Observium vs. SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset

• If you are on a budget, this is one heck of a tool for the price (including the ~$200/year for the Pro subscription).
• If you are OK with maintaining and updating open source tools, this is a great tool.
• If you are afraid of the Linux command line or live in a Windows-centric world, this might not be the tool for you.
• If you can't stand things occasionally not working, this is probably not a good fit.

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

• Automatic device discovery.
• Scalability
• Real-time monitoring.

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

• Documentation
• Community support
• Easy to set up but hard to customise fully

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

It's open source. Your mileage may vary. Sometimes the provided documentation is beyond frustrating, other times it's right on the mark.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

I haven't used other products that are similar to Observium. Observium is an open tool, with a robust feature set. There are elements of comparable monitoring across other tools, but nothing I've seen that is a complete parallel in terms of feature set and visualizations. If I were asked, I wouldn't have another tool to recommend over Observium.

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

• It is good for DC admin.
• Only positive impact.
• Highly recommended.

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