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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)

    Score8 out of 10
    N/ASolarWinds LEM is security information and event management (SIEM) software.N/A

    Zabbix

    Score8.5 out of 10
    N/AZabbix is an open-source network performance monitoring software. It includes prebuilt official and community-developed templates for integrating with networks, applications, and endpoints, and can automate some monitoring processes.N/A
    Pricing
    SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)Zabbix
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)Zabbix
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)Zabbix
    Considered Both Products
    SolarWinds
    No answer on this topic
    Zabbix
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    88%
    Would buy again
    30 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    15 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    28 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    15 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    91%
    Happy with the feature set
    31 Answers
    93%
    Happy with the feature set
    14 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    89%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    16 Answers
    90%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    9 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    89%
    Implementation went as expected
    25 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    13 Answers
    Features
    SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)Zabbix
    Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
    Comparison of Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) features of SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM) and Zabbix
    Feature
    SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)
    8.9
    18 Ratings
    11% above category average
    Zabbix
    -
    Ratings
    Centralized event and log data collection9.018 Ratings00 Ratings
    Correlation8.015 Ratings00 Ratings
    Event and log normalization/management8.018 Ratings00 Ratings
    Deployment flexibility10.018 Ratings00 Ratings
    Integration with Identity and Access Management Tools8.013 Ratings00 Ratings
    Custom dashboards and workspaces9.017 Ratings00 Ratings
    Host and network-based intrusion detection10.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)Zabbix
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Medium-sized Companies
    IBM Security QRadar SIEM
    Score8.9 out of 10
    Icinga
    Score9 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Microsoft Sentinel
    Score8.6 out of 10
    HPE OneView
    Score6 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)Zabbix
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.0
    (46 ratings)
    8.3
    (28 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    7.3
    (2 ratings)
    9.0
    (3 ratings)
    Usability
    8.0
    (6 ratings)
    8.6
    (4 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.5
    (17 ratings)
    5.0
    (5 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM)Zabbix
    Likelihood to Recommend
    SolarWinds
    Optimal for SolarWinds Security Event Manager needs for smaller companies - it is a very cool product but has some limitations around EPS (which gets chewed up quickly if you're doing it the right way & adding servers/storage/FW & other network devices)... Also pricing model is GREAT (not consumption-based, which is the greatest grift the SIEM industry has created).
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Zabbix
    Zabbix is great for monitoring your servers and seeing alerts when the system uses too much CPU or memory. This allowed the system Engineer to be proactive and add resources to these systems to avoid interrupting the services. Especially servers running operations applications and services. This is one of the best usages for Zabbix.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    SolarWinds
    • It does a great job of notifying us when accounts have been locked out. We can then find out the device on the network where the login attempt occurred.
    • Searching for incidents is now a lot faster with the implementation of the HTML 5 interface.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Zabbix
    • Collecting hardware data - CPU, Memory, Network, and Disk Metrics are collected and reported on.
    • Flexible design - It is very easy to build out even very large environments via the templating system. You can also start where you are - network monitoring, server monitoring, etc. and then build it out from there as time and resources permit.
    • Provides a "plugin architecture" (via XML templates) to allow end users to extend it to monitor all kinds of equipment, software, or other metrics that are not already added into the software already.
    • Very complete documentation. Almost every aspect of Zabbix has been documented and reported on.
    • Cost - Zabbix is FOSS software and always free. Support is reasonably priced and readily available.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    SolarWinds
    • All SolarWinds product suffer from slow response times in management portals. SolarWinds SEM is no exception. While it is much preferred over a "thick client" there is much room for improvement in speed.
    • If you use the email alert features with SolarWinds make sure to prepare you staff and team for the large amount of emails they could receive. Make sure to reduce the number of alerts so your team does not ignore the alerts.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Zabbix
    • Creating an alert & its trigger can be made easier.
    • More VM-based data collection counters should be introduced to have better VM monitoring.
    • The raw counters collection agent in every node is relatively weak. It goes down often, which needs more stability.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    SolarWinds
    It is pretty likely that we will renew SEM when the time comes up. It is easy to use and maintain so there isn't much of a need to replace this product. It is also a pretty fair price for the capabilities provided by the SEM
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Zabbix
    It is free. It didn't cost anything to implement (other than my time and the cost incurred for it) and it is filling a badly needed gap in our IT infrastructure. Support is available if we have issues and can be done annually or paid for on a per incident basis as needed. Expansion, updates, and all other future lifecycle activities are likewise free of cost, so as long as someone is able to implement/maintain the software (and the OSS project is maintained) then I imagine the company will never leave it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    SolarWinds
    If you are familiar with SolarWinds then you can use this product it's as easy as that. If you have never used a SolarWinds product then it will take a minute to get how they do reports and make dashboards but that being said the tool is great and can make things very easy once you get a feel for how it works and get everything setup how you like it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Zabbix
    I think every organization, especially the IT department, needs a tool like this. I know of another product like Zabbix that gives a similar or the same solution, but its range makes it very useful. You can see almost all the device info in one place: disk usage, disk space, network usage, etc.
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    SolarWinds
    The quality of support can vary depending on whom you end up speaking with. I was fortunate enough to work with a support representative who was very familiar with the product. He had even authored some of the support documentation on the website. On the flip side, I had two other experiences where I was simply directed to online training material.
    Incentivized
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    Zabbix
    The setup is the most time-consuming portion of using zabbix. It takes a lot of effort to shape it into a usable format and even then it can get very messy. It's not exactly intuitive and as mentioned the UI seems a bit antiquated. If I was to roll out a monitoring solution from scratch, I'd probably look for alternatives which are easier to use and maintain.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    SolarWinds
    No answers on this topic
    Zabbix
    We are a mainly Windows environment, so it would be useful if we could have used Active Directory to deploy agents. As of version 4.2, Zabbix has announced a new agent MSI file to allow exactly that. Unfortunately, we didn't have that option. Also, for Linux and MAC deployments, there is no simple way to deploy that. Using remote scripts you may be able to create something, but most places will opt for either SNMP (agentless) or manual installation of agents to add to Zabbix. A way of deploying agents via discovery would go a long way to helping in the adoption of the tool.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    SolarWinds
    Fortianalzyer can only do logs from FortiGate so usefulness is limited. Elasticsearch was a lot slower than Solarwinds and the filters were a lot harder to set up and use. The connectors for SEM were far more stable.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Zabbix
    We're using the Solarwinds suite as our global monitoring standard, but it is very complex and its licensing model makes it difficult to monitor a wide range of technologies. So, we're using Zabbix as a complement on our monitoring process. Zabbix is a way more flexible and has free integrations to a wide range of technologies. It is also more 'user friendly' and easy to manage.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    SolarWinds
    • For the price, it produced a decent value. It did a lot of the easy stuff well. I can't give any specific data given the objective of the product was to monitor very basic events in the environment.
    • There are free options that can do a better job.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Zabbix
    • Good ROI when trying to get ahead of network related problems instead of waiting for users to complain
    • Good ROI when doing upgrades or exploratory work on a neglected network
    • Good ROI when showing usage trends to management showing higher actual usage versus what was thought to be happening
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    SolarWinds Security Event Manager (SEM) Screenshots

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