Grafana is a data visualization tool developed by Grafana Labs in New York. It is available open source, managed (Grafana Cloud), or via an enterprise edition with enhanced features. Grafana has pluggable data source model and comes bundled with support for popular time series databases like Graphite. It also has built-in support for cloud monitoring vendors like Amazon Cloudwatch, Microsoft Azure and SQL databases like MySQL. Grafana can combine data from many places into a single dashboard.
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Veeam ONE
Score 8.4 out of 10
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Veeam ONE is virtualization management technology from Ohio based VMware partner Veeam Software.
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Pricing
Grafana
Veeam ONE
Editions & Modules
Grafana Cloud - Pro
$8
per month up to 1 active user
Grafana Cloud - Free
Free
10k metrics + 50GB logs + 50GB traces up to 3 active users
If I was starting over on an Observability platform, Grafana would be my number 1 choice due to the flexibility and ability to act as a single platform either on its own or combining multiple data sources. The trick however, is that it can be fairly complex to learn and setup, so time is needed to make it a successful implementation. There is a level of cognitive load required
Veeam One works great for monitoring virtual infrastructure. However, other dedicated server monitoring apps do better with monitoring the individual VMs. Where it stands out is its reporting functionality, which allows you to forecast growth and keep track of how you are using your resources. It is also great for companies without a big monitoring budget, as there is a pretty functional free version.
Proactive Alerting - the product can provide email alerts to notify one of any issues in the environment.
Capacity Planning and Forecasting - it has the ability to provide an analysis of the current environment as well as provide a report to forecast future capacity requirements.
Monitoring and Reporting - the software can monitor you environment 24x7 with the ability to provide comprehensive reporting.
The licensing is tricky to understand. You can have an enterprise BR license or a Veeam ONE license, and the split modules read from only one module where the license is actually loaded into it.
Documentation could be a little better.
It's not exactly pretty to look at. Themes and tweaks are pretty limited.
It is infinitely flexible. If you can imagine it, Grafana can almost certainly do it. Usability may be in the eye of the beholder however, as there is time needed to curate the experience and get the dashboards customized to how it makes sense to you. I know one thing they are working on are more templates, based on data sources
The software is a joy to use. The user interface is good overall and you can find frequently needed things easily and quickly. Some less frequently needed things eg. settings are hidden under several menus and one might have to look for those for a while. We also haven't had any issues with the products reliability.
We rarely if ever call support, but overall Veeam is very responsive, quick to get a hold of, and knowledgeable in there help. Some companies get big like Veeam and their support drops off, but we haven't seen that with Veeam (but again, their products seem really solid and trouble free so we rarely need help).
Grafana blows Nagios out of the water when it comes to customization. The ability to feed almost any data source makes it very versatile and the cost is great.
Veeam One is very easy to use, easy to configure and get what you want. The integration for Veeam Backup is perfect, for today i think Veeam need to make Veeam One monitor Microsoft 365 envirioment, this will give great imput and integrated with Veeam Backup for 365 will be amezing.
The most positive impact has been a centralized platform to manage all our vCenter Tags, which orchestrate all our BCDR solutions with Veeam.
Response time for analyzing system performance when there are issues has greatly increased due to the simplicity of the software, plus we have been able to allow access to application developers and managers to view and asses their servers when they feel there are issues, without the need to contact the infrastructure team members.
