Likelihood to Recommend As I said before, not only for Spectrum, but for any monitoring tool, you need to know what is critical in your environment and think about how exactly you should monitor and treat it. If you have done that, everything will work just fine.
Well Suited - Networking Monitoring Less Appropriate - When you need to customize some monitoring and to update the version Read full review We used a product before that was designed to prevent users making changes and saving files to the desktop computer. This required a renewal of the license. By using SCCM in our environment we were able to discontinue using that product because SCCM allows us to completely restore a machine back to the original configuration. We have taught our users to save their individual work on either a network drive or a cloud drive. By doing this, if we do a re-image of their machine they have lost no data, and it makes for a faster resolution. In some instances having a computer in our SCCM environment it can become cumbersome when creating new users for very specific purposes. It can be done by creating new organizational units and applying new policies but when in a pinch it can be frustrating. For the most part we have tried to make "new" purpose images and groups to at least accommodate a quick install.
Read full review Pros Polling and traps can be configured to take heartbeats at specified intervals and notify on an event in real-time, respectively. Topology of devices gives a high-level overview of network architecture. Discovery of devices is simple and secure with the use of community strings. Details can be added per device or alarm type for actions to be taken to make troubleshooting easier. Read full review Provides our users the ability to deploy and manage our own datacenter based on defined software with understandable solutions for storage, compute, networking and security. We are able to update at once all the computers from all departments without having to install the OS on every computer. It allows us to have everything in one place for database management and datacenter inspection as well. Read full review Cons Read full review Needs web based storefront for requesting new software Needs ability to manage the packaging work flow better Sometimes is slow to download and there is no indication the entire catalog is being loaded, resulting in confused users not being able to find common software in the available list. Read full review Usability It is not user-friendly for the most part. With IT infrastructure, sometimes it cannot handle excess requests. Every few months, you will need an upgrade in terms of server resources to keep up with incoming alerts and requests. This does not happen all of the time, but it does happen when there are too many requests.
Read full review Support Rating If I had to dislike something about the system it would be how much it changes once you upgrade. This could be more of a problem of mine since I get used to one way and don't like it when it changes so much. I am enjoying the newest update, but it is a mess when you are actually going through the upgrades.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Other tools I have used are more server/application-centric. CA Spectrum seems to work effectively and efficiently for network devices. Notification delays can be set to grant grace periods in case of network blips or false positives, which occur ALL the time. Other monitoring tools send event notifications immediately and would clear instantly, which while on-call can wake a technician for no reason.
Read full review We previously used a mix of FOG and Clonezilla to image machines. The biggest issues with these products is that changing one piece of the image required you to rebuild the entire image itself. These pieces of software also did not allow you to manage applications and Windows Updates, causing IT to have to constantly touch machines after they were imaged and update or manage them with a much more hands on approach.
Read full review Return on Investment Proactive monitoring for networking To many times to plan an update Read full review We have been able to automate our patch management, firmware and other security concerns. We have a standardized "image" ensuring our setup is consistent across the enterprise. This alone has saved us in time to support and time to understand how to use our desktops. Read full review ScreenShots