Netwrix Auditor vs. PagerDuty

Netwrix [Auditor] is a great tool for any SysAdmin no matter the company size. Licensing is determined by users, not employee count, and that makes it a great product from a small business to an enterprise application. The time savings coupled with the increased productivity is a key factor is determining this tool over other products.

Incentivized

I've used ICM in the past which has been a very Microsoft product with everything thrown into a blender. So, PD implementation is a breath of fresh air with focused pages to achieve the end goal. If the goal is to collaborate on issues across the organization, PD might not be the best solution but within specific teams, PD excels at it.

Incentivized

• Netwrix Auditor performs the audit collection process in a method that does not burden the systems it is auditing. It usually just pulls the log and event logs data from the machine it is auditing and then performs the extraction of the information in these files on the Netwrix Auditor server. This reducing the audit processes to only pulling log data from the server but does not keep the server busy processing the data.
• Once the log data has been pulled from a server being audited, Netwrix will store the log data in a compressed form in its Long Term Archive. This allows the database to be kept smaller than the all the data being kept in the Log Term Archive and therefore makes creating reports much faster since the database is not as big as it could be.
• Since Netwrix Auditor uses standard Microsoft SQL Server and SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) to perform reporting, working with the results of the audit is much easier. Anyone who knows SQL Server and SSRS can work with the data and create their own reports.
• The predefined reports that come with Netwrix Auditor cover most of the items required to properly report on the status of a system. They have many predefined reports for FedRamp, PCI, HIPPA, and other compliance regulations.

Incentivized

• Alerting notifications is its best attribute; it will continue to make contact until the alert is acknowledged by a user.
• The calendar view provides valuable information regarding who is on call by the team and their full contact information.
• The application also lets you initiate a tech bridge meeting instantly and notifies all on-call users.

Incentivized

• There is a bit of a learning curve. The interface is fairly intuitive, but I think there is room for improvement.
• There is a LOT of functionality which can be quite overwhelming at first, but in and of itself, not a bad thing.
• I think this software would benefit from a "Simple" mode and "Advanced" mode. This would ease the learning curve a bit.

Incentivized

• When getting a phone call, PagerDuty doesn't seem to allow acknowledgments of alerts through the phone, which it says it does. I constantly receive a message that it was updated by another person - when in reality, it wasn't.
• Smarter notifications. If an alert was snoozed for a time, when it comes back, it sends out another alert. It should, I think, send a message asking if the alert is still an issue and give the option to close.
• Make schedule changes more intuitive.
• One button to acknowledge and close an alert.

Incentivized

We have renewed already the licensing of the product minus SQL Server and Oracle Database because the organisation believes the modules are very expensive and have identified a different product for auditing Databases Other modules are very important like the User Activity monitor, AD queries that we can not get from the native AD itself or you have to run complicated powershell scripts! Easy to use interface Pre-defined Reports Easy way to subscribe to important alerts e.g Privilege account group membership changes

Incentivized

They have been rock solid for us thus far and are not very expensive and to be honest no time to evaluate other software at this point.

Incentivized

The product has user friend pre-defined queries which takes off the stress and horrors of having to query Active Directory with complex Powershell scripts! You can subscribe to certain functions when they are done and you get an alert e.g privileged accounts actions and you don't need to have programming skills The product has a desktop version of the software and donot have to login to the server all the time you need to use it. You can see very fast the posture of your environment of the overview screen and deduce what exactly is wrong and what has to be done

Incentivized

The UI is more complex than I would like. Part of the challenge is that most users use PagerDuty infrequently; I don't remember how I changed a policy last time. Another part of the challenge is that some users expect alerting to be a trivial feature, and are reluctant to invest any time in reading the documentation.

Incentivized

Customer support has always been fast and helpful when we run into any issues. The smaller issues are usually resolved within a day or two. It is great support and I feel like I am in good hands anytime an issue comes up. However, we don't run into many issues

Incentivized

PagerDuty is reliable and easy to set up. It gives an effective way to notify the team about critical incidents which results in a faster turnaround time on issues. users can customize their alerts rules based on their preferences. Overall it's effective and easy to use which adds great business value.

Incentivized

Make sure you trial the software and understand the fundamentals of each module that you are interested in Make sure you get the buy in from both Management and most importantly your team members (the product users) for a successful implementation Watch the webinars of the product from the product website

Incentivized

When I setup notifications to PD thru the Python API I was impressed with the ease with which I could set up the software/service.

Incentivized

I can only compare it to SolarWinds. Their similar products have larger foot prints and seem a little clumsy in comparison. The Netwrix product turns on a lot of the auditing options that were required for the product to work properly where it seemed I had to do a lot of manual tweeking with the SolarWinds product.

Incentivized

I have not use the 2 technologies for as long as I have used PagerDuty but in my opinion PagerDuty makes things a lot easier. The other tools got the job done and got alerts out but PagerDuty just seemed to make the setup for on-call alert schedules and integrations easier than the others. This isn't to say the others are difficult, just that PagerDuty was slightly better. I also have noticed that more tools have options to integrate to PagerDuty over the other tools.

Incentivized

• 2 men 4 four rule is eliminated.
• System administrators are on their toes now and very attentive before performing and change.
• Change management is followed properly.
• Compliance is implemented as it should be.
• Housekeeping of servers is done.
• AD users maintained well.

Incentivized

• Allow our service to be available 24/7 with minimal downtime, improving customer experience
• Monitor incidents and allow us to customize/schedule alert notifications, making engineers' jobs easier and preventing turnover
• Prevent SEVs that could deteriorate, bring down our service, and cost us millions of dollars from loss in bookings

Incentivized