Observium vs. SolarWinds Network Device Monitor

• 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

On its own, it's a solid choice for an SMB or Mid-size Enterprise if you're price sensitive and looking primarily for core functionality. SolarWinds has a large family of products that can also be leveraged in conjunction with SWNDM. Turning the product loose on a very large environment for discovery and mapping should be done with care and concern for a number of reasons but including the performance of the product for this task. If you're looking for an all-in-one product with some presumed supporting features built in (config manager, etc.) you'll need to look elsewhere.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• Monitor for and record network device configuration changes.
• Allow for the creation, or modification, of hardening standards for multiple vendors' network devices.
• Automate the creation of alerts that can be sent to owners for correction of compliance violations.
• Allow you to organize a visualization of your network devices.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• More security put into the product, the Orion hack was not good news.
• More frequent releases to address small bugs rather than big releases that are rare.
• More IPv6 related features to make it easier for people familiar with IPv4 to learn IPv6.
• Ability to edit dashboards using JSON or another similar language.

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

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

MS is meant for windows monitoring and up/down for mostly everything else. Moved away from MS System Center. Now we have better visibility and management can get reports. The other teams have added Linux to Solarwinds and also see improvements in monitoring. Whether you use snmp (v3), wmi or some other credentials to connect to you system, Solarwinds will more than likely be able to manage and monitor it.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• Reduced site visits and recurring issues by 25 to 35%
• Enables proactive warning, thereby reducing downtime caused by unforeseen issues
• Provides a central panel for monitoring the entire network at a glance
• Allows for SLA management thereby increasing accountability by 50%
• Reduced time to repair by 35% as techs are more informed of root cause

Incentivized