Zenoss Service Dynamics Reviews

I primarily use the solution for monitoring the network infrastructure and the operator platforms. The last implementation I did was for the user experience. 

It can also be used as a data center, similar to a virtual machine. Some users use Zenoss only for seeing everything on specific types of devices. They see only certain devices like operating systems and network communications, for example.

The solution has a variety of great features.

The dashboard is excellent. With it, I can see everything from one place. It gives me a full picture of my networks and I can quickly see if there are any trouble areas to note.

The user experience is excellent.

Within the solution is a piece of software called Twill, which is very good. It's like dynamic monitoring. Twill provides a great user experience. I can put the URL from a website and I can send the user and password on that. 

Overall, it's a great solution, and I consider it to be one of the best.

The initial setup is very easy.

The product offers good documentation that helps with initial training.

If Zenoss tries to change Twill from what it is now to another kind of solution, such as Selenium or something similar, it would be nice.

It would be nice if the ZenPack could work but with fewer features. That said it's a problem not from Zenoss. It's a problem from the ZenPack itself.

There's a bit of a learning curve when you first use the solution.

The product needs to be a bit better in terms of auditing features.

It would be ideal if the product offered sound alerts. If you have, for example, 10 monitors with a lot of batch alerts and you have it working with your computer, sometimes you will see the dashboard. However, if you could listen instead, and be alerted by the noise, you can raise your head easily look at your monitor, to see the problem. That's why I put in sound within my operating system. That is the only feature that I could never find in Zenoss.

I've been using the solution for a few years at this point. I've been using the solution for two or three years now.

I had a community ZenPack that started to eat through my RAM, and I did not know why. I removed it - which was a very easy process - and then went to the official ZenPack store and put in my samples and it worked fine after that. I'm not sure why I had that initial experience. 

The scalability is very good. I can grow my site to suit any data center that I need.

I can have Zenoss in one data center, for my primary data center, and then I can deploy another one in another data center. I don't need a second Zenoss in that other machine. I use the same solution. On top of that, I can see all my devices in one dashboard for both data centers.

I can grow up very, very fast. 

We have maybe 15 users of this product in my organization.

I've only used technical support one or two times as I was having a bit of trouble with official ZenPacks. I sent an email with my case. I received a case number and the response was very fast. In less than one week, or five days, I received the new ZenPack with the features that I needed for my specific devices. The support was very good and the service was only a few days or more. In Zenoss, support is fast and strong and works very well.

I've used the solution for about a year now, and therefore I don't find the implementation to be complex. It's very straightforward, actually.

The cloud solution can be a little hard if you don't know Zenoss. However, for me, it's very simple, and I can deploy a Zenoss environment in a couple of hours. When I first started about three years ago, it could take me as long as three days.

The first step was to deploy the virtual machine.  Then you need to deploy the software, and then you need to deploy all the dashboards and all features that you need. That is a little complicated as you need to understand how Zenoss works.

Now, however, in the cloud solutions and hybrid models on cloud nodes or in side nodes, it's a little different due to the fact that you have a controller and you have the client's deployment in certain parts. Still, it's very, very easy to deploy as you put the controller software in one machine and you put the nodes in the other machines. Then, you only need to select your features. The features now are also all-inclusive.

The ZenPacks, the backup servers, are for also perfect all kinds of devices that I use.

The product offers both a community and enterprise-level version. I've deployed both.

I'm using the latest, the most updated version of the solution.

I'm an administrator of this solution within my organization.

I would recommend this solution to other organizations. I'm a big believer in the product and I've even written papers on the solution.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten. I really do love the product.

We use Zenoss Service Dynamics to monitor our customers. We use it to monitor the devices we manage, and also use it to generate reports, and alerts, and also use it for larger assets.

What I like most about Zenoss Service Dynamics is that it monitors the devices and gives close to real-time alerts. For example, in case the device is not available, Zenoss Service Dynamics generates an alert so my team can resolve the issue.

As Zenoss Service Dynamics is more for network-centric devices and you want to monitor, for example, a server, its services, IP addresses, and interfaces, if it's a network and you're going to monitor multiple items, you'll be charged multiple times. This is what Zenoss Service Dynamics needs to improve to make sure that customers pay just one fee to monitor the entire server.

What I'd like to see in Zenoss Service Dynamics in the future is a public cloud monitoring feature, particularly for the Azure public cloud. Another additional feature I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is integration with the Azure public cloud because I know that there are some services from Azure that Zenoss Service Dynamics is currently unable to monitor.

In my current team, I've been using Zenoss Service Dynamics for seven years. My team's always using this solution. I've also used Zenoss Service Dynamics in my previous team, so I've been using it for more than ten years.

Zenoss Service Dynamics is a very stable solution. On a scale of one to five, I would rate it a four or a five.

