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SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor

Overview

What is SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor?

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) delivers application and server monitoring capabilities. SAM allows for self-service for easy setup, 1200+ monitoring templates, and customization options, as well as integrate with other SolarWinds products.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor is a versatile tool that has been widely used across various industries and departments for …
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True Insight

10 out of 10
January 27, 2022
Incentivized
I use SolarWinds Server Application Monitor to monitor my infrastructure as well as applications within that environment. It provides a …
Continue reading
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 12 features
  • Server availability and performance monitoring (269)
    9.8
    98%
  • Application monitoring (266)
    9.0
    90%
  • Threshold alerts (271)
    8.9
    89%
  • Out-of-the box templates to monitor applications (256)
    7.9
    79%
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Pricing

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What is SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor?

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) delivers application and server monitoring capabilities. SAM allows for self-service for easy setup, 1200+ monitoring templates, and customization options, as well as integrate with other SolarWinds products.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttp://www.solarwinds.com/products/pric…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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What is Azure Monitor?

Microsoft's Azure Monitor is designed to analyze and optimize the performance of web applications and infrastructure, including virtual machines (VMs), Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure Storage, and databases. Monitor Linux and Windows VMs and their health and dependencies—all on a single map.

What is SolarWinds Pingdom?

SolarWinds Pingdom is a website uptime monitoring and alert tool, with additional reporting and Real User Monitoring capabilities. Pingdom is part of SolarWinds’s DevOps package, enabling full-stack monitoring as a service.

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Features

Application Performance Management

Application performance management software monitors software to ensure performance and availability

8.7
Avg 7.6
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Product Details

What is SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor?

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) delivers application and server monitoring capabilities for IT pros enabling them to diagnose and troubleshoot issues faster. The vendor’s value proposition is that this solution prevents slow applications and downtime from impacting end-users and business services. Users can use this tool to pinpoint the root cause of application issues across various layers of the IT stack.

The vendor says SolarWinds SAM is affordable, easy to deploy, use and customize. Users can automatically discover their systems environment and start monitoring in about an hour. No professional services or consultation needed.

SAM is built on SolarWinds Orion® platform enabling native integration with Network Performance Monitor and other IT management software from SolarWinds.

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Features

  • Supported: Single Web interface to monitor multi-vendor applications and server infrastructure.
  • Supported: Out-of-the-box monitoring templates for 200+ enterprise applications.
  • Supported: Easily extend monitoring to virtually any custom or home-grown applications.
  • Supported: Gain contextual visibility of relationships and dependencies between applications and physical and virtual servers.
  • Supported: Monitor server hardware health, perform capacity forecasting, and manage asset inventory. Remediate server issues remotely with built-in management actions.
  • Supported: Monitor VMware and Hyper-V environments to identify problems impacting application performance.
  • Supported: Centrally manage IT asset inventory and keep track of server hardware and software information.
  • Supported: Leverage the wealth of built-in alerts and reports, and easily customize them as needed.
  • Supported: SAM is an agentless monitoring software. Optional agent installation extends monitoring to the cloud.

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Screenshots

Screenshot of Multi-vendor application performance monitoringScreenshot of Multi-vendor server monitoringScreenshot of Application dependency mapping with AppStackâ„¢ dashboardScreenshot of Microsoft Exchange performance monitoring with AppInsightâ„¢ templateScreenshot of Microsoft IIS performance monitoring with AppInsightâ„¢ templateScreenshot of Server hardware health monitoringScreenshot of Built-in virtualization monitoring for VMware and Hyper-V environmentsScreenshot of Easily extend monitoring to any custom or home-grown application

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Videos

An introduction to and a brief overview of SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
In this video, the TrustRadius team is going to take a look at Solarwinds Server and Application Monitor, a powerful tool that can help you monitor your systems and identify issues early. We'll explore the overview, user sentiment, pricing, top features, and use-case, and help...
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Watch SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Training Videos

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Competitors

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise
Operating SystemsWindows
Mobile ApplicationNo
Supported LanguagesEnglish

Frequently Asked Questions

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) delivers application and server monitoring capabilities. SAM allows for self-service for easy setup, 1200+ monitoring templates, and customization options, as well as integrate with other SolarWinds products.

