SolarWinds AppOptics Reviews

The sum solution, NTA, and DPA. We are able to consolidate what we're monitoring and combine the metrics provided by these three applications into a dashboard.

I would like to see more granular information provided on Unix applications. 

Also, the integration with Unix services should be a bit more straightforward in terms having an agent to retrieve your credentials rather than having to enter or save them for SSH on SolarWinds. From the outset, we had to set some commands to log into the search console, and they are saved on the solution, which presents a challenge in terms of exposure.

The solution is unable to monitor APK solutions completely because we'd then be forced to break down the APK and provide the APIs or go through the source code. They don't have a module that can analyze an application that is maybe under-used.

I have been using this solution since 2019. 

It's a solid application. It has been stable. 

Considering that we have an on-prem setup, it's scalable. We are able to operate within the license that we have, and we've been able to grow the number of applications we're monitoring. We've grown from 10 people using this solution in our company to having a whole unit for monitoring, so about 20 to 30 people are now using it.

The only point when we needed to seek consultation was for integration with Solaris. We got help and feedback from the THWACK community. I would rate the support through that community as a five out of five because there were a number of instances when we needed to have a joint call, and they were willing to help at all times. 

Certain aspects of the setup were a bit complex, but generally when it comes to Windows solutions, the setup is straightforward. We had some slight challenges when integrating with Solaris, but we overcame them. Some integrations with Java presented some issues too, but we figured them out. I would rate the initial setup as a four out of five. 

The license module may have changed because our requirements have changed, but the OEM has been giving us offers to entice us to stay. We're partners with this solution, so the pricing hasn't changed much, but our licensing requirement has changed, so the pricing will probably go up in the next few years. Since it's a negotiable rate, I would rate the pricing as a five out of five. 

A company wanting to implement this solution needs an individual who's going to do the background setup for both the networks and the server solutions. I realized that we had one gifted individual on the network side who didn't understand what to do with the servers, so someone with an all-around perspective in terms of interacting with the IT ecosystem would allow you to set up the solution properly.

Because of its inability to monitor mobile solutions, I would rate this solution as a seven out of ten. 

SolarWinds AppOptics does far more than what an individual may realize. It is not just a SIEM tool.

I have found the most valuable feature is application performance management.

I would like to see more integration with other tools that are available on the market.

I have been working with SolarWinds AppOptics for the past eight years now.

SolarWinds AppOptics is a stable solution.

There is scalability with SolarWinds AppOptics.

For our organization, I found the initial setup simple.

I believe the current licensing cost is reasonable.

If the administrative side is doing a good job implementing the right modules, and configuring the right tools within SolarWinds AppOptics then all will be well. I would rate SolarWinds AppOptics a nine out of ten.

The primary use case of this solution is for the net op teams. Some teams also use it for the servers or even the applications, but the focus is more on the network team. 

This solution is mostly deployed on-prem. 

Some of the most valuable features of SolarWinds are the topology discovery and network performance analysis. 

The most important thing is the pricing should be improved. The licensing scheme is based on the number of elements, whereas compared to other solutions, they're already shifting ahead and moving to node-based, which is practically easier. 

In terms of the technology, I think they need to put some more advanced troubleshooting into SolarWinds, in terms of AI capabilities. That's the next generation, especially in the cases of APIs which have already adopted AI capabilities into their products. 

We have been working with SolarWinds for over five years. 

This solution is stable. 

The scalability of this solution is quite good. We have several customers ranging from 100 to 700 nodes for SolarWinds. 

The support is not too bad, but also not very good—it's quite standard. I forget the last time I contacted SolarWinds, but their support is standard, in terms of the response time and the quality of the support engineers. 

The installation is quite straightforward. The basic one takes between two to three days. The implementation time ranges between one and a half to two months, the longest time we need for solving. 

We implemented this solution ourselves. 

Mostly, it's a perpetual license. We don't have any customers using the subscription right now—it's mostly a perpetual license that the customers purchase. The licensing is based on the number of elements, whereas other solutions are node-based. 

In terms of APM, we used to have CA products, but I think we switched to Dynatrace. Of the SolarWinds products, we have one especially for laptop monitoring, and we have the SAM as well, but we don't put too much focus on that feature. 

I rate SolarWinds an eight out of ten, specifically for the NMS. I recommend this product to others, especially for network teams. 

We are using AppOptics to monitor our servers and applications. It looks at the logs and the other data that is available in the environments that we want to be monitored.

The user interface is very good.

AppOptics would benefit from having a much more centralized view. Rather than having to use several applications such as Papertrain, Loggly, and NPM, just have one main application wherein you can get all of the logs and other information about the server. This would allow us to more quickly dig down into the system, in more detail.

Adding more widgets to the interface would make it a richer environment.

My company has been using AppOptics for a long time.

We have had some minor issues where the data is not picked up, although it is pretty good.

The whole company uses AppOptics. I do not know how many people are in different teams, although I can say that we have fewer than 100 users. The teams that use it are the infrastructure team, the application development team, and the monitoring teams.

We spoke with AppOptics about wanting to scale and they were willing to give us a deal.

Technical support is always live and they're supportive. I would say that they are both responsive and helpful.

The initial setup is straightforward.

Our in-house team handled the deployment. One or two people in the DevOps team are responsible for maintenance.

