Plixer Scrutinizer Reviews

There are two ways of using Plixer Scrutinizer, and I'm sitting on both ends. First of all, it's used for network capacity management. In other words: "Who is eating my cake?" That means: "All my bandwidth is gone. Who has stolen it?", to be clear: "Who is eating it?" What computer is eating my bandwidth?", so that is one use case, and the other use case is security. Plixer Scrutinizer belongs to a handful of products that are able to drill down quite deeply into the network traffic. For security purposes, it is really a very powerful product.

One feature I found most valuable in Plixer Scrutinizer is the very extensive reporting. Reporting is very flexible, though sometimes you need a little bit of support from Plixer Scrutinizer to create custom-made reporting in a very short time. Reporting is a very strong feature of the product.

Another valuable feature of Plixer Scrutinizer is more on the side of how you can implement it. It is running on a virtual appliance or a physical appliance if you have a very large network, but competing systems sometimes run on a Windows platform where you have to install a lot of Windows and databases that are appliance-based. As for Plixer Scrutinizer, you just need to install it with the right specs, and you have a working appliance, and this is a plus for the product.

In terms of additional features I'd like to see in the next release of Plixer Scrutinizer, I can't think of any because you can do some integration with other monitoring tools that are not strong in NetFlow or don't have NetFlow at all. There are also some integration possibilities in the product, plus there are alerts, too. Plixer Scrutinizer is a pretty complete product.

There was a price lift because previously the product was privately owned, and now there is some external capital in the organization, so pricing could be lower, though, for Plixer Scrutinizer, there is almost no competition at this price point.

I've been working with Plixer Scrutinizer for more than ten years.

Plixer Scrutinizer is a very stable solution.

In terms of scalability, Plixer Scrutinizer is an excellent solution for enterprises. It's not really for SMBs. It scales very well for enterprises.

You don't really need technical support for Plixer Scrutinizer, especially for people who are very skilled already with the product, so those people have initiated this or collected this expertise a long time ago, for example, people just evolved with the product while using it. I suggest and advise you to get training one to two times per year, for example, a two-hour session about the new features of Plixer Scrutinizer because there are a lot of features under the hood that are not being used.

My company made the switch to Plixer Scrutinizer because it is scalable, compact, and very competitive in pricing. It is also a small company, and not a large company, so you can ask questions about features and won't have to wait ten years before a feature becomes available. Plixer Scrutinizer has a dedicated NetFlow-only team and organization.

The initial setup for Plixer Scrutinizer is pretty straightforward, particularly if you know what you're doing because you need some knowledge about networking and NetFlow.

Basic deployment can be completed within one day, so you can see what traffic is coming into your network, then you can also start using the filters and the reporting. You can see basic results within a few days, and good results within a few weeks.

The money I'm spending on Plixer Scrutinizer is worth the investment because you can use the product in two ways as a capacity management tool for the network and as a forensic security tool. You can use it in a network operations center or a security operation center. You can do both in just one device.

Currently, the license for Plixer Scrutinizer is subscription-based and at a yearly fee. The price would depend on the amount of traffic you pull in. For example, there are several blocks from a 10K flow, a 40K flow, and a 100K flow, and based on the number of devices that you receive the flows from, that's the license, and it is not a per-interface pricing model, so that is a very strong, very competitive pricing feature of Plixer Scrutinizer. Licensing for the product is also not based on the number of storage, compared to some competing products that are priced based on the amount of storage you need, particularly based on the retention and the amount of data. Plixer Scrutinizer licensing is based on the device, and it's more in the direction of $10,000 because, with just  $1,000, you don't have anything.

I'm not an end-user of Plixer Scrutinizer. I'm a partner of Plixer and I can only say what I know about the product. I've used it with technical people because I'm into a high-level perspective of the product.

I'm a reseller or a partner, but my partners are larger organizations, so the total number of users on the appliance itself would be around one hundred.

My advice in terms of using Plixer Scrutinizer is that if you are looking for NetFlow and you really need more than just a simple NetFlow because there are, of course, solutions on the market that cost considerably less, based on if you have one or two interfaces, or if you have multiple devices, but you have a lot of traffic or ISPs, then the product is a must in terms of pricing. If you have only a few devices, core routers, and you have a lot of traffic, then Plixer Scrutinizer is a very competitive product compared to the other products. It's a very stable solution and all the features you ask for are there.

My rating for Plixer Scrutinizer is nine out of ten. I never give a ten when rating a product because I always leave some room even in better products, but this product is close to a ten. Nine is the max for me, in terms of rating.

I'm a partner/reseller of Plixer Scrutinizer and my role supports customers with questions about the product and helps customers with issues, particularly little support issues. Generally,  I ask customers what it is they need and make sure they don't buy the wrong product. I hold a consulting role that ensures customers buy the right product and the right size: not too big and not too small. I'm a value-added distributor with a consulting role.

