Electric Coop and SolarWinds
October 18, 2019
Electric Coop and SolarWinds
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
We are using SAM to monitor system services, primarily, in our environment and automate their restart when necessary. By using the software in this way, we are able to proactively address issues across all parts of our organization. As an electric utility, up time is not a goal. It is a necessity, and SAM helps us accomplish that.
- Discovers services through the wizards.
- Tracks specific application utilizations to help us pinpoint problem areas and memory leaks.
- It allows us to group like applications for easy to deploy templates.
- Native integration with Active Directory and Exchange for health monitoring.
- The drill-down menus could be more intuitive.
- Links to relevant application information. For example, lsass.exe is a Windows process but unless you're experienced, it could look like malware. Providing a link to KB or known applications could be helpful.
- More verbose explanations of criteria when setting up alerts. For example, the Active Directory monitor notifies based on specific events that occur. It could be helpful if more detail could be provided on that specific event to keep users from having to look in two or three different places for information.
- We have a 24-hour dispatch center at our utility. Proactive monitoring of applications gives them the ability to be notified of service failures and even restart them using the Solarwinds console. This cuts down on helpdesk tickets and also gives them a better uptime.
- Often, we would chase wisps when searching for application related issues (services stopping, etc.). SAM has given us a better window into that.
- We are definitely saving money every year by using SAM. We estimate that we saved the purchase price in labor in approximately 4 months.
The interface of the SolarWinds Application suites is familiar to us and is fairly intuitive. While there were some year two and year three cost savings associated with migrating to another platform, we decided that the monetary value would be lost in retraining and lack of ease of us. In short, the Solarwinds application suite, with a single interface for management and monitoring, sold us.