ScienceLogic Reviews

I use the solution for IT infrastructure monitoring, specifically in complex IT environments with enterprise-grade level solutions. If I were a small to medium business, I probably wouldn't choose this provider. It is a heavily configurable, heavyweight, and scalable IT solution for IT infrastructure monitoring.

The solution excels in three areas: application monitoring, server monitoring, and network performance monitoring. Adding server monitoring into that list is quite key. 

One of its biggest features is its coverage of all the public clouds, which is significant because it is mostly an on-premise hybrid technology. If I have a complex hybrid infrastructure, it can look across all the major public clouds and virtualization solutions. 

It accommodates VMware, Hyper-V, KVM, and even older storage arrays and video conferencing and wireless technology. The real strength lies in its ability to operate across multiple landscapes, both modern and old, facilitating all of them. A major benefit is eliminating visibility gaps, which motivates me to consolidate tools. 

It offers over 500 integrations with a wide range of device types, referred to as PowerPacks, which are prebuilt integrations for hundreds, if not thousands, of integration types.

Our usual use case of ScienceLogic is as a strategic monitoring tool for all the customers in our company, and because of that reason, all the accounts and projects are migrated from other monitoring tools to ScienceLogic. Before migrating from other monitoring tools to ScienceLogic, first, we need to build the database servers as well as collector servers. Once the setup is ready, we then need to build the onboarding for the devices.

Before onboarding any device into ScienceLogic, we need to check the prerequisites, such as whether ping is open from the collector to the endpoint server, whether Telnet is working, and whether WMI is open. These are the basic prerequisites that need to be met before onboarding any device into ScienceLogic. Once the prerequisites are met, we then go for onboarding. Before we onboard, we first need to build the device groups and create the credentials we are using, either Windows or Linux.

Additionally, we need to prepare the templates based on whether it is a Windows server or a Linux server, reflecting the dynamic application which is essentially a small script that helps collect information from the endpoint server. For instance, if it is CPU, the script connects to the server to capture the CPU metrics. Similar dynamic applications exist for disk memory and others, based on customer requirements. Once the template is ready, I will push that template to the server, and that's the basic onboarding. After onboarding, when the OS classification is prepared, such as Windows 2021 or 2019, we need to validate data collection issues and enable the alerting rules and configurations. Alerts can be directed to ServiceNow tickets or email notifications, and based on that, we need to create the alerting rules.

The features and capabilities of ScienceLogic that I have found the most valuable include its ability to monitor server metrics as well as application-level metrics, similar to other infrastructure monitoring tools in the market. While each tool has its capabilities, ScienceLogic stands as one of the tools that monitor the server and application metrics effectively. However, it is not as capable for OS cloud platforms like Azure and AWS, and even for Azure, we need to build the collector with multiple processes involved. In comparison, other monitoring tools such as LogicMonitor are designed specifically for cloud-based monitoring. When it comes to infrastructure-level monitoring, tools such as SolarWinds, LogicMonitor, Nagios, and Zabbix are limited to scripting.

The integration of ScienceLogic with our existing IT ecosystems has significantly benefited our organization, as all alerts now directly go to IBM Netcool and then to the ITSM tool, ServiceNow. Initially, all alerts went through email notifications to specific users, but once integrated with ServiceNow, all alerts automatically create tickets through IBM Netcool, which then are assigned to the relevant teams based on SLAs and which ensures immediate response without missing deadlines. In the previous setup, there was always the chance an email could be missed, hence the integration with the ITSM tool has improved our alert management.

The primary use case is mostly centered around monitoring infrastructure and management.

The CMDB update and the automatic CMDB update are valuable, along with the new function of Skyler.AI, where I can use JNEI PeerSpot's assistance.

When discussing network devices, for example. When you enable network monitoring, you should be aware of what is being monitored, such as devices, switches, and hubs. You must be aware in order to enable monitoring, but when you try to discover a device within ScienceLogic, it performs granular discovery. You don't have to worry about which location, site, place, or subset or subset of devices is installed or placed. It performs granular discovery. 

