Stands alone but better with friends
August 03, 2018
Stands alone but better with friends
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
Our IT department was looking for a monitoring tool to proactively address issues before they were encountered by the customer. Issues easily cropped up as a result of regular maintenance and would quickly be noticed by customers because checks were not done afterwards. We have been able to use SAM to check key services and applications for availability. This has also allowed us to track system uptime and keep better inventory of the monitored software and systems.
- Powershell. We use this as a key tool to make sure software (both custom and delivered) is up and working correctly. Microsoft has standardized on this for the foreseeable future and Solarwinds does a great job using this tool set.
- Stack monitoring. It has always been extremely difficult to find the source of a problem. Combining SAM with their other products really provides an amazing insight in correlating a perceived issue with its ultimate cause.
- Community/Support. While SAM is a great tool, it is the people that really drive this product. Both support and customers are very responsive and excited to help out.
- Learning Curve. SAM (and other solarwinds products) take a lot of time to learn how to make everything work well. Management can become frustrated with the perceived lack of progress. Solarwinds has recently made efforts to improve this with their Customer Success Center.
- Reporting. The reporting tool is ok for some basic table reports but lacks a lot in comparison with reporting services.
- Default dashboards. While custom dashboards can be awesome tools, the default ones are overwhelming in detail and underwhelming in looks. There is are also difficulties in creating great looking dashboards.
- Customers create less incident tickets because we can be assured that our monitored services are up which has reflected directly our our uptime.
- Server performance monitoring has been able to prevent system slowdown and assure our customer base during peak load times.
- Management has a much clearer picture of our server loading and future needs.
PRTG was a consideration as it provides a expansive platform for any monitoring system. However, SAM is part of a larger Solarwinds environment that few companies can match for community and support. SAM's value keeps increasing with each other product purchased as the integration is very tight. It can stand alone and provides enough value to do so, but many features are lessened without expanding to the other products as well.