITRS keeps only last 10 versions of the changes. If I want to restore an older version then it will not be possible unless you are taking regular backup of the set-up xml. Integration with a SVN will allow every major change in ITRS setup xml to be checked-in. If i want to restore any version of the xml (a month old), I can do that from the SVN.

I came across an incident when the setup xml was mysteriously wipe off from the disk. So we had to restore last working xml from a SVN that was manually maintained outside ITRS setup. If ITRS can include an optional SVN configuration (like DB logging), it will be very useful.

What is most valuable?

ITRS can define rules to alert when certain parameters that you monitor breach a threshold. Rules can be configured to fire recovery actions automatically to clear the alert. However, if the alert persists for an extended period, then it has the capability to fire multiple levels of escalation email or actions.

It also has powerful visualization features to develop dashboards to display in big screens and share it via Webslinger (a web server that allows dashboards to be accessed via web browsers). It can log metrics (values) into a reporting database and generate historical charts for trend analysis. The Toolkit plugin can run scripts for custom monitoring requirements that cannot be implemented using standard plugins. There are features to suppress alerts for time-period - Snooze, as ITRS call it - or change the value/severity of the parameter.

There are a number of things that you can do directly from ITRS active console without logging into the server. Processes can be restarted and you can open log files directly from active console. It also has a built-in scheduler that can run tasks (commands that you configure) on multiple targets. The active time feature enables you to apply different rules at different times. It also helps to disable alerts during non-business hours (eliminates noise).

What needs improvement?

ITRS has setup XML that holds the entire monitoring configuration. Only the last 10 versions of the setup XML is saved locally on the gateway server. These 10 versions get overwritten quite easily when you are working with a big configuration change. I would like to see ITRS integrate its setup editor with a SVN to check-in setup XML after major changes.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I have not observed any stability issues so far. ITRS has a transparent failover mechanism. If the primary gateway fails, the secondary gateway takes over. I have seen the active console freeze while it’s failing over, but everything recovers within a few minutes.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I have not observed any scalability issues in an environment with 60+ servers, 1000+ processes, 5000+ logs to monitor.

How are customer service and technical support?

I am very satisfied with the level of technical support I get from ITRS. All the queries that I raised around monitoring setup and configuration issues were closed in a timely manner. We also have a ITRS technical support specialist visiting our office twice a week. This is very helpful to discuss some of the complicated monitoring solutions that we wanted to implement in person.

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

I have used Wily Introscope and Nagios, but they are not as comprehensive as ITRS.

How was the initial setup?

Initial setup complexity depends what you want to implement (e.g., building a dashboard is complicated). You will need a basic training session to start working with the initial setup. Depending on what you want to achieve, the rules and actions can become a bit complicated.

What about the implementation team?

We have 20+ applications monitored in ITRS and the implementation was done in-house. ITRS has features to import template setup. This will save a lot of effort on the initial setup. If you are starting from scratch, create a setup template which can be re-used on the new gateways that you create. (E.g., default rules/samplers, etc. can be defined in a template and imported.)

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

I don’t have much visibility to the pricing, as this is negotiated at enterprise level. I heard that enterprise-level licensing is quite expensive.

What other advice do I have?

I would definitely recommend this product for monitoring mission-critical applications.

ITRS is the best monitoring tool I have used so far. It comes loaded with a lot of built-in plugins to monitor almost all of the parameters that you want to monitor in a production environment – i.e., processes, memory, disk space, CPU, keywords in log files, daily feed file generation, web service monitoring, MQ, Database, FIX Sessions, etc.

ITRS ActiveConsole provides a powerful interface for monitoring the environment. The gateway setup editor makes it easy to work with the monitoring configuration.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user261192 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user261192Marketing Manager with 51-200 employees
MSP

Hi Thomson,

Thanks for a great review.

I've shared some information below which should be of interest:

(1) SVN: We do have a manner in which to check-in a gateway setup change into SVN
(2) Historical: We do have a setting which allows you to keep more than 10 saves

I have asked a client service analyst to reach out to you.

Kind regards,
OJ

it_user430599 - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Vice President at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
It has assisted the team to identify issues pro-actively. Tutorials and plugins should be available to download from their website.

Valuable Features

The tool is highly customizable and can be tailored to your requirements. Dashboards can be created if needed and database logging can be enabled for analyzing trends and monitoring performance.

