SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor vs. Tenable Nessus

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) delivers application and server monitoring capabilities. SAM allows for self-service for easy setup, 1200+ monitoring templates, and customization options, as well as integrate with other SolarWinds products.N/A
Tenable Nessus
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Tenable headquartered in Columbia offers Nessus, a vulnerability scanning and security assessment solution used to analyze an entity's security posture, vulnerability testing, and provide configuration assessments.
$2,790
Pricing
SolarWinds Server & Application MonitorTenable Nessus
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
1 Year
$2,790.00
1 Year + Advanced Support
$3,190.00
2 Years
$5,440.00
2 Years + Advanced Support
$6,240.00
3 Years
$7,951.00
3 Years + Advanced Support
$9,151.00
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
SolarWinds Server & Application MonitorTenable Nessus
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsSAM pricing starts at $2,995.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
SolarWinds Server & Application MonitorTenable Nessus
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
SolarWinds Server & Application MonitorTenable Nessus
Application Performance Management
Comparison of Application Performance Management features of Product A and Product B
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
8.7
276 Ratings
13% above category average
Tenable Nessus
-
Ratings
Application monitoring9.0266 Ratings00 Ratings
Database monitoring8.5230 Ratings00 Ratings
Threshold alerts9.0271 Ratings00 Ratings
Predictive capabilities8.2215 Ratings00 Ratings
Application performance management console8.2239 Ratings00 Ratings
Collaboration tools7.8148 Ratings00 Ratings
Out-of-the box templates to monitor applications8.0256 Ratings00 Ratings
Application dependency mapping and thresholding8.7216 Ratings00 Ratings
Virtualization monitoring9.0234 Ratings00 Ratings
Server availability and performance monitoring9.8269 Ratings00 Ratings
Server usage monitoring and capacity forecasting9.1250 Ratings00 Ratings
IT Asset Discovery9.0199 Ratings00 Ratings
Threat Intelligence
Comparison of Threat Intelligence features of Product A and Product B
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
-
Ratings
Tenable Nessus
5.1
1 Ratings
46% below category average
Network Analytics00 Ratings8.21 Ratings
Threat Recognition00 Ratings4.51 Ratings
Vulnerability Classification00 Ratings8.21 Ratings
Automated Alerts and Reporting00 Ratings1.01 Ratings
Threat Analysis00 Ratings5.51 Ratings
Threat Intelligence Reporting00 Ratings7.31 Ratings
Automated Threat Identification00 Ratings1.01 Ratings
Vulnerability Management Tools
Comparison of Vulnerability Management Tools features of Product A and Product B
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
-
Ratings
Tenable Nessus
8.0
1 Ratings
5% below category average
IT Asset Realization00 Ratings9.11 Ratings
Authentication00 Ratings9.11 Ratings
Configuration Monitoring00 Ratings9.11 Ratings
Web Scanning00 Ratings4.51 Ratings
Vulnerability Intelligence00 Ratings8.21 Ratings
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SolarWinds Server & Application MonitorTenable Nessus
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Score 9.1 out of 10
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Score 9.1 out of 10
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User Ratings
SolarWinds Server & Application MonitorTenable Nessus
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(278 ratings)
8.5
(7 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.9
(10 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.6
(29 ratings)
9.7
(2 ratings)
Availability
9.9
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
6.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(21 ratings)
7.1
(4 ratings)
Online Training
4.5
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
4.5
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
1.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
4.5
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.9
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
4.5
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
4.5
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
SolarWinds Server & Application MonitorTenable Nessus
Likelihood to Recommend
SolarWinds
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.
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Tenable
Nessus is perfectly suitable for performing comprehensive vulnerability assessment scans being a vulnerability scanner. It is less appropriate for performing penetration testing since it is not a penetration testing tool, it does not have the ability and modules to exploit the vulnerabilities of the system.
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Pros
SolarWinds
  • 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.
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Tenable
  • With Nessus we can find the missing critical patches for a server or workstations.
  • Nessus points out any vulnerable or outdated software Technologies used in the system, thus eliminating any chances for security flaws being turned up.
  • Nessus typically points any configuration level issues in accordance with the OWASP guidelines. Even the configuration of SSL related which are most of the time handled by some vendors or 3rd parties.
  • Nessus not only lists out these Vulnerabilities but describes clearly the vulnerabilities in details with its thousands of plugins updated regularly, the tool also recommends solution with practical details of easy implementation.
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Cons
SolarWinds
  • 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.
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Tenable
  • Could use an upgrade within reports.
  • Scans can take a long time to complete. Have to break them down in small sections.
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Likelihood to Renew
SolarWinds
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.
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Tenable
Nessus is best and easy to use application for Vulnerabilities finding and reporting, it has multiple platforms and wide scope covering almost all devices for security improvement so far, thus we are very likely to continue its services.
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Usability
SolarWinds
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.
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Tenable
It's very much a plug and play application that the user can go into with limited knowledge and set-up scans in minutes.
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Reliability and Availability
SolarWinds
The tool works and monitors items 24x7, it only requires maintenance a little more frequently due to security fixes in the Windows operating system.
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Tenable
No answers on this topic
Performance
SolarWinds
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.
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Tenable
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
SolarWinds
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.
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Tenable
I haven't needed to contact support yet. But issues are easily solved with a quick internet search which means support and by extension, the larger community are involved and knowledgeable.
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Online Training
SolarWinds
It was sufficient to read their documentation and watch videos.
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Tenable
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
SolarWinds
Make sure SNMP and WMI are configured ahead of time
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Tenable
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
SolarWinds
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.
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Tenable
Sometimes when we identify a vulnerability with Nessus that has an exploit, we made a proof of concept with Metasploit in order to show to the IT managers the importance of the software/hardware hardening.
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Scalability
SolarWinds
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
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Tenable
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
SolarWinds
  • 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.
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Tenable
  • Nessus certainly has a positive impact while me while performing my job, either as security research, or performing vulnerability assessments for clients. It gives a lot of information about the system/application after performing scans. The number of false positives is also less compared to other vulnerability scanners.
  • The professional edition is very useful as policy templates available in this edition are very handy and useful even to perform compliance scan like PCI DSS scan.
  • Also, the ability to export the scan results into reports in formats like HTML, PDF is very useful which could be for performing system/application reviews.
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ScreenShots

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Screenshots

Screenshot of Multi-vendor application performance monitoringScreenshot of Multi-vendor server monitoringScreenshot of Application dependency mapping with AppStack™ dashboardScreenshot of Microsoft Exchange performance monitoring with AppInsight™ templateScreenshot of Microsoft IIS performance monitoring with AppInsight™ templateScreenshot of Server hardware health monitoring