Progress WhatsUp Gold, Nagios Core, and Tivoli Monitoring (legacy) are common alternatives for SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor.

Reviewers rate Server availability and performance monitoring highest, with a score of 9.8.

The most common users of SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(649)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor is a versatile tool that has been widely used across various industries and departments for monitoring and managing servers, applications, and network infrastructure. Users rely on the software to ensure that critical systems are up and running smoothly. With its ability to monitor servers, applications, and network nodes, customers appreciate the comprehensive insights it provides into their IT environments.

One of the key use cases of SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor is its role in proactive monitoring and alerting. Users have praised the software's capability to detect issues such as CPU utilization, memory usage, response time, and low disk space. By setting up corresponding alerts, users can address potential problems before they impact end-users. This proactive approach helps prevent system failures and ensures optimal performance.

Another important use case of SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor is its ability to provide detailed insights into server metrics and application performance. Users can monitor various elements such as CPU, memory, and disk usage on servers, as well as track the health of applications like Exchange, SQL, IIS, and SharePoint. The software's integration with other products in the SolarWinds Orion family enhances network management capabilities, allowing for a unified view of segmented networks.

Additionally, SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor is valued for its flexibility in monitoring different types of systems and services. It supports Windows, Linux, Unix, and AIX servers both on-premises and in the cloud. Users have leveraged the software to monitor services, processes, URLs, IP addresses, MAC addresses, SMTP devices like networked cameras, and even Linux services such as IPTables. This broad range of monitoring capabilities makes it a valuable tool for organizations with diverse IT infrastructures.

Overall, SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor has proven to be instrumental in maintaining system stability by providing real-time alerts for potential issues and facilitating efficient troubleshooting. Its ease of use and customization options allow different departments and administrators to tailor monitoring and alerts to their specific needs. The software's comprehensive insights, proactive monitoring, and wide range of supported systems make it a valuable asset for organizations looking to ensure optimal performance and availability of their IT infrastructure.

Customizable Dashboard: Users appreciate the fully customizable dashboard in SolarWinds SAM, which allows them to tailor it to their specific requirements. This feature has been mentioned by several reviewers and enables users to easily access the information they need for effective monitoring.

Proactive Alerting: Reviewers have praised SAM's proactive alerting capabilities, with alerts being triggered for offline servers, low disk space, rebooted servers, and critical network device outages. This feature has been highly valued by users as it helps them stay on top of potential issues and address them promptly.

Reporting Capabilities: SAM's reporting capabilities have received positive feedback from users who find the detailed reports provided by the software helpful for meeting regulatory requirements and ensuring system stability and performance. The granularity in alerts and reporting has been mentioned by multiple reviewers as a valuable feature of SAM.

Confusing User Interface: Users have expressed frustration with the user interface of SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor, stating that it is confusing and difficult to navigate. Some users feel that there is a steep learning curve and find it overwhelming, especially for first-time users.

Lack of Comprehensive Documentation: Several users have criticized the documentation provided for SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor, stating that it is spotty and lacking in examples. They believe that more comprehensive and detailed documentation would greatly aid in understanding and troubleshooting the software.

Poor Customer Support: There have been complaints about the customer support provided by SolarWinds. Multiple users have reported that customer support has worsened over time, causing frustration due to delays in reaching the correct support team and resolving issues in a timely manner.

Users have recommended several key actions for users considering SolarWinds based on their experiences. These include:

  • Recommending utilizing the software for internal use, specifically for monitoring servers and applications.
  • Suggesting taking advantage of the free trial to test the software before making a purchase decision.
  • Advising researching and planning before implementation to ensure the software is suitable for one's needs.
  • Encouraging careful design of the environment, especially when using the software in different locations.
  • Recommending purchasing a license that matches the number of components needed for monitoring.
  • Urging cautiousness when it comes to support and potential glitches with the software.
  • Suggesting working with a detail-oriented engineer for proper setup and configuration.
  • Promoting interaction with the user community site to learn from others' experiences and share knowledge.
  • Emphasizing the need to understand the licensing model before signing up and selecting appropriate licensing based on the number of nodes to be monitored.
  • Suggesting exploring other SolarWinds offerings and using them in conjunction with this software.

