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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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TrustRadius Insights
TrustRadius Insights

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 …
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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)
    9.0
    90%
  • Out-of-the box templates to monitor applications (256)
    7.9
    79%
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Pricing

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SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor

N/A
Unavailable

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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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 AppStack™ dashboardScreenshot of Microsoft Exchange performance monitoring with AppInsight™ templateScreenshot of Microsoft IIS performance monitoring with AppInsight™ 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 Integrations

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Competitors

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise
Operating SystemsWindows
Mobile ApplicationNo
Supported LanguagesEnglish

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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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(650)

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

(101-125 of 278)
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November 09, 2019

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor is a Solar WIN when it comes to monitoring!

Jay Myers | TrustRadius Reviewer
Jay Myers
Operations Specialist
Glendale Elementary School District #40 (Education Management, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Solarwinds is best suited for medium to global companies. For example, our school district is composed of 17 sites, a district office, and a support center, all of which have network equipment and servers. By centralizing the monitoring, it allows us to manage the whole district's data flow and re-route around bottlenecks before they happen. One specific instance that server and & application monitoring is key is in our datacenter. We have over 200+ servers ( Physical and virtual). Using SAM allows us to monitor usage, plan for upgrades, predict failures and keep the data moving, all without the end-users knowing if there are problems or not.
November 05, 2019

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor is a solid and easy to use tool

Ryan Andrus | TrustRadius Reviewer
Ryan Andrus
Network Services Manager
Davis County Government (Government Administration, 501-1000 employees)
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Solarwinds Server & Application Monitor is well suited for medium-sized organizations that want a good Server Monitoring tool. It also can be utilized as a tool for tracking other network nodes and devices. It does a good job of keeping track of beats, and uptime, as well as gauging performance and capacity planning.
November 05, 2019

SolarWinds are Warm and Strong

Adam Morrison | TrustRadius Reviewer
Adam Morrison
Director of IT Engineering
Pearl River Resort (Gambling & Casinos, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
For device up and down alerts or system service monitoring it really shines. The initial setup and the process of adding a node to the SolarWinds system is slow. There are features for mass import to get you going if you have a CSV of devices, but adding them ad-hoc is troublesome.
November 04, 2019

SolarWinds SAM Review

JS
Josh Soltis
Systems Engineer
Davenport and Company (Information Technology and Services, 201-500 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
We use SAM to monitor uptime of our SQL reporting services and their usage. We are a small shop, so there are only a handful of servers that require such monitoring. SAM is well suited for this, as, after some customization, we are very plainly able to report these statistics to our users in an easy to digest format.

Additionally, SAM also provides a resource for troubleshooting and analysis should those services require any attention. It keeps a long and detailed history that can be used to help identify trends, issues and make more informed decisions.
October 31, 2019

Monitoring with Solarwinds SAM

Fernando Villamil | TrustRadius Reviewer
Fernando Villamil
LAN Engineer
Maimonides Medical Center (Hospital & Health Care, 5001-10,000 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
I really like the fact that it integrates with other Solarwinds products that monitor the network and what's going on with the host. So if you have high CPU usage and there is minimal bandwidth, it's a very simple solution (more processing or memory please). Trending helps you see where the issue starts and you can even get an alert based on set parameters. We have one monitoring our internet status, using the proxy.
October 18, 2019

Electric Coop and SolarWinds

Verified User
Manager in Information Technology
Utilities Company, 51-200 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
SAM works well if you are already an NPM customer. If you don't have Solarwinds NPM, then you would have to replace your current based architecture and replace it and then put SAM on top of it. NPM is also a great piece of software, but there is a market share being lost in smaller companies where a paid product is better than Spiceworks, but there is no budget.
October 16, 2019

SAM is a good addition for a heavy server shop if you can afford it

Verified User
Consultant in Information Technology
Pharmaceuticals Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
There are no other viable options for shops that don't have enterprise support and can get SCOM and SQL for free. However, it must be noted that SolarWinds does not support SQL Express anymore. You MUST buy a SQL license for anything above NPM 12.2 and SAM 6.6. NPM 12.5 and SAM 6.9 will not upgrade on a SQLe box. People saved a lot of money the past few years with SQLe but it's no longer supported.
October 04, 2019

Pass on Server and Application Monitor, but definitely buy Database Performance Analyzer

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Computer Software Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 3 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Previous solutions we have used were much more capable when monitoring MS SQL Database servers. We could monitor more than just a number which meant when there was an issue, a SQL Query could return a text result stating what the problem was. This could then be sent in the alert email which made configuring and managing alerts simple. Because SAM can only process numbers, we have to configure far more notifications so that we can tell what specific number mean when there is an issue.

Because of the cumbersome configuration, trying to tune the system so false positive notices are not sent is difficult. We receive a high volume of non-valuable notice emails which causes important messages to get lost.
September 30, 2019

How SolarWinds made me more productive and gave me back my network admin!

JR
John-John Reyes Figueroa
System Administrator
Launch Federal Credit Union (Banking, 201-500 employees)
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
This is the perfect companion tool for any network or system administrator. My PMO (Project Management Office) tried to use it but did not have much luck, considering I don't see how this would benefit anyone other than admins.
September 28, 2019

SolarWinds Server is a good established product with some legacy limitations

Harvey Guindi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Harvey Guindi
Chief Information Officer
Health Network Laboratories (Hospital & Health Care, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
SolarWinds is very good and an established solution. Their support is OK. The issue that keeps it from a higher score is that is defaults to raw data view vs. a top-level/drill-down view, which means more work on the part of the analysts to get to the data/detail that is needed. It also takes a bit more work to set up systems vs. having predefined solution templates.
September 17, 2019

Efficient Data Monitor

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Information Services Company, 501-1000 employees
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
It is well suited for the environments with multiple servers and applications that need to be monitored. In a complex environment the data visualization is extremely helpful. The product itself is lightweight and does not demand too many resources. It is slightly time consuming to research and utilize all the available features.
August 29, 2019

Very new to SolarWinds

Verified User
Employee in Information Technology
Defense & Space Company, 10,001+ employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Likelihood to Recommend
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor is well suited for larger environments with many moving parts and systems to monitor. I believe it would be overkill for smaller organizations as it is complex and can be difficult to configure which results in time-consuming work that smaller organizations cannot afford.
August 27, 2019

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Review

NN
Nate Nettrouer
Senior Help Desk Technician
New York Blower (Mechanical or Industrial Engineering, 501-1000 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
It does a very nice job giving you several ways to display your information. If you are more on the database side, you can see how it interacts/shows your SQL database statistics. If you are more on the web side, the interface for IIS is well done. Finally, if you are on the hardware side (like me), it gives us very good information regarding our server environment.
August 23, 2019

SAM's heroes: How Server Application Monitor helped us monitor our environment

Damien Solodow | TrustRadius Reviewer
Damien Solodow
IS Systems Administrator
Gaylor Electric, Inc. (Construction, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
It's an excellent tool for monitoring common server hardware platforms as well as basic virtualization monitoring. The monitoring (performance and up/down) of common services and applications, along with the ability to customize them as well as create your own, lends a great deal of flexibility.
It's a bit more focused on Windows platforms and applications than others, but it does have support for them as well.
August 21, 2019

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Review

JY
Jason Yeung
sr engr
Global Cash Card (Financial Services, 5001-10,000 employees)
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
It's good to monitor and detect anything that might not be working properly. You can create custom monitors too if you have a specific application to monitor. We can use it with VMware and monitor the virtual machines in our environment. The app stack helps us to see the servers all in a single pane of glass.
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