Likelihood to Recommend It [SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM)] is well suited for small to medium sized companies who want to enhance and ease up their daily work. As well as it is suited for organized structures, it has its problems with very complex environments. For example, if you are working with direct and multiple permissions instead of having more granular group based permissions.
Read full review Netwrix [Auditor] is a great tool for any SysAdmin no matter the company size. Licensing is determined by users, not employee count, and that makes it a great product from a small business to an enterprise application. The time savings coupled with the increased productivity is a key factor is determining this tool over other products.
Read full review Pros SolarWinds Access Rights Manager is easy to set up and configure. We had the first report generated in a few hours. The automated feature for the reports is great. We just set it and forget it and now the reports get emailed on schedule. Read full review Netwrix Auditor performs the audit collection process in a method that does not burden the systems it is auditing. It usually just pulls the log and event logs data from the machine it is auditing and then performs the extraction of the information in these files on the Netwrix Auditor server. This reducing the audit processes to only pulling log data from the server but does not keep the server busy processing the data. Once the log data has been pulled from a server being audited, Netwrix will store the log data in a compressed form in its Long Term Archive. This allows the database to be kept smaller than the all the data being kept in the Log Term Archive and therefore makes creating reports much faster since the database is not as big as it could be. Since Netwrix Auditor uses standard Microsoft SQL Server and SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) to perform reporting, working with the results of the audit is much easier. Anyone who knows SQL Server and SSRS can work with the data and create their own reports. The predefined reports that come with Netwrix Auditor cover most of the items required to properly report on the status of a system. They have many predefined reports for FedRamp, PCI, HIPPA, and other compliance regulations. Read full review Cons Licensing model when we changed over to SolarWinds was [I feel] a nightmare. It needs to be more streamlined and SolarWinds needs to understand what their customers require. When we changed over to SolarWinds we found it very hard to get answers to what modules we were still licensed for. Our current system is not functioning. We can't login to the application with the accounts we created that were working. The error that appears doesn't help to resolve it. So at present we just renewed licenses for this year and we can't use the system. Read full review There is a bit of a learning curve. The interface is fairly intuitive, but I think there is room for improvement. There is a LOT of functionality which can be quite overwhelming at first, but in and of itself, not a bad thing. I think this software would benefit from a "Simple" mode and "Advanced" mode. This would ease the learning curve a bit. Matt Rogers Information Technology and Web Support Specialist
Read full review Likelihood to Renew It is in place and working. No time or money to consider anything else.
Read full review We have renewed already the licensing of the product minus SQL Server and Oracle Database because the organisation believes the modules are very expensive and have identified a different product for auditing Databases Other modules are very important like the User Activity monitor, AD queries that we can not get from the native AD itself or you have to run complicated powershell scripts! Easy to use interface Pre-defined Reports Easy way to subscribe to important alerts e.g Privilege account group membership changes
Read full review Usability End user experience is much better than administration
Read full review The product has user friend pre-defined queries which takes off the stress and horrors of having to query Active Directory with complex Powershell scripts! You can subscribe to certain functions when they are done and you get an alert e.g privileged accounts actions and you don't need to have programming skills The product has a desktop version of the software and donot have to login to the server all the time you need to use it. You can see very fast the posture of your environment of the overview screen and deduce what exactly is wrong and what has to be done
Read full review Reliability and Availability On occasion the server will need to be restarted to get things running again
Read full review Performance Satisfactory performance
Read full review Support Rating Very slow response times and sometimes I found the solution and ended up sharing it with support
Read full review Customer support has always been fast and helpful when we run into any issues. The smaller issues are usually resolved within a day or two. It is great support and I feel like I am in good hands anytime an issue comes up. However, we don't run into many issues
Read full review Implementation Rating It was my first exposure to this type of product and I wasn’t given the time to figure out how best to implement it. I would say get a plan together of what you are tying to accomplish first
Read full review Make sure you trial the software and understand the fundamentals of each module that you are interested in Make sure you get the buy in from both Management and most importantly your team members (the product users) for a successful implementation Watch the webinars of the product from the product website
Read full review Alternatives Considered I found the installation and configuration to be much easier and more straightforward. What also assisted in the decision to go with Access Rights Manager, was the fact we already made use of Solarwinds products. Knowing from previous experiences with their support staff, meant we knew how great their after-hours support was whenever we had any technical issues with the platform. We felt it would be better to keep it all under one roof so to speak
Read full review I can only compare it to SolarWinds. Their similar products have larger foot prints and seem a little clumsy in comparison. The Netwrix product turns on a lot of the auditing options that were required for the product to work properly where it seemed I had to do a lot of manual tweeking with the SolarWinds product.
Read full review Scalability No experience with this
Read full review Return on Investment Team leads recieve automated reports of permissions within their team, and it allows them to proactively audit their team members Security specialists have really clear dashboards to audit individuals We can be sure we never leave a permission open after a person leaves Read full review 2 men 4 four rule is eliminated. System administrators are on their toes now and very attentive before performing and change. Change management is followed properly. Compliance is implemented as it should be. Housekeeping of servers is done. AD users maintained well. Read full review ScreenShots SolarWinds Access Rights Manager (ARM) Screenshots Netwrix Auditor Screenshots