SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset vs. SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
SolarWinds® Engineer’s Toolset (ETS) helps users monitor and troubleshoot a network with over 60 tools for network management. ETS allows users to monitor and receive alerts in real time on network availability and health, and perform network diagnostics for faster troubleshooting and resolution of complex network issues. With ETS users can deploy an array of network discovery tools including Port Scanner, Switch Port Mapper or advanced Subnet Calculator, manage Cisco® devices with specialized…
$1,585
Per Instance
SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
SolarWinds® Hybrid Cloud Observability aims to provide a comprehensive, integrated, and full-stack solution designed to optimize performance, improve availability, and reduce remediation time by correlating data from across the IT ecosystem, including networks, servers, applications, databases, and more.
$5
per month node
Splunk Observability Cloud
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Splunk Observability Cloud aims to enable operational agility and better customer experience through real-time AI-driven streaming analytics allowing accurate alerts in seconds. It is designed to shorten MTTD and MTTR by providing real-time visibility into cloud infrastructure and services.
$180
per year per host
Pricing
SolarWinds Engineer's ToolsetSolarWinds Hybrid Cloud ObservabilitySplunk Observability Cloud
Editions & Modules
One Time Price
$1,585
Per Instance
Essentials
$5
per month per node
Advanced
$9
per month per node
Infrastructure
$15
per month (billed annually) per host
App & Infra
$60
per month (billed annually) per host
End-to-End
$75
per month (billed annually) per host
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
SolarWinds Engineer's ToolsetSolarWinds Hybrid Cloud ObservabilitySplunk Observability Cloud
Free Trial
YesYesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPricing is set per node, per month, and billing is annual. The prices listed are base prices that could increase depending on your environment. Please speak to a representative to get a quote.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
SolarWinds Engineer's ToolsetSolarWinds Hybrid Cloud ObservabilitySplunk Observability Cloud
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User Ratings
SolarWinds Engineer's ToolsetSolarWinds Hybrid Cloud ObservabilitySplunk Observability Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(11 ratings)
9.0
(4 ratings)
7.7
(57 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(2 ratings)
Usability
8.2
(1 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
7.6
(16 ratings)
Support Rating
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
SolarWinds Engineer's ToolsetSolarWinds Hybrid Cloud ObservabilitySplunk Observability Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
SolarWinds
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.
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SolarWinds
- For small teams serving big organizations - it's a really simple tool to install and set up relatively quickly. - the new installer is also great - I don't have to understand what modules need to be installed; it's all streamlined. - The HCO Licensing allows you to run the Additional polling engines at a scale where the previous licensing model didn't. We can deploy APEs in locations now, which would not have been worth the investment in previously as there weren't enough devices in that location/region to spend the $$$$ on an APE License.
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Cisco
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.
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Pros
SolarWinds
  • 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
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SolarWinds
  • Automated dependency mapping is a big hit.
  • High availability is extremely simple to implement.
  • Simple to use and drill into issues.
  • Analysis of growth patterns driving the recommendation engine.
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Cisco
  • 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.
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Cons
SolarWinds
  • 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.
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SolarWinds
  • Can be complex to setup
  • Is strongest with network resources
  • Assumes a fairly large amount of base knowledge
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Cisco
  • 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.
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Likelihood to Renew
SolarWinds
No answers on this topic
SolarWinds
No answers on this topic
Cisco
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
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Usability
SolarWinds
Very easy to use and intuitive. Just be careful with the WAN Killer...it does what it says.
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SolarWinds
- decent ease of use - good training materials - good documentation - acceptable level of expected knowledge
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Cisco
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.
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Support Rating
SolarWinds
Our organization uses it regularly. It is reliable, and we keep finding new uses for it
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SolarWinds
No answers on this topic
Cisco
Splunk support is very quick and efficient. Pre-sale specialists are very skilled and available.
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Implementation Rating
SolarWinds
No answers on this topic
SolarWinds
No answers on this topic
Cisco
Follow a training before starting.
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Alternatives Considered
SolarWinds
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.
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SolarWinds
Solarwinds has the best overlap of the two others I've mentioned - the other two tools (Datadog and Dynatrace) are great in their own way but Solarwinds is just good at everything; if I had to pick one tool of the above, it would be Solarwinds for the compatibility and ease of use, the other tools are more focused on being great at certain things while Solarwinds is the jack of all trades.
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Cisco
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.
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Return on Investment
SolarWinds
  • 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
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SolarWinds
  • one license requiring 1 PO to be raised
  • sharing costs between departments for monitoring under one platform using APEs
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Cisco
  • 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.
Read full review
ScreenShots

SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset Screenshots

Screenshot of Perform network stress tests with Engineer's Toolset WAN Killer. You don’t need to use real traffic for studying network activities, like testing traffic and load balancing. Instead, deploy Engineer's Toolset WAN Killer to help interactively test connections and adjust the IP traffic generated to achieve the desired network load based on your requirements.Screenshot of Quickly troubleshoot your network with enhanced ping capabilities and packet route tracing, among other network bandwidth usage and monitoring tools included in ETS.Screenshot of Using ETS, you can run scans to gain insight into how routers, hubs switches, and other devices are configured by analyzing SNMP queries and viewing MIB attributes. ETS is designed to help you more easily understand whether your network and ports are using appropriate settings.Screenshot of Config Compare, a part of ETS, is built to compare the running configuration of a Cisco router with the startup configuration. With the Cisco configuration compare tool, you can easily detect the changes made to the network, switch, and router configurations that are not committed to non-volatile memory (NVRAM).Screenshot of Manage your IP network from discovery to address tracking. Discover subnets on a seed router and scan the subnet or a range of IP addresses, generate a list of subnets along with their mask, size, range, and broadcast address and actively monitor subnets to identify and track which IP addresses are in use on your network.

SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability Screenshots

Screenshot of ITOM Executive DashboardScreenshot of Observability MapsScreenshot of Performance Analysis DashboardScreenshot of Application Alerting DashboardScreenshot of Network Path Analysis

Splunk Observability Cloud Screenshots

Screenshot of Real-time monitoring for public, private and hybrid cloud