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SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Reviews

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497 Ratings
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Score 8.2 out of 100
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Reviews (1-25 of 242)

Tim Kovars | TrustRadius Reviewer
July 24, 2020

My Opinion on SolarWinds SAM

Tim Kovars
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Pros and Cons

  • Server health, using insight through WMI for what Microsoft is seeing from within the box.
  • Monitoring services/apps through AppInsight and being able to add specific services not included or for other applications.
  • Sometimes and easy button would be nice to simplify the views and data collected.
  • Sales calls are persistent for anyone who has any involvement, which is just plain annoying.
Read Tim Kovars's full review
Callen Gilmartin | TrustRadius Reviewer
July 17, 2020

SolarWinds makes your life easier and your network more efficient.

Callen Gilmartin
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Pros and Cons

  • 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.
Read Callen Gilmartin's full review
Bret Brutlag | TrustRadius Reviewer
July 14, 2020

be prepared to roll up your sleeves

Bret Brutlag
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Pros and Cons

  • SAM and App Insight are handy to look at the whole environment. When looking at a node I can see how that fits into the whole enterprise. If a issue is reported I can see that there might be some environmental issue at the root of the problem and not necessarily the server that is being reported. For instance the SQL server is fine but a switch upstream from that server is having issue or there is a internet circuit down. This saves a lot of troubleshooting time.
  • When you see monitors that are out of tolerance there are immediate resources to help make sense of the reported issue. Not just that something is out of sorts but why.
  • The metrics that are collected simplifies the process of identifying trends and the predictability monitors do a good job of letting you know that not only are resources are becoming tight on a node but a estimate when they will become critical. This give you that chance to plan for the growth instead if a reaction to some critical event.
  • I have used both WhatsUp Gold and SolarWinds. One item that I think WhatsUp does particularly well is customizing the user interface for each user. Customizing the interface in SolarWinds is cumbersome. A change to a page layout by one user affects all users that use that page. The security is very granular and it can take some work to get what you need. There is nothing ad hoc about it. But this is more of a complaint about the whole Orion interface that displays the SAM data in addition to data from all the other modules.
  • I would also like to see some improvements in node configuration, I would like for it to be easier to manage nodes as groups. You can groups nodes together for monitoring purposes but there isn't an obvious way to manage them as a group for instance add/remove monitors and pollers. I would like to see a feature to add a server to a group and it automatically gets a predefined set of pollers and monitors assigned.
  • The new modern Dashboard should have shipped with more canned items, a fair representation from the standard legacy offerings. At a minimum the newest SAM release should have included at AppInsight standard items. The Dynamic Designer is difficult to use because no example of whats returned for a is provided. Without an intimate knowledge of the schema its cumbersome.
Read Bret Brutlag's full review
Alejandro Pineda | TrustRadius Reviewer
July 14, 2020

Works well to see performance and generate alerts

Alejandro Pineda
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Pros and Cons

  • Forecasting server behaviors
  • Historical performance reports
  • Correlation of historical data
  • Easy implementation
  • Go community support and online information available for users
  • Reporting generation when you need to create from zero a report
  • Forecasting server behvior is not to easy to set up
  • Setting up alerts and baselines
Read Alejandro Pineda's full review
Odysseas Basdekis | TrustRadius Reviewer
July 30, 2020

Monitors, Alerts, Solves

Odysseas Basdekis
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Pros and Cons

  • Immediately alarms if the disk has not enough free space.
  • The most powerful tool is that you can design your own monitor, depending for example on the existence of a file, its size, and its contents.
  • Mainly, if the issue is resolved, SAM also alerts.
  • Sometimes, changes in the equipment or on the server system cause issues, i.e. change of the FQDN of the server. Resolution is available but when there is a problem with SAM, the monitoring stops, so sometimes it causes more serious problems.
Read Odysseas Basdekis's full review
Mark McCully | TrustRadius Reviewer
July 17, 2020

A cost-effective solution for your small or enterprise business needs

Mark McCully
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Pros and Cons

  • Very easy to set-up.
  • Very easy to administer.
  • Not a steep learning curve to get to know the product.
  • Creating custom alerts for multiple objects can be cumbersome.
  • Adding a user account with a password to use for scanning purposes requires a lot of steps.
Read Mark McCully's full review
Curt Sminkey | TrustRadius Reviewer
July 14, 2020

Very Happy with Solarwinds SAM

Curt Sminkey
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Pros and Cons

  • 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.
Read Curt Sminkey's full review
ZAREH OHANIAN (MSM, CISSP, ITIL) | TrustRadius Reviewer
July 14, 2020

Infrastructure at a glance with DB as a side note

ZAREH OHANIAN (MSM, CISSP, ITIL)
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Pros and Cons

  • It monitors many devices, which gives it flexibility.
  • It has a solid graphics interface, and with some API use one can present graphical reports that are strong.
  • It does not require much maintenance, and the upgrade path is relatively painless.
  • I would like the ability to set trending 'capacity' thresholds. For example, I would like to know that someone is pushing 10Meg of data per min on the pipe for 3 minutes. I would like to get notifications on that.
Read ZAREH OHANIAN (MSM, CISSP, ITIL)'s full review
Ramoan Seymour | TrustRadius Reviewer
March 29, 2020

Satisfied with SolarWinds SAM?? I AM!!