Improvements to My Organization

It has assisted the team to identify issues pro-actively, i.e. prior to a business user reporting them. This would ensure that the issue is identified and fixed in a timely manner. Also, the tools assists with stability as we are monitoring application infrastructure – application (all O/S), databases, middleware and much more.

Room for Improvement

It would be good if there were documentation on the ITRS website such as tutorials or plugins which are available to download.

Use of Solution

I've used it for three years.

Deployment Issues

We've had no deployment issues.

Stability Issues

There have been no issues with the stability.

Scalability Issues

We've had no issues with scaling it for our needs.

Customer Service and Technical Support

I have not spoken to the vendor directly.

Initial Setup

It was straightforward, due to the automated tools created in-house to assist teams with the installation and set up.

Implementation Team

In-house. Several tools were created by the Tech Services team to ensure the Geneos Netprobe installations and other key processes are simplified; easy to understand and use by all teams.

Other Advice

Ensure some of the samplers and types (for monitoring infrastructure i.e. disk space, hardware, memory etc ) can be used by multiple servers to prevent duplicating things. In the Gateway Setup Editor, follow the same generic folder structure and set up for all your applications (if you have more than one). This will make the Gateway easier to manage.


Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Senior Manager - Trading Systems Support at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Dashboards enable us to monitor critical trading systems, application servers, networks switches, and software
Pros and Cons
  • "It enables us to monitor application processes, to do log-monitoring on a 24/7 basis, to do server-level monitoring - all the hardware parameters - as well as monitor connectivity across applications to the interfaces."
  • "Sometimes, if there is a lot of data coming onto the servers, we have observed a little bit of slowness on the gateway servers which are doing the ITRS dashboard monitoring."

What is our primary use case?

We are monitoring uptime, availability, and performance of the trading systems through the ITRS dashboards. We have five segments and we have created all the applications and dashboards for these segments. 

We are monitoring online and have created a separate, integrated monitoring room where we have installed all the Geneos dashboard screens and we have a separate group of people monitoring these tools. In case of any alerts, there are mechanisms for escalation.

Currently, we have not only provided dashboards to IT operations, but we have provided them to other departments as well. For example, the hardware team has its own dashboard, and the network team has its own dashboards. The business team also recently started using dashboards.

The types of applications we monitor start with trading applications. We have a cash market, futures and options, and through the ITRS dashboards we monitor all the back-end servers. The only thing that is not covered by the dashboards is the front-end, which is used by the members. But all the in-house application servers are covered, as are all the networks switches, all the hardware details, and the software applications for the trading servers. Apart from that, there is a separate interface team that is also monitoring its own dashboards.

Essentially, we are trying to include all the business parameters in the monitoring, those which are used most by the business users. Those parameters are being tracked in the ITRS dashboards. We have divided our dashboards into application processes, logs, hardware, and network. All these dashboards are combined and are visible in an Exchange one-view dashboard which is visible at the executive level.

How has it helped my organization?

On a yearly basis, we identify around 50 to 60 incidents through ITRS. Typically, we don't have outages to our critical systems. We haven't had any in the last three to four years. So while ITRS has not been involved in avoiding outages, there have been one or two critical issues which it detects each year. Those have not resulted in outages, but there would have been major business impact from them. We detected them due to ITRS.

What is most valuable?

It enables us to monitor application processes, to do log-monitoring on a 24/7 basis, to do server-level monitoring - all the hardware parameters - as well as monitor connectivity across applications to the interfaces.

The ITRS dashboards monitor real-time data. There are two processes. One is that it reads from files via netprobes that are installed on all the servers. They read the respective online files which are updated every two seconds and then display the online data. The second process is that the dashboards are updated through scripts. ITRS servers run scripts and collect all the data. That is how real-time monitoring is done.

It also provides integration with ticketing tools. Whenever there is an alert, ITRS can directly open a ticket in a particular ticketing tool.

We can also view the logs from the time of an alert and back, or at ten minutes before the alerts, or two hours or one day before the alert.

We are also able to shift all the rules from one server to another.

And recently, we have started using automated actions when there are critical alerts.

What needs improvement?

We have introduced many of the monitoring processes in the past five to six months, for the trading dashboards and the business team. We have segmented gateway servers doing the monitoring. Sometimes, if there is a lot of data coming onto the servers, we have observed a little bit of slowness on the gateway servers which are doing the ITRS dashboard monitoring.

