Microsoft Application Server (deprecated) vs. Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

Microsoft Application Server has been incredible this past year during COVID. Previously I would have said that we could go without it, but after this past season, I’m glad we have utilized it. Without having this software set up prior to COVID, we would have been in a tough situation. I mention COVID a lot because we were able to continue our work almost seamlessly this entire year.

JBoss EAP is subscription based/open source platform. It's very reliable and great for deploying high transaction Java based enterprise applications. It integrates well with third party components like mod_cluster and supports popular Java EE web-based frameworks such as Spring, Angular JS, jQuery Mobile, and Google Web Toolkit.

Incentivized

Its great if you need real-time visibility across complex or regulated environments. Also strong for hybrid or multi-cloud setups where uptime, observability and fast IR are required. It’s probably overkill for smaller teams or environments that don’t have constant changes or compliance reporting needs. It's expensive and has a steep learning curve. Also, in my opinion, do not get yourself into a consumption based model. Costs can certainly get out of control quickly.

Incentivized

• Microsoft Application Server has proven to be highly reliable and effective at deploying to all of its clients.
• Application performance is surprisingly good and responsive even in bandwidth-constrained environments and generally very reliable.
• All software programs are manageable from a single location, even when bandwidth is limited.

• MOD_CLUSTER integration. JBoss EAP integrates pretty well with mod_cluster. This is an intelligent load balancer especially useful in highly clustered environments.
• Supports enterprise-grade features such as high availability clustering, distributed caching, messaging etc.
• Supports deployment in on-premise, virtual and hybrid cloud environments.

Incentivized

• The first one is its Kubernetes container monitoring.
• I really like this features because as we know how much K8s is vast and to manually monitor each part of the Kubernetes it takes so much time but Splunk Observability Cloud makes it easier. And even once we integrate K8s with Splunk Observability Cloud it gives us some prebuilt dashboards which gives holistic view of our Cluster and its nodes, pods, etc.
• The dashbaord feature of Splunk Observability Cloud, it gives us full flexibility to customize our dashboard with a wide range of predefined chart types.
• Now it also supports OTEL, which is a plus point for observability. As now everyone is moving towards Otel and in current market there are only few tools who supports OTEL based integrations, Splunk Observability Cloud is one out of them.

Incentivized

• Some security hotfixes and general release updates require restarts.
• We wish it supported more applications out of the box.
• Thin client support would be great for MS Application Server.

Incentivized

• Difficult to replicate configuration outside of a container environment
• Still requires quite a bit of knowledge of the CLI
• Integration with deployment tools requires CLI knowledge

Incentivized

• You can use table-like functionality to generate dashboards, but these queries are heavy on the system.
• It could be easier to give insight into what type of line parsing is used for specific documents in a company-managed environment and/or show ways to gain the insights needed.
• I would like to see ways to anonymize specific data for shared reports without pre-formatting this in a dashboard on which reports could be based.

Incentivized

We are planning to migrate away from Jboss to Tomcat as Jboss has shown not interest in supporting OSGi which is heavily used at our shop

Incentivized

Good: Stable system with low error rate Easy to use for simple use cases Bad: UI is not very clear for complex usage Mobile view (when logged in from phone) is bad No library for .net

Incentivized

I have found Microsoft Application Server to be incredibly easy to use. I have used dozens of similar programs and have always struggled to navigate through all the functions. So far I have been able to adapt and learn this software with ease. I rarely run into a problem that I wasn’t easily able to move forward on with a few tips.

JBoss overall is easy to use. The installation and deployment of applications are quick. Documentations and support are also readily available.

Incentivized

When there is an issue, it’s a win if one can easily identify the root cause. To do the same, it should allow the user to dig deep with multiple data points and compare the data and identify the anomaly. In this use case, it’s good to drive from Splunk 011y.

Incentivized

JBoss EAP is lightweight and doesn't really consumes much physical resources. It's high performing and suites well for high transaction Java enterprise applications. The out of box performance settings are not really great and you will have to configure the settings to suite your environment to leverage it's full benefits.

Incentivized

Stability is one of the first things we consider when evaluating software. MS Application Server has been rock solid and has reduced the time that our IT staff dedicates to maintaining our legacy applications.

Incentivized

Fast response.

Incentivized

Splunk support is very quick and efficient. Pre-sale specialists are very skilled and available.

Incentivized

Follow a training before starting.

Incentivized

It has a similar feature to what Microsoft Application Server has but at a greater cost and also having to deal with another vendor when we could use a full Microsoft Stack for better training and support.

Incentivized

We selected JBoss because of compatibility with EJB's. We currently are trying to reduce our footprint and will highly consider using Tomcat.

Incentivized

Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring provides far superior options for anybody using a complex hybrid multi-cloud environment and allows both your SOC and NOC to work together on the same data while driving their own insights. We found other products are still in the old world view of servers and agents residing together within a single data centre, but modern apps are no longer like this.

Incentivized

• Our ROI has been great since it has enabled our IT staff to have a central location to perform application updates which enables us to save time and money.
• Deployment is very easy since the internal applications that required constant updating are now updated in one central location.
• It's a lot easier to be within compliance protocols requirements.

Incentivized

• Jboss EAP is easy to deploy and configure. This lead to lower cost and faster delivery.
• Even though we have large number of machines running JBoss, we have only two Jboss Administrators. It doesn't requires too much administration and maintenance on daily basis and reduces number of administrators required for large implementations.

Incentivized

• Significantly reduced the MTTR (Mean Time To Recovery), which in turn has improved the end-user experience tremendously.
• Meets compliance requirements of security policies, audit, regulation, and forensics.
• Helps us to track/manage the resource usage on our cloud instances which has a direct implication on the recurring cost.

Incentivized