IBM SevOne vs. SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor

The software is handy and really helps us track all the issues that may occur in our network, allowing us to rectify them before any significant problems with our server can arise. It also enhances the overall performance of all our servers and networks, but, as I mentioned earlier, it will take considerable time for a beginner to become familiar with every feature of the software.

Incentivized

It is a well-suited software for monitoring and surveillance of your deployed nodes. The error-readability and filter options for filtering out logs and errors could be improved. But overall, it has a good UI design, is user-friendly, and is very easy to learn and access for new users.

Incentivized

• To see trends in network usage, identify upgrade switches, increase bandwidth and cabling
• Provide dashboards to operations, logistics for both warehouse and production managers
• Can integrate into incident systems to auto create tickets when issues happen

Incentivized

• Monitor Azure Cloud Severs- We use SolarWinds SAM to monitor Active Directory and DNS on Several DCs published on Azure Cloud.
• Monitor Hyper V and VMware - SolarWinds SAM monitors applications on both Hyper V and VMware, while also monitoring the physical host machines.
• It also helps us monitor Warranty expiration for physical servers.

Incentivized

• Documentation for the embedded help pages in NMS and more. In my opinion, these do not provide anything of any depth or maybe anything helpful at all. If anything it just seems to be a guide of what actually exists on the page. It is nicely searchable documentation though.
• It is very surprising and disappointing for us to learn that it isn't until the latest version of IBM SevOne that bulk editing was introduced. I think this is such a basic and foundational feature that should have been a part of the original rollout. My team is still trying to configure the REST API.
• It was disappointing for the webinar to start with a speaker who had a thick accent and simply read from slides. To me, it felt hopeless until the second speaker, who was engaging and easy to understand. It's as if this fact wasn't considered. I'm sure the first speaker lost a lot of viewers who didn't stick around to discover the 2nd speaker.
• I asked three different questions during the webinar and none were answered.

Incentivized

• Custom application monitors can be a little tricky to configure.
• Logic in custom alerts can be a little hard to follow and figure out.
• Inability to monitor certificates on custom applications or SQL Server.
• Can be a little slow at times with on-prem SQL server.

Incentivized

We are heavily invested in Solarwinds products for a reason. They are generally easy to setup and run with, requiring only some interfacing with support or help articles on rare occasions. They do what we bought them to do and we can't ask for more.

Incentivized

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor is quite easy to use and super versatile. It allows you to do just about anything you can through premade templates or through scripting. You can use an agent on the servers if you want to, or you can monitor through WMI or SNMP credentials. You can customize thresholds for alerting quickly, and you can configure alerts to be as complex or as simple as you want.

Incentivized

The tool works and monitors items 24x7, it only requires maintenance a little more frequently due to security fixes in the Windows operating system.

Incentivized

The graphical interface and the performance of the database leave a little to be desired, they could be better explored.Some functionality and screens do not work well depending on the browser used. The integrations never had any problems or caused crashes in other systems.

Incentivized

I think there was only a couple times I had to open a support case for SAM and one time they got multiple engineers on the phone to get a better idea what I was trying to monitor and was able to point me in the best direction to monitor that system.

Incentivized

It was sufficient to read their documentation and watch videos.

Incentivized

Make sure SNMP and WMI are configured ahead of time

Incentivized

IBM SevOne was selected instead of Datadog because it is perfect for large insurance networks and also connects trouble-free between the on-premise and cloud environments. Its alerts are in real-time, it offers comprehensive dashboards and it allows to gain a better grip on the network issues, thus helping to keep the downtime small and the operations well managed thanks to the good communication.

Incentivized

Nagios requires far more manual work to configure than SolarWinds does, though that also encourages customization and perfect-fit solutions. Nagios also requires far, far fewer resources to run than SolarWinds: SolarWinds wants great gobs of memory and disk, while Nagios is refreshingly humble. Nagios starts working from the first minute, too, whereas SolarWinds needs lots of set-up time.

Incentivized

It is hard to find the recommended SQL setup and convince others that is the way you should configure the server when you set it up

Incentivized

• The software has minimal downtime, which helps us connect with our customers quickly and resolve their issues.
• Automated networks reports that it gives saves a lot of time and resources.
• Setting up and completing the configuration will take more than three months, which is a significant expense at the outset.

Incentivized

• Ability to sunset multiple legacy monitoring platforms.
• A single pane of glass across global locations (Enterprise Operations Console) simplifies monitoring for junior staff.
• A single toolset allows staff from across the global environment to share knowledge and quickly set up/modify monitoring.

Incentivized