I believe the plan is that the tooling team will divide the gateway servers into two, with half of the application trading servers monitored by one gateway server and the other half monitored by another gateway server.

In our organization, every department is very much dependent on ITRS. For me, the basic concern is the contingency planning for ITRS. For example, if a dashboard server stops working tomorrow there is a concern. Contingency is a concern; something needs to be planned. We have not observed any failures in the ITRS dashboards. But because of the dependency of every department on the ITRS dashboards, this is a major concern. The trading server availability is dependent upon the server availability of the dashboards.

For how long have I used the solution?

One to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Up until now, there has been no failure in ITRS. Currently, it's stable. Because the number of servers, the monitoring alerts, rules, and categories is increasing, we have to increase the number of data servers. But it's currently stable. There is no problem with the stability of ITRS.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Because we have an enterprise license there is no issue with scalability.

If the number of servers increases, we have enough licenses to cover that. As far as the dashboards are concerned, the number being used by the various departments is fixed.

How are customer service and technical support?

We have received very good support from technical support. All our tickets, all the changes, have been done in the specified time. We received a good amount of support from them during the initial deployment. Although it was a complex architecture, the deployment went very smoothly. 

And currently, the changes which happen very frequently here, the changes in the dashboards, are done very smoothly. We have not had any issues with support.

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

Previously we had an HPE service for monitoring and before that we had Nagios. The flaw in them was that we only received emails. One dedicated person had to continuously monitor the mail to get action taken when there were alerts. What helped us with ITRS was the real-time monitoring, where the alerts are coming in on the GUI itself. This has resulted in faster action when there are alerts. Events are immediately captured in the ITRS dashboard.

We checked various other tools and the monitoring techniques on the market, as well as the techniques used by ITRS. We found that the ITRS monitoring techniques, whether by polling or reading the files, was capturing the data more effectively and showing it on a dashboard which is more intuitive. Here, everything is done based on the trading system that is on the one gateway server. The monitoring techniques that the internal ITRS dashboard is using are more effective than the other monitoring techniques. That's why we opted for ITRS.

How was the initial setup?

The setup was not straightforward because our system is quite complex. There are multiple servers and segments and departments and, at that time, we had various OS versions. We had some challenges.

We deployed in segments. Our first deployment took around eight months. The next segment of deployment took around three to four months. The third segment took another three to four months. Everything together, all the dashboard deployments completed and all the segments, took between one-and-a-half and two years.

We also had some migrations planned for the trading department at that time, so we integrated the deployment of the dashboards with those migrations. The servers that had already been migrated, where the major architectural changes had already happened, they were where we deployed ITRS first. If we had deployed on the old servers, we would have had to re-do the deployment efforts of ITRS.

The second point in our strategy was that the critical servers were the trading servers. We did the ITRS dashboards on them first, and then, finally, on the hardware and network. And we have targeted the interface servers for later.

We also integrated this with a latency tool, Corvil.

We had a number of people involved in the deployment. There was a manager as well as someone who looked into the basic ingredients of the ITRS dashboards, the coding, etc. Another person was responsible for the user look and feel, how the GUIs would look, as well as the use-cases. There were three people at that time. Now, managed services has started to use the ITRS dashboards, and that is being handled by our separate tooling team. 

When there are any releases or changes made to the trading systems, we inform our tooling team. We create a request for them to make all the changes to the dashboards and they make the changes.

We're now into more of a maintenance process.

Overall, we have about 150 to 200 people using the solution in our organization.

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

Things like the capacity planning have a separate cost.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We looked at three other monitoring tools, but that was four or five years ago. BMC was one of them and there was an HPE solution as well. We looked at them based on top industry reviews.

We considered HPE open-source, but the GUI features and how fast it displays alerts on the GUI, as well as polling and integration with other third-party tools - they were lagging. We found ITRS more useful.

What other advice do I have?

It's a very good tool to use and everybody is very happy with it. We are looking forward to more features.

Not all the data that is being captured is currently being stored completely in the right ITRS dashboards. There is a project in progress for collecting the data and storing it for capacity and numbers purposes. We have seen a demo related to data collection for capacity planning and it looks very useful, as do the capacity reports. But that project is still in the roll-out phase and will take a couple of months.

