Azure Network Watcher vs. PingPlotter

Azure Network Watcher is well suited to monitor or diagnose logs for azure virtual network, managing connection/relationship between virtual networks. Diagnose network traffic, network traffic etc. Overall, it is appropriate to use in monitoring, diagnostic and logging activities for resources in azure virtual network. It is mainly used in infrastructure as a service component.

Incentivized

It is well suited for performing monitoring and testing from a single device. It is less appropriate if you have to monitor from multiple different endpoints. That type of deployment would be more of an enterprise application. If you are looking for an end user monitoring solution then PingPlotter is the one for you.

Incentivized

• View resources and theri relationship
• Diagnose network routing problems
• View security rules for a network interface

Incentivized

• Monitor traffic in network
• Measure stops when contacting network locations such as websites
• Measures the lag and latency it takes to contact network locations
• Gives you both induvidual measurements as well as good oversight
• identifies when network lag or disconnect occurs

• More granular visualization through the Azure Network. Ex. Seeing NSG Flow through each Hop.
• Allow for more capabilities to view Connectivity through On-Premise Networks.

Incentivized

• Its a little confusing to see which targets are currently running pings and which ones are displayed in the plots.
• Starting and stopping pings requires a right click and that would be better with a play/pause button I think.
• Ability to drag and drop the graphs to reorder them.
• more columns to show which targets are running and which are displayed. Currently this is done with symbols so you cant sort by just the running targets for example I've found.

Incentivized

I have not had much contact with the PingPlotter support, only one time have I went to them and it was a positive experience. The questions I had were answered quickly and professionally. I have no issue with the experience I had with the Support team. This was from before and after the purchase of the product.

Incentivized

Azure Network Watcher can help with resources in the Cloud if this device is able to send traffic. We are using Azure Network Watcher in cases Solarwinds can't cover easily like API to load balancers & additional testing.

Incentivized

A balance of a generic tool vs a network equipment product is necessary when investigating network incidents or disruptions. Need to train the engineer to use both tools to perform their analysis and to dive down to the issues as fast as they can. Experience with the tools will continue to play a part if we were to adopt PingPlotter

Incentivized

• Positive impact as it helps in setting up critical alerts
• Monitoring network, hardware
• Customizable reports can be set which helps in business objective

Incentivized

• Great ROI, troubleshooting time has been reduced by 90%
• Network Discoveries used to take 2 to 3 hours and were inconsistent - now it is a matter of minutes
• lacks integration into our MSP toolkit, and we now use it as a stand alone product

Incentivized