IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) Reviews

We use it to look into performances in our system and different dedicated environments. We try to draw graphs that represent what we have in terms of time response, bandwidth, and input and output across all our data centers to see if the load balance is correct. We have some traffic flows that say if the traffic is dropping and being taken by another data center. There are a lot of reports all around about different points of our architecture.

It is deployed as a physical appliance on-premises. So, we have the SevOne appliance in our data center.

Based on some metrics, we have policies that will raise issues and tickets internally, in case thresholds are being crossed. 

We have benefited mainly from the use of the dashboard interface. It makes the network visually interesting for people who are not in the network. A lot of people are not network techies who understand streams in the network. Based on location, we have streams coming in and out. They can see visually when there is some problem. They don't need to understand all the network technology behind it to be able to understand if everything is working well or if there is a problem. 

The visualization doesn't remain in the network. It is available for everyone in production management, etc.

We don't use all the features so far because we are just using the product that was there without supervision for one year. So, with a couple of colleagues, we are doing a lot of work to put everything back on track. We know that SevOne can do a lot, in terms of hitting some baselines, especially with their new visualization software, SevOne Data Insight (DI). This gives a new perspective in terms of dashboarding. It is something more dynamic and flexible than the previous version.  

There are different types of reports based on the metrics that we want to monitor and check.

The most valuable feature is that we can draw reports with the historic value of data. So, we can see if there is a trend in the past or if something has been changing over the past couple of weeks. When we have an incident, we need to go back to the occurrence of this incident some time in the future. We can see if it is something that happens regularly or not.

Data coming from our system to SevOne needs to be comprehensive. This is the way SevOne works around data flows. So far, it has been good.

They support software-defined networks as part of another module. They have their main module, which is called NMS, then they have other side software which complements the main architecture. They also support software-defined networks, like Cisco ACI. 

We made assessments internally about the system, i.e., about what could be done better. There are a lot of points. 

With the administrative management of the appliance, if some object appears from SevOne because something changed in the network or whatever, then as an administrator you will not be aware. If you are using this object in a report, this object will disappear from the report and you will not be aware of it. So, if you have 1,000 reports, you cannot always check these reports everyday to see if objects are missing or information has disappeared. We don't have any information on alerts, saying that something is happening there and maybe we need to take action. If an object was replaced by another one, or if a link was replaced by another one, then the graph needs to be changed because it doesn't exist in the graph anymore. However, we don't have this information.

This is also the same in terms of the internal architecture that we put in place inside the system. We can tag our network device based on the firmware, some rules, or a manufacturer/vendor. But, it is not always clear when we add a bunch of devices that they will mark these categories. For example, we need to make sure that one device is from a specific vendor. We have to dig deep in each device to make sure they are really attached to the correct vendor. If they're not attached to the correct vendor, then information will not be pulled in the same way, and we might be losing information. So, small tweaks need to be made to the internal management, making it easier for me.

SDN networking is going from legacy towards object-oriented, so we don't have a choice. It is something that we are using and need. Unfortunately, our IT lead is not really into the SDN solution of ACI, as apparently it is missing some features in terms of deep analytics and monitoring of ACI hardware infrastructure as-is. In the future, we may use SDN infrastructure because I know they are releasing features every month.

We have had it in service for five years. I was not there when it was installed at the beginning. I have been handling it for a year and a halfs.

It is really stable. We don't have any issues, except when we do our disaster scenario a couple of times a year. We have to physically cut the connection between our sites for redundancy and compliance. Then, we can sometimes see that we need to ask the help of support to put back the database in a correct state because the replication is not always clicking well. But, that is most likely because of the technology used behind it. MySQL is always a bit sensitive in this kind of scenario. So, I am not sure it is really the SevOne application that has an issue. It is more the technology that lies behind it which can be a bit faulty in these kinds of scenarios. Besides the replication, it works really nice. 

Without disaster scenarios, we are reaching 100% of availability easily.

