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SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor is a versatile tool that has been widely used across various industries and departments for …
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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Popular Features
- Server availability and performance monitoring (269)9.898%
- Application monitoring (266)9.090%
- Threshold alerts (271)8.989%
- Out-of-the box templates to monitor applications (256)7.979%
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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.
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For the latest information on pricing, visithttp://www.solarwinds.com/products/pric…
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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
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...
 Show More Watch SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Training Videos
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Integrations
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Competitors
- Progress WhatsUp Gold
- Nagios Core
- Tivoli Monitoring (legacy)
- Microsoft System Center
- DX Application Performance Management (formerly CA APM)
- SiteScope (formerly HP SiteScope)
- ManageEngine Applications Manager
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Technical Details
| Deployment Types | On-premise |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows |
| Mobile Application | No |
| Supported Languages | English |
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Downloadables
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 Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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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!
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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.
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(1-25 of 26)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
January 25, 2022
Review of SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
We have around 200 servers in our network (physical and virtual) and we needed a way to monitor these for any issues. The answer to this problem was SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor which allows us to monitor applications for errors. It also provides us metrics, such as top processes which is very useful.
- Monitor Azure Cloud Severs- We use SolarWinds SAM to monitor Active Directory and DNS on Several DCs published on Azure Cloud.
- Monitor Hyper V and VMware - SolarWinds SAM monitors applications on both Hyper V and VMware, while also monitoring the physical host machines.
- It also helps us monitor Warranty expiration for physical servers.
- Server Warranty Information: We have had issues where the expiration date was wrong.
December 11, 2020
SolarWinds: Does the job, comes with a learning curve.
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.
December 11, 2020
Overall Satisfaction
I was working with the IT department using SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor to monitor our company's server environment and alerts. By using the tool, we are enabled to maintain at the level to be informed of the status of our servers at all times. It also enables us to monitor SQL and other apps.
- Quick insights.
- Continuous monitoring.
- Alerts.
- No auto-tuning.
- A bit clunky.
- Low flow visibility.
July 17, 2020
A slightly recommended product
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.
August 21, 2019
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Review
We use it to monitor our hosts at the colo for the IT dept. We get alerts on issues such as CPU, memory, and response times. It's good for our applications and detecting issues with our sites. We can proactively fix problems and troubleshoot the things that keep breaking so that everything is stable.
- Monitoring
- Alerting
- Trending
- Machine learning
- Anomaly detection
- Proactive alerting
May 01, 2019
While I don't hate Server & Application Monitor, it is my least favorite SolarWinds product.
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor is utilized by the IT department to monitor Windows scheduled tasks on our automation servers and ensure that the IT team is notified if any tasks fail to run via text and/or email.
Server & Application Monitor is also utilized to monitor NGINX, PM2, and APIs on our Debian Linux web servers, and IIS on our Windows web servers.
Server & Application Monitor is also utilized to monitor NGINX, PM2, and APIs on our Debian Linux web servers, and IIS on our Windows web servers.
- Notifies us of failures on scheduled tasks on our Windows automation servers and if it eventually starts working again.
- Maintains statistics on how chatty a service is on a server.
- A strong user community. If SolarWinds does not have an alert for a service, then usually you can locate one that another customer developed in the forums.
- Monitoring IIS, AD, Exchange, SQL will consume a lot of your licenses.
- Configuring the latest IIS is more difficult than monitoring other services.
April 27, 2019
Quick Review of SolarWinds SAM
We currently have SAM version xxx. We currently use it to monitor our 50 Windows servers, 3 Linux servers, VMware ESXi hosts, IBM fiber switch, HP network equipment and IBM servers for uptime, services, and resources. We also use SAM to monitoring some application on the Windows servers. Those applications are SQL and IIS. We use this product for all of our infrastructures. We really like how you can make custom alerts. E.G. I can make an alert to warn me a server is running a full load for 20mins. Then, I would check it out to see why. The main reason we bought this product is to help users with alerts on the server and application level. E.G. if an IIS website goes down we get an alert.
- You can create custom alerts for basically anything.
- The dashboard has a clean look. Easy for a nontechnical person to understand.
- The application is very stable. I had no issues with it so far.
- The product gets new features once or twice a year, which is nice.
- The support is very good.
- A bit of a learning curve to figure out how to use it the way you want it. Creating custom alerts can be complicated.