The next feature we are looking at rolling out is the integration with the ticketing tool. That is planned for the next four to five months.

We are now looking at integrating small things into ITRS. If any incident or issue comes up, the first thing we ask is, "Why isn't it part of ITRS? How can this be integrated into ITRS?" Any small activities, challenges, or issues which we foresee in our day-to-day operations, we look at how we can implement them in ITRS. This is a more proactive kind of approach. So it's not only for current alerts but we can also implement things for the future in ITRS.

I would rate ITRS at nine out of ten. Everything is being monitored by ITRS. The reason it's not a ten is that, because it's an integral part of all our operations, if anything fails in ITRS, we're not sure where we would go. We are almost over-dependent on ITRS.

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
PeerSpot user
Senior Technical Director at CJC
Vendor
The best real time data monitoring system however you may require a system architect to design the system initially.

What is most valuable?

The primary ability is to monitor systems in real-time. Many alternative monitoring systems use a polling system – so a short incident that occurs for a couple of seconds or less and resolves (such as a line outage or data gap). The small outage could have major consequences. Having to wait up to 60 seconds for the message can also mean valuable time is lost in resolving the issue.

The ITRS development team constantly works to make plug-ins and samplers, ensuring that when I implement new technologies – servers/black box solutions etc. minimal development has be done on my side. We can simply download the specifically written plug-in to the gateway and deploy the probe to the new technology. This ‘off the shelf’ approach beats onsite resources developing solutions that already exist.

Dashboards & auto execution – a few years ago the staff supporting our systems would have multiple windows open into various server applications. Not any longer. We have created powerful dashboards which on one screen shows every part of the system we need to see, going into the end applications is a rare occurrence and only for senior third line team members. Auto execution provides the ability to fix issues from the monitoring system. This allows us to have Geneos monitoring and incident management as our ‘core skillset’ – knowing how to support hundreds of applications via only needing to know one. Training is now far easier and staff can support more apps.

We support various versions of view the software at various institutions. The latest version is compatible with Linux/Solaris and SPARC. The probes (which deploy on end user systems) work on most OS including Windows. Consoles to the gateway to view status are Windows based and also various web based tools use modern versions of browsers such as IE, Chrome and Firefox.

How has it helped my organization?

We can only respond to issues once we confirm that the issue exists. An analogy we sometimes use is likening our role to that of Formula One pit mechanics – we work hard to ensure the engine is tuned and running, but we can’t stop unexpected issues ‘on the track’. Once an issue happens, we need to be working to resolve it instantly. Any solution that does not monitor in real-time is a non-solution for both CJC and our end clients. As we can see the moment an issue occurs reaction times are quicker. Events are logged and so trend analytics can be used for performance benchmarks; so month to month or even day to day we can review the system heath with a view to improving our performance and refine our monitoring.

What needs improvement?

CJC require an enhanced level of visual reporting for our clients, specifically due to the large datasets we need to analyse and the importance CJC place on capacity and upgrade management. CJC created a new visualisation tool utilising the existing ITRS Database. This was done with the full support and assistance of ITRS for our specific requirements. I have found that ITRS are aware of their client’s requirements and work towards platform improvements to benefit individual clients and the community as a whole.

For how long have I used the solution?

I first used the solution in 2009 however CJC have been working with this product since 1999. CJC has to provide 99.999% availability on mission critical infrastructures and it would be incredibly difficult to do this without Geneos. Our clients have a similar requirement of ITRS and so require consultants trained in the product to support their systems. We have assisted in the support of real-time infrastructures at 15 tier one to tier two banks along with brokers and vendors.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

From a software Installation point of view no, however all deployments come with their own challenges, especially when migrating away from an existing system as not one infrastructure is alike. CJC has historically upgraded a client from a legacy monitoring system on over 600 servers to ITRS, replicating thousands of bespoke rules and alerts. Migration has to be done with ITRS standing ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with the legacy system. ITRS during this time provide specialists and technical support to replicate rule sets.


What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Fortunately the system is very stable - we have never seen an application level incident with the monitoring system itself. The gateway has a redundancy mode which we enable so we have a live/live environment.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

None, once the server gateways are setup it's simple to deploy the probes. We adhere to ITRS guidelines and monitor the servers themselves to ensure that we are not adding unnecessary load. The gateways run a fairly low footprint on entry level server specs.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

The ITRS accounts team are passionate about the product and are client focused.

