How SolarWinds made me more productive and gave me back my network admin!
September 30, 2019
How SolarWinds made me more productive and gave me back my network admin!
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
Currently, SolarWinds is being used in our IT department only. We use it mainly for granular alerts on our VM environment servers, both critical and non-critical. Its granularity is excellent, allowing me to administer my infrastructure in a very detailed and organized way. Works as it should, but one of the business problems I can see is that it is all module-based, but allowing different admins (such as system and network) to create their own alerts and topology of our infrastructure gives them ownership of their job descriptions.
- The granularity in its alerts and reporting gives me access to critical information, especially in compliance.
- Its LDAP integration with Active Directory really helps in keeping organized our "Master List" of network-connected devices.
- Once, when my Windows Server Update Service was unavailable, was able to implement patches through it.
- The GUI is very user intuitive.
- I would much like to see the modules sold in categorically grouped bundles, such as a networking bundle which would include all modules relating to the network.
- Would love to see an addition of an API or something like that to connect to VMware Vcenters.
- Found that if you acknowledge alerts, it makes it very difficult to remediate them inside of the program.
- With Solarwinds, our biggest achievement due to its use is the fact that we were able to cut down by more than half our finding during our annual Penetration testing.
- Using Solarwinds, we were able to mitigate and remediate our Pen test's findings, such as findings related to AD accounts and passwords.
- Being able to automate a lot of the processes helps with the set it and forget it mantra, especially with server monitoring and network traffic monitoring.
Cherwell is not a bad product, but Solarwinds simply blows it out the water! Both in terms of granularity and integration. Also, our Help Desk ties in very nicely with the monitoring portion.
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Feature Ratings
Feature Questions
- Alerting and Reporting
- Monitoring of server health
- Monitoring of network health
- LDAP integration for Active Directory (Allows changes to be made without having to go into AD - Users and Computers)
- Price
- Product Usability
The ability to integrate both system and network monitoring needs into one product.