Sysdig Monitor Reviews

Sysdig Monitor has become essential for overseeing a vast array of hosts and EC2 instances across our environment. We initially tried Grafana, but it fell short in operational capabilities. Managing multiple instances of a self-hosted Grafana setup led to operational overload and high S3 costs. We needed a managed solution with robust host monitoring, and Sysdig Monitor delivered just that.

Since our infrastructure was based on Prometheus, it was crucial that the new tool support Prometheus metrics to simplify our transition. Sysdig Monitor fit the bill perfectly, making our migration and dashboard setup seamless. Managing between 1,000 to 1,500 nodes, we operate on a substantial scale.

We started using Sysdig Monitor for host-based monitoring and have since expanded to track application-specific metrics by having applications expose their custom metrics. This feature has been incredibly useful, and the anomaly detection and Cost Advisor tools have helped us pinpoint excessive spending and resource overuse effectively.

Decreased operation cost and improved the quality of monitoring 

Sysdig Monitor’s standout feature is its user-friendly dashboards, which simplify the learning curve. The support for Prometheus-based queries is another major plus, easing the transition for those moving from open-source Prometheus solutions. This compatibility means there’s minimal vendor lock-in, allowing for easy migration back to open source if desired.

The ability to transition seamlessly was crucial for us, as Sysdig supports all Prometheus metrics. Moving our dashboards from Grafana was straightforward, mostly requiring simple copy-paste of queries, which minimized the workload on our engineering team.

Sysdig Monitor has significantly reduced our operational costs and improved system monitoring. Previously, using Grafana, we had separate S3 buckets for numerous stacks, leading to high costs and operational challenges—often missing alerts from internal monitoring failures. Switching to Sysdig provided all the benefits of a managed solution, with far less effort. The dashboards are reliable and available whenever needed, and the responsive support team has boosted developer confidence. The alerting system has been particularly effective in trimming costs and reducing the operational burden.

Sysdig Monitor could be improved, particularly regarding application monitoring. There are specific areas or features where improvement is needed, specifically in application-level monitoring. While other monitoring solutions provide APM capabilities, Sysdig Monitor does not and targets only host-based monitoring.

Many applications require APM support, and we want to introduce OpenTelemetry into some applications to gain more insights, but with Sysdig Monitor, we could not implement this functionality, so we have to opt for solutions from other vendors for those applications.

Beyond the APM and OpenTelemetry support limitations, I would appreciate seeing Sysdig Monitor offer a unified solution for all monitoring needs, including logging as well, eventually bringing  whole observability under one roof. That would be ideal.

I have been using Sysdig Monitor for more than three years.

Sysdig Monitor is stable.

never had an issue with scalability with more than 1500 nodes across different regions

The support team deserves highlighting. When we were onboarding during our initial days for the first couple of years, the support team was exceptionally responsive. If we contacted them, we would receive a response within minutes, and they would help fix any issue. Even when we had ideas or when the dashboard was not supporting something, we could talk to the team, and they would ensure they put it on their roadmap to implement if it made sense. I appreciate that approach, as it was quite helpful in various ways.

The customer support is exceptional. Initially, when we were setting up, we had a dedicated person who was extremely responsive. Any issues could be resolved without raising a ticket, and a quick message on Slack would get a reply in five minutes. Once we were settled, the need for specific support decreased, but the support team remains very responsive compared to other tools.

We previously used a self-hosted Grafana and Prometheus-based solution. We switched because of operational issues, including frequent failures of the pods, which created a significant operational burden.

straightforward and the support is there to help at every step

with the help of the support team its super easy to onboard

I do not have perfect examples to share regarding return on investment, but I can say that features in Sysdig Monitor, like the Advisor feature, provide a helpful dashboard for an on-call engineer to understand how the environment is performing. Since the operational costs are very low, we hardly need to monitor them, which is acceptable. It runs in an autopilot mode.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was good. Before moving forward with Sysdig Monitor, we analyzed many other tools, and the costing was more transparent and significantly better than what other competitors offer. The cost is reasonable, and the exceptional support from the Sysdig Monitor team made it easier to get it set up and running.

