SAM Review
January 23, 2019
SAM Review
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
We use SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor to monitor critical applications and alerts on those monitors with NPM. It is used solely by the IT department but covers all applications across the organization.
- We found AppInsight for exchange very useful. The level of detail on the inner workings is almost too much.
- User experience monitors are also very useful. We use them to verify web form logins, SSH, and other processes are up and running.
- Windows process monitors are great too! Very easy to set up and a quick way to monitor services.
- AppInsight takes up 50 licenses: a bit steep. With a base 150 license count, we can't run AppInsight for SQL, Exchange, and IIS without running out of licenses.
- We get a lot of timeouts monitoring external websites. Still, we haven't determined why this happens. We have dual 2gig pipes to the internet.
- SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) gives our entire IT department visibility into our organization's application performance, availability, and status.
- Over the years, I believe having SAM and NPM have saved countless hours of troubleshooting, both by being a tool for preventing outages, and a tool for troubleshooting them when they happen.
- SAM reduces outages by notifying us when they occur. Downtime = lost productivity, lost revenue, and loss of confidence in IT.
- PRTG Network Monitor, HP BTO (formerly OpenView) Discontinued and Cisco Prime LAN Management Solution
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor is way more user-friendly than PRTG. We can't get OpenView anymore, but we moved from that to SolarWinds at one point and never looked back. Prime really doesn't offer any application monitoring.