We just scaled it up a month ago because we were reaching some limits. It is quite scalable. It took a day to scale it up with the new appliances that were delivered. It is quite easy to scale.

We are monitoring 886 devices. That is infrastructure monitoring. There are more devices that we still want to monitor. Our plan is to reach 1,300.

We use the technical support quite often. It is good, though it depends on the location that is doing the support. There are several locations that do support, whether it's India, Poland, or the US. Depending on that, the support can vary as well as the response time, because we're not always in the same time zones as their support. Sometimes, it can take a long time to receive an answer if we have been redirected to the wrong support.

Since it is something new, we are in contact with the vendor. We can give them some updates about what issues we are facing and if we are happy with the product so far. 

We are using another tool called EMC Smarts, but it is more for event monitoring. So, there isn't any drawing of dashboards. It is more only thresholds for SNMP Traps that can be received. Based on that, it distributes tickets. So, we cannot see the history nor draw the status of a link. 

A long time ago, I used Nagios, which is kind of the precursor to monitoring. However, I cannot compare it to SevOne because I used it about 10 years ago. 

You have to try it. The first step may be a bit harsh because of the layout. It's an older type of layout, but it works. Once you find your way with it, it is quite easy and straightforward. But, at first, it's not always easy to handle. But, it is a good tool that works nicely. So far, we don't regret it.

We need to master the system to be able to fully grasp what can be done. It is not for every end user who wants to go into the system and start monitoring whatever they want. They need to be able to grasp some content before that. Without training or previous knowledge, it is not always easy to grasp every concept behind the solution. It is a monitoring system so it's not a system where you click, then drag and drop.

I know they support telemetry. But the device on the end user side needs to be able to send telemetry information, which is not something we can do yet. We don't have enough devices doing telemetry to really use that feature to its greatest potential. So, this is something we have on our roadmap, and probably we will dig into it in a couple of months or years when our infrastructure is evolving in that direction.

Telemetry is something that we would like to invest some more time with, because it is different from having just simple SNMP polling, which is heavy on the system. It puts on a lot of overload based on the frequency of polling. By default, it takes five minutes. We want to have something with a frequency smaller than five minutes and maybe pause every 10 seconds, and SNMP can do it, but it puts a lot of overhead on the system. With telemetry, the big advantage of telemetry is a constant stream of information. There is no overhead. We just have a constant flatline of internal usage. We don't have huge peaks. We have fast information, close to real-time. We should have closer to real time monitoring in the future, instead of just being passive and waiting. There is still a ways to go for telemetry, but most infrastructure is capable of doing it.

Nothing is perfect. I would rate it a solid seven (out of 10) because a lot of points could be improved. I have a long list of small tweaks and customization that can be brought to the system. We give some of them to the customer support, but we are not their only clients. So, they go through prioritizing all their processes. Sometimes, our propositions are refused. It is a good system, but there is still some room for big improvements.

The fact that it's agentless. With agents, you only see what you instrument and what you tell it to look at. With SevOne, I have complete infrastructure visibility and can see anything on the network.

In 2002, my company was using Tivoli and I was totally frustrated in our inability to see anything. The first thing we fixed was storage and only got around to monitoring in 2008, which was a mess. We had trouble keeping our agents running and had 5 actions for every 125.

Now, we have about 125 actions as opposed to 125 phone calls of issues, increasing our proactive measures hundred-fold. We also began providing rich detailed data to our customer on system performance to the point that they had to change their processes and level of transparency.

We're blowing away our competition.

I think that the downstream suppression could be improved. Suppression must all be done manually, but this improvement is on SevOne's roadmap, I believe.

I've used SevOne since 2010.

For our POC in 2010, we did a little bit of work ahead of time, laying down a small system and receiving an actionable date within four hours. A sister company was having a problem with a payroll system and had no monitoring on the system, so we installed a full suite of SevOne for them on a shared, virtual environment. We deployed those in 24 hours and we provided real-time data into how well the infrastructure was performing.

