Solarwinds SAM a good investment
March 08, 2016
Solarwinds SAM a good investment
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
We used SAM specifically for our SQL Server 2012 and Exchange 2010 and IIS 7. Our IT department monitors a proprietary CRM and web portals that we needed to keep an eye on for 24/7 monitoring and 100% uptime. The Exchange monitoring was just a plus.
- SQL server monitoring was probably the best use for SAM, although there are other products that get into further detail. SAM basically gives us the confidence to be sure that the source of a bottleneck or error is not hardware or configuration related, but instead a possible code or efficiency issue.
- Exchange 2010 monitoring is a little difficult through the management console, so SAM provides that extra layer of monitoring that shows what applications are failing, when the management console doesn't load. This can only be done otherwise through advanced powershell scripting.
- We've seen products that provide that extra level of monitoring that the SQL server monitoring wasn't capable of. However, the cost of solutions like Idera are very high in comparison to what you are getting with SAM.
- We rely on 100% uptime, so predictive monitoring has been especially helpful, particularly with aging equipment. Some of our legacy systems are on older physical servers and have not yet been virtualized, so SAM has given us the confidence that no problems have arisen that we are not aware of.
- For the low annual cost for SAM, it is a good investment to keep online for peace of mind.
SAM provides the base level of monitoring needed to monitor your systems on a hardware and configuration level. We are still looking into getting additional monitoring for SQL that will give indepth reporting on procedural efficiency, and am also considering on expanding to IIS monitoring through Solarwinds. SAM has a very specific purpose, and it best used in combination with other tools, instead of being used over another product.