While users find SolarWinds to be a valuable tool, they also mention that it may not be suitable for beginners due to its learning curve. Overall, it is recommended to carefully consider setup, pricing, and requirements before implementing SolarWinds.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 138)
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January 27, 2022

True Insight

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use SolarWinds Server Application Monitor to monitor my infrastructure as well as applications within that environment. It provides a thorough insight into the health and availability of my infrastructure through an easy-to-read and customizable dashboard. Without SolarWinds Server Application Monitor, it would feel like I'm trying to navigate through a wildfire without visibility. Receiving alerts to issues as they are happening is a lifesaver. We have critical processes that would otherwise go unmonitored without SolarWinds Server Application Monitor. We use it for our entire virtual environment.
  • Discovers servers in our environment
  • Monitors both servers and applications in our environment
  • Monitors hardware health
  • Allow more granular control of application templates
  • Provide suggestions based on trends
  • provide a dark theme option
SolarWinds Server Application Monitor is well suited for any environment where you care about health and uptime. If you are at all concerned about your infrastructure, SolarWinds Sensor Application Monitor is your best friend. I have yet to work in an environment without SolarWinds Server Application Monitor and I can't imagine being successful at a company that doesn't have it.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) provides our organization visibility into the performance and availability of our servers and applications. It also provides email notifications so that we are able to troubleshoot any issues as they occur. It also proactively provides threshold data so that we can optimize our servers and applications before an issue occurs. We also use SolarWinds SAM for monitoring our own Windows services.
  • Application performance
  • Application reporting
  • Application insight info
  • SolarWinds SAM configuration
We can monitor all our servers - virtual and hardware servers at one time, group them by OS, and determine instantly if the servers are operational. Templates are available for used applications, for example, Windows Active Directory and DNS services.
January 20, 2022

Solarwinds SAM Review

Matthew Plourde | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Solarwinds SAM provides visibility into the performance and availability of our servers and applications. It provides email notifications so that we may be able to troubleshoot any issues as they occur and proactively provides threshold data so that we can optimize our servers and applications before an issue occurs. Excellent product!
  • Reporting
  • Thresholds
  • Visibility
  • Simplicity
  • Configuration
  • Guided resolution
Solarwinds Server and Application Monitor provides excellent visibility into our servers and applications. It allows us to optimize latency issues, storage issues, and so forth as these key items for functionality and performance begin to reach their thresholds. It helps us resolve these issues before they cause an issue in our production environment.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor (SAM) is used for monitoring servers, applications, and databases in our environment. We have many [SolarWinds] SAM templates defined to monitor applications (JMX, Tomcat, AD, etc). We use [SolarWinds] SAM to monitor event logs, custom logs, and run Database Queries. The [SolarWinds] SAM templates also support running custom PowerShell, Perl, and Python scripts to monitor your environment. Additional Templates are available to monitor Database, SQL Server, Oracle, MYSQL, [and] Storage Monitoring. There are over hundreds of [SolarWinds] SAM Templates available to address your monitoring needs.
  • Custom Script (Windows, Powershell, Python, Perl, [etc.])
  • Performance Stacks (Dashboards) based on data collected from [SolarWinds] SAM Templates
  • Application dependency Mapping for some [SolarWinds] SAM Templates
  • Additional Templates for monitoring applications (JBoss, JMX, etc.)
  • Dependency Mapping for these applications
  • More Application Performance Management features
SolarWinds SAM is suited to configure custom monitoring. This includes monitoring log files, error messages in logs, running database queries, and executing custom scripts. This data can be displayed in [an] intuitive dashboard for the NOC team. The [SolarWinds] SAM templates can also be used to manage application availability and uptime for all critical applications. Alerts can be defined for monitoring the [SolarWinds] SAM templates.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It's a very powerful product, we are using for Servers and Applications monitoring for HQ and DR sites. We found it very powerful for Microsoft Services like DHCP scope issues, Exchange, AD, IIS, SQL, etc.
  • Monitoring Servers Uptime.
  • Monitoring Application and Services.
  • CPU and RAM utilisation alert.
  • Microsoft Services.
  • Virtualisation.
  • Database.
  • I found SAM already updating and improving day by day.
It helped us to find the root cause for SQL services, DHCP scope issues, IIS web issues, high utilisation alert, unreachability issues many more.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We utilize SAM to monitor our Windows servers and Linux servers for CPU Load and Physical Memory usage and drive capacity. We also utilize SAM to monitor the custom applications on our Linux server environment to make sure that the applications are up and that they are functioning properly.
  • Monitor CPU and Memory.
  • Monitor drive capacity.
  • Monitor hardware.
  • I would like the ability to modify custom application groups.
SAM is well suited for monitoring applications, Component response time, monitoring process and the CPU load that they are using, and monitoring the processes by the physical memory that they are using.
January 19, 2022

