IBM Z IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS vs. SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor

IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS is perfect for just about any after-the-fact analysis that I have tried to use it for. Sometimes it doesn't provide support for the latest SMF fields, but that is the nature of SMF data analysis - it is impossible to keep up with the rate at which new SMF fields are added. Combine that with the fact that the description of new fields is often poor, and it is amazing that IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS is as up-to-date as it is. I think that less experienced users might benefit from material that more clearly differentiates products like IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS, which feed off SMF data, and products like Omegamon, which report in real-time contents of various system control blocks.

For monitoring applications that run on Windows hosts on VMware or HyperV virtualization, SolarWindows offers a nice, vertical view of both the loads and the resources. In such an environment, this makes life really good! But if you have something else -- for example, Linux hosts -- you're on your own to some extent. That is, the things it does well, it does very well -- but everything else is much less polished.

Incentivized

• IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS is easy to use for beginners and experts.
• Search and drill down helps to find overview and deep dive.
• IntelliMagic has implemented expert knowledge into Vision and the rating of the report is really helpful.
• Predefined reports can be modified very easily and individually adapted reports (replacement of old SAS programs) are also possible without any problems

• 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

• The voluminous data is a challenge for all tools. As always, improved response time is always appreciated.
• I really appreciate reading the descriptions and field descriptions that are provided with the screens. All additional elaborations will be appreciated.
• Monthly trending and cyclical pattern detection

• Provides basic monitoring/visibility. Visibility into detailed/fine-grained issues best suited for more specialized/expensive solutions.
• Licensing per monitored application rapidly uses up purchased license count.
• More out-of-the-box templates or easier setup of monitoring less-common applications would make the solution more appealing given the target audience of the product.

Incentivized

In comparison to other products (even on IBM Z), IntelliMagic Vision for z/OS is really RAS (reliability, availability, and serviceability). The GUI is really stable; analyze/reduce jobs with detailed diagnostics; restart functions with Automator

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

with more than 12 years of experience in Mainframe performance tuning and analysis, it was much easier to translate and understand the tool. New college grads without Mainframe exposure struggled a bit to connect the dots, it might be good to have a recording from IM to go through mainframe basics before the staff start to use the tool covering mainframe concepts than tool itself.

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

Really highly skilled IntelliMagic team:

• Head of IntelliMagic (Gilbert Houtekamer, Els Das and Jean-Marc van der Kolk)
• Account manager DACH/Europe local support team ...

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

These are the legacy products that have been used for capacity/performance/billing and report generation over many years. Some are better suited for solutions using programmatic interfaces ( internal billing ), and processing IMS transactional data in particular. For most tasks, however, Vision can generate charts, provide levels of drill-down, allow a focus on analysis rather than report generation, much faster with greater reliability and less required training than the above products

Incentivized

It has been a while since we first purchased SolarWinds, but I looked over several other products that I can't remember now. Many other products tried to scan the network to find computers but given that our computers are located in various places across campus with other computers in our buildings that are not ours that type of network scanning was not what we needed. Other services have extra services that we had no need of and I liked the ability to add custom fields in SolarWinds so we can track the information on each computer that we need to know.

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

• Based on data from Vision, we have not had to expand the hardware this year.
• Any expansion of hardware in the coming years can be well supported by figures from Vision.

• Less time spent investigating causes of issues. We are alerted straight away and can find the root cause of the issue in less time.
• We have been able to ditch all our previous individual monitoring solutions, none of which integrated with each other for a single solution which fully integrates with each of the different modules to provide a single portal for monitoring and alerting.

Incentivized