ITRS Geneos Reviews

• Excellent set of plug-ins for the financial industry.
• Easy to extend and to incorporate existing monitoring scripts/programs.
• Publishing monitoring data to many users is simple due to webservers included in Geneos.
• Attribute-based viewing tree allows different views of your data for different purposes/users.
• Very good maintainability due to groups/types: very effective build and change of configuration.

• Trading desk has continuously updated view of full quotation process. Issues are displayed and alarmed about in near real-time instead of going unnoticed for longer periods of time.
• Depending on the issue, the relevant group of people is informed in case of a problem and has already a head-start due to the specific information sent by the monitoring system.
• All teams (operations/IT management group/users) have a common information base consisting of the generated dashboards and drill-down web pages leading to each running sampler. This immensely improved communication in case of production problems.

5 years

No issues. Deployment is very easy also for large number of hosts due the feature of "self-announcing netprobes". This makes it possible to deploy to hundreds or even thousands of servers without manually configuring the connection between monitored server and Geneos gateway (where all data is sent to for evaluation).

No issues.

No issues. If a gateway has a high load it easy to set up additional gateways to get headroom on each gateway again. If a netprobe has too many servers one can parallelize by running several netprobes per monitored server. Resource footprint of Geneos is generally very small.

Excellent. If you address to the help desk you are immediately in contact with very knowledgeable personnel. There is no "first-level" support which can only handle easy problems. You can get right down to the issue at hand without being transferred (see tech support).

10 out of 10. Service requests are usually acknowledged (by humans, not mail robots) within minutes and answered depending on the difficulty of the question but mostly within 20 minutes, often faster. The quality of the service is very high. You get code examples or links to the relevant sections of the large body of online documentation (videos, manual etc.). If needed your configuration files are proof-read and possibly corrected.

We used Icinga (a Nagios-Clone) before and currently still do in various areas. Geneos has been introduced due to the need for real-time monitoring and notification and for the excellent possibilities to publish monitoring results via web servers.

Initial installation was relatively easy even though - due to the nature of the task - numerous components had to be installed: netprobes on every monitored server, gateway servers, dashboard webserver, webmontage webserver. Directly after installation, however, basic real-time infrastructure monitoring worked out of the box, more advanced monitoring after appropriate configuration.

We had partial support for specific monitoring requirements by ITRS professional services staff on-site. They all were very knowlegedable and customer-oriented. It was obvious that in addition to solving the task given to them they really tried to transfer their knowledge to our staff.

Difficult to quantify. We have reduced stress level of all involved personnel and increased user satisfaction due to the real-time dashboards we gave them. Targeted notifications reduce effort due to false or misdirected alarms. Processes have been improved due to the insights gained by the Geneos monitoring.

ITRS is quite flexible depending on the size and requirements of the customer. Given the benefits we have from Geneos and also compared to pricing of other solutions (e.g. job scheduling) costs have not been an issue so far.

Icinga (Nagios-Clone), AppDynamics, BlueStripe, Leutek. Icinga was too slow for our requirements and would have required - according to the company mainly supporting this open-source solution - major development efforts to accelerate it enough. The other solutions did definitely make a good impression but we went finally for Geneos due to its specific focus on the financial area (we are a bank) and also due to positive experiences with Geneos we had in the past in another time-critical business area (ETF Market making).

For the beginner there is a steep learning curve. To master the Geneos technology reasonably well, four to six months are realistically needed (within those you can already build up an initial monitoring though). For larger organizations it may make sense to centralize this know-how and re-use it for different monitored applications or processes instead of having many individuals learn about Geneos just to realize one specific monitoring each. Once set-up, Geneos proved to be a very powerful and versatile tool to real-time monitor our IT infrastructure and - most important for us - our critical applications and business processes.

• Active Console
• Gateway
• Webslinger
• OpenAPI
• Geneos netprobe

We are now able to monitor our applications.

I've used it for one year.

No issues encountered.

Sometimes there were issues with the database. If the database logging was high then the gateway would be slow.

