SolarWinds SAM made me more productive and proactive.
January 23, 2019
SolarWinds SAM made me more productive and proactive.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
Our department (IT) primarily uses SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor to ensure key servers and services stay up and running. As a bonus, I use the performance monitoring tools to judge how servers are performing, determine where more (virtual) hardware is needed, and show executives and developers how the hardware is not bottlenecking the software.
- Monitoring - I can easily use built-in templates for most things, but I can also easily create custom monitors for things that are more unique to my environment.
- Alerting - It takes some work to get it exactly right, but you can tune your alerts to ensure you are not crying wolf.
- Application insights - the templates for monitoring Exchange and SQL performance really allow you to quickly and easily pinpoint and attack problem areas in these critical applications.
- Licensing - while the model is simple, it can be frustrating. New features, like AppInsight, use a ton of "monitors" so you will always need/want to upgrade to the next level. The difference in licenses/pricing can be startling. For example, if you need 301 you have to buy 700. Finding more flexibility here would make happier customers.
- Sales - the sales team is unnecessarily aggressive in their tactics. They will call and email every listed contact they can find repeatedly offering account reviews, quarter end sales, etc.
- All of the monitoring and tuning has freed my staff and I up for other activities.
All of the monitoring and tuning has freed my staff and I up for other activities. We're able to provide a much higher level of support than previous.
I've used a few other tools, and SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor provides the most bang for the buck in my opinion. Cheaper alternatives exist (Lansweeper and Spiceworks notably), but do not provide the width of servers and applications you can monitor nor the flexibility needed in alerting and performance monitoring. I've yet to find anything I couldn't monitor with SAM. It is really an application that gives you exactly what you put into it. It might not do everything you want it to out of the box, but if you put the effort in to learning it and playing with it, you'll get everything you want.