SAM I AM

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it as part of our internal IT monitoring solution. We generate proactive support tickets for systems coming close to outage thresholds and we use it to page out different teams when their application isn't responding. We support 3500+ servers and datacenter infrastructure that where a good portion is in SolarWinds.
  • The simple addition of nodes.
  • Lots of templates that help with application monitoring.
  • Community input is very helpful.
  • Some of the documentation doesn't make much sense to a new user, need to show use cases.
  • Creating graphs and custom dashboards seems overly complicated.
  • Having to use SQL queries in several scenarios for various widgets shouldn't be needed.
For IT infrastructure teams, SAM is a great fit, and even including the Linux side seems to be getting better. The application aspect is great but understanding the alerting of application issues vs node issues is a little complicated at times. If we could work on module integration so a simple build of a system that included all applications, node, and infrastructure monitoring would be great.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We currently use it to monitor our AD environment along with a few other Azure resources such as IaaS and PaaS, with response time monitoring.
  • AD monitoring
  • IaaS monitoring
  • PaaS monitoring
  • User interface
  • simplified management console
SolarWinds Server and App monitor are a good solution if you need something affordable and have a hybrid infrastructure in place. Being able to hook into AWS, Azure for IaaS and PaaS is a huge plus.
January 18, 2022

SW Review :)