Ramoan Seymour
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Pros and Cons

  • Server and Application Monitor does a great job with analyzing our Exchange environment and notifies us if there are issues with replication, the Information Store and other essential components of our email system.
  • For our DHCP service, Server and Application Monitor alerts us if there are IP conflicts, errors with the DHCP service or if scopes are nearly exhausted.
  • Server and Application Monitor Excels with providing information on the amount of web traffic our sites receive. It tracks the performance of essential web services and pinpoints bottlenecks.
  • Implementing a custom monitor can be cumbersome and frustrating.
  • Monitoring a lot of services can be taxing on your system.
  • Would like to see more SolarWinds approved templates available.
Read Ramoan Seymour's full review
Jeff Allen | TrustRadius Reviewer
July 14, 2020

Out of the box SAM is great! Can't wait to fully deploy and watch the magic happen

Jeff Allen
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Pros and Cons

  • Monitoring-I am able to set trends based on how I expect my equipment to run.
  • Reporting-I can pull up reporting for trends to see when things are not in alignment.
  • Alerting-I can be alerted or notified if something is out of balance or unavailable.
  • None that I can think of until we fully deploy it.
Read Jeff Allen's full review
Kiran Yakkala | TrustRadius Reviewer
February 28, 2020

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Review

Kiran Yakkala
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Pros and Cons

  • 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.
Read Kiran Yakkala's full review
Lasha Jojua | TrustRadius Reviewer
April 16, 2020

Good tool for application monitoring, with its limits

Lasha Jojua
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Pros and Cons

  • Configurable alerts.
  • 3rd party integrations.
  • Custom templates for out-of-box apps.
  • User community.
  • Hard to configure and get results.
  • Alert configuration, you can do mostly everything, but you have to do it, tool does not do it.
  • Training/support seems not interested to deliver best practices, they just share high level over viewed data.
Read Lasha Jojua's full review
Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
July 22, 2020

Just starting . .

Verified User
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Pros and Cons

  • Mail alerts
  • Automation
  • Many monitors available for newer software and hardware
  • Licensing!
  • Ease of setup
  • Logging
Read this authenticated review
Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
July 22, 2020

SolarWinds makes sure we're in control!

Verified User
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Pros and Cons

  • 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.
Read this authenticated review
Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
July 20, 2020

SolarWinds SAM - one stop shop for monitoring your enterprise

Verified User
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Pros and Cons

  • When adding applications to be monitored to SAM, the baselines included in the product normally require very little tweaking.
  • Creating granular alerts for each trigger is very helpful when troubleshooting the exact cause of an issue.
  • Since SAM can monitor so many different aspects of an application, pollers can become overloaded very quickly and require attention to proper sizing.
  • Creating and sizing Operational Kiosk maps to fit specific screen sizes can be tricky.
Read this authenticated review
Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
July 17, 2020

Mission Critical, we can't live without Server and Application Manager.

Verified User
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Pros and Cons

  • 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...
Read this authenticated review
Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
July 17, 2020

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Helps You Sleep at Night

Verified User
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Pros and Cons

  • 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.
Read this authenticated review
Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
July 17, 2020

I am a new user with great power in his hands.

Verified User
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Review Source

Pros and Cons

  • The overview gives me essential information.
  • The Information has a lot of details.
  • We can easily watch the exchange status.
  • If it wasn't for the documentation and the support, some configurations wouldn't be functional or efficient.
  • You have to make a group to make the SAM module more efficient.
  • Without a group, it's easy to lose yourself in SAM configurations.
  • Unorthodox and homemade application are not easy to setup
Read this authenticated review

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Scorecard Summary

Likelihood to Recommend (497)
8.2
Likelihood to Renew (10)
8.8
Usability (14)
8.9
Availability (1)
5.5
Performance (1)
5.5
Support Rating (10)
8.5
Implementation Rating (2)
6.4
Product Scalability (1)
7.3

Feature Scorecard Summary

Application monitoring (233)
8.7
Database monitoring (201)
8.0
Threshold alerts (236)
8.6
Predictive capabilities (188)
7.8
Application performance management console (209)
8.1
Collaboration tools (123)
7.1
Out-of-the box templates to monitor applications (221)
7.9
Application dependency mapping and thresholding (187)
7.8
Virtualization monitoring (203)
8.4
Server availability and performance monitoring (235)
9.2
Server usage monitoring and capacity forecasting (216)
8.5
IT Asset Discovery (170)
8.4

About 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.

Categories:  IT Infrastructure Monitoring,  System Monitoring,  Application Performance Management (APM)

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Features

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

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Screenshots

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Videos (2)

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Downloadables

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Integrations

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Competitors

Ipswitch WhatsUp Gold, Nagios Core, IBM Tivoli Monitoring, Microsoft System Center, DX Application Performance Management (formerly CA APM), SiteScope (formerly HP SiteScope), ManageEngine Applications Manager

Pricing

  • Has featureFree Trial Available?Yes
  • Does not have featureFree or Freemium Version Available?No
  • Does not have featurePremium Consulting/Integration Services Available?No
  • Entry-level set up fee?No

SAM pricing starts at $2,995.

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Support Options

 Paid Version
Phone
Email
Forum/Community
FAQ/Knowledgebase
Video Tutorials / Webinar

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Technical Details

Deployment Types:On-premise
Operating Systems: Windows
Mobile Application:No
Supported Languages: English