DRE is a phenomenal addition to anyone using SolarWinds for their helpdesk!
June 04, 2020
DRE is a phenomenal addition to anyone using SolarWinds for their helpdesk!
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Dameware Remote Everywhere (DRE)
We use it company wide as our Samanage helpdesk (another SolarWinds product) integrates nicely with it.
- The ability to send ad hoc links to a Samanage ticket allows users to be helped even if they're on their home computer and need assistance logging into our VPN was essential for us in the COVID-19 transition to an at home workforce!
- The methods of deployment are nice and easily managed through GPO.
- The interface of seeing waiting sessions and options to collaborate with other technicians is nice and user friendly.
- When the end user doesn't have admin rights (most don't on work PCs or within VDI) and they click to run the downloaded exe given to them from the helpdesk ticket, the exe isn't smart enough to realize there's already an agent installed (which DOES allow admin rights) so what ends up happening is the technician becomes hampered and unable to even see the screen when admin rights are requested forcing us to adopt an ever changing password tempadmin user that we give to the end users (but even then we can't see what they're seeing and our session goes into an infinite loop). DRE is supposed to request and even give credentials for admin access but it simply doesn't work in practice when within a VDI environment.
- I'd like the ability for all technicians to be logged in even if we don't have the licenses, we pay for concurrent sessions not users, it shouldn't require us to leave the application totally logged off, that's silly.
- Given the robustness of the integration with the Samanage helpdesk (saves session history so we know there was a technician who helped that ticket, etc) we really wish it was smart enough in the inventory integration to know what agents already exist and are operating and allow us to give a link to leverage that user's agent on the known inventory item, like if there was a dropdown in Samange for known inventory PCs associated with that user and based on the user's ticket see which have the agent installed allowing our technicians to simply click to connect to that rather than putting our user through downloading and running an exe.
- An interface showing all known inventory items akin to how TeamViewer does it with their address book would alleviate some unknowns and allow for better management of unattended remote access needs rather than us hunting for it and/or resorting to other means of access not DRE (like vCenter spying on a session which messes up users with multiple monitors, RDP which takes over user sessions with our own, or VNC which doesn't work through the internet).
- Oh it's more than paid for itself! Without it we would be stuck without any decent alternative supporting our users working from home or connecting with their crazy devices!
- With the discounts we won and the advice of the sales team we ended up walking away with only needing 1 concurrent user session for our fleet of 5 IT staff supporting our 125 users in the wild (mostly in CT but one in CA and one in Germany). This saved us over $1,000/year in expected costs!
- While hard to put a number on, the idea of driving to users' houses (when we had to blitz and support remote work a few months back) was likely going to cost us TONS of money in compensating my IT staff for gas mileage! Instead that money was able to be saved and put towards end users acquiring better home setup equipment like 2nd monitors and printers to help support their job away from the office. The potential loss of business had we not been able to do this and forced to shut down would be impossible to calculate as our impact to our customers would be so devastating who knows if we'd survive that at all!
Its integration with Samanage and cost were the key deciding factors over TeamViewer (which can be VERY expensive despite how easy and nice it is to use) and it's just far more functional and less limited than VNC or RDP or Chrome Remote Desktop options or even the screen share with Microsoft Teams (which only works when using the installed Teams app). It's important to note the deployment methods are nice and powerful too and support has been great so far.
Do you think SolarWinds Dameware Remote Everywhere (DRE) delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with SolarWinds Dameware Remote Everywhere (DRE)'s feature set?
Yes
Did SolarWinds Dameware Remote Everywhere (DRE) live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of SolarWinds Dameware Remote Everywhere (DRE) go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy SolarWinds Dameware Remote Everywhere (DRE) again?
Yes