- The software requires to be on the latest SQL server (2019 or 2016). We currently use 2012 so I can not upgrade SAM to the latest version.
- I get some false positive alerts sometimes. It could be my environment but it would be nice for SAM to gather some log data when that alert has happened so it would be easier to troubleshoot.
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor is used to monitor the health of servers and networks across the organization. Proactive maintenance rather than reactive maintenance is achieved through active monitoring of nodes and networks. Proactive maintenance requires advance knowledge of the servers and networks through active monitoring.
- Real time monitoring
- Health of servers
- Health of network
- Ease of use
- Ease of other user management
- Initial learning curve
April 20, 2019
Server and Application total visibility
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) allows you monitor and alert on applications at all stages in the AppStack. SAM really comes out to shine when you're invested in other products in the SolarWinds Orion family, by allowing you very thorough integration into multiple different aspects of your network. SAM offers numerous out of the box templates for common applications, along with extensive user created ones available in the SolarWinds "THWACK" user community. If you need to monitor an internally developed application or an application that doesn't have a template, SAM makes it easy to create your own application template using many different metrics, services, and processes.
- Full stack monitoring from the User to the App server.
- Most common apps are supported out of the box.
- Create custom app templates for in house apps.
- There can be a significant learning curve to take full advantage of the product.
- Somewhat limited without integration with other SolarWinds Orion products.
- Reporting requires some SQL knowledge to use them to their full potential.
March 25, 2019
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor, it's like a baby monitor for Servers and Applications.
SolarWinds Server & Application Manager (SAM) is used to monitor and manage our servers worldwide. It provides comprehensive monitoring of not only the core server systems but can also be configured to monitor custom services. It can through resource monitoring, proactively alert to a potential problem before it becomes a major issue. It can also be configured to launch a script or perform an action to attempt to solve the issue without human intervention. For instance purging the log files if a disk becomes full or restarting a service in the event of a failure.
- SAM provides quite a few application templates and the THWACK (SolarWinds Users Group) user community has hundreds more. There is a huge amount of support for the SolarWinds platform making it easy to get help.
- Lots of customization can be done to tailor the monitoring to a particular application. Templates can be tweaked to add, delete or change the way the application is being monitored. For clustered applications, you can set the level of urgency. By that, if you have multiple clustered application servers and one goes down, it is usually not as critical as an application residing on a single server. The application is still up but degraded whereas the single server application is down. This helps prioritize what needs to be looked a t first.
- With SAM you can set up one pane of glass to see what your application servers are doing. It's usually one of my first stops when I'm looking at what's happening during an outage. A lot of time s you can see what is happening on the server/s and know where to begin troubleshooting.
- When used in conjunction with other SolarWinds products it can give you insight into whats going on in the environment. You can see if the issue is with the server or in some other area such as storage or virtualization. It can really speed up your ability to find the issue and correct the problem.
- Setting up alerts is a bit clunky. It's quite powerful but not that intuitive. There is a bit of a learning curve there.
- The same could be said for setting up and testing application groups from a template. The interface is a real pain to use and the method for looking up applicable servers is, in our case, very slow and inefficient. I must note that we have a huge network over 130,000 network elements so this may not be an issue for smaller installations.
- While SAM supports PowerShell an Python scripting, the documentation for this is sparse. You have to do a lot of playing around to figure out how it all works.
January 23, 2019
SolarWinds SAM made me more productive and proactive.
Our department (IT) primarily uses SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor to ensure key servers and services stay up and running. As a bonus, I use the performance monitoring tools to judge how servers are performing, determine where more (virtual) hardware is needed, and show executives and developers how the hardware is not bottlenecking the software.
- Monitoring - I can easily use built-in templates for most things, but I can also easily create custom monitors for things that are more unique to my environment.
- Alerting - It takes some work to get it exactly right, but you can tune your alerts to ensure you are not crying wolf.
- Application insights - the templates for monitoring Exchange and SQL performance really allow you to quickly and easily pinpoint and attack problem areas in these critical applications.
- Licensing - while the model is simple, it can be frustrating. New features, like AppInsight, use a ton of "monitors" so you will always need/want to upgrade to the next level. The difference in licenses/pricing can be startling. For example, if you need 301 you have to buy 700. Finding more flexibility here would make happier customers.