No issues encountered.

10/10.

10/10.

We previously used Nagios, but switched to Geneos as it has better monitoring for applications. Also, it has more features and better configuration possibilities.

It was easy to setup as there were step by step installation instructions for every operating system.

We used a vendor who were 7/10.

Yes we did, however I do not know what the other options were.

• Real time monitoring
• Possibility to develop custom scripts to fit your own solution
• Simple interface
• Ability to manage dissimilar systems
• Reporting

Our support team can monitor our applications and servers easily and we were able to reduce the time in finding errors and providing a solution. The entire process of support has been improved.

The graphical interface is nice but could be improved.

I've used it for two years.

No we didn't.

Geneos is a very stable product, both server side and client side.

No we didn't.

We got in touch just few times, and there were no problems with them.

It's good.

We didn't use anything previously.

It was straightforward.

It's a very good solution and can fit the needs of big company.

The dashboard is a valuable feature.

The 'start of day' (SOD) and 'end of day' (EOD) checks were automated by using this tool, thus reducing the amount of manual work needed by almost two hours per day.

Currently the dashboard does not have the capability of providing different status levels, and this needs to be updated.

I've used it for four to five years.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

We've not had much interaction with the vendor, but their training program is really poor.

Good.

No previous solution used.

It was very straightforward.

We implemented it in-house.

This is a great tool to automate all the manual day-to-day checks.

This is the most amazing monitoring tool I've ever worked with, because it allows you to monitor a lot of things and also to address the issue and assign it to someone so everyone will know it's being investigated.

I've used it for six months now.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

9/10.

9/10.

We switched because this covers everything we need to monitor in one place.

It wasn't that complex to setup.

We implemented it in-house.

Do it and you won't regret.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Our clients pay for Geneos directly from ITRS.

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.

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.

• Breach predictor
• Compute Engine
• Reporting
• Dashboards

In many cases we are now able to correlate multiple events and take actions while considering a large number of criteria when we do. We can more reliably instruct the product to take action when a certain number of events happened in a certain sequence. This can be done even without setting hard thresholds, but looking at the data we collected in the past and the behaviour the system has on a daily basis.

• Active Console
• Breach Predictor
• Documentation
• Data Storage

I've used Geneos 2 for three years.

Deployment is simple and straight forward. The packages also include examples on how to start them.

In some past versions yes, but the issues were immediately fixed.

No. Planning the implementation of the product on the infrastructure keeps scalability issues away. The product is easily scalable.

Customer service delivered by ITRS is to the highest standards from all points of view. Highly responsive and quick acting.

Technical support delivered by ITRS is to the highest standards from all points of view. Highly responsive and quick acting.

Yes we did. Geneos is a highly configurable monitoring system with many built-in plug-ins and offers great functionality. All of this aside, the breach predictor was one of the selling points. The old product was missing many of the expected out of the box functionalities.

The initial setup was a bit complex. We use the product to monitor the Core trading infrastructures (OTC, CFD, Low Latency, etc.), which means many servers, many processes, many metrics. It was complex as in the beginning we were not completely aware of all the capabilities of the product and our infrastructure is close to 200 Servers and 150-200 unique process which are running multiple times. It was complex due to the very high complexity of our systems and the scale.

Initial setup and delivery was done by ITRS and they were a highly professional and experienced team. Redesign and reimplementation was done in-house.

I can't say for sure as I don't know the contractual figures, but I suspect the ROI to be at least 100%.

Original setup was included in the purchase order. I can't say what the day-to-day costs are as I don't know the figures, but if we exclude the licenses, I would say about 10-25 Eur/day and still, this is a wild guess.

We did evaluate other options. One was Integrien Alive (bought by VMWare and non-existent anymore), Leutek ZIS, Quest Software Big Brother and IBM Tivoli (TEP).

Plan the implementation top to bottom before starting so you don't have to redesign it afterwards.

1. Get to know the product and the capabilities
2. Decide what you need to monitor
3. Implement it in steps, e.g. first core (hardware) and then application specific