Plixer Scrutinizer has a few use cases, and the most recent one was looking at network visibility across multiple campuses, so full end-to-end visibility, including cloud. My customer wanted to see some of the cloud apps. Another use case was vendor agnostics, where my customer had a mixed environment of multiple vendors, and Plixer Scrutinizer was key to making sure that my customer can ingest the data that those solutions could put out.

My customers were using multiple tool sets, and through Plixer Scrutinizer, they were able to simplify their visibility down to one management console or one pane of glass. They're now using simplified tool sets.

One of the most valuable features of Plixer Scrutinizer is the reporting, particularly how easy it is to drill down into the reports. Another valuable feature of the solution is its overall visibility. It's great. I also liked Plixer Scrutinizer in terms of deployment time and that it's very simple to set up. Once you get the appliance set up and connected, the customer starts to see results immediately, versus other solutions where that could take a while.

Though Plixer Scrutinizer has network detection and response, it's an area that needs just a little more rounding out. Another room for improvement in the solution is its lack of SaaS offering which some customers were looking for. My company deals in small to medium businesses, mid-market, and some customers wanted the SaaS feature which Plixer Scrutinizer doesn't offer.

What I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is for it to have a SaaS offering because my company also deals with educational spaces and smaller businesses that just don't have the staff that can implement this. If there's either a managed service or SaaS-based offering to just make it a little easier for those types of customers, it would be a great addition to Plixer Scrutinizer.

I've worked with Plixer Scrutinizer for two years.

Plixer Scrutinizer has very good stability. It's been around a long time and its networking visibility tool is fantastic, so it's extremely, extremely, solid.

Plixer Scrutinizer is an extremely scalable solution. It's known for its scalability which was why the customer selected Plixer Scrutinizer.

The technical support for Plixer Scrutinizer was fantastic. The team was awesome. Support was very responsive, very knowledgeable, and not just only on Plixer Scrutinizer, as support was very knowledgeable with third-party solutions as well. Whether it was Cisco, Aruba, or whatever the network was, the support team was very knowledgeable.

Our customers were using either LiveAction or Stealthwatch from Cisco, and they liked that Plixer Scrutinizer had greater visibility compared to Cisco which does well only on Cisco environments. A lot of the clients we have are, given the market, taking advantage of adding HP switches to their infrastructure, so they're no longer single siloed. That was a key feature of Plixer Scrutinizer.

Our customers also used AkenTech and ExtraHop. What made them choose Plixer Scrutinizer over ExtraHop was the price. It came down to pricing because Plixer Scrutinizer only charges by node, so how many exporters or devices customers were taking exports from, while ExtraHop does bandwidth, and that seems to be a very expensive way to do it.

The initial setup for Plixer Scrutinizer was very, very straightforward. As long as you could export flow data off the switches, and point and direct that flow, the only manual process you have to do is set up the switch to export the data. It was a pretty easy process, once everything was aligned. The client was pretty happy with it.

The deployment time for Plixer Scrutinizer was pretty quick. From the time it was delivered and it was set up, it took two weeks, but that was really on the client. Once the client had all the information needed to set up the solution, it was a very smooth and very quick process.

We're a reseller-consultant, but we use their in-house services for implementation. Their engineers were great.

The licensing cost for Plixer Scrutinizer is in the middle. It's not the cheapest, but it's not the most expensive. Its licensing model is based on how many exporters, how many devices export information to the system. Plixer Scrutinizer has different modules you could add such as the security module which would cost extra.

Our customers evaluated LiveAction, Stealthwatch, AkenTech, and ExtraHop.

I have experience with Plixer Scrutinizer, particularly the latest version with NDR capability. I know a little bit about its installation, deployment, etc.

The solution is deployed on-premises. It isn't a SaaS-based solution.

In terms of the users of Plixer Scrutinizer based on my customer, everybody from the network is using it, for example, engineers use it and some security personnel uses it for alerts. It's all been very positive. My customer was able to integrate Plixer Scrutinizer with the current SIEM solution. The network operations team seems to like it, so it's all been positive so far.

I have no idea how many people are in charge of deployment and maintenance, but Plixer Scrutinizer is known to be a very simple tool.

Currently, my customer is using the solution mostly on the network side. Plixer Scrutinizer did announce a security module and my customer is taking a look at that. There are some definite enhancements added to the tool.

My advice to others looking into implementing Plixer Scrutinizer is that if you're running a multi-vendor, multi-network environment, definitely take a look at the solution because it excels in that area.

I'm giving Plixer Scrutinizer a nine out of ten because even if it has some areas for improvement, the overall experience with the solution especially based on the clients I've worked with, has been fantastic.

My company is a partner/reseller of Plixer Scrutinizer.