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use SolarWinds to manage our servers and networks in our organization.
  • Network Monitoring
  • Alerts
When our Network goes down, it alerts us that our Network is down and which Network is down. It makes it easy to pinpoint.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We make use of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor throughout the whole organization. It has solved many issues for us, from quickly monitoring our infrastructure and alerting when systems are down, when resources (eg disk space) are running low to giving us a single view into our virtualization, network, as well as server environment. It is our number one tool for monitoring of the environment and allows us to not only be proactive when it comes to potential outages, but also allows us to quickly diagnose faults and incidents and resolve the outage quickly so that staff are able to carry on working.
  • The layout and feel of the product first and foremost. You can have a product which can do everything under the sun, however if it's lacking visually or hard to navigate, it's not very useful.
  • Seamless integration of assets between the various modules of SolarWinds, makes it a breeze to monitor or report on the environment.
  • Customisation - All aspects of the software is customisable, whether its reporting or when it comes monitoring configuration, SolarWinds SAM allows you to customise it fully to your environment so you achieve the best outcomes when it comes to monitoring and alerting.
  • The get the best out of it requires a decent amount of knowledge of the product. In saying that, you could absolutely get the basics up and running using their how-to's and built in wizards, and with continual use find your way around and customise it further to your environment to best serve your organisation/objectives.
Absolutely I would recommend the product. If you want a single product to monitor and manage your whole environment, whether it's hardware, servers (physical or virtualised), networking and all from a single "portal" Solarwinds SAM is what you want to use. You could quite easily start off with SAM, and then decide you wish to monitor the networking side of things, you can obtain the NTA/MPM module, if you wish to monitor IP address usage, or IP conflicts, DHCP etc., you can install the IPAM module. It all neatly integrates into the same portal, meaning you go to one address and all the information is there at your fingertips.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor is being used by the IT Infrastructure team to monitor servers and services that sit on an IBMi and Windows platforms. It allows us to monitor a number of critical services where we receive notifications when critical services go offline or if thresholds are met that will indicate a problem needs to be addressed. It is a critical tool we use in order to monitor, identify and prevent serious issues from occurring.
  • Identify and monitor critical services on an IBMi platform.
  • Identify and monitor critical services on a Windows Server Platform.
  • Set thresholds to provide notifications where necessary to address serious issues before it hampers the operation.
  • Provide usage reports and other data that can be useful for forming IT Strategy.
  • Support aspect of the operation could be better in terms of assisting new customers to get up and running quickly.
  • Some of the options can be simplified, broken up into simple vs. advanced properties.
  • More access to knowledge is always useful whether that is a knowledge hub or easy access to support engineers for guidance with specific requests.
-AS400 / IBMi Environments to monitor services and key metrics such as resource utilization and service status
- Windows Server environments to monitor services and key metrics and receive alerts for critical events.
- Reporting & IT Strategy Planning
- To be able to get a snapshot of your infrastructure and identify areas for improvement
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
[SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor] is used to monitor the status of our operational technology platform used by production critical systems. It operates behind a firewall without internet connectivity and we use it to notify of issues with our VMware cluster, windows server VMs, and physical windows workstations. It also tracks the status of services at a basic level (eg IIS website up or down). It is capable of more advanced monitoring and analysis but we haven't used those features in great detail yet.
It does work well, however can be a little noisy with email alerts if you don't put some effort into tuning resource thresholds for VMs especially.
  • The dashboard is easy to use and very informative
  • Notifications are customisable
  • Setting up polling is easy without the need for agents on each system
  • Polling agents are useful for cross firewall applications and scalability
  • Alerting and setting thresholds can be difficult to ensure you aren't notified spuriously
  • Documentation on remote access permissions and tight firewall rules was a little hard to find. Some example group policies would have been helpful to allow monitoring without compromising security
  • The online update feature, where you use the system to deploy updates to other polling agents etc never worked for us, potentially because our system is quite locked down. We had to use the offline manual installer and the process wasn't as smooth as you would want
[SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor] is too much for small systems, it is best suited to medium or large deployments. It does a good job at monitoring infrastructure and the status of standard services like databases and IIS. If you want to monitor bespoke or custom applications it may be able to do so but likely in a limited way. We would like it to monitor or control system and historian statuses but are not sure if it can or would be worth the effort.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor module is used across our entire infrastructure. It gives visibility into a lot of data and issues across the organization.
  • SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor was able to give info on certs that are going to expire, which helped us renew before they caused an outage.
  • SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor module gave us insights into resource utilization for multiple servers due to which the debugging and fixing of issues was very easy.
  • Alerting is broken for us. When we asked about it, we were told it is a bug and to upgrade our SolarWinds. It is a very huge upgrade. We didn't even get a workaround.
  • Support is sometimes very slow.
I haven't seen any other tool capable of monitoring certificate expiry like SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor. It is suited for infrastructure monitoring but it is absolutely useless to monitor application performance.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are leveraging SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor to monitor all of our servers and networking equipment, as well as creating customized alerts that will notify the help desk team when things are less than ideal. We are using it across our entire department, but not necessarily the entire organization. The business problem it is solving is creating that single pane of glass that we can see green/yellow/red how our network/infrastructure is currently doing.
  • Alerting- You have the ability to alert on many different things and get pretty granular.
  • Dashboard-You can create customized dashboards for different people/groups that can see what they need to see.
  • Monitoring- You can also get pretty granular as far as what you want to see, and if they don't have something built-in, things can always be added.
  • Some things are kind of hard to find unless you know exactly what you're looking for and where to find it.
  • It's a lot to manage for just one or two people.
  • Some of the graphs/charts can't be customized in all the ways we want to.
It's great to monitor environments of all sizes (provided you have the licensing for all of the nodes you would like to add). I think it's a little less appropriate if you're not a huge IT shop. There are probably other, cheaper, better-suited products out there at that point.
Adam Gadsby | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Server and Application Monitor has been deployed to all servers within our client's organization, and it has enabled our support team and the client's staff to identify potential issues before they become critical saving time and money. The application monitor elements allow us to keep tabs on the health of key business applications such as email, SQL, and identify and resolve issues quickly.
  • Quickly identify potential issues with applications and their root causes.
  • Server resource usage can be kept on top of, with additional resources, added before its needed.
  • Its simple and intuitive to use.
  • Easy to drill down to get the detail behind the headline information.
  • Could have more application insights.
SAM module is well suited to organizations with multiple servers in one or more sites, as it takes care of the mundane monitoring tasks, allowing your staff to focus on more pressing matters. Business-critical applications, such as Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes, and SQL databases, can all be monitored out of the box, and other applications can easily be added in and monitored using the template creation features.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is being used by the whole company. It helps us monitor any issues that arise. It helps us in trouble shooting and saves us a lot of time. I would strongly recommend SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor for any IT needs. Their support is also great they will spend time in resolving your issue.
  • Drills down to source
  • Notification of issues
  • Easy management
  • Easier navigation
December 03, 2020

