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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    F5 Beacon

    Score9.7 out of 10
    N/AF5 Beacon an open source tool used to gain full visibility across an application landscape, obtain app insights and business intelligence, and make better-informed decisions. With the Beacon Insight Engine, users can leverage pre-built insights or create custom insights. Beacon also integrates with many types of deployments across hybrid and multi-cloud environments—and provides a set of app stats in a simple SaaS model.

    $0

    Retrace (legacy)

    Score8 out of 10
    N/AStackify Retrace provides application performance management across the entire stack. Coupled with aggregated logs from common logging frameworks, find every exception in code. Retrace code with lightweight code profiling and track and monitor all key application and server metrics. The vendor states that with coverage for full lifecycle development, the Stackify Retrace software offering is tailored to be inclusive for multiple role types, and presents everything your team needs to know about…

    $99

    up to 3 servers, 500,000 traces, and 1,000,000 logs

    Pricing
    F5 BeaconRetrace (legacy)
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Essentials
    $99
    up to 3 servers, 500,000 traces, and 1,000,000 logs
    Standard
    249+
    2,000,000+ traces and 5,000,000+ logs
    Enterprise
    Custom
    Customer number of traces and logs
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    F5 BeaconRetrace (legacy)
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details—Pricing is based on trace and log usage.
    More Pricing Information
    Features
    F5 BeaconRetrace (legacy)
    Application Performance Management
    Comparison of Application Performance Management features of F5 Beacon and Retrace (legacy)
    Feature
    F5 Beacon
    9.7
    1 Ratings
    21% above category average
    Retrace (legacy)
    6.4
    1 Ratings
    20% below category average
    Application monitoring10.01 Ratings7.01 Ratings
    Database monitoring10.01 Ratings6.01 Ratings
    Threshold alerts10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Predictive capabilities10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Application performance management console10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Collaboration tools10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Out-of-the box templates to monitor applications8.01 Ratings6.01 Ratings
    Application dependency mapping and thresholding10.01 Ratings7.01 Ratings
    Virtualization monitoring10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Server availability and performance monitoring10.01 Ratings6.01 Ratings
    Server usage monitoring and capacity forecasting9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    IT Asset Discovery9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    F5 BeaconRetrace (legacy)
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    SolarWinds AppOptics
    Score7.6 out of 10
    SolarWinds AppOptics
    Score7.6 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Splunk AppDynamics
    Score8.5 out of 10
    Splunk AppDynamics
    Score8.5 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    F5 BeaconRetrace (legacy)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    F5 BeaconRetrace (legacy)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    F5
    It is very well suited in complex, multi-cloud application environments where it provides holistic, application-centric visibility by ingesting data from NGINX and other telemetry sources. It helps troubleshoot performance issues in high-availability and regulated environments where outages have a high impact on strict SLAs. It is less appropriate in situations where organizations rely on unmaintained or archived integrations.
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    If I need to change a logo design on the invoice, the new logo is slightly larger or smaller so the type below the logo is in a different area than before. In this case, you would need to load the new version of the document into APM Plus and redo the mapping of the field areas to properly grab the information needed to process the document. Without doing this, the document could fail or go to the wrong archive based on the fields.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    F5
    • It supports seamless multi cloud and hybrid monitoring with easy integration.
    • It provides actionable insights for faster troubleshooting.
    • It delivers comprehensive end to end application visibility.
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • Integration of performance management with log management so you get the parameters sent
    • In-line log and error data in trace
    • Integration of error and log data, so in one click you can see all the logs recorded when an error was thrown
    • Very reasonably priced
    Read full review
    Cons
    F5
    • F5 needs improvement in Platform Stability and Maintenance gaps.
    • It has limited built-in insights and relies heavily on customization.
    • Application modeling and data ingestion setup is complex.
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • To set up the fields that APM Plus monitors, you need to map each field area on each document.
    • APM Plus could use a way to link the documents back into the finance or business software so you can find the document under the PO, Sales Order, Invoice, etc.
    • APM Plus setup is only for the professionals. There are many areas that need tweaking on setup, having a better default setup would lessen the learning curve to set it up for use.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    F5
    The reason for the above rating is that F5 Beacon delivers clear visibility, helpful insights, and streamlined decision-making, which, in turn, translates into a better user experience. Beacon easily ingests telemetry from multiple sources, including NGINX, BIG-IP devices, and third-party platforms. The Beacon insight engine generates actionable recommendations and performs anomaly detection.
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    F5
    F5 Beacon is best for F5-centric, hybrid, app-centric visibility, whereas Datadog is best for cloud-native, distributed observability. F5 beacon is superior for understanding BIG-IP flows, WAF, ADC behavior at the app level. It has a unified view of F5-powered applications. F5 Beacon simplifies troubleshooting across multicloud F5 deployments. Beacon provides business logic level visibility.
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    It is a very impressive tool which doesn't overwhelm you with unnecessary data. They have combination of tools that haven't seen by any other company which makes it a very powerful tool
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    F5
    • Positive - It provides deep, application-centric visibility by aggregating telemetry from NGINX and other sources.
    • Positive - It improved decision making about scaling, security, and resource allocation.
    • Negative - Setup and Maintenance is a bit complex.
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • APM Plus has freed up users from having to manually attach documents to each place they are sending it. APM Plus will do it automatically.
    • APM Plus provides a searchable archive to re-visit sent documents with customers and vendors. Having to reprint a document you risk the potential that something has changed since it was last printed.
    • APM Plus does need IT staff for adjustments and to review sending problems. Not for an average user.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Retrace (legacy) Screenshots

    Screenshot of Detailed stack trace with inline error and logsScreenshot of Web Apps Dashboard:
The Apps Page gives you a high-level overview of all applications found and monitored across all servers in each environment. Click on any app to take you to the App Dashboard to view more information for a particular app.Screenshot of Apps Dashboard:
The App Dashboard is a powerful monitoring and troubleshooting perspective that gives you a view of application health across one or more environments.Screenshot of Performance (APM+) Dashboard:
The Performance section will give you a report of how well the application is performing overall, as perceived by your users.  A graph will allow you to view all requests by Satisfaction by viewing "Fast", "Sluggish", "Too Slow", or "Failed" types of requests.  Another report includes graphs of HTTP Error%, Satisfaction Score%, and Page Load Time.  Lastly, you will have the ability to sort each page request of your App by different categories: Satisfaction, Slowest page, Failed pages, pages hit, and total load time.  By clicking on an individual page a Performance Details page with further information about that specific page's health, performance, and errors will be displayed.Screenshot of Performance Traces:
One of the ways we strive to deliver relevant insights is to only collect traces around interesting requests. Some examples of these request types that are interesting would be faster than normal, slower than normal, new web requests, requests introducing new SQL, requests introducing new exceptions, or abnormal satisfaction scores. Under performing requests will be profiled more often than fast requests. As long as the app is getting steady traffic Retrace should be saving a trace every 5 to 15 minutes.Screenshot of Errors Dashboard:
From the Errors Dashboard, you can get an overview of all the exceptions of all your applications across different environments. It gives you a central location to view details about your errors.