Item: SolarWinds Kiwi Syslog Server
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Kiwi Syslog Server

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Kiwi Syslog is used only internally by our network engineering team. We consider it to be highly useful; as it's easy to set up and has minimal need for any additional configuration. We use it regularly as a replacement for the SolarWinds Orion Syslog that is part of their NPM package; as we find that the NPM syslog can't always keep up with logs.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Fast! Logging is close to real-time.
Simple set up
Cheap. The whole product is usually less than $300 USD.

Cons

Minimalistic; If you're looking for something with analysis features look elsewhere.
Operating System support is Windows only.
Some management features cannot be configured via web interface.

Return on Investment

Increased visibility into Network Issues
Reduced Downtime
Centralization of Logging

Usability

Kiwi Syslog has the best usability of any syslog server. While not being able to offer the most features, the ones it does have are intuitive and easy to work with. Everything that it has is where you think it should be. If you can't find it in the menus, it doesn't exist.

Support Rating

SolarWinds support is pretty decent, but I wouldn't rate them much higher than that. They do a good job in most cases, but sometimes they just tell you that "that's how it is," and provide no solution. Other than that, they are pretty helpful. Also worth mentioning is their "Thwack" forums, which has an excellent user community.

Alternatives Considered

SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor, Elasticsearch and Graylog

Our group already had a license for the Orion Syslog server that comes bundled with Orion NPM, but it didn't quite meet our requirements for performance. Elasticsearch and Graylog easily met our performance requirements, but not enough team members were able to manage the software and handle updates, or security patching. An added bonus was of course the pricing of the application.

Other Software Used

Vim, LiveAction LiveNX, SolarWinds IP Address Manager, SolarWinds Netflow Traffic Analyzer, draw.io, Nmap, Wireshark

Likelihood to Recommend

SolarWinds Kiwi Syslog Server really thrives in environments where the network is small enough that high scalability or log analysis are not required. I would avoid using this in a network where automated log analysis is required, and would look more at a SIEM or something in that same vein. It should also be noted (and hopefully managers or product purchasers are reading) that this isn't the same as a SIEM, and therefore isn't a suitable alternative to one -- though it is great for what it is.

SolarWinds Kiwi Syslog Server Feature Ratings

Comments

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