Powerful but complicated.
Updated March 02, 2021

Powerful but complicated.

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review

Overall Satisfaction with ScienceLogic SL1

As we are a large company we have many different requirements and due to the way ScienceLogic works we are having to spend a lot of time creating standards and disabling some features from the product that may impact on our customer's requirements. Regarding tool the specifically, it seems to be a very powerful tool but as the famous phrase from Spiderman says, with great power comes great responsibilities. The level of knowledge from the maintainers must be on a higher level than the previous tools required.
  • Flexibility through scripting.
  • Easy installation and upgrade.
  • Wide community on the internet.
  • Unwanted automation that causes rework like the auto alignment monitoring.
  • Database monitoring on a full spectrum.
  • Old GUI still connected with Nagios.
  • Still not possible to measure and personally I'm not involved in the money area.
Still too early to tell, in the next months we will have a better understanding on this topic.
One of the strengths of ScienceLogic is the flexibility to monitor cloud env. as this is something we are aiming to do with it.
Currently, we are not integrating ScienceLogic yet but with the flexibility provided by the scripting feature, we may be able to do it with not much effort.
  • Cloud monitoring
  • Containers
  • Virtual machines
As a big company we use almost all monitoring tools on the market but ScienceLogic may be different since it can be used as part of our offerings.
Personally, I believe ScienceLogic requires more management than the usual monitoring tools. Due to that, the management required on huge environments may be a problem. However, it would fit well with small and medium companies and it would be viewed as a strong ally to IT departments.

ScienceLogic SL1 Implementation

The complexity on monitoring non-network devices is quite complicated.
Change management was a major issue with the implementation - DB monitoring, Auto alignment, SNMP dependencies, sub component relationship, those were some issues we had and are impacting out environment.
  • DB monitoring
  • Auto Alignment DA
  • SNMP dependency
  • Power Shell connection issues
  • Sub components relationships

Configuring ScienceLogic SL1

Initial configuration (out of the box) is simple but when you need to do a fine tuning it become complex (snippets).
Auto Align is a good solution for small env. but for medium and bigger there should be a middle term
No - we have not done any customization to the interface
Some - we have added small pieces of custom code
Some extra DA not covered by the current powerpacks and some runbooks.

Using ScienceLogic SL1

We are still testing the tool in a world wide scale, a few deployments are going on in parallel too.
Different from other tools SL is more complex so I believe high skilled personal would be required to support the tools and all code it requires for deep monitoring (aka Snippets, RunBooks).
  • Integration with IBM Omnibus
  • Database monitoring using subcomponents
  • Cloud monitoring
  • In small environment it can be used as a full solution, from alerting to event enrichment then ticketing.
Even being certificate on the tool I believe only with the work I will be able to reach a deeper understanding on the tool.

Evaluating ScienceLogic SL1 and Competitors

  • Product Features
  • Product Reputation
The product is being used over the world with good reviews on it and it is also more aligned with new technologies such ask Cloud and Containers.
Speaking on technical perspective we have other good players available but a decision is not only based on technical perspectives so I believe SL would be the choice again.

ScienceLogic SL1 Training

  • Online training
  • no training
Only cover the basic, the most powerfull part of the tool was not covered.
For the basics yes, the part where coding is necessary is complex and should have the first steps guided by someone with more experience.
With auto align a wrong change can be catastrophic

ScienceLogic SL1 Support

The cases I opened took some time to be solved but the the personal support is a good point.
ProsCons
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
No escalation required
Immediate help available
Support understands my problem
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
None
Yes - Took some time but we had a huge team involved and it was fixed in the end.
The issues I had were well solved but speaking about a specific issue me and my team had a excellent support on doubts related with Power Packs and its behavior.

Using ScienceLogic SL1

System still has an interface correlated with Nagios which is not a good thing.
ProsCons
Like to use
Unnecessarily complex
Difficult to use
Requires technical support
Not well integrated
Slow to learn
Lots to learn
  • SNMP monitoring, it is clean and easy to deploy.
  • VMware monitoring, quick deployment and easy to understand.
  • Discovery but DB discovery specifically
  • Dynamic Applications auto alignment

Integrating ScienceLogic SL1

  • None at the moment.
  • File import/export
Simple interface but there is still some gaps at integration purposes.

Relationship with ScienceLogic

Not applicable to me.
Not applicable to me.
Not applicable to me.
Not applicable to me.

Upgrading ScienceLogic SL1

Yes - We had two scenarios, big environment were way more complicated.
  • Failover capablity
  • More details from collector side