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SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA) vs. Sensu, by Sumo Logic

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA)

    Score8.6 out of 10
    N/ASolarWinds Netflow Traffic Analyzer is a network monitoring tool within the broader SolarWinds ecosystem. It includes core traffic monitoring features, as well as customizable traffic reports and alerts.N/A

    Sensu

    Score8 out of 10
    Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
    Sensu, now from Sumo Logic (acquired in June of 2021) is presented as a future-proof solution for multi-cloud monitoring at scale. The Sensu monitoring event pipeline is used by businesses to automate their monitoring workflows and gain visibility into their multi-cloud environments. The vendor boasts companies like Sony, Box.com, and Activision use Sensu to help deliver value to their customers. Sensu offers a comprehensive monitoring solution for enterprises, providing visibility across every…N/A
    Pricing
    SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA)Sensu
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA)Sensu
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalOptional
    Additional Details
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA)Sensu
    Considered Both Products
    SolarWinds
    No answer on this topic
    Sumo Logic
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    95%
    Would buy again
    42 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    95%
    Delivers good value for the price
    37 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    95%
    Happy with the feature set
    42 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    95%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    36 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    88%
    Implementation went as expected
    37 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    Best Alternatives
    SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA)Sensu
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    Medium-sized Companies
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    Score8.3 out of 10
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    Score8.3 out of 10
    Enterprises
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    Score8.8 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA)Sensu
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (62 ratings)
    8.6
    (2 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (11 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.0
    (49 ratings)
    3.0
    (1 ratings)
    Online Training
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    9.1
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA)Sensu
    Likelihood to Recommend
    SolarWinds
    We use and depend on it for status state of our network gear, switches and routers. It does an excellent job of getting you the details you need to confirm all devices and products are working at the level needed. At times, it does tend to flag network switch ports and/or switches themselves as exceeding their rated capacity when frequently it was a quick blip of high traffic due to downloads, or uploads causing the max'ing of the device. Again, you can adjust the settings but then you adjust it too high and miss real activity. It can become nuisance alerting when you tend to then ignore
    Incentivized
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    Sumo Logic
    • Well suited for raising pagers when you have count-based metrics.
    • Well suited for threshold-based metrics.
    • Not well suited for tracking events over the day, since graphs and other visualizations are missing.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    SolarWinds
    • The level of customization possible with Network Bandwidth Analyzer is very valuable. Rather than being stuck with a "one-size-fits-all" presentation, an administrator can easily create customized views, reports, and alerts so that users can have a more tailored view of the data provided by Network Bandwidth Analyzer. This has the effect of making the tool more attractive to the end user.
    • The NetFlow Traffic Analyzer piece of Network Bandwidth Analyzer provides the details on bandwidth usage on the network. More than knowing how much bandwidth is being used, one is provided with detailed information on how that bandwidth is being used. This provides invaluable information for capacity planning and even certain forensic tasks faced by the network engineer.
    • The ability to produce network maps provides an easy way to create an attractive and functional NOC/SOC view of the entire network. Both technician and the occasional passerby can quickly determine if there are issues to be addressed. The ability to customize a map with background images and custom icons and stencils can make these maps really pop.
    Incentivized
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    Sumo Logic
    • Unique concept as a "monitoring router" that can tie services together.
    • Backward-compatible with Nagios environments.
    • More of a DevOps focus than Nagios.
    Incentivized
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    Cons
    SolarWinds
    • The ability to intuitively and quickly serve up specified information up to a dashboard for general “public” consumption, that cycles through several pages of information.
    • The ability to intuitively set up alerting on bandwidth levels, instead of having to dig through all types of alerts available to find the one needed.
    • Provide a pricing model based on different support levels: if I want only available update installations, don’t make me pay the same amount as those wanting full support.
    Incentivized
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    Sumo Logic
    • Cannot be solely used for tracking metrics over time.
    • Not a very good UI.
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    SolarWinds
    As far as rating for usability is concerned I would give 10/10 as NTA is very easy to use. All you need to do is install that module and ask network Team to configure the Netflow towards Server IP. [The] rest is pre-configured and reports are pre-built. Moment you receive the flows from Network all you will have is information about traffic.
    Incentivized
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    Sumo Logic
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    SolarWinds
    I know we could probably pay for it, but it would be nice if we could get to a tier 2 technician faster. Spending a couple of hours on the phone with the level 1 technician, when we have already tried the troubleshooting they are walking us through, is just a waste of time.
    Incentivized
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    Sumo Logic
    Sensu's customer support was always willing to work with us but never really seemed to learn much from our experiences. I think they get a lot of customers with DevOps IT teams that are willing to put in a lot of elbow grease to get the most of Sensu's architecture. However, despite explaining my continued disappointment with their documentation and the overall flow of the product, I never got much more than a "sorry" and a notice that their documentation was open source if I wanted to contribute to it. The problem, of course, is that you can't document what you don't understand. I'm a former technical writer, so I know that better than most.
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    Online Training
    SolarWinds
    The training offered by SolarWinds is some of the best out there. They have several different videos that go into great detail from initial setup to advanced configurations. In addition to the view at your own pace video, they also have live training for customers that focus on a single product and you can ask questions with the folks who develop the software. I have had good success with their live sessions and getting questions answered.
    Incentivized
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    Sumo Logic
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    SolarWinds
    SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer compared to Wireshark and PRTG Network Monitor beats it by just the simple interface. Though all are manual setup, NTA takes it a step further with graphs and reports that analyze the data for you. In comparing to Extrahop from a bandwidth comparison, Extrahop wins but Extrahop is a lot more than just a bandwidth monitoring and cost.
    Incentivized
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    Sumo Logic
    Have used New Relic and Sematext Cloud for APM and for tracking over days and visualizing the issues. But those are very expensive as compared to Sensu.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    SolarWinds
    • Be prepared to answer lots of questions. When people see the data in NTA they are going to want to know why App A is talking to App B. Be ready to explain!
    • Hand the keys to the NTA kingdom to the network team. They will thank you. Everyone wants to have friends on the network team, right?
    • Be prepared to invest in some significant compute and storage performance to keep up with your NTA monitoring
    • Running the latest firmware for your network gear is (often) required to take advantage of all the flow-monitoring. You upgrade regularly, right??
    Incentivized
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    Sumo Logic
    • Standing up the Sensu Go server took very little effort.
    • Setting up and maintaining the build processes and deployment logic for Sensu assets and checks was somewhat exhausting and resulted in lower adoption among non-DevOps IT.
    • The limited web interface resulted in lower adoption among non-DevOps IT.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots

    Sensu Screenshots

    Screenshot of Sensu dashboard homepageScreenshot of Sensu dashboard namespace switcherScreenshot of Sensu events displayed in Grafana. In the examples above, Sensu is comfortably handling 40,000 Sensu agent connections (and their keepalives) and processing over 36,000 events per second.Screenshot of Sensu events displayed in Grafana. In the examples above, Sensu is comfortably handling 40,000 Sensu agent connections (and their keepalives) and processing over 36,000 events per second.