SolarWinds® Virtualization Manager (VMAN) is a tool for monitoring, performance management, capacity planning and optimization for on-premises or cloud-based virtual environments. It also integrates with other SolarWinds products.
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VMware Horizon
Score 8.1 out of 10
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A VDI solution used for the secure delivery of virtual desktops and apps from on-premises to the cloud. It is used to deploy, manage, monitor and scale desktops and apps across private, hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure using a cloud-based console and SaaS management services.
The Cisco solution is more expensive and complex to install and configure The VMware Horizon does not detect and manage the non VMware VMs such as Microsoft Hyper-V In case the environment is purely VMware, then VMware Horizon provides more possibilities of managing the VMs and …
I've only tried out a few products, but we were already using SolarWinds for other things, and the capability of having all your monitoring products integrated is extremely valuable. Also, it is much easier to work with than VMWare's monitoring tools.
[It is well suited for] full integration with the virtual environment (VMware vcenter in our case). [It is also useful] when updating [the] host to a new version, including [a] new version of VM Tools. Messages are automatically created in SolarWinds VMAN to notice which VM's still need to be updated with [the] newer version of VM tools. This [makes] management [easy].
VMware is well suited to a business where there will be many remote users needing to connect to the companies desktop. The installation on a remote computer is simple and is easy to use remotely but can be complicated to set up on the back end on the office system. It may not be worth the effort for a company that has few people who need remote access.
I created custom dashboards, to view the different elements of the virtual environment. For example, you can view the number of online VMs and those off, or disconnected. You can also choose to see the status of every virtual cluster, the storage disk usage on every VM, the RAM usage, CPU usage.
I used this application to see the growth of virtual memory in each cluster and accordingly do forecasting for future growth. A capacity planner included in this application would help in doing accurate estimations and setting a future upgrade budget.
Another powerful tool was the customized reports, where i could generate reports on any element of the VM or cluster. Reports can be exported to Excel or PDF and are very useful for sharing information with colleagues and management.
Alerts can be customized. For example, you can set a rule to get an email alert if any virtual server RAM usage exceeds 85% and send a text message if RAM usage exceeds 90% for more than 10 minutes.
It provides a robust, secure, rich desktop environment that is able to access all internal network resources.
Addresses security and compliance concerns as all data resides within the internal network. All data accessed stays within the internal network and does not need to traverse a VPN to the local desktop where it may be cached, etc.
The connection is thin client that does not require large amount of bandwidth.
Client application is available for all common devices and O/S’s.
No need to install, configure and maintain applications on local desktop.
We did have issues during the setup, with successfully connecting to some of our hosts and vCenters and we found support were just sending us back to articles we had already read, it was also taking long periods before getting a response. The issue is still ongoing, in fact.
Currently, there is no other tool that gives us what we need to monitor a geographically disperse environment with multiple non-related instances of VM clusters. In addition, the level of reporting, historical data trending, and alerting that VMAN provides is essential for our business process. Lastly, the effort to customize and set up any monitoring system is not trivial. This makes switching to any other product very difficult without being able to clearly demonstrate a ROI.
SolarWinds VMAN is easy to use for everyone. When I say everyone which literally means anyone e.g. Virtualization Environment SME, Consultant, Support Team, Management Officers etc. Anyone who have worked on IT technologies could easily deploy SolarWinds by reading videos, Thwack posts or Virtual Classrooms (Custom Success Centers) - this makes this application easy to operation and for maintenance support is always there.
VMware Horizon is very easy to use. It is very easy and quick to log in remotely. It is very easy to install remotely. It is usable easily on many different operating systems. It is easy to set up which tools are available to each remote user so that each user has just what they need to perform their work without any extra tools cluttering up their space or bogging down the system.
Performance is excellent of you provide the needed hardware to support the sessions/connections. Pages load very quickly at the client end as the thin client application does a very good job and requires very little bandwidth. All applications function well, as they are running on a session on an internal server that is accessing data directly on the network
SolarWinds gives good support. I have never had a time when i was working through a support case where I did not get the support I needed for the required issues to be resolved. I have always had resolutions from SolarWinds support. They are top notch. Issues once had are no more.
It is surely way better than Citrix, but it could improve a bit. Usually, they send us the solution without saying what was the root cause so we can avoid breaking something in the future. Besides that, VMWare support answers in an OK time-frame and even speaks our language (Portuguese).
Its really the best product on the market for someone looking to have total control over their VM environment. anyone interested should download a demo and try it, I know you will buy it after you do. It changing the way you have to manage on a daily basis
The operation began using Nagios XI, after a year of use, and based on the results obtained, we realized that what our client wanted was not fully met. Our client asked us to use WhatsUp, however, SolarWinds covered in a more efficient way what was required by our client (IT) and even more.
Although I really prefer Microsoft Remote Desktop for accessing Windows servers (from Windows machines especially), and this can be done from off-site with a VPN, this entails much more effort, namely getting everyone's Active Directory in the correct group to have access. VMWare Horizon is a much simpler solution in terms of granting access. Chrome Remote Desktop and TeamViewer are really not viable solutions for remotely accessing servers in business settings, although they work alright for home servers and such, especially from off-site.
VMAN has been used for reports provided to executive-level meetings. These reports showed our growth patterns, allowing for easier decisions on purchasing additional hardware.
VMAN has provided a positive impact on allowing for near real-time monitoring of resources, able to pinpoint when services are using more memory than expected, not running at all, or other options as defined.
VMAN was purchased to help monitor our VMware platform, the added abilities for AWS allowed us to migrate clients from on-prem to cloud-based with the same views.