Before choosing Sysdig Monitor, I evaluated some options, including monitoring tools from IBM , DataDog and Dynatrace

While I do not have a specific percentage, I have noticed a significant reduction in operational costs since we do not have to manage any self-hosted tools. Managing Sysdig Monitor is straightforward, and one standout feature compared to other monitoring tools is its transparency. There are no hidden costs, so you can expect the costs upfront without surprises.

My advice for others looking into using Sysdig Monitor is to proceed if their requirement is primarily for host-based monitoring, as that has worked well for us. However, it depends on individual needs. Some may prefer a solution that covers everything, such as logging and APM capabilities, which might not be suitable for their organization.

Our company does not have a business relationship with Sysdig Monitor other than being a customer. I would rate this product a nine out of ten.

During my undergraduate studies, I investigated how the frequency or order of actions within a specific system triggered events on our website. To achieve this, I effectively used Sysdig Monitor to track the health of my containerized environment, essentially acting as a central monitoring station within the container.

Sysdig Monitor does not have a steep learning curve.

Sysdig Monitor impressed me with its in-depth visibility into my infrastructure. It treats my entire computer like a container, allowing me to drill down from the host level to a specific process. I can then examine detailed information about that process, including individual system calls, their timestamps, and even their frequency within a chosen timeframe.

I needed to identify the sequence and frequency of system calls for a specific system. Sysdig provided this information readily. However, analyzing frequency proved more challenging. As far as I know, Sysdig Monitor lacks functionality to directly obtain system call frequency for certain files. Therefore, I had to capture a screenshot of the relevant data from Sysdig Monitor and then manually extract the text. A built-in Sysdig feature to retrieve system call frequency for specific website actions would greatly enhance its usefulness.

I had difficulty installing Sysdig Monitor on Windows.

I have been using Sysdig Monitor for one year.

Sysdig Monitor's stability is generally good, but sufficient memory on the host machine is crucial for its smooth operation.

Sysdig Monitor is easy to deploy.

Sysdig Monitor is not expensive.

I would rate Sysdig Monitor eight out of ten.

Our organization had two users who utilized Sysdig Monitor.

Compared to other monitoring solutions, Sysdig provides a better view of the sequence.

While Sysdig Monitor offers easy setup on Linux, I encountered errors on Windows initially. To avoid these potential issues, I recommend starting with the Linux version for a smoother first-time experience. 

We use it monitor production environment pods. The policies that we have applied allow us to avoid unwanted breaches. In case they happen, the pod is stopped/paused, and we can do forensics with captures taken when any breaches happen.

We rely on the policies that we have created to make decisions when there is a breach.

The ability to stop/pause and capture logs when something happens is the most valuable feature.

It is needs to automate the actions to take when an alert is triggered. 

It is a "new" product, so there are things missing (like the automation of actions when some policy is breached).

Docker containers are completely supported, kind of like "first class citizens".

Also, native support for Mesos, Marathon, AWS, K8s, and others.

Good monitoring of hosts' metrics (CPU, memory, etc.), great monitoring of containers over Mesos (taking into account resource limits), network traffic, and errors.

Not entirely user-friendly at first. It takes a bit of time to get used to the interface. Also, "Events" reporting (errors, crashes, etc.) is not clear at all in a Mesos environment (i.e., it's not clear what specific container is the one that went down). In a Docker Compose environment, it may be way better.

About one year.

Nodes and containers monitoring works out-of-the-box, by deploying a container in each node, possibly using Marathon.

In order to monitor masters, you need to manually run another container. Not a problem in itself, but not explained upon installation (had to contact support, and ask specifically about it, for them to "remember" that piece of information).

The Sysdig containers do log quite a bit, and over time may suck up some space. Take this into account when deploying (configure log rotation).

None.

Great. Always supportive and doing all they could to help out. Had a few calls and got to talk with an engineer about monitoring masters and such.