Technical Support:

Generally we work direct with the developers as CJC staff are at an advanced knowledge level with the application. The development team quickly understand our requirements and work with us to achieve the goals we require.

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

We have historically supported many different monitoring systems, however one of the major reasons for switching was a previous system was not being developed further due to an end of live announcement. ITRS Geneos is commonplace on client sites and our teams had prior exposure or expertise. New staff can be trained on Geneos in a short amount of time and a solid user of Geneos can pull much more out of the system than previous alternatives.

How was the initial setup?

The product is straight forward to install and configure along with the deployment of probes to servers. From out of the box installation to a point of monitoring systems can be done in less than 24 hours. Installing new servers/applications into an established system can be done in minutes. ITRS Geneos is very well known in the financial services community as being the best platform to monitor real time data infrastructures and the application does what it says on the tin. Industry peers reflect this sentiment. ITRS are very good at adding plug-ins to various new software and technologies/black box solutions and also provide order flow monitoring.

However, it being both straightforward AND complex is the key. The system is easy to setup from a software perspective, but you need a system architect to design the system initially. Geneos is ultimately designed for mission critical servers supporting real time infrastructures, high frequency trading, low latency and order flow (and much more). Even with a fairly small footprint – setup not done properly could cause huge exposure. None of this can be reflected on the software, as deployment is always straightforward, however the day to day operation is where the platform form is judged.

What about the implementation team?

Generally we work through vendors however in most circumstances they provide CJC the freedom to setup the system how we require as ultimately we are doing the live support. We work with vendors/clients who have both a hands off and hands on approach to monitoring. However in both cases the understanding of why they would utilise ITRS Geneos shows their understanding of their own infrastructure needs.

What was our ROI?

It’s the primary tool to detect and start end to end incident management and system analytics so it’s a key part of our company offerings.


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

Our clients pay for Geneos directly from ITRS.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We found the best alternatives to be open source systems, however the development costs to get these to the standard of ITRS meant that open source was more expensive. Many clients have also done internal investigations and have come to the same conclusion. I would prefer not to name these systems simply due to the confidence that they do a fine job, however, I believe they are not best placed in our fast moving industry.

What other advice do I have?

My logic is ask for a proposal – they cost nothing! If you don’t ask, you don’t get. It’s up to those looking for top level monitoring to go to the various providers and weigh them up both in terms of functionality in cost. I’m confident ITRS would be competitive for commoditised IT and non-mission critical environments.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Ravi Suvvari - PeerSpot reviewer
Ravi SuvvariPerformance and Fault-tolerance Architect with 1,001-5,000 employees
Top 5LeaderboardReal User

Thanx for inputs

ASP Administrator at FIS
Real User
Offers a critical, secure, and regulated environment that gives us information about the health of our systems
Pros and Cons
  • "It's also easy to implement. The implementation of Geneos is very easy and interesting. It's not complicated. It's very quick to implement. The installation is very easy. There are many topics about ITRS Geneos that explain more about the features of the function of Geneos."
  • "There is a part of the rules for monitoring alerts. I want to understand more about how to choose the samples and the requirements for the rules. That is the part that I want to understand better and get better training for."

What is our primary use case?

Our primary use case is to monitor services and networking. We monitor applications like the processor, CRM, and next-gen Gateway which is a Windows service.

How has it helped my organization?

Geneos is responsible for collecting and monitoring data from our computers. It's helpful for us to get data and to get good information about the health of our systems. The data it provides is very helpful for us and for our work.

ITRS Geneos provides peace of mind by mentoring our processes and applications. It's in the most amounts of environments. Geneos has encouraged real-time analysis and monitoring.

What is most valuable?

Geneos is very easy to use. They have an interesting dashboard and the app's console is very easy to understand.

It's also easy to implement. The implementation of Geneos is very easy and interesting. It's not complicated. It's very quick to implement. The installation is very easy. There are many topics about ITRS Geneos that explain more about the features of the function of Geneos. 

The architecture is very comprehensive.

It provides us with real-time data. We use the dashboard, we can remotely monitor the services, and we can reach the data, the percentage of CPU and memory with real-time monitoring.