We know when we talk about certain appliances, such as XClarity or certain Cisco appliances or other appliances, many nodes or hub switches, servers, and devices are connected to a single hub in an appliance. When you find a specific appliance, it will perform a granular discovery until the last child is found. If you try to find a parent, it will only find up to the last child, which is not the case with other monitoring tools. This is one of ScienceLogic's best features.

This happened in our previous company's environment, they didn't have a proper inventory where they could have given us the details of devices, hubs, and switches, because if it's a large company with a large infrastructure, they rarely get to have an updated inventory. It is extremely difficult to obtain each and every inventory when working on such projects or transitions. That's when ScienceLogic came up with this granular discovery, in which it discovers each and every child within that specific parent, appliance, or device.

As a result, we were able to return a report. Essentially, ScienceLogic is used as a reporting tool. Instead of giving us the inventory, we ran a report after the entire discovery to show the customer, what they have in their environment that they were not aware of. It was a nice thing to boast about because they were unaware of their inventory, but we were able to provide them with that inventory.

Another application was to use ScienceLogic as a source of truth. When we say the source of truth, we generally refer to CMDB in large environments. When we go for ticketing or any kind of event management, it generally refers to the CMDB, pulls the data, pulls the server information, drags it to the ticketing into the system, and it provides all the details in the ticket.

But sometimes the CMDB is not updated, either because it requires manual updating or because someone is attempting to upgrade or update it through some script or something, and somewhere, there is a miss. However, when we use ScienceLogic as a source of truth, there is nothing to miss because whatever is discovered within ScienceLogic can be used as a source of truth. Essentially, ScienceLogic would have the information that CMDB does not have.

These were two cases, test cases, or things that we came across. And we were overjoyed to offer the customer the solution, that they could use ScienceLogic as a source of truth, instead of referring to CMDB. That's when we suggested that they integrate ServiceNow with ScienceLogic and use ticketing instead of a CMDB. At the time, we had completely removed CMDB. Maintaining CMDB is also an expense. We actually save the customer money with the help of ScienceLogic.

As I previously stated, as an example, ScienceLogic can help you save money. It is not necessary to monitor your environment with multiple tools and applications.

When it comes to business problems, the first thing that comes to mind is cost reduction. I believe that most companies have a CMDB, I believe that if you want to cut costs, that can be a very good business value. It adds monetary value to the company. That is one of the factors.

Another issue that arises in the course of doing business is billing. Billing the customer, and billing the client. ScienceLogic can be an excellent tool for taking out or reporting such inventory, KPIs, and so on. 

ScienceLogic can be used as a reporting tool.

When I was working as a transition manager, we had to create these reports every day after discovering certain devices. We had to create these pie charts, graph charts, and other graphics and then present them to the customer. We would tell the customer how many devices we had built, how many are being phased out, how many must be in place by next month, and how many have been temporarily shut down. It provided us with a comprehensive view of the entire infrastructure.

ScienceLogic is primarily a network monitoring tool. We used it alongside another tool. Initially, ScienceLogic was supposed to replace the old tool, but we used it for so long and never fully transitioned. ScienceLogic has a lot of benefits, with additional functionality through power packs and the ability to build things out manually. It is also more flexible than other tools but very manual to configure.

Initially, we received some help configuring ScienceLogic to monitor externally polling databases. ScienceLogic also combined that with its network device polling and gave us a complete picture. We had about 1500 branch locations and 100 on-premise network devices, so ScienceLogic was the tool that could merge those two worlds.

The best feature is the highly flexible graphs. If you have the time, the output allows you to input the precise information you want. In addition, the solution enabled us to make a single dashboard displaying about 12 vital statistics as we needed them.

It is also fairly extensible, and power packs are available. The modules slot in and extend the functionality. We had the most mileage out of monitoring UPSs, and power supplies in our data center.

We use the solution to monitor servers and DNSs.

The solution provides good infra-monitoring features. It sends me alerts.

We are using ScienceLogic for monitoring and orchestrating the remediation.

ScienceLogic has helped our company by monitoring. We have old tools we use and the functionality has been good.