Item: SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
Rating: 10
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We have around 200 servers in our network (physical and virtual) and we needed a way to monitor these for any issues. The answer to this problem was SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor which allows us to monitor applications for errors. It also provides us metrics, such as top processes which is very useful.

Pros and Cons

Monitor Azure Cloud Severs- We use SolarWinds SAM to monitor Active Directory and DNS on Several DCs published on Azure Cloud.
Monitor Hyper V and VMware - SolarWinds SAM monitors applications on both Hyper V and VMware, while also monitoring the physical host machines.
It also helps us monitor Warranty expiration for physical servers.

Server Warranty Information: We have had issues where the expiration date was wrong.

Return on Investment

Within Hyper V and VMware, we run several versions. So without SolarWinds SAM, we needed 5 different consoles to check our various VMs. Even with all 5 different tools, the data that was available for monitoring was nowhere close to the level of detail provided by SolarWinds SAM.
SolarWinds Server and Application Manager is essential to us as it gives us insight into applications and the servers that host the applications allowing us to be proactive instead of reactive.

Alternatives Considered

PRTG Network Monitor, Prometheus and Nagios Core

PRGT Network Monitor seems to be very good, initially, but, in our experience, when we reached close to 100 devices, the system kept crashing and behaving erratic. Prometheus was missing many features and required some CLI scripting and the GUI was years behind SolarWinds. The learning curve was higher whereas SolarWinds Nagios Core was more lightweight, but required scripting for everything that we wanted to add and monitor. It was not feasible for many servers and the learning curve was very high compared to SolarWinds.

Key Insights

Do you think SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor's feature set?

Yes

Did SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor again?

Yes

Other Software Used

SolarWinds IP Address Manager (IPAM), SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (npm), SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM), SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)

Likelihood to Recommend

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor is well suited for monitoring virtual machines. We have multiple VMs hosted between HyperV, VMware, and Azure. SolarWinds SAM brings the info from all these systems to one place so it simplifies the monitoring process. From this one page, we can view the top applications by CPU, response times, and memory among other things. SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor is used to track warranty expiration, but I would advise double-checking the dates when adding the devices to ensure that they are correct

Review of SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor

Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor