Foglight vs. IBM Spectrum Control

Strengths [Foglight]

• Monitoring, Alerting and Management of on-prem virtualization and physical servers
• Historical trending and baselining are excellent and being able to compare a problem period against the same sets of data for a period when there was no issue is especially helpful as part of troubleshooting.
• Ease of use for end users is appreciated

Weaknesses [of Foglight]

• Creation and management of custom monitors is a developer level activity requiring Groovy skillset
• Less useful for management of an environment where there is a large amount of custom implementations
• Commitment to longevity of cartridges/packs for specific subsystems
• Ability to create custom schedules/alerts/escalations is only available via a 3rd party product (from a former Quest developer) and is not particularly easy to manage/manipulate
• Lack of API accessibility for external integrations to other analytics (splunk, etc.)

Incentivized

I work at a company developing tools for performance and cost monitoring, as well as application and infrastructure troubleshooting. So, with the three points named answering the previous question, I can give ISC an 8 out of 10. I have been working with ISC since 2005, and over this time, ISC has maintained a consistent approach to growth and continues to innovate.

Incentivized

• Database monitoring
• Database management suite
• Customization (both monitors and dashboards)

Incentivized

• Managing of block storage
• Standard and customized advanced reporting
• Performance monitoring of the IBM block storage
• Monitoring and Performance of the vSphere cluster

• There are not many problems with this product
• Limited ability to use Foglight itself to solve problems it identifies

Incentivized

• Installation of the many components ISC is consisting of.
• Updates and patches, especially the installation and maintenance of these.
• Installation on Windows Servers which are integrated in domain networks.

Incentivized

Why didn't I give the full 10 out of 10? My problems are still: since I have been working with the software for more than 20 years, the installation on Windows hosts that are part of domain networks. In these networks, installing is nearly impossible due to group policies. In the opposite: without group policies - especially for Windows updates - you can barely manage the ISC server when on a MS Windows basis. But because the software works seamlessly after a successful installation and support is very responsive and helpful, ISC gets a 9 out of 10.

Incentivized

Incentivized

IBM Spectrum Control has highly influenced our decision-making process and planning based on the analytics we receive from data. It is the only unique product that I have worked with offering great services under different environments. It monitors data both inside and outside our company and vives feedback on time for planning on different programs. Optimization of data is reliable and the storage planning is done to enhance easy access.

Incentivized

• Foglight has a positive impact on my company by being a complete monitoring platform that specializes in risk assessment, user diagnosis and management, and server monitoring ensuring a secure business infrastructure through predictive analytics, query analysis, anomaly detection, behavior tracking, troubleshooting, automated discovery, and more.

Incentivized

• The high licensing cost if offset buy the capacity savings and the accuracy of the analytics.
• It has a positive impact on our ROI and as improved it almost 9%.