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The Application Performance Monitor that will not let you down when you need it most
May 06, 2016

The Application Performance Monitor that will not let you down when you need it most

Paul Cardelli, CISSP | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor

We were using it to monitor servers and systems across the organization, but mainly in the IT department.
  • Monitors application health
  • Create customize monitors to monitor status on just about any service
  • Useful dashboards, that assist with troubleshooting and integrate well with Solarwind's other modules.
  • Licensing based on the monitors used instead of the application can make this solution seem a bit limited. For example monitoring all your exchange servers services could easily eat up a number of these licenses quick. So recommend counting each critical service that supports your application.
  • The ability to know when a application may be having performance issues before the end user calls
  • Easy of use, once application monitors are set up
  • Customization of alerts to carry out actions or notify the correct group of individuals
I have used Nagios, Whats Up Gold, Manage Engine, and even help desk software such as SysAid. I found that Solarwind's Server and Application Monitor was the most feature rich and the wizards helped us to get up running quick each time we needed to monitor a new server application.
If you're already a Solarwinds customer, or you are looking at using Solarwinds to monitor your network then Server Application Monitor is perfect for you. You may have other existing systems that can do similar things, but the integration with Solarwinds other products makes this a one stop shop for all application monitoring and troubleshooting needs.

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Feature Ratings

Application Performance Management
9.4
Application monitoring
10
Database monitoring
6
Threshold alerts
9
Predictive capabilities
9
Application performance management console
10
Out-of-the box templates to monitor applications
10
Virtualization monitoring
10
Server availability and performance monitoring
10
Server usage monitoring and capacity forecasting
10
IT Asset Discovery
10

Using SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor

26 - Database Admins, System Admins, Document Admins, Exchange Admins, Active Directory Admins, and Network Admins. Even a few end users.
2 - Someone with admin rights to the systems being monitored is helpful. Also understanding which critical services need monitoring can cut down on the number of monitoring licenses required.
  • To stay on top of application performance across the organization
  • Monitoring Applications that are critical 24/7 with staff able to be alerted on call instead of staff on site 24/7
  • Seeing valuable insight for planning and budgeting for adding additional resources to support applications
  • Monitoring services that were impacting our customers, and simply creating an alert action to reset the service automatically. This way we could monitor how often we were having issues and work with the vendor on correcting the issue while keeping the system up for the customer.
  • We will be monitoring more and more of our applications, and creating dashboards and reports based on departments they support and share with departments so the end users can see if their applications are down, or overloaded. It will bring visibility to everyone in the organization that needs it.
Mainly because it can be pricy, but well worth the cost at renewal when pared with all of the other solar wind' modules. It does allow us to streamline the troubleshooting process.