- Sales - the sales team is unnecessarily aggressive in their tactics. They will call and email every listed contact they can find repeatedly offering account reviews, quarter end sales, etc.
December 10, 2018
Love at first SAM
I use SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor at our Cranston, RI location only. I use it to monitor our exchange environment. I love the mailbox quota alerts.
- Users By % Mailbox Quota Used is great for notifying users to archive.
- Mailbox Database Size and Space Use is great for monitoring your DB size quickly and the alerts are a plus.
- Critical Processes and Services is great because it shows the health status... I check it daily and have alerts set to notify me if there are any warnings.
- I would like to add a widget for "Users By % Mailbox Quota Used" to my SolarWinds home page summary dashboard but this option is not available.
- More widgets for alerts.
- Cisco Jabber integration would be nice.
November 18, 2018
SolarWinds alerts free up our time from constant reporting.
We currently use SolarWinds as an uptime monitor as well as software configuration. It also serves as the main source of reporting on disk space and network utilization for our organization. We use it in combination with SCCM and ServiceNow to be able to prove the growing needs of our department and the current issues that our systems teams need to address.
- Uptime reporting
- Memory Utilization reporting
- CPU Utilization reporting
- Managing and sending alerts
- Adding servers is not as intuitive as I'd like. It seems like there are multiple places to add, but only one method is correct.
- There's a learning curve for new users to have to get past in understanding the administrative portions.
- Sleeping email alerts for times during maintenance windows is not something we have gotten fully worked out.
November 07, 2018
SAM Saves the Day!
We use SolarWinds SAM to monitor our business critical applications. Not only do we check for up/down status of each application, but we do a deep dive into the performance of individual components within applications. It is currently used only by our IT Operations - Systems team, but we hope to expand to our DevOps and other teams. With SAM, we are able to be deeply connected to the status of our running applications, and can be proactive when our applications start to malfunction.
- SAM's included templates target the most commonly needed application monitors.
- SAM links directly to a community lead custom application monitor repository, for those monitors that are not included out-of-the-box.
- Custom SAM monitors are easy to build, and have virtually no limits. If it exists, it can be monitored.
- Linux support is still pretty young. Most of the monitors are geared for MS Windows Server applications.
- As with any customizable/powerful application, there can be a steep learning curve.
- SAM seems to lack a discovery tool that helps you build your own custom monitors. You have to have a good understanding of the application you are monitoring before you can really get started.
November 06, 2018
SolarWinds at a glance.
[It] Maintains active monitoring of our servers to ensure system availability and the identification of hardware and access issues as they happen. This allows us to respond before our users are aware of the issue or at the very least as they are becoming aware of the issues. This reduces our response time to incidents thus increase operational up time for our users.
- Identify hardware issues
- Identify interface over utilization
- Provide application service level monitoring.
- Allow customization alert prioritization of importance. While an alert on node A may be very important for it an Alert for node B is larger scheme of things is more important when looking at a list of things with problems. May even be same type of service but B is more important and in large data centers if multiple things are going wrong have list of most to least important would allow quicker response time.
November 02, 2018
SAM Can Be Your Friend Too
SAM and I go way back. It's been used to monitor the health of MS Exchange 2013 and 2016. I've used it successfully to keep an eye on MS SQL servers and IIS applications. That's not all I've done with SAM. We use it to get daily disk space reports, trends, forecasts on usage, and to look at how system resources are affected by new application installs. Everything. It keeps us ahead of the curve.
- Easy to configure over other solutions. Works with the built in MS SQL Express. Easy to migrate to SQL standard if needed.
- Easy out of the box reports. Most of what you want to know is there from the get-go. Sometimes you need a different angle and the report writer is your friend.
- Alerting isn't confusing. Other products sometimes don't make sense when they send an alert out. SolarWinds SAM can tell you exactly what is up, down, warned, and you can link the alert message right to the node with the problem. Get email. Click. There. Simple.
- While it is generally easy to get going with SAM and the Orion platform, getting into the weeds can be difficult and overwhelming.
- SAM opens the door to monitoring and reporting on a verity of things. I think Orion is designed to leave things out so you buy more.
- Fine tuning thresholds can be confusing. SolarWinds defaults on somethings that don't make sense in a real environment. But not all environments are the same. They could give you more guidance.