I use Plixer Scrutinizer for Network traffic analysis.

When comparing Plixer Scrutinizer to NetFlow Analyzers and Microfocus NPS (Network Performance Solution), the features I found most valuable in Plixer Scrutinizer are the ease of access, particularly in the GUI, and the ease of the solution.

The most valuable features of Plixer Scrutinizer are its ease of use, accessibility, and UI.

I would recommend having more data points. Plixer Scrutinizer cannot handle high traffic volumes.

This is NetFlow Analyzer, and the number of data points, or the massive volume of information is stored. There are numerous processes running inside a router. As a result, a massive amount of data is being logged in this Plixer Scrutinizer. 

It is my understanding that when the flows are too high, the solution cannot handle them, and it is not simply a matter of scaling it up. For example, on ACI, you can define Cisco ACI core switches, and it is found that on Plixer Scrutinizer they are unable to handle the traffic volume. 

When I'm talking about a core switch or another switch that has a large amount of traffic flowing through it, the solution is also incapable of handling it.

In terms of data aggregation and storage, while I was not managing it, one of the feedbacks, specifically to this solution. I can't comment further on the technical side of things, but from a user standpoint, the team was only keeping the real-time log for one day. Then, for three days, it switches to five-minute aggregation. It switches to one-hour aggregation for one week. For one month, it will be aggregated on a daily basis, to save space. 

It aggregates the data points and removes the individual real-time data points before reducing the data points to conserve storage. I would suggest an improvement in data storage, or how the data is archived and sold so that enterprises have more room to keep data for a longer period of time with less aggregation. It will be kept for real-time value for a month, rather than just one day.

I've been using Plixer Scrutinizer for nine years, but I haven't used it in the last year.

I don't remember what version we were using because I haven't actively used it in the last year, but it was one of the more recent ones.

In terms of stability, it was good, but I wouldn't say that it was excellent.

I have seen a few crashes, however, it's very rare. While it is stable, there is always room for improvement. But it's fairly stable, and in the user experience, it remains consistent.

The solution's scalability is struggling on devices with a large number of flows.

ACI from Cisco, and not the Data points. Data points are improvements to how data is stored or archived. I've noticed that the solution is inconsistent on devices with a large number of flows, such as core switches for Data centers, or Cisco ACI.

To rephrase, the solution is suitable for a brand router or an internet switch, but it is not suitable for, at least in our environment, a core switch within a data center where the number of flows and communications will be high. From what I understand it is that the solution is not very scalable in a high volume traffic environment with a large number of flows.

This solution is used directly by 50 people in our organization. Most of the users were network engineers.

The solution received positive feedback. The usage was already on a daily basis. No further increases were anticipated or planned, but it was used extensively throughout the organization.

I am not aware of the pricing.

I am not an expert user or an administrator of the solution, and I have not recently used it. 

I am a problem manager. I conduct deep-dive analysis and retrospective analysis following the incident. To determine the root causes, we must examine all of our solutions in the application landscape.

I would strongly recommend this solution to anyone who is interested in using it.

I would rate Plixer Scrutinizer an eight out of ten.

We used this solution for MTA. I am responsible for the network; I would have been the only person using this solution.

As I didn't get it fully up and running, I can't really say what features were best. 

When you download Windows 10 and first log in, it says something like, "Welcome. We're setting up a few things, we'll be right with you. We're going to customize some things and get it going for you." Then, it just loads to a desktop and nothing else happens. You don't have the applications installed. You don't have any customization, it's just a default setup. That's essentially what we had. We had a default setup. We were trying to set up some configuration, but it just wasn't quite working properly.

We couldn't get it set up properly. We had multiple meetings. They apparently noted down what I was asking for, but we just went back and forth, and we just couldn't get the thing to work or configure properly.

Those discussions were with their sales guy and their sales engineer. They set up a demo for me. They were working with me to try to set up some configurations — some customization within it. It wasn't very intuitive. They gave me documentation, that wasn't very user-friendly. They just didn't seem to understand what I was trying to do. So we just went back and forth, back and forth.

It was like calling McDonald's and asking for a cheeseburger, and they give you some chicken nuggets. I'd say, "This isn't working for me. I want a hamburger. You gave me chicken nuggets". I would ask for this and they'd give me something else that didn't make any sense. After multiple meetings, eventually, I was like, "I'm done." Then I started looking at Awake Security and started looking at some other MTA's out there. 

I used Plixer Scrutinizer for a few months. I never got it fully configured. I ran into a bunch of problems and I just couldn't quite get it working properly.

We didn't experience any bugs.

They need better customer service that can help you make the trial experience better.

We had some challenges with the configuration — that's one of the reasons why we stopped using it.

My advice is to make sure you have a good experience during the trial that you set up.

Overall, from my short experience with this solution, I would give it a rating of five out of ten.