SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Reviews

The solution is used for infrastructure monitoring.

Identifying the problem statement is easy. However, we must also find out why the problem happened. The vendor has invested heavily. The solution has a lot of features. It is good. The incident response is connected to the ticketing system. I always ask my team to create their own dashboards.

The biggest pain point is root cause analysis. It is difficult to analyze, assess, and warn my IT department about what will happen in the next five hours. It is also difficult to use AIOps to reduce ticket size. The product does not explain why a problem occurred. It does not tell me how to stop it from happening again.

If the same problem happens consistently, we face productivity loss. There are ITES issues. It affects the other applications. We manage about 145 applications across 1000 servers. If we get a two-second delay in one hop, it will affect us a lot. We cannot tailor the tool for every situation. We cannot re-engineer the ports to suit the infrastructure.

The price is too high. The tool is overpriced. We don't need all the features. The product must minimize the features and reduce the price. It all comes down to pricing. The customers find it pretty costly. It costs us $100,000 to $400,000 per year.

I have been working on application performance and servers since 1992. One tool cannot solve all the problems. We have multiple tools to find the root cause. All application performance monitoring tools have basic features. Not many solutions have correlation features. It helps us understand what is happening and why a particular problem has been triggered.

I am well versed with other technologies similar to SolarWinds. I know SolarWinds could do better. If I knew only SolarWinds, then it would be amazing. The other tools are futuristic. I will recommend the tool depending on what the client needs. Overall, I rate the product a six out of ten.

I use SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor for network device monitoring and server monitoring.

The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is the network devices' performance monitor is the best. 

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve the server monitoring and the web application monitoring features are not good. Microsoft SCOM has better server monitoring.

In a future release of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor, they should add some additional features.

I have been using SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor for six years.

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is a stable solution.

The scalability of the SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is good. However, if we consider the resources that are required to monitor the servers at times it can be too much.

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve their customer service. The escalation procedure when raising a support case takes a very long time to respond. The engineer who is assigned to me for troubleshooting any issue does not give the required knowledge at the initial level. They will investigate for one to five days minimum. If they don't know the answer, they will escalate to the second-level support. This takes a lot of time. If an engineer or technical expert was in the first level of support he can troubleshoot the issue quickly.

I rate the support from SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor a two out of five.

Neutral

I have previously used Microsoft SCOM.

The initial setup of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is straightforward. We only need to make a design based on the infrastructure and applications we have. Then once we design the setup, we can deploy it.

We did the implementation ourselves. We need a lot of staff members for the maintenance of the SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor.

We are on an annual license to use the solution. The price of the solution is expensive. The price is based on a bunch of factors, such as the number of engines and elements.

I rate the cost of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor a one out of five.

I rate SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor an eight out of ten.

We use the product to monitor the server's health that includes hardware health like power supply, temperature, and other physical parameters and also performance parameters like CPU, memory, server network, etc. We also use it to monitor application health. 

The monitoring is covered under 3 aspects - 

Server Hardware Health

Server Performance Monitoring

Application Performance Monitoring (restricted to services, process)

I am impressed with the tool's AppStack feature which mainly helps us in the identification process. This feature can give an overview of the fault and help us identify the issues for performance degradation. Instead of looking at multiple places, we can look at a single place to identify the issues. 

The tool's AppStack needs to improve in the storage monitoring part. It should also include an analytics and recommendation approach. If I have found a fault in a server or application, I would like to know what caused it and how do I recover from it.

I have been working with the solution for over 6 years. 

The solution is stable. 

The tool is scalable and I have customers who use it to monitor around 2000 servers. 

Some resolutions require catering to the unique environment of customers and can take time. Otherwise, the tool's support is pretty good. 

Neutral

The tool's installation is easy and can be completed in a couple of hours. You need to plan and figure out what exactly would you like to monitor. For example, when a customer has 2000 servers, then you would need to find the application groups and define them. If a customer has a large web server environment then you need to create dashboards for the web administrators. The tool is flexible and allows you to do it. 

The solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money. 

I would rate the product an eight out of ten. 

SAM is an easy-to-deploy solution. You need to plan your monitoring strategy well because if you want to monitor a large number of servers, you need to plan and decide what exactly would you like to monitor. Because things can get pretty complicated, especially when it comes to application monitoring. The solution gives the flexibility to decide as to what you would like to do with their monitoring platform. You shouldn't go blind and say that I want to monitor everything.

We are only implementing the SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor functionality for every application which is going through migration. The solution monitors the client's full infrastructure, such as prod, non-prod, and QA. If the server is provisioned, you will see it in this solution.

The most valuable feature of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is its powerful monitoring capabilities.

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve by having a cloud version. They have an observability platform but it still needs to be maintained by us.

I have been using SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor for approximately two years.

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is not stable. We have to maintain the platform and it goes down frequently. If we have plenty of resources the solution has problems managing the load.

The scalability of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is good. We can add multiple scalable engines but they have performance issues most of the time.

I have not contacted the support for SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor.

The initial setup of the SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is easy. The full process of deployment took approximately three to four months. The amount of time it takes depends on the environment.

I did the implementation of the solution.

My advice to those new to the solution is they should be aware of all the templates that they provide. The template is one of the powerful aspects of this tool, it consists of all the monitoring requirements that anyone can have.

I rate SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor a nine out of ten.

I mainly use SolarWinds SAM for server and application monitoring, web URL monitoring, and performance and fault monitoring.

