Very good, not wonderful
Updated March 02, 2021
Very good, not wonderful
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with ScienceLogic SL1
Disclaimer: We are heavy users.
Review: It is a great tool, however, there are still some gaps.
We were impressed, at first sight, with the easy way to monitor anything in an agentless way just by using specific powerpacks, however, in a few months we realized it was not so simple. It is a trade-off between the pros and cons.
From the perspective of service provider and internal users we use and support sciencelogic in internal (in house) and external (offering) in order to address the monitoring for several different technologies (as databases, hypervisors, cloud, operational systems, etc). So the pros and cons:
Pros:
1. Agentless monitoring is surely the future. In a small environment it does not matter, however when there are thousands of servers, appliances, etc, do not botter with agent patching, install, reinstall, etc, is a relief.
2. Snippets can be used to customize or get the information exactly as you need
3. Runbooks can save a lot of time. When you get used to the possibilities in the tool, the runbooks can save some time and you can even start using data that usual tools cannot.
Cons: You need to pay way more attention to the network, appliance hardware/usage, need to code, etc. IF you want to fully use the tool.
- Agentless solution minimizes the time we spend patching for security needs.
- Report and Dashboard are easy to create and use
- Price
- Easy customization
- Runbook automation
- The data collectors/database required hardware is way more complex than the documentation indicates. When you use more "heavy" collections (such as PowerShell), achieving 5k devices or more you will need some hundreds of RAM for your database and some dozens of RAM for your collections.
- There are several powerpacks that need to be enhanced (some are really bad). We had to develop several snippets on our own.
- If you want to use the tool a little bit deeper you should program in python and know what is being monitored.
- Not a good solution to monitor logs (agentless solution that requires an agent to monitor logs)
- Transitions took longer than expected (longer ROI)
- Support is easier in steady state (highering ROI in long therm)
- Learning curve is short for daily usage ((highering ROI in long therm)
- The cost of the appliance hardware is higher (lowering ROI in short therm)
Yes - We are substituting some IBM Tivoli Monitoring environments to ScienceLogic. It is being done to cover new technologies ITM cannot monitor.
There was a slight visibility as the ScienceLogic GUI presents dashboards and reports that can be used accross the customer hierarchy. Giving that we have management and technical teams accessing and using the tool. Although it is not the goal of the tool, we can see a slightly usage for capacity management as well. Given that, although not being specialist in some areas (as dashboards, reports, capacity) the tool is also being used in those areas.
No new products or new business are being supported through ScienceLogic.
It works by manual intervention for most of processes (as request to start monitoring/discover) however there are automatic process specially for the cloud environment, using events triggering runbooks to process required information in the tool as well as the tool being source of events to another processes (as triggering events to other tools in order to some action to be taken).
- Start simple automation through e-mail receiving in the tool
- Use the reports to analyse cloud environments
- Use the component device topology for a visual view of some environments
- AppDynamics, DX Spectrum (formerly CA Spectrum), Dynatrace, IBM Tivoli Monitoring, Nagios XI and Prometheus
As enterprise, we needed to leverage a tool that would resolve our problems for a fair price. Although ScienceLogic is not a fancy tool for some environments (as Dynatrace for the APM) or the visual appeal for observability (as Prometheus) we needed a tool that would broadly monitor the high number of technologies we have with a good support internally and externally (meaning we needed to deeply learn how to use the tool as well as count with the provider support) in different models (multitenant, SaaS, on premise, etc) and we found in ScienceLogic this intersection.
ScienceLogic SL1 Implementation
- Implemented in-house
- Third-party professional services
The sciencelogic by itself.
Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled - Change management and understand of the changes were essential to the success of the project. As this is an agentless, credential driven, tool, it is essential all teams understand all users/views/ids/network/etc to be correctly set befor any data pull attempt.
- Colllector sizing
- Lack of support of some technologies (lack of powerpack)
- Log monitoring
ScienceLogic SL1 Reliability
Configuring ScienceLogic SL1
Pay a lot of attention with the collector sizing; do not choose the minimal credential setup; and have a programmer with you, a python one.
No - we have not done any customization to the interface
Some - we have added small pieces of custom code - Python code, that's what was used.
Using ScienceLogic SL1
50 - We have people from the level one technical to executive. Meaning we achieve almost all the hierarchy with the tool.
20 - ScienceLogic resources need to be almost purely technical. It is an "open" tool, so the resource needs to know how to code (specially in python), needs to understand about network, operational system, technologies to be monitored, etc. Only a very small part of the team, most of them more close to the management, will be there, however focusing more in dashboards and reports.
- Monitor cloud environment
- Deliver out of the box dashboards for the team
- Hability to run snippets in the devices and plot graphs with results
- Simple source for the capacity management
- Trigger point for automation
Evaluating ScienceLogic SL1 and Competitors
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Product Reputation
It covered what we needed with the budget we had. Along of a good POC and POV we understood the tool would fit.
ScienceLogic SL1 Training
- Online training
- in-person training
- no training
Not so much, althouth the documentation is quite easy to understand, a lot of background in several tools would be required.
ScienceLogic SL1 Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response | None |
Yes, premium support was necessary as we also support the tool to another customers.
Yes - It was just fine, they added the resolution in a new version of code (where I preferred an interin fix, for example).
Using ScienceLogic SL1
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Easy to use Well integrated Feel confident using | Unnecessarily complex Cumbersome |
- Simple device discovery
- Import new features (using powerpacks)
- Use out of the box dashboards
- Size collectors for multiple technologies
- Create snippets
- Runbook (automation) requiring snippets and external calls