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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.
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttp://www.solarwinds.com/products/pric…
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- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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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 Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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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!
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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.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
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June 15, 2022
SolarWinds is a useful resource for IT Management
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use SolarWinds as our inventory management tool and it is an invaluable resource that allows us to keep track of all of the computers and the software installed on our computers. This helps us keep track of who has what device(s), when it was purchased, and if the user needs more room on their hard drive when it comes time to replace their computer.
- Inventory management
- Software management
- Computer age and refresh scheduling
- Would like a Linux agent
- Would love to be able to see when a device was first added to the database
February 06, 2022
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) is good tool to monitor your applications and make calls via APIs.
Little information about health and availability of applications. We need to better monitor our applications and handle applications in API format.
- Handling API requests.
- Monitoring SQL thresholds.
- Monitoring DHCP pools.
- Cover non-windows based applications.
- API Poller doesn't provide friendly messages when getting issues to retrieve info.
- Unable to edit Authorization Poller settings.
January 27, 2022
Server and Application Monitoring made easy
I work at a University and we use SolarWinds Server Application Monitor to monitor about 250 servers. We monitor in-house servers (inclusive of physical, VMware and Hyper-V) and cloud-based Azure deployments.
- Alerts- SolarWinds Server Application Monitor can send alerts based on high disk and CPU usage as well as Server up/down among other criteria
- Monitor Azure Severs
- Monitor Hyper-V
- Monitor VMware
- Monitor SQL instances
- Alerts can be easier to create. I understand the need for complex alerting and appreciate that but there should also be a simple way to create basic alerts
January 20, 2022
SolarWinds SAM review
SAM is used to monitor all of our existing production environment.
- Hardware Monitoring
- Alerting for down systems
- Statistical information
- None really, I just use what it provides.
January 19, 2022
My Tool for My IT Environment
[My organization] installed SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor for complete Infrastructure on both physical, virtual, and cloud environments [for] monitoring of system resources utilization [on] over 50+ devices. [It] worked great with Windows and Linux servers and an additional advantage on monitoring some custom-made services with ease. Alerting services helped to a [greater extent] to act in [a] timely fashion. A great and fantastic product to use and recommend to anyone without [needing a] second opinion.
- [Provides] detailed monitoring [on] Windows server
- Virtual Infrastructure monitoring capabilities
- Linux environment and custom services monitoring
- Alerting services
- Grouping applications
- Assigning services to individual systems for monitoring
- MAPs creation
January 19, 2022
Great product for use in Education
We use it to monitor our employee and student information services. Specifically, it lets us see what servers are running hotter than normal so we can adjust our resources.
- Monitor server applications.
- Monitor services and logs.
- Alerts from servers.
- Adding more features
- Allow for virtual versus physical specifications
January 19, 2022
Best monitoring product for IT
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.
January 19, 2022
Great App Services Monitoring Tool
[SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM)] is a good friend for administrators of the Orion. The extensive WAN activity monitoring needs of my customer are met for and exceeded by SAM. It is especially useful when you have a large infra with complicated, very distributed infra operations. It is used to monitor critical network applications like DHCP, AD, DNS, etc [...]
- WAN activity monitoring
- Critical network applications monitoring
- Seamless integration with the Orion platform
- Software App monitoring would be good.
- Scaled down versions would be good.
- Budget friendly for SME use version would be good.
January 19, 2022
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) lets me know the status of my environment at a glance.
At my current company, we use SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) to monitor both internal and externally hosted servers. This includes both virtual and physical boxes as well as both Windows Servers and LINUX flavors. We use Server & Application Monitor (SAM) in everything from Up/Down monitoring to memory, disk, CPU usages. We monitor processes and services and can create alerts based on these monitors.
- SAM keeps historical data on usage so it is great to forecast resource needs such as RAM and CPU.
- Alerts can be greatly customized and anyone from the local admin to the app owner can be alerted on the issue.
- Hard to say what features are missing since it's more of the training of the user and their imagination which is most likely the bottleneck in most deployments.
January 19, 2022
SAM I AM
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.
January 18, 2022
great product - I recommend
As the IT Operations teams, we use SW for our daily monitoring and checks. We also created dedicated consoles for our local IT teams and other teams (MES, SAP, etc...). SW has become the source for knowing at any time how each and every service/server is doing. We have a dedicated team managing it and through the agile process, we continuously adjust the thresholds, the alerts, and the reports/KPI.