My advice for anybody who is implementing AppOptics is to contact technical support when you begin deployment. They will explain how everything works and you can install right away. It is easy to start.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

I used the solution for monitoring servers and network equipment.

The product has a great dashboard.

The solution should be more user-friendly.

I used the solution for a few years.

The product was stable.

Five people were using the solution in our organization.

The initial setup was not complex.

I deployed the solution.

My organization does not use the solution anymore. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution to bring up all the inventory information used for the whole deployment. The tool was extensively used. We used to use this solution for managing our service management portfolio. 

The reporting of the solution is very good.

The implementation needs improvement. It needs to get modernized with the newer cloud scenario in both public and private deployment models.

This is especially true on the reporting side of it. It has to get integrated with tools like Power BI. That way, we can create our own customized viewer screens that help our management. It has to really network with Magic Quadrant.

Performance monitoring ability would be a good idea to improve within the solution. It would really help.

I've been using the solution since 2015 or 2016.

The solution has been very stable. I haven't witnessed any bugs, glitches or crashes.

The solution is scalable. We have a pretty big operation to scale and we also used a cloud to have the data center moved. The scalability was useful to us at the time.

Our user base is about 100 people from the IT department largely.

We've never been in touch with technical support.

We didn't previously use a different solution.

The initial setup was a bit of a challenge. When we are using the tool, we have to get permissions within that IP, particularly for all the ports that need to get opened up. That is something that was very time consuming when we originally deployed.

It's best to install the solution with the assistance of consultants or integrators in order to get the clarity you need.

We didn't look at other vendors before choosing this solution. Once we started looking into and experimenting with this solution, we realized we didn't need to.

When we're moving from on-premises to the cloud, we really would like to know what others are doing so that we're better prepared for the shift. That's something we're working on right now. With the cloud becoming popular and having higher demand, once the solution has modernized the ability to migrate and to set the cloud up, it will be great.

Our program management team and steering committee are really interested in knowing how real day-to-day operations are affected by this solution and what the cost factor is. We'd like to understand a bit better in financial terms how the solution is impacting our business. Right now, we don't have that available to us.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

Heat Maps, Stack traces, and Pathview Monitoring (load speeds from various locations)

We utilize various parts of the tools (from Stack traces detailing service call counts and timelines; to error tracking) to help improve overall site functionality as well as site reliability.

Added functionality for filtering and display results would be a nice addition.

AppNeta has been in use for around a year and a half.

We have had a few minor issues with deployments communication with the reporting server. But product support has been extremely fantastic in helping resolve issues as soon as they arrise.

We had a stability issue with a portion of the installation (Sequencer) when it was first introduced and have chosen not to install that specific function.

No, scalability is very easy.

Customer service is exceptional. They are very much in tune with our service needs and are always in contact for both enhancement requests and overall satisfaction.

Technical support is excellent. On the few instances of having to use support, they have been helpful and have communicated very well until the issue was resolved.

We used to use New Relic but switched for pricing and functionality issues.

Initial setup is very straightforward and very well documented. We were up and running on a dozen servers within the first few hours.

All in house.

With minimal effort on our part, TraceView provides extraordinary visibility into the requests that flow through our SOA applications. The causes of performance issues and bottlenecks have become trivial to find.

Product reliability has been improved, allowing more time to be spent on features as opposed to maintenance/fires.

I'd like to see the ability to use other internal instrumented applications as filters in the overview/aggregation screen.

I've used it for two years.

We did not encounter any issues with deployment. With minimal effort we were able to automate all deployment via Puppet and use APIs for all administrative interactions for tasks, such as registering new apps and hosts.

The product has been very stable for us.

We haven't had any issues scaling up as the product supports our hundreds of applications.

Customer service has been excellent and answers are concise and prompt.

Technical support has been amazing, bugs are quickly fixed in weeks or less depending on the severity, many feature requests have been accepted and implemented in the short term.

Our in-house similar solution was dropped in favor of an external vendor. The product is not driving our revenue, so it was considered a better choice to pay a recurring fee and have all developers creating features for our customers.

The product is not overly complicated and consists of a few packages (eg, .rpms) to install along with a Java command line option for each application. The on-host configuration is flexible enough for automated environments to take control as necessary.

We implemented it with our in-house team.

We did not calculate an ROI.

Pricing and licensing seem on par for the product space.

New Relic was also examined.

The products in this space are targeted at slightly different niches. TraceView, for example, is aimed for shops with a large SOA-style footprint with many small interconnected apps. Be sure to know what you need when shopping around.

Agentless, real-time monitoring of networks and applications.
Identify hop-by-hop network performance.
Monitor end-to-end performance through service-provider MPLS clouds or on private networks.
Hosted service with minimal configuration required.

Uses "micro-appliances" which must be installed onto the network.
Does not perform traditional SNMP/CLI/NetFlow/WMI etc monitoring.

AppNeta provides a range of products, all based around intelligent network testing algorithms. PathView cloud is their hosted service, relying on miniature plug and play network devices which phone home to the cloud service.
The "micro-appliances" are actually network sequencers which generate network traffic, then record and process the results. The general idea is to target an end-device (server, router, etc), with the intent of measuring the path between the micro-appliance and the end-device.
The application is designed to monitor network paths, not necessarily devices so won't replace your NMS. But, it does a surprisingly good job of detecting network capacity, as well as potential problems with a path.