We previously used Nagios. It would take us thirty minutes to get an alert. With Geneos, you can use the access time so we can monitor the analysis and we can receive the analysis when we want and with what we want, every 15 minutes or 10 minutes. With access time it is a very good way to monitor the alerts, to receive analysis. We also get alerts based on real-time data. 

What needs improvement?

There is a part of the rules for monitoring alerts. I want to understand more about how to choose the samples and the requirements for the rules. That is the part that I want to understand better and get better training for. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used Geneos for six months. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's stable. If it goes down, we can use the Geneos backup.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We have around 100 devices that we are monitoring. There are three administrators who administer it. 

How are customer service and technical support?

Their support is very proactive. When I raise a request, I have an answer immediately. They explain the solution very well. They provide us with a good way to research the information. I like the technical people who work at Geneos.

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

I worked with other monitoring tools like Nagios and I found Nagios is a bit hard to enter in the agents and to understand the services. But Geneos is very easy and it's very interesting to understand and to work with it.

I work with Geneos now because I switched companies. 

How was the initial setup?

The deployment took around one hour.

What was our ROI?

We have not seen ROI yet. 

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

I think Geneos is really expensive, even compared to Nagios.

What other advice do I have?

If you want a critical, secure, and regulated environment and to do powerful and flexible rules, you should choose Geneos.

I would rate Geneos an eight and a half out of ten. Not a ten because when the Gateway was very overloaded it was very hard to monitor the alerts, especially for the product services. The situation would be very critical. Otherwise, it's a very good, excellent tool.

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
it_user456597 - PeerSpot reviewer
Middle Office PnL & IPV Technology Support Analyst at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
It can be used as a one stop shop for all your monitoring needs if you understand how to utilise it to its fullest extent.

What is most valuable?

As a user its UI is very easy to understand, nice to look at, organised easily, and also very quick at alerting. This makes it stand out above its competitors, which in my experience are slow and ugly.

As a company looking to onboard, its capacity to monitor just about anything from Unix log files and processes to database memory, and even run queries and provide results. It can be used as a one stop shop for all your monitoring needs if you understand how to utilise it to its fullest extent.

How has it helped my organization?

It has improved our efficiency in many ways. Management and user information are now on self-service as we can provide them dashboards which give them live updates on what they want to know when they want to know, rather than running a query every day and e-mailing it to them.

We can configure it to send us email alerts for errors, and set up pop-ups so we do not have to constantly monitor something. We now have control of what we monitor so there is no reliance on external teams to send us alerts.

What needs improvement?

Like any product there is always room for improvement, and although their documentation is good, I would say better documentation is always one to aim for though, and I believe they are doing this.

Technically, I believe the dashboard functionality can be more configurable as some shapes are very limited with what they can do.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have worked with multitude of versions for a year and a half. All of the versions I have used are very similar, and it has very much added value to every team that has used it.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

I was involved with the deployment of NetProbes onto the app servers to collect data. This was a simple process and easy to do.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We had no issues with the performance.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I was not involved with any of the other processes although I would say from my knowledge and experience it shouldn’t be that hard to deploy or scale up though I think depending on the size of scaling you would want to strategize how to handle the workload.

How are customer service and technical support?

The Customer Service is one of my favourite parts. They are always helpful and point you in the right direction. They are also very quick to respond and have a forum for self-help. This is definitely one of their strong points.

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

We previously used a monitoring system that sent alerts to our phones or sent emails to us. We also have a team dedicated to monitoring and sending us mail. It was inefficient and a worse form of monitoring overall.

How was the initial setup?

I was not involved in the initial setup.

What other advice do I have?

Often I find that people who are not a fan of Geneos had a bad experience with a terribly configured gateway. It needs to be understood that being very configurable has its negatives as it needs to be managed properly to make effective use of the tool. Ground rules need to be set and changes need to be controlled, otherwise it can get messy very quickly and ruin user experience.

I am sure you have the ability to sit and consider options, both positive and negative, before choosing a product. I strongly suggest that if you do not have a visual and easily configurable monitoring tool then use this as a comparison for other tools. If you feel the other tool is better than Geneos then it really must be good or the sales man for the other product has done a great job

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user261192 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user261192Marketing Manager with 51-200 employees
MSP

Hi Abiraj, thanks for a great review. You're correct about documentation: a new site should be available later this month.

OJ

Buyer's Guide
Download our free ITRS Geneos Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: March 2024
Buyer's Guide
Download our free ITRS Geneos Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.