Splunk Enterprise vs. IBM Turbonomic

Pros: Splunk is very well suited if you have multiple log sources of related data. All of them can be correlated and tasks can be automated based on the requirement. Other than alerts, Splunk can also run a specific script of your choice, based on some defined conditions. Cons: If you have a few logs but a large number of log sources, Splunk can be very expensive.

Incentivized

Turbonomic helps us see what uses resources and what needs more and how to reorganize to maximize hardware use. I think companies with multiple VMware clusters would benefit from this software. Perhaps not if the company is small. However, Turbo Operations Manager is best for virtualizing data-intensive platforms like SQL.

• Real-time + Scheduled alerts - i-e you can set up alerts which are actively monitoring your logs
• Pretty good response time for search results. With our key/value logging, Splunk makes it blazing fast to query the data.
• Dashboards provide insights into historical data
• Love how Splunk indexes all of the data and provides keys to search on

Incentivized

• Presentation is nice. Its easy to understand what your looking at and the data that is being presented to you.
• Properly identify resource utilization and recommendations for action on how VMs can be improved and resources can be better utilized.
• It was also able to tell us the same information and analysis for cloud resources. I was not expecting that.

Incentivized

• At times some queries can run slowly if indices are not on a portion of the query you use.
• Setup time initially can be difficult if your logs aren't stored in common locations or in a common way to write the log.
• Ability to ingest logs from different locations without having to change code to put logs in a certain place (pro and con).
• Searches can be a bit more difficult to look through if your log isn't pulled in a manner that is easy to read through splunk.

Incentivized

• It would be nice if the UI included a break-down of features that are both licensed as well as un-licensed. That way, you could not only see what you have, but what you don't.
• The right-sizing recommendations are great, but very little info is given about why the recommendation is being made. More info would not only increase understanding, but would also help drive decision-making.

Incentivized

We are using Splunk extensively in our projects and we have recently upgraded to Splunk version 6.0 which is quite efficient and giving expected results. We keep track of updates and new features Splunk introduces periodically and try to introduce those features in our day to day activities for improvement in our reporting system and other tasks.

We are certainly happy with Turbonomic as a whole and have invested quite a bit of time and effort into learning the ins and outs of the product. We have our reporting setup the way we want it and have gained definite value from these features. I will say though that many products nowadays are offering more native monitoring, reporting, and alerting features which may eventually steer us away from this product

Incentivized

You can literally throw in a single word into Splunk and it will pull back all instances of that word across all of your logs for the time span you select (provided you have permission to see that data). We have several users who have taken a few of the free courses from Splunk that are able to pull data out of it everyday with little help at all.

Incentivized

Excellent approach to larger VM organizational management. They have an very clean integrated dashboard that allows us to see everything in our environment and what that is doing in real-time. It works on multiple hyper-visors really well and integrates capacity planning on my local site as well as my cloud locations.

Incentivized

When properly setup and configured, Splunk is extremely reliable.

Incentivized

VMTurbo has not caused any outages by not doing what we expect it to do.

Incentivized

It allocates resources among applications by showing more on the cost breakdown by cloud service, with metrics on cloud provider information like Azure Management, Identity, Networking, Storage with costs per day, and total services costs. This then could facilitate and show the corresponding actions thereafter upon scaling.

Incentivized

Splunk maintains a well resourced support system that has been consistent since we purchased the product. They help out in a timely manner and provide expert level information as needed. We typically open cases online and communicate when possible via e-mail and are able to resolve most issues with that method.

Incentivized

When I contact support I get a quick response and they are able to solve my problem quickly. I also get a sense that they want to make sure that we are getting value from the product and walk me through whatever steps are needed to accomplish my goals.

Incentivized

Alex (from VMTurbo) has worked with the product for years and helped develop the product. He was very knowledgeable and was able to provide our support team with details knowledge on how to get our deployment configured correctly as well as help with another VMTurbo POC within another customers environment.

Incentivized

The online course was simple clear and described the main capabilities of the solution. There is also an initial module that can be done for free so anyone can familiarize themselves with the functionality of this solution. On the other hand, however, there could be more free online courses. Maybe even with a certificate, this would broaden the group of people who are familiar with the platform while increasing familiarity with the solution itself.

After buying VMTurbo Operations Manager, I was invited to an online user training event. I felt this training was effective and dug just deep enough to be informative yet still keep my attention. Additionally, the webinar was free.

Incentivized

Smooth without too many major issues.

Incentivized

The implementation was very simple. Just upload an OVA file and power on the VM. Once it comes up enter some networking information and you can then access the web interface. From there, just begin configuring the system for your environment by adding you license and the various virtual environments and storage through the inventory tab

Incentivized

I wanted to learn a new language that I can quickly master and implement. Splunk is easy, fun to use and best of all, it can be developed in hours not days or weeks. Splunk is fundamentally a programming language that is minimal but yet powerful enough to collect, analyze and visualize data.

Incentivized

As the organization had experience of years in using IBM products, we had the confidence that they will provide us with great support. And we needed a reliable solution as a financial institute to ensure continuous operations. Even though the price was very high, we made the correct decision to go ahead with IBM Turbonomic as the feedback from existing users in the region was very positive. We needed a solution which was capable of handling our automation requirements. All these were green in IBM Turbonomic.

Incentivized

Splunk can scale in to the petabyte per day range which of course is awesome

easy scalable, adding new clusters in, no big deal.

Incentivized

Professional services were always there to guide us in our transformation to the cloud. They understood our business model and then were able to provide guidance on what we needed from the tool.

Incentivized

• Overall very positive. It has provided visibility to what is going on within our network.
• One drawback is the time it takes to get up to speed with the application, but this is up to the user, and Splunk education is excellent.
• In my field, IT Security, there are few other friends to have in your back pocket better than Splunk. They are just that good.

Incentivized

• Application performance has been a big one. With Turbonomic keeping everything running at top performance, it can make changes when extra resources are need, quicker than somebody being notified and then making the necessary changes.
• Turbonomic has been a great cost savings for us on multiple occasions. We use it every time we are improving servers.
• With the planning feature we get the best performance form new hardware purchases

Incentivized