Item: SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor (SAM) is used for monitoring servers, applications, and databases in our environment. We have many [SolarWinds] SAM templates defined to monitor applications (JMX, Tomcat, AD, etc). We use [SolarWinds] SAM to monitor event logs, custom logs, and run Database Queries. The [SolarWinds] SAM templates also support running custom PowerShell, Perl, and Python scripts to monitor your environment. Additional Templates are available to monitor Database, SQL Server, Oracle, MYSQL, [and] Storage Monitoring. There are over hundreds of [SolarWinds] SAM Templates available to address your monitoring needs.

Pros and Cons

Custom Script (Windows, Powershell, Python, Perl, [etc.])
Performance Stacks (Dashboards) based on data collected from [SolarWinds] SAM Templates
Application dependency Mapping for some [SolarWinds] SAM Templates

Additional Templates for monitoring applications (JBoss, JMX, etc.)
Dependency Mapping for these applications
More Application Performance Management features

Return on Investment

Define Custom Monitoring for all critical applications and databases
Alerts and Dashboards for proactive system monitoring
Faster root-cause diagnosis and Incident response time

Alternatives Considered

SolarWinds Pingdom and SolarWinds AppOptics

SolarWinds Pingdom and AppOptics [are] full-fledged Application Performance Management Tools. [SolarWinds] SAM provides Server and Application Monitoring using [SolarWinds] SAM templates, [but] it does miss out on APM capabilities which other APM solutions offer.

Key Insights

Do you think SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor's feature set?

Yes

Did SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor again?

Yes

Other Software Used

CA Workload Automation

Likelihood to Recommend

SolarWinds SAM is suited to configure custom monitoring. This includes monitoring log files, error messages in logs, running database queries, and executing custom scripts. This data can be displayed in [an] intuitive dashboard for the NOC team. The [SolarWinds] SAM templates can also be used to manage application availability and uptime for all critical applications. Alerts can be defined for monitoring the [SolarWinds] SAM templates.

Robust Server and Application Monitoring Solution

Overall Satisfaction with SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor