SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Reviews

If your environment is predominantly Windows (there is Linux support but I have not used it), you leverage applications such as AD, Exchange, SQL and IIS, and especially if you already use NPM then SAM may be just what you are looking for if you want to take your server & app monitoring to the next level. The ability to use templates from other SAM users through the SolarWinds community site is also a great way to further leverage the investment.

In an on-air environment that broadcast live television, the real-time monitoring is a little slow and there have been some possible delays in reporting or alerting network outages or connectivity loss. It is not a show stopper but the real-time analytics could use some improvement. Monitoring network traffic across a large facility that has both layer 2 and layer 3 switches, the toolset fits perfectly and the ease of setup and the single dashboard is more adaptable than other products which require multiple different licenses and separate dashboards.

From personal experience, I would not say that SolarWinds SAM is suited for small environments, mainly due to the cost. When I first started with my current employer 17 years ago, we implemented SolarWinds. Eventually we needed additional products like NPM and others to fully manage the environment, and discovered that it was very cost prohibitive at the time, so we ended up moving away from SAM and implementing an open source solution which could handle just about everything we needed. However, that solution was not easy to set up and maintain in the long run. Jump ahead 12 years, and at that point our environment had grown 10x and the open source solution was not ideal for that growth. At this point we were in a position that we could afford SolarWinds SAM and all the other licensing needed to fully manage it. If your company can afford it, SolarWinds is, in my opinion, the best at what it does. If cost is a concern, it may not be the ideal solution.

We use SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor to monitor our Lync servers (Edge Frontend and Proxy Server) SharePoint servers, our auto dialer systems, Exchange servers for application issues and alert us if there is a possible issue. We also monitor our certificates for expiration, as well as we get notified when a user is locked out via a custom monitor I set up. We also monitor for low disk space as well as CPU usage and ram usage to alert us if we need to increase resources on a server.

SolarWinds SAM is well suited for Mid-large enterprises or MSPs. Smaller companies may not be able to rationalize SAM from a cost/benefit aspect. The SolarWinds onboarding team is very helpful in introducing new customers to its products, and its user community, THWACK, is unparalleled in the depth of knowledge it contains.

I can't think of a scenario where SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor would not be appropriate! You get so much out of this tool with very little effort. SAM is another set of eyes in my environment. I pair SAM with NetFlow and to get a great understanding of the data flows in my environment. I have set up custom application monitors for almost every component running, and are using the Windows Time Skew App monitor constructed by SolarWinds. There are so many great templates already created for the end user. When you get good enough, you can configure your own template and share with the THWACK community and other SolarWinds users. The greatest thing about SolarWinds in general; the end users drive the products!

We have had some issues trying to monitor UCS Blades and Fabric interconnects core infrastructure. It does a great job of monitoring each individual server but lacks the ability to understand which FI is in standby and which one is active. It would be nice to have this functionality built in.

It's really good at monitoring availability, and the database performance monitor is excellent in identifying issues with queries, bad queries, long queries etc. You can monitor resources, like who's doing what and how long it's taking, etc. I can't find anything that applies to my setup that I can say is not appropriate. I have customized it quite uniquely to our environment.

One of the best things I value about SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor is that monitors and alerts are two different things, yet can be combined in any way one could imagine. One can even create alert templates and user alerting templates over and over across different monitors.

It's great for SaaS companies who need to monitor multiple servers because all of the metrics and alerts can be managed in one place. The plugins are great too because it gives us more detailed monitoring of specific software, such as database servers.

This solution may be more suitable when you have a small datacenter(maybe under 100 servers); the User Interface may be snappier and you may find your answer more quickly regarding the issues you face on some machines. But with thousands of servers, we are seeing slowness. It has many features that you need to monitor your infrastructure and have great visibility into the details, whether you are the IT responsible for it, or you are just a user that needs to make sure his team has the servers they need to work in proper shape.

If you have a smaller IT team, you will spend less time physically checking devices by using the Server & Application Monitor. The alerts are a quick read, and you can track down the issue and starting point of the failure using the visual dashboard and notification. It saves us a ton of time finding where the issue started.

Determining what is the root issue as it pertains to the network or application.

If you are looking for specific application monitoring as well as simple up/down on servers(cpu.memory. HD). If you are looking for URL, network, or DB monitoring there are other tools, specifically by SolarWinds that can integrate well. This helps with a single pane of glass dashboard look.

The phones are the number one priority in the company. We can get anything else done on paper so long as we can get the calls. I can monitor call volume and quickly search call failures with the SolarWinds applications. This is done in both real-time and call detail records. This ability, along with the network monitoring of all the routers and switches, makes this tool invaluable.

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor is great for businesses that have critical processes or many servers as the single pane of glass is a great tool for any small IT department. You do not want your users to tell you when something is wrong, so having an alert to pinpoint the issue and let you know first is worth so much!

This is the best server and application monitoring system. This is very robust as well. We use additional SolarWinds modules, such as Network Performance Monitor and Netflow Traffic Analyzer, which actually add more value to our monitoring system. We depend on this monitoring system to monitor our critical production servers on a day-to-day basis. This has helped us to keep the "Lights ON."

Anywhere you have servers and applications, you should be monitoring them. SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor provides so much peace-of-mind that I cannot recommend it enough.

It's a cost versus sensor ratio. If you have only a few critical criteria...it works great for the moment.

It is good for monitoring general servers' OSs and getting total information on a system.

Well suited for: Performance Monitoring, Resource utilisation, Capacity planning.

Very good solution. Tons of options and features. Very detailed monitoring of the infrastructure. But extremely expensive. We were using the solution just because our virtual DC provider had that solution implemented and provided access for free as part of services.

[Well suited] for customization for alerting; SAM is very versatile and allows very granular alerting and monitoring solutions. With the ability to provide app insight with our Exchange and SQL environments, we are able to drill down to issues and provide valuable data to resolve application problems as they are happening. We also like to use the forecasting ability to ensure that our end users are aware if there will be resource issues forthcoming.

Well suited for monitoring servers/devices when they go up or down. Would like to see the mapping expanded a bit more.

Taking inventory and notifying of availability.