Zenoss Service Dynamics is a scalable solution, but every time we have new devices to monitor, we need to buy ZenPacks that may not cover every feature we need. Zenoss Service Dynamics is quite scalable, but not to the point that meets the current market for public cloud.

I wasn't the one who set up Zenoss Service Dynamics, in particular, the entire vendor system. It's a little bit complex, but in terms of setting up the agent to monitor devices, it's pretty easy. It took a week or so to set up the entire vendor system.

I wasn't familiar with the implementation strategy for Zenoss Service Dynamics because it was implemented before I joined the company.

We implemented Zenoss Service Dynamics in-house.

I've seen ROI from Zenoss Service Dynamics, in particular, my company spends on the monitoring system to provide managed service for customers, and this product is doing its job, or what it's supposed to do. My company can pick up any alert, issue, and any potential device that's down, and can address it in time, so customers stay with my company, and that's ROI to me.

There are additional costs you'll have to pay apart from the license fee for Zenoss Service Dynamics. I can't remember exactly how much my company is paying because I don't handle the finance part, but the cost is paid annually. On a scale of one to five, with one being the cheapest and five being the most expensive, I'm rating the solution three out of five.

I'm not sure which version of Zenoss Service Dynamics my company is using because I don't use it for hands-on work. It's a solution I have for customers, but my company keeps the product updated with renewed license, so it's either the latest version or the version before it.

My team has its instance, apart from the instance of other teams or departments, so thousands of people use Zenoss Service Dynamics in my company. Engineers and people in operations use the solution for onboarding devices and monitoring managed devices. As for deployment and maintenance, twenty people from IT handle that for the entire company.

My advice to people looking into implementing the solution is that it's pretty good if you want to have a centralized monitoring system. It's good to use, but of course, different portals would have different features, so it would still depend on what you want. For my company, Zenoss Service Dynamics does its job, so I would recommend others to use it.

I'm rating Zenoss Service Dynamics seven out of ten. It does its job and provides the functions and features for monitoring devices. You can configure it and integrate it, so it does its job, but some features can still be added to it or improved in it, so you can start monitoring different services from different service providers.

My company just uses Zenoss Service Dynamics. It's not being sold by my company.

In one use case, a client organization launched a website for people to pay their taxes on the web.

They had a lot of crashes and a lot of troubleshooting. Then, with this solution, they can have one million users at the same time with no crashes. That's really changed the use of the platform. There's no troubleshooting, no bugs, no anything. However, on the off chance that they have something, they are directly notified by a message or a text message, so it's easier for them to deal with issues.

It's easy to use.

You can use it across various clouds (such as Azure and AWS).

Zenoss is one of the most complete monitoring tools on the market.

Technical support is good and can support in multiple languages.

The stability is good.

It can scale. 

The AI aspect needs to improve. Most of the clients go to see the competition and hear about their AI offering and this solution lacks that.  

I've been dealing with the solution since February.

It's stable. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

The scalability is good. We won't have any issues scaling it. 

Right now, a team of ten is using the solution. The largest the team got was up to 18 or 20 people. We have IT network engineers, IT managers, and also the CIO on the product. However, most of them are really infrastructure and network engineers.

Sometimes when the company grows up and develops itself, they want to extend the solution to other departments, other subsidiaries, et cetera. There's always a chance for increased usage.

Technical support is great. In Morocco, we can get both English and French support and find them to be very helpful. 

I did not previously use a different solution. 

We also resell the Dynatrace product.

The initial setup is not overly complex or difficult. 

The length of the deployment depends on the size of the infrastructure. It can go from three days to three months, something like that. The bigger the environment, the longer it takes. 

You only need one person to deploy and maintain the solution. We use an
IT expert and he delegates the smaller task to engineers, to junior engineers.

The clients don't set it up. We set it up for them. We have experts on the tool, so it's not a problem at all for us to dive in and do the implementation.

We've seen an ROI. For example, with our company, we've made two million dollars in profit in a year dealing with Zenoss.

The licensing is charged on a yearly basis. The pricing depends on the environment, the number of services, and the size of the data center. It can go from $100,000 to a million dollars.

There are some plugins that they add. For example, the APM, and the other models, we can add to the environment to meet specific needs.

I'm not usually in a position to evaluate other options. I don't handle that aspect. 

I'm a reseller. I don't use the solution personally. The technical feed is not my part. I'm just more the one who takes the meeting with the client and I leave the technical part to my partner.

There are different deployment options. For the public sector, it's generally on-premise. The banking sector is usually on the cloud. It really depends on the environment of the clients or what kind of infrastructure they have. For the cloud, typically AWS or Azure is used. 

If you have a big environment, it's really the tool that is really suitable for your environment. However, if you have a small environment, it's useless. If you have one or two services, it's just too big.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.