Item: SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
Rating: 3
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

SAM is being used to monitor and report outages for Windows servers, Linux server, various applications such as Tomcat on servers, and MS SQL Database Servers.

Pros and Cons

Monitors many various applications
Emails notices of outages
Provides historical information to review

Cumbersome to setup
Database Query monitors are very restrictive and can only process number responses
Single polling engine seems limited on how many monitors it can functionally manage before monitoring performance is affected

Return on Investment

When properly configured, SAM can provide notice of outages that can be mitigated quickly
Due to the complexity of the system, you need a qualified, dedicated administrator or team of administrators to properly manage SAM

Previous solutions we have used were much more capable when monitoring MS SQL Database servers. We could monitor more than just a number which meant when there was an issue, a SQL Query could return a text result stating what the problem was. This could then be sent in the alert email which made configuring and managing alerts simple. Because SAM can only process numbers, we have to configure far more notifications so that we can tell what specific number mean when there is an issue.

Because of the cumbersome configuration, trying to tune the system so false positive notices are not sent is difficult. We receive a high volume of non-valuable notice emails which causes important messages to get lost.

Pass on Server and Application Monitor, but definitely buy Database Performance Analyzer

Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros and Cons

Return on Investment

Likelihood to Recommend

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor Feature Ratings