SAM keep an eye on the little things
February 02, 2019
SAM keep an eye on the little things
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
We use SolarWinds SAM to monitor over 100 servers. Our IT team is able to check on server and service status on all servers across the network. SAM allows us to keep an automated eye on critical and non-critical services. Knowing a service has gone down before the calls come flooding in can keep us ahead of the game. We also have benchmarks to see how those services are performing.
- SolarWinds keeps an eye on all of the various services we need to keep track of. DHCP, DNS, Radius, HTTPS, SQL...all running under an automated observer. Find out something is slowing down or failing BEFORE the client calls come in.
- Integration into the Orion suite allows SolarWinds to provide more information to the node stack. DPA lets us see the database, NPM the network and SAM the server service. Get a quick glance at where to start troubleshooting
- SolarWinds has a ton of canned services to monitor. There's little setup involved to get a DHCP monitor up and running. Server & Application Monitor also includes the ability to add in custom services if you can't find the one you're looking for.
- Initial set up is easy. So easy that you can flood your views with services you didn't need to know about because you "checked all."
- Canned templates can be vague as to what they are monitoring.
- Views of the information range from overwhelming lists to graphs lacking depth.
- Poor service performance identification. SAM helps us identify problem areas without having to plague a client with questions they don't want to answer.
- Canned displays allow us to get immediate results about our services without having to learn how to design a UI or add dozens of widgets. It's all prebuilt.
- SolarWinds products can be prohibitive in regards to cost. SAM licenses off the service, which can quickly add up when you have a dozen core services on a single server.
SAM is infinitely easier to set up. I don't have to build out low-level agents to gather the information I want. SAM makes it as easy as checking some boxes in the UI. The UI is much easier to understand and set up. SAM comes with easy integration of LDAP to help manage users.