Item: SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
Rating: 8
Author: Erron Walter

Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use SolarWinds on a day to day basis. It's important to monitor all our WMI, SNMP servers, router switches and AP's. Whether it's drives, CPU, ports or applications NPM, NCM and SAM are essential for monitoring and reporting for our entire network.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Good interface and and user friendly for setting up alerts.
Fairly easy to navigate and set up groups.
Vast variety of alerts and custom alerts to create.

Cons

SAM leaves something to be desired.
No way of drilling into your node and seeing what apps are currently being monitored by that node.
NPM, NCM and SAM are almost completely separate from each other.

Return on Investment

POS - thresholds for drive capacity are critical. Whether it's a terminal server or database server or exchange server, if a drive fills up and stops over a weekend much time and money is lost.
POS - Prompt alerts and escalation levels to make sure the right person knows about the issue or downtime.
Neg - SolarWinds sometimes is a little shaky with custom scripting.

Other Software Used

Patchmanager, VMware vCenter Server, Cisco Data Center Network Manager

Likelihood to Recommend

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Feature Ratings

Using SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor

Users and Roles

5 - Applications Engineering, Desktop Engineering, Network Engineering

Support Headcount Required

2 - It doesn't take rocket science to set up or use SolarWinds. You definitely need to know and understand how networks work and function with servers, vlans and switches. I would say learning some of the powershell to really get your alerts going is key when setting up the alerts and monitoring.

Business Processes Supported

Drive Monitoring
Down nodes
Crucial applications

Likelihood to Renew

Again some of the interfacing could be better. Mostly because I like how alerting and monitoring are set up. My biggest issue is with SAM and it doesn't really tie in with the rest of the system.

Evaluating SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor and Competitors

Products Replaced

Key Differentiators

Prior Experience with the Product

I had used SolarWinds previously. When I went to another company I used another monitoring product that just was not as good as Orion. Setting up your nodes, alerts and thresholds were much easier to manage using SolarWinds.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

I wouldn't

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Implementation

Implementation Rating

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Implemented in-house

Implementation Phases

Change Management Lessons

Not sure - n/a

Implementation Issues

Deciding [what] we wanted to alert on
Try to set up custom monitors
Trying to minimize the amount of alerting that can come out of SolarWinds

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Support

Support Rating

We talk to a initial person and they may not be specialized in what we are trying to resolve. They then have to call back or have someone call back after that person is free from working on another issue with another customer.