Intermapper vs. SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset

Intermapper is a light weight, quick and easy to use monitoring application. It will get you up and monitoring key infrastructure devices with a simple management interface and effective alert system that doesn't generate a lot of noise. It provides mobile device access through a web interface and is relatively inexpensive.

Incentivized

I have found the toolset especially useful for scanning subnets to discover devices, and for setting up temporary real-time monitors when we are troubleshooting or setting up new connections. The most useful aspect has been the ability to apply the tools to help troubleshoot and pinpoint intermittent issues. More general tools like Orion often do not have the granularity to detect issues like intermittent packet loss which are especially impactful to applications like Voice. The toolset gives us another level of capability to dig into issues.

Incentivized

• The best thing about Intermapper is that it is map-based. You start by building your map, which is done completely automatically. I've used many different monitoring software packages, Solarwinds, Nagios, Opmanager, and it is a royal PITA to create live maps with those.
• Another great feature is that it shows you, visually, the bandwidth utilization of your network by using "ants" and color codes. Incredibly useful.
• Alarms are very easy to setup, again much easier than the packages mentioned above.

Incentivized

• Various monitoring
• Stores history
• Suggests indices
• Helps to find the SQL query text
• Helps to see what machines/users the bad queries are coming from
• Shows current blocking session

Incentivized

• Setting up probes in bulk can be difficult, so it can take a long time to get the system set up correctly to start.
• Sometimes the probes can be sensitive and report false positives.
• Interface can be a little clunky and non intuitive at times.

Incentivized

• The unifying component that is intended to be the initial interface to the tools seems clunky. I prefer to start the tools individually rather than using it.
• The port scanner could use some improvements to make it easier to use.

Incentivized

Very easy to use and intuitive. Just be careful with the WAN Killer...it does what it says.

Incentivized

The product works well and is very easy to maintain. As such, we haven't had many occasions to use support. When we have called them they were easy to contact and responsive to our questions. We have had the product for years and it may have been a year or better since the last time we contacted them.

Incentivized

Our organization uses it regularly. It is reliable, and we keep finding new uses for it

Incentivized

Intermapper is a cross between WhatsUp Gold and Nagios. WhatsUp Gold being for a less technical end-user and Nagios doing more than just SNMP scans and up down monitoring.

Incentivized

I haven't compared any tools similar to SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset. This might be because I'm pretty biased when it comes to monitoring, and reporting solutions. I've found that SolarWinds provides the biggest bang for the buck in my opinion. I'm sure there are other solutions on the market that compete, but I haven't tried any of them because I've been very satisfied with SolarWinds.

Incentivized

• Downtime costs money. Every minute we can get ahead of an outage is time that a plant is not sitting there waiting. We don't need to wait for a call from a plant, we know they are down immediately and we can begin troubleshooting.

Incentivized

• Spend less time downloading free buggy tools
• All the tools in one spot, so you don't have to look around for tools
• Get to the solution sooner

Incentivized