October 05, 2018
SolarWinds Across the Enterprise
Currently it is deployed to monitor our IT infrastructure. We use it to monitor the network, servers, virtual infrastructure, services, UPS, workstations and printers. This monitoring is across the entire organization though other departments are not currently using or monitoring these resources. We are attempting to define customer pain points and proactively monitor for the causes of those pain-points. In addition we use SolarWinds to help us efficiently resolve issues in a re-active situation such as site outages or unplanned service outages.
- Netflow information and configuration management of network devices works really well for us. As these two comprise two of the core products of SolarWinds Orion suite it's good that it does this
- SAM (Application manager) Provides excellent insight into services and service states and is very customizable.
- Support community is excellent (THWACK) as is the available free training from the SolarWinds Customer Portal. Which is good, you're going to need it due to the depth and complexity of the software suites.
- SolarWinds Orion is not just one product. It's a bunch of cobbled together products gained from acquisitions. Because of that finding a standard way to manage devices is difficult, and understanding one product is no guarantee of understanding another.
- The pane of glass that is Orion is very customizable. It is based on widgets but none of the widgets operate in a predictable way. There may be one that does what you want but you are going to have to find it and you will probably have to try 4 before you find one you like for what you are looking to do. A huge time-sync
- The network-atlas software that lets you put your Orion objects in a visual layout is terrible. Right down to what you can set as defaults for fonts or labels and all the way to stability it is terrible.
October 05, 2018
Good Detailed Infrastructure Monitor Tool
We currently use SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor to monitor our hosted application servers in our third party cloud environment. It is currently only being used by our Technical Services department. It address our need to have constant data on our application servers to ensure they are running smoothly.
- SAM has very detailed monitoring tools designed to work out of the box for SQL server to quickly set up alerts for SQL servers.
- SAM has great alerts that are customizable so you can keep up to date on the information that you need.
- The reports in SAM are great way to share the status and history of your environment with stakeholders.
- Initially SAM can automatically find 'nodes' to monitor, and some of the default alerts can be overwhelming until you are able to dig through the options to fine tune the alerts to usable thresholds.
- The interface, while displaying lots of information, has a pretty steep learning curve to figuring out.
- The licencing is based off of a 'node' and it is a little confusing at what constitutes a node.
August 27, 2018
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Review...Great Overall Monitoring For Servers, Apps, and Databases
Having SolarWinds in our environment has been very helpful as you can see issues across the environment and prove or disprove something very quickly and easily. The reporting and alerting have been helpful in finding and resolving issues.
- Monitors system health like CPU, memory, and disk space.
- Alerts on various issues that you can configure.
- Reporting and trending of device performance.
- Coming from 10+ years using Nagios there is definitely a learning curve to getting up to speed with SolarWinds.
- It's not quick and easy to learn and takes time to fully understand how to manage the software.
- Make the UI easier to navigate to find various options and settings.
August 10, 2018
All the eyes in your environment with SolarWinds SAM
We use SolarWinds SAM to monitor our applications and databases, both in our development and production environments. Additionally, we recommend and implement SAM to our customers, especially those who work with third-party applications.
SAM allows us to have a centralized control of our IT assets. SAM lets us know when an application is using many resources at best, and in the worst case it lets us know when a container like Amazon EC2 or Tomcat is down.
Regarding our customers, in addition to the above, SAM allows us (and them) to determine reasonability for the performance of our applications compared to others of the client property (our outsourcing partners).
- SAM really has the exact customization detail needed to monitor your most important assets on a single screen in real time.
- Works very well with Azure apps and Amazon AWS. You can integrate them in less than an hour.
- Easy and comfortable UI for less technical roles.
- Clearly one of the best in the monitoring systems field given the experience from SolarWinds
- Reports and dashboards can be quite simple without customization. Customizations in general can have a little slower learning curve.
- Some clients depend on batch and shell scripts. The tool provides monitoring though the logs, but that is it. We would like to see more detail regarding the consumption of resources in these types of programs.
- For Azure apps monitoring, other Microsoft tools like SCOM have a better performance overall.
August 03, 2018
Stands alone but better with friends
Our IT department was looking for a monitoring tool to proactively address issues before they were encountered by the customer. Issues easily cropped up as a result of regular maintenance and would quickly be noticed by customers because checks were not done afterwards. We have been able to use SAM to check key services and applications for availability. This has also allowed us to track system uptime and keep better inventory of the monitored software and systems.