SAM at a glance

John Martins | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SolarWinds SAM is being used by one of my customers in their department. I was responsible for the installation/configuration/ day to day operations of SAM. My customer is utilizing SAM to replace their previous monitoring product. SAM is used for them to be able to monitor servers and applications, to ensure their environment is healthy.
  • Ability to monitor and graph specific components of servers and applications.
  • A various amount of already built templates ready for deployment.
  • Fast and easy set up with subnet scans.
  • There is no option out of the box for SAM to show you the process that is consuming the most CPU. To be able to do this you need to ensure that the process/service is actually selected for monitoring (this is a problem as we just want to know frequently the top 5 processes consuming the highest CPU without monitoring them all).
  • We find the interface a bit slow sometimes (yet, with this being said, we are currently rebuilding to ensure everything is set up right, as we are not sure if it is an environment or application issue).
SAM is suited for monitoring components of a server/application e.g. CPU usage, memory usage, a specific service. There are a lot of components that can be monitored via SAM and SAM comes with several default templates to help the users.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor is mainly used by our IT department, but our IT department uses it in a way to support other departments throughout our organization.
  • SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor helps monitor the status or some of our most important applications. It has the capability of letting us know when an application goes down which helps us fix the issue faster.
  • SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor helps monitor the resources on servers. By knowing the key components of the server such as CPU, RAM, and storage, we can forecast whether we need to increase or decrease resources on any server.
  • SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor helps us by sending real time alerts when issues occur related to servers that we are monitoring.
  • SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor has been extremely helpful for our organization. I can't think of anything to improve on.
Any server administrator needs a tool such as SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor in their environment. Having the ability to receive real time alerts when an application or server goes [down] only helps in the troubleshooting process and the down time. No one wants to see a server or application go down but it is inevitable that it will happen. Having the ability to get it back up and running in a timely manner is most important.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor to closely monitor all of our important infrastructure and interfaces across our organization. It allows us real time alerts if any mission-critical applications or hardware develop problems. This often allows us to rectify those issues before they potentially impact users.
  • Physical port monitoring
  • Monitoring of resources during peak usage
  • Monitoring servers for outages
  • Finding root cause sometimes requires drilling into a few things with added clicks.
It is well suited for medium sized organizations who want a cost effective way to monitor critical pieces of their infrastructure.
November 08, 2020