- live alerting in a timely manner
- nice customization for various sets of users with different expectations
- simple and fast discovery and implementation on servers
- KPI aggregation and high level reporting (for non technical people)
January 18, 2022
SolarWinds Server and App support - Solid solution for the money
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 & 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.
April 13, 2021
A great solution for your company
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor is currently used and administered in the IT department.
It is very useful to be able to detect any type of problem, from very small to [large] problems that can cause severity in any department of the entire company.
It is very useful to be able to detect any type of problem, from very small to [large] problems that can cause severity in any department of the entire company.
- Logs and Event monitor
- Sql user experience
- Oracle User exprience
- TCP port monitor
- Multiple Statistic
- Sybase integration
- None
April 06, 2021
SolarWinds SAM - Monitor it all!
The SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is used to provide us up-to-date information on the performance of our applications hosted on virtual servers. It's most useful to give all users visibility to critical health monitoring where Linux may not necessarily be their strength. Having a single pane of glass to track health makes troubleshooting issues quick and easy!
- Flexible
- Easy to use interface
- Large product monitoring scope
- Cost somewhat high
- Scalable licensing could be better
- Upgrades can be painful
January 25, 2021
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Review
It is used to identify poor performing SQL servers and SQL processes.
- High wait time.
- Long running queries.
- Poorly designed SQL tables and code
- It is not simple to navigate.
- The user interface takes a while to get familiar with.
December 17, 2020
Solarwinds the Budget Friendly Solution for Everyones Enterprise
[SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor] is our go to Monitoring Solution, spanned across the entire company that might have any sort of monitoring needs.
- Volume Monitoring is absolutely Essential
- WPM synthetics are cheap and efficient
- Design is Clunky
- Features are burried
- Regular Users do not like it
- Need to spend a lot of time in it to really understand anything going on.
December 11, 2020
Very Happy with Solarwinds SAM
We use SAM to monitor all of our servers (across 4 different sites in North America) as well as our store registers (Over 350 stores). We report and get alerts on disk space, high CPU/Memory usage, running processes and just implemented AppInsight for Exchange (which is awesome).
- AppInsight for Exchange gives us stats on DB sizes, mailbox sizes, errors, ETC.
- Email alerts let people in our organization who don't normally log into Solarwinds, get notified of any possible problems
- Historical reporting lets us see trends over time for CPU, memory, repsonse times, disk space, ETC.
- I, personally, had a hard time figuring out how to add AppInsight for Exchange and had a tough time finding any documentation on it. When I figured it out, it was easy, but took me quite a while (and numerous attempts) to get there.
- The new web reporting is difficult to use. In the end, I love how the reports look, but i have to spend a lot of time to get there.
- We get a lot of alerts that we aren't sure what they really mean. A better explanation of why an alert occurred or what it means could be useful in finding the root cause.
December 11, 2020
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor is a Fantastic Product
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor is currently being used to monitor services, process, URLs, and various other things on Windows and Unix servers. It is also used to monitor network devices through traps and certain script monitors. It is a cheaper way to monitor these items throughout the system. It allows for easy and quick access, and even incite to the environment. It offers a wide range of usage just by being able to configure and run scripts as monitors. One of the key features that allowed Regions to choose to use it, is the option to not have to install an agent on a server. You can use WMI or SNMP to app monitoring.
- Application Monitoring
- Easy of Use
- Versatile
- Could use more in-depth functions with APIs
- There are more options for Windows than Linux/Unix
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
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Helps You Sleep at Night
We use SolarWinds Server and application monitor to monitor our production servers, networking equipment, and critical applications across the entire organization. We are able to see details about specific applications, insight into response times, uptime, and server performance in near real time. We are able to see issues before our end users, and proactively communicate what we are doing to address the issues.
- Gives me the information I need in a dashboard web interface that is easy to read and share with non-IT people.
- It's easy to setup and add new devices to SolarWinds.
- The application is easy to administer and easily installed on virtual servers.
- Needs to be a little easier to set up and manage alerts.
- Mobile viewing could be improved upon
- make it easier to drill down into TCPIP packets from top level views
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.
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.
December 03, 2020
SAM at a glance
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).
November 11, 2020
A Great Cost / Performance Choice for Your Organization.
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.