My review after working so closely with ScienceLogic SL1 as monitoring tool.
Updated April 25, 2024
My review after working so closely with ScienceLogic SL1 as monitoring tool.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with ScienceLogic SL1
I am an SME in HCL Technologies for the ScienceLogic SL1 monitoring tool and have five ScienceLogic SL1 customers in a shared environment. There was scope to manage the entire 60 customers from HCL Tech, but because the scope is limited and not advanced, many customers opted out for ScienceLogic SL1 as a tool. Scope of use cases - each PowerPack should be tested properly for alerting. With the help of the application team, the DB alerts should be tested. They should consult with the DB team and ask what alerting is required and how relevant it is with the PowerPack that ScienceLogic SL1 offers, and accordingly, this should be enhanced.
Both
- Ping monitoring and polling reports are very good. Customer-first looks for this feasibility and how closely it can monitor that is well defined in ScienceLogic SL1.
- Collectors' connectivity with SL DB is very stable. We hardly see issues of any connectivity failing. Agentless is far better and easy to handle and use than other tools. The best part is plug and play type.
- CDM monitoring, it really does well and has wise poll reporting.
- The dashboard is really awesome. We use and showcase to customers their servers as a whole, and for one server, a lot of details can be checked under the performance graph.
- Bulk Onboarding/Offboarding is so good in ScienceLogic SL1. Search criteria are matchless. ScienceLogic SL1 has such a beautiful, organized field.
- Suppression alerts, FS is so well defined, easy and quick to use.
- ScienceLogic SL1 has improved so much in defining license consumption, which shows license consumed against all items.
- Log monitoring and event monitoring should be defined and should not be enabled with event ids. We have to create a duplicate Dynamic App if different events ids are to be enabled as per application. More visibility and descriptions should be included in the Log and Event id monitoring description.
- Database monitoring should be enhanced, and more advanced features should be added, such as replication, DB mirroring, DB Sync, Log Shipping, etc. So far, with the Dynamic app, we can't monitor DB status. The same goes with virtual server addition, we don't get DB status alerts which is deadly required. The same goes for all the DB like Oracle, Postgres, MySQL, and others. Numerous features and capabilities should be there. You may take the example of CA UIM, which has more than 75 parameters to enable against DB. ScienceLogic SL1 is lacking badly in this area.
- UNIX servers cluster monitoring is not that good, we can only monitor cluster nodes' status, but there are more that can be captured as part of features.
- TOP 10 processes and services should be captured for CPU and Memory. We don't have such things yet that can be enabled or found in a server.
- HADR, AS400 are majorly asked for by customers but till now it's not available.
- Application deep level monitoring is very limited in scope, such as HTTP, DNS, AD, and others.
- ScienceLogic SL1 reports don't work so well. They need to be worked on it for internal troubleshooting purposes.
- Hardware, Backup, and Storage monitoring are very limited in scope, which should be increased.
- Traps based monitoring should be encouraged more from ScienceLogic SL1.
- Monitoring with advanced features of Active Directory, DNS servers, Exchange servers, etc., should be more in scope.
- The most important thing, PowerPack, which is in ScienceLogic SL1, should be tested well and should be released only with the consent of the Application/DB team.
- There should be a team who should work on Community PowerPack so that if the customer wants to make it and use it via general availability should be available.
- Customer support and follow-up have gone down over the past two years as if they don't bother, which has a negative impact. Customer is big or small. SMEs who work ideally send out messages to other organizations about how good a tool is or how bad its support system is.
- A quarterly training session should be organized, as in real terms, your ScienceLogic SL1 is driven by SMEs who work on your tool, and many of the wrong impressions are sent due to SMEs' ignorance even if the tool is good.
- I see the big scope of ScienceLogic SL1 as a monitoring tool provided 10% of ScienceLogic SL1 product is improved. The demand for 10% is so much, and it's not good that it's the main reason your 90% good things are sidelined.