Great Product

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor across our entire organization in order to monitor in real-time the status of various aspects of our application and server environment. We use it to keep track of our production servers, services, and applications in order to provide world-class information technology service to our customers (other company employees).
  • Critical Services Monitoring
  • General Server Health
  • Current Server Status
  • Print Queue Monitoring
If you are looking to monitor servers, services, and applications (on those servers), SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor is well suited for you. I have had difficulty implementing Print Queue monitoring, but admit that I am not well-versed on how to implement it. I plan to contact support for guidance in this area.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use SolarWinds throughout the whole organization, for monitoring managed systems for our end-customers, and for in-depth analysis in case of incidents. Customized dashboards have been implemented per team. We have set up extensive alert triggers that interface with our main ticketing system for direct analysis by our Support Team. We have also automated a vast majority of the daily checks and monthly reporting via SolarWinds.
  • Monitoring leveraging trusted and built-in protocols and techniques, option but no mandatory requirement to install agent software on monitored servers.
  • Endless monitoring possibilities with the option to create own scripts for several operating systems.
  • Clean, responsive web dashboards that can be customized to suit each team's needs within the managed services organization.
  • Multiple backend databases support for the SolarWinds modules; e.g. Oracle, MySQL, DB2, etc. At this moment, only Microsoft SQL Server is supported.
  • Multiple Operating Systems support for the SolarWinds modules applicative server(s) e.g. Linux. At this moment only Microsoft Windows is supported.
  • In SolarWinds SAM, a script in for example the Linux Script Component has to be designed in a particular format in order to return max. 10 pairs of "statistic+messages" as script output for SolarWinds to process the returned data. Would be more convenient if this output generated by scripts can be more flexible.
  • On Web Dashboards, it's not possible to return results of a predefined SQL Query in any format required (e.g. a table with rows like the actual table on SQL Server is structured).
  • When creating reports or Dashboard resources with filters, the filter names are added above the resultant report or Dashboard blocks, which in most cases is redundant and there should be an option to hide it.
SolarWinds Server is ultimately suited for small to mid-sized companies wanting to monitor their in-house applications and servers, as "one pane of glass" - tool for the internal IT Department. Also suited for managed services providers as allows for 'multi-tenant' setup. Less suited for specific applications that are not supported out-of-the-box or for companies running iSeries.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We the application monitor to both keep track of and monitor the nodes on our network. It not only allows us to pinpoint areas of failure, but is a thorough system to documents IP addresses, MAC addresses, and SMTP devices such as networked cameras. The alert system in SolarWinds is probably the most useful tool - we have setup intricate monitors and alerts to correctly alert the right department at the right time. The versatility of the program allows us to monitor everything from servers, to switches, to specific processes running on VM's hundreds of miles away.
  • Versatility: The program allows for monitoring of almost any system, simple or complex and allows for intricately programmed alerts based on each monitor.
  • Ease of use: Type in the URL, and you are greeted with a fully customizable dashboard with any and all of the pertinent features to your workflow.
  • Modular: The program itself is very powerful, but the ability to add or remove features based on need is exceptional compared to competitors.
  • Help links & additional tool-tips. Having thorough and easy to understand instructions is the most important part of software this comprehensive and it would be great to include direct links to wiki pages.
  • Monitor/Alert templates. The program could use more and simpler alerts and monitors.
The best use for SolarWinds is a comprehensive organizational and network monitoring tool. The network atlas/mapping tool is extremely useful for visualization of the physical locations of cameras, switches and numerous other network devices. SolarWinds is not the be-all-end-all when it comes to performance, however. It should be used only on large-scale server clusters that can handle the load efficiently.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
SAM is used primarily for operations support, and is extended to datacenter and technical support teams. While we use some canned monitors, the bulk of our SAM components are custom written script monitors using Perl, PowerShell, VB, or TSQL. We monitor everything...
  • Flexibility with specific monitoring requirements by creating our own scripts to control output messaging, and monitor for statistics that are unique to our in-house written applications.
  • Out of the box support for common vendors' hardware MIBS or API to report on chassis hardware issues, etc.
  • Customization of the web portal provide specialized dashboards for our various NOC teams using Orion, as well as executive dashboards, alert boards, historical reporting, etc.
  • User roll granularity. While this has improved over the years, the user rights are not granular enough.
  • Profile based views. End users frequently want to modify their own views, but views are generally global. Under account rights, I would like to be able to allow an account to have a profile based set of views. It's also important to easily review a users specific profile views to check for resource abuse.
  • Better information on user activity, views usage, etc. Knowing what views are used the most or least would be helpful information when considering what works and what doesn't, what needs to be cleaned up, etc...
SAM is both extremely easy to use out of the box, as it is customizable for advanced users and complex environments. The user community is an outstanding resource for users trying to take their monitoring to the next level using advanced scripts and customization. I still struggle with full app stack monitoring, and we lack visibility with some of our custom apps (Java), where I'm hoping to see some growth out of the AppOptics purchase.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor in the IT department, for monitoring servers and networking devices. Before SolarWinds SAM we did not have a complete vision of our infrastructure performance and status, and now we can be proactive.
  • Our team can check IT infrastructure quickly.
  • The administrators can configure threshold and alerts.
  • SolarWinds SAM could improve the use of memory when it is running.
It is useful for IT infrastructure monitoring. The alerts are very important to make decisions about IT services and infrastructure. You can monitor servers, networks, and other devices.
Derek Benson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We currently use this app exclusively in the infrastructure/networking department. It allows for real-time monitoring of assets and allows for historical data, which is useful to our team.
  • Real-time monitoring.
  • Historical data.
  • Ease of use, "ergonomic" in that it is easy to navigate, and intuitive.
  • Quick-start guides for new users would be great.
It is strongly suited for asset monitoring by an infrastructure-oriented department. It's not recommended to casual or infrequent users.
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