SolarWinds SAM has provided us with dynamic thresholds based on historical trends and requirements. The threshold gets configured automatically, so it's no longer necessary to configure it manually every time. Based on the historical data, and with the help of ML algorithms, the device is smart enough to find out when to add a CPU to the device and when to reallocate those resources again. For example, if the utilization always goes up on a particular day in the week, the system knows from historical data that this is happening, and it automatically increases the threshold or schedules the threshold accordingly.

SAM is missing code-level monitoring of applications and could be improved by adding detailed metrics in that area. SAM's software-defined network monitoring capability is also low and could be improved. In the future, I would like SolarWinds to add IoT functionalities.

I've been using this solution for five years.

SolarWinds SAM is stable and performs well.

SolarWinds SAM is easy to scale.

SolarWinds' technical support is good, but they could improve their turnaround time and the ease of their escalation points.

Positive

I previously used Zabbix, which is a freeware tool and therefore has limited functionalities compared to SolarWinds. It also does not have any vendor support or a proper channel to communicate to the vendor if something goes wrong.

The initial setup was complex as it was all a manual process. It had to be built from scratch, then all the devices needed to be onboarded and monitored before the matrices had to be configured on those devices. The amount of time taken would depend on the size of the infrastructure, including the number of devices that need to be monitored and what matrices are involved. A minimum of two months would be required to get everything installed and running well.

I used a vendor team.

SolarWinds have marketized their pricing, so it depends on the number of devices you have. For example, there's a specific price for zero to 100 devices, then another price for 100 to 300. There are also differences in pricing depending on which modules you want to include. I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market.

SolarWinds SAM is suitable for small to medium enterprises but not for large ones. I'd advise those implementing it to ensure things are configured properly and keep only what you require on the dashboards. I would rate SolarWinds SAM as seven out of ten.

We use the product for application and server monitoring. We use it to get information on web services, databases, and other applications we need to maintain.

SolarWinds is a very good solution. Features like monitoring and infrastructure dependency mapping are valuable to us. Infrastructure dependency mapping gives us a view of the networks connected with the applications and processes.

The product needs to reduce its price.

I have been using the solution for six years.

I rate the stability an eight and a half out of ten.

I rate the scalability an eight and a half out of ten. Around seven employees are using the product in our organization. Our customers are enterprise businesses.

The support is very, very good. In case there's any problem, we can contact support.

Positive

The initial setup is very easy. I rate the ease of setup a ten out of ten.

Deployment can take one to two weeks, depending on the customer’s requirements. We give customization documents to the customer and ask them questions about how they want to deploy and use the solution. Then, we request the customer for documents about the server and CPUs to deploy the solution. Before deploying the solution, we also confirm the features they want to install on the server.

I rate the pricing an eight out of ten. There are no additional costs associated with the solution.

I am using the version that was released before the latest version. The solution can be put on-premise or on the cloud. The product is set up for a lot of things. The product can be used depending on our area of interest, be it network, server, or application. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

We are using it for the monitoring of servers and applications. Currently, we are using version 2020.2.5.

Monitoring of processes and services is the most valuable feature. It is not necessarily just the server alone in terms of the CPU or the memory. We can go in-depth into services and processes.

Reporting is the only thing with which we currently have challenges. They have this in two ways. There is the report writer, which is the backend, and we also have web reports, which are on the console. So, they have removed the report writer for the backend reports, and we are making use of the web console, but most of the users are not finding it very interesting to use the frontend reports.

I would like them to bring back the report writer. That's the key area within it to improve on the reporting. If they can bring back the report writer, then most users will actually be comfortable. I have some customers who are trying to export their report to an Excel format, but it is not possible because they said any report that has been done from the web console cannot be exported to Excel, but most of the customers need to export their reports to Excel. That's one area they need to work on.

It has been close to six years now.

It is really stable. We're making use of a polling engine. When the customer site is experiencing some slowness of the console or the server, they'll know that they have overutilized the resources. So, we'll try to give them recommendations on what to do to make it better.

Its scalability is pretty good. There are a lot of users using SolarWinds. They are mostly financial institutions. We are trying to bring in more people to make use of the product. So, we try to do a comparison to what they have presently and how we can optimize for them.

It was pretty much straightforward. Anybody who doesn't understand the basics of SQL can make use of the backend, but you need to have a little bit of experience with SQL before you can use the frontend for the reports.

The deployment takes up to an hour. Normally, the installation part will take around 45 minutes to complete. When it comes to the configuration part, it takes time depending on the devices you want to onboard to SolarWinds.

I am a consultant, so I did the deployment. Its deployment and maintenance can be done by one person.

Its licensing is on a yearly basis. It is just the standard price, but it can vary depending on the current rate of the dollar.

I would rate it a nine out of 10 so that they improve on the report.

The application dependency feature identifies issues between applications and servers or within the network where the application is hosted. It highlights related problems, whether related to packet processing or other issues, enabling the creation of alerts and reports accordingly.

The current script monitoring feature has limitations, especially when dealing with custom scripts.

I have been using the product for six years. 

The tool is stable. 

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is scalable. My company has 25 users. If you have more than 25 users, then you need to purchase an enterprise console. 

The level of support provided by SolarWinds is contingent on the type of support plan chosen. The rating would be around seven to eight out of ten for premium support with response times of one to one and a half hours. However, given the faster response times, if a client opts for extended or premium support, the rating can go as high as nine out of ten.

The tool's initial deployment is easy. You can easily use the product with a day's training. 

On the customer portal, two types of training videos are available for users. One type includes pre-recorded videos providing a detailed overview of the platform's features. These videos are divided into three to four parts, each lasting around three to four hours. Users can invest their time in these sessions to understand the system's functions. I rate it an eight out of ten.