- Agentless monitoring is the best part of ScienceLogic SL1 monitoring, which is asked for by all the customers.
- Customers are happy for what they have other than couple of use cases.
- The objective is to provide a solution for whatever the customer asks, be it cost-based or your own product.
- Workaround and ETA are missing and lacking as part of business objectives in ScienceLogic SL1.
I have checked the feasibility of these tools, and except for CA UIM, other tools are not even close to ScienceLogic SL1. ScienceLogic SL1, in this respect, is far more advanced. ScienceLogic SL1 is smooth, easy to use, easy to make anyone understand, and make ready to work. The support team is very helpful but depends on use cases, and then ETA is delayed.
Do you think ScienceLogic SL1 delivers good value for the price?
No
Are you happy with ScienceLogic SL1's feature set?
No
Did ScienceLogic SL1 live up to sales and marketing promises?
No
Did implementation of ScienceLogic SL1 go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy ScienceLogic SL1 again?
No
ScienceLogic SL1 Implementation
- Implemented in-house
Change management was a big part of the implementation and was well-handled
- Proxy setup was a big challenge between ScienceLogic SL1 DB and collector.
- Collector registration, at times, faces challenges to registering collectors during implementation when the collector doesn't sync with ScienceLogic SL1 DB.
- Upgrading ScienceLogic SL1 is a big challenge. It doesn't get completed until the engineering team joins in.
Using ScienceLogic SL1
5 - We have five customers where ScienceLogic SL1 is deployed as a monitoring solution for INFRA monitoring only.
6 - Six people support five customers. They are well skilled and, at times, help the ScienceLogic SL1 support team when they get stuck technically and in term of feasibility and feature discussions.
- Customer INFRA monitoring
- DB application monitoring
- Hardware and integrations
- Traps based integrations monitoring can be used widely.
- Server Hardware, Backup, Storage, and other application-level monitoring can be included.
- Network monitoring is best suited in ScienceLogic SL1.
Evaluating ScienceLogic SL1 and Competitors
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Prior Experience with the Product
UI is good and easy to handle. Managing customer requirements is also achievable. Support is good; hence the overall product is good for basic INFRA monitoring.
If I have to do it for any new customer, I will have a thorough review and a POC of each item that ScienceLogic SL1 offers. Many times PowerPack doesn't work as expected and always offers PS Support which is not favorable.
ScienceLogic SL1 Support
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Kept well informed Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success | None |
Not sure about premium support, but if this is the case, then each support ticket should have this column to get to know what would support case ETA. We should also know what we have purchased and how effective this is. I strongly disagree with having premium or having any other category. This only has a negative impact on ScienceLogic SL1 as a product. Support is support, and ETA should be followed up. Category of support makes the entire product useless.
Yes - We have found many bugs and updated the ScienceLogic SL1 Team, and each time they say this would be included in our next release, and this is what I have heard for over four years. On top of it, they offer PS support for the same bug fix, which is actually a ScienceLogic SL1 product bug.
00228011 - Unable to find ports in a server, I was to enable port monitoring against a server, but in spite of the port being opened from Collectors, it was not showing in the ScienceLogic SL1 console. The support team fixed it in one go without asking any further questions. Similarly, Pankaj supported me to enable MFA for NOKIA customers, which I found really helpful and much-needed support at that time.
Using ScienceLogic SL1
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | Inconsistent |
- Onboarding/Offboarding is easy and smooth
- Bulk configuration is very easy and very effective
- Port status from ScienceLogic SL1 collectors are very easy and smooth even with bulk servers
- Reports extraction is very difficult and at times it doesn't work.
- Taking our server configuration report is difficult, and it is a cumbersome process like all monitoring enabled with all threshold parameters running in a server.
- Creating Virtual DB servers credentials is difficult.
- To find credentials aligned in a server is difficult.
- Segregation of servers with collection data vs ping monitoring servers.
- PowerPack upgrade is a cumbersome process as most of them are used as community PowerPacks, and PS creates those, and only PS can support and no one else.