- Powershell. We use this as a key tool to make sure software (both custom and delivered) is up and working correctly. Microsoft has standardized on this for the foreseeable future and Solarwinds does a great job using this tool set.
- Stack monitoring. It has always been extremely difficult to find the source of a problem. Combining SAM with their other products really provides an amazing insight in correlating a perceived issue with its ultimate cause.
- Community/Support. While SAM is a great tool, it is the people that really drive this product. Both support and customers are very responsive and excited to help out.
- Learning Curve. SAM (and other solarwinds products) take a lot of time to learn how to make everything work well. Management can become frustrated with the perceived lack of progress. Solarwinds has recently made efforts to improve this with their Customer Success Center.
- Reporting. The reporting tool is ok for some basic table reports but lacks a lot in comparison with reporting services.
- Default dashboards. While custom dashboards can be awesome tools, the default ones are overwhelming in detail and underwhelming in looks. There is are also difficulties in creating great looking dashboards.
SolarWinds SAM helps us track performance on our Microsoft SQL and IIS workloads. A great tool to hold historical data to investigate current performance issues. SolarWinds SAM templates have everything we are looking for and were great in helping us get set up quickly. We love the SolarWinds product lines and can't wait to see what else is coming up from them.
- Hold historical performance data
- Easy to use templates
- Out of the box compatibility for Microsoft SQL and IIS workloads
- Orion has some learning curve
- SQL database set up can be difficulty
- Some baselines could be easier to configure
February 22, 2016
Solarwinds Review
We use SolarWinds on a day to day basis. It's important to monitor all our WMI, SNMP servers, router switches and AP's. Whether it's drives, CPU, ports or applications NPM, NCM and SAM are essential for monitoring and reporting for our entire network.
- Good interface and and user friendly for setting up alerts.
- Fairly easy to navigate and set up groups.
- Vast variety of alerts and custom alerts to create.
- SAM leaves something to be desired.
- No way of drilling into your node and seeing what apps are currently being monitored by that node.
- NPM, NCM and SAM are almost completely separate from each other.
February 19, 2016
Solarwinds - Monitor with the Big Boys
Solarwinds SAM is our IT department's monitoring software. It allows us to proactively address server and system application issues before they become critical. It alerts us via email when we are not actively watching its output. It provides ultra deep insight into the inner workings of mission critical applications. It keeps a history of our system's health and allows us to produce pretty much any report you can think of. It also, allows us to create custom views of the monitored systems so we can control what a specific user or group can see.
- The ease of creating a custom alert is really incredible. Something that may take 30 minutes in Nagios takes only 3 minutes in Solarwinds.
- The custom views are incredibly useful for meeting the demands of specific department and execs to be able to see only what they want to see of the systems being monitored.
- The Thwack community is a to-the-point technical forum with real-world usable solutions by novice and veteran Solarwinds users alike. Its resources include the actual code/plugin needed to take advantage of the solutions.
- The learning curve can be steep. With so many granular, customizable options, it can be overwhelming.
- The default alerts issue too many emails that sound unnecessarily urgent and are sometime misleading, like saying the Domain Controller is down when a user account gets locked.
- Some of the products in SAM are also included in other Solarwinds products making choices sometimes difficult.
February 10, 2016
A true Solarwinds SAM review.
Solarwinds SAM is a great tool for network monitoring. It allows you to monitor and analyze server performance as well as application performance from sql server to iis. Solarwinds supports a very wide variety of applications, and tools. For example, I was looking to tie our backup system into solarwinds, and I found the plugins for it in solarwinds to allow me to be notified if there are any issues. Solarwinds has helped me immensely in troubleshooting and alerts when problems occur.
On a side note, there is a huge learning curve to it's use. It takes quite a while to configure, and use it to its full potential. Though once it is working properly, it will not fail.
On a side note, there is a huge learning curve to it's use. It takes quite a while to configure, and use it to its full potential. Though once it is working properly, it will not fail.
- Solarwinds is great at its wide variety of support for different vendor software and applications.
- Solarwinds is great for its customizations.
- Solarwinds is great for being able to monitor almost anything you need it to in a network.
- There is a learning curve to using solarwinds.
- Updates tend to break the logic for all alerts.
- It can be difficult to configure, though the support from solarwinds is awesome.