IBM Instana vs. Power Admin PA Server Monitor

I would recommend IBM Instana based on its strengths in automating application performance monitoring, dynamic tracing, and its ability to handle modern, containerized environments effectively. The automatic discovery and mapping feature, along with AI-powered anomaly detection, provide valuable insights for proactive issue resolution. However, I would consider factors such as the organization's specific technology stack, scalability requirements, and budget constraints. Conducting a thorough evaluation, including a trial or proof of concept, would be essential to ensure that IBM Instana aligns with our unique needs and contributes positively to our technology and business objectives.

Incentivized

Power Admin PA Server Monitor works great for our needs. We do however wish that it worked for Linux Operating Systems.

Incentivized

• Collecting Kubernetes and Infra level logs and presenting in easy to understand visuals.
• Tracing the end-to-end journey of an event and also categorizing by technology and Endpoints
• Built-in and custom alerts help to monitor almost all of scenarios without much additional configuration.
• Ability to create Applications to logical group important flows

Incentivized

• Alerts us when a server, storage device, or network device goes offline.
• Alerts us when a critical service running on a server stops running.
• Alerts us if files change, are removed, or are created.
• Alerts us if an unauthorized file type has been created on a monitored system
• Generate up-time reports for Executives.

Incentivized

• I believe that the "live" option in monitoring does not truly update the status in real-time, thus I must manually update to feel comfortable.
• The call analysis tool might be improved, third-party resources are restricted, and the pricing is slightly more than competitors in comparable categories.

Incentivized

• It does have bulk settings tools to set up bulk settings for multiple devices, but to me it could be a bit easier to use. However, I ran into a snag and reached out to support and they are great.
• It does not support Linux Operating Systems.

Incentivized

Excellent product, easy to use, many features, and fast/excellent support.

Incentivized

It is an excellent product that is much easier to use than many other open source type offerings. Easy learning curve.

Incentivized

Very fast, knowledgeable, and helpful support.

Incentivized

Overall it is an easy install and setup and their support is very fast and helpful

Incentivized

We chose IBM Instana for several reasons, and the most important one is that we didn't have to make changes in our code for nearly all of our applications for it to work. We are happy with the decision we made to use IBM Instana.

Incentivized

We tried some open source solutions. But, they were much more difficult to set up and maintain. PA is easy to use "out of the box". We looked at other paid solutions also, but they were cost prohibitive, since we are a small institution.

Incentivized

• System down time is shortened as our ability to troubleshoot issues goes up.
• Potential downtime is stopped as we are able to slow down calls/ availability of calls in response to monitoring the dashboard.
• We are able to react to issues quickly through the smart alert system rather than manual checks.

Incentivized

• It has decreased our critical services downtime, because we are able to VPN in and fix issues as soon as Power Admin alerts us of an issue. ROI has been excellent.
• It allows us to catch issues before they become critical by alerting us on errors that show up in our Event Logs.

Incentivized