The only stability issue we had was with a recent upgrade, which took us a long time to backup and restore. We had significant issues with the stability of the PLA platform early on but they fixed and relaunched – very few companies have done that. The PAS and DNC have been rock solid.

No issues with scalability – that’s what's sweet about this product, unlike Tivoli with which he did have scalability issues. SevOne is peer-to-peer so you just add another PAS to the cluster. It's like lots of hands making light work – no problems scaling.

9/10 – they are working on improving that, but have a way to go yet.

We looked at a bunch – we did and RFI – Opnet, NetQS, SevOne and a fourth one. We ended up testing NetQOS (CA owned) and SevOne.

Tivoli – we're still using it as a backup, but all of our RCA and SLA reporting are coming from SevOne.

Easiest deploying product I have ever worked with. It's intuitive. I used to be a Unix admin, and I haven’t done this deployment before, yet I'm able to find data as I need.

We implemented SevOne through our in-house team.

The ROI for my kind of business is difficult to assess, but if I could get rid of Tivoli, I'd reduce my load by two FTE’s which would give me a six month ROI as a back-of-the-envelope kind of guess.

We have increased our capability a hundred-fold over, so it was more of a customer performance thing than ROI. I could see stuff I never saw before. In our root-cause analysis, I would typically have eight level-six people and it could take 24 hours. That’s a lot of horsepower. Now it takes us a quarter of the time. That’s huge.

We looked at a bunch during the RFI process – Opnet, NetQS, SevOne, and a fourth one. We ended up testing NetQOS (CA owned) and SevOne.

I would advise someone to test drive the product and see if it's what you need. I've recommended many people to use this product because it deploys so easily.

It's given us the ability to create various real-time network performance reports and distribute them to any colleague who can access these reports immediately. They can access them any time without needing their own user account to the system.

• SevOne threshold monitoring alerts help to improve our network monitoring.
• Procedures in troubleshooting were built on predefined SevOne reports.

Single device-based baseline monitoring works well in SevOne, but sometimes device independent base-lining in redundant network environments. Software upgrades can be tricky is not easy.

I've used it for five years.

The software upgrades can be tricky.

The appliances run quite stable.

Scalability is just a matter of adding new appliances to the cluster if needed.

They have good customer service.

Technical support is very professional and fast in developing solutions.

We chose it because it has a fast working reporting engine and because of the scalability of the solution.

The set-up of the basic monitoring is straightforward, but customizing for special needs, such as calculation pollers, takes some effort.

The implementation was performed by a vendor team together with an internal one. The vendor had a high-level of expertise.

It's provided us with improvements in network monitoring and troubleshooting as well as advanced reporting solutions payback.

The SevOne tool was convincing from the beginning, and after testing it there was no need to test anything else.

By default the tool provides a lot, you need to focus on your needs, adding something else later is usually no problem.

• Alerting
• Graphing

We are able to alert the correct application owners, as well as troubleshoot problems quicker, leading to less downtime.

• Customization of fields
• The UI is a little dated, but it doesn’t cause any features to fall short of what they need to do.

I have been using it for 1.5 years.

I have not encountered any stability issues.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support is 10/10; responses to questions are within 20 minutes and the longest time to be resolved was three days.

I previously used BMC BPPM (ProactiveNet). SevOne was already being used by the network group. Price was a major player in the decision to switch.

The product was set up and installed by SevOne technicians. So, initial setup was very straightforward.

SevOne is usually spot-on with their scaling of an environment. Be sure that you tell them exactly what you want to monitor. Objects can grow quickly with each additional service you wish to monitor.

Before choosing SevOne, we evaluated SolarWinds, TrueSight, and ScienceLogic.

As with anything, if you want this to succeed, have a plan and focus; the product has many great features, so don’t get distracted. It’s easy to want to show everyone what you can do with the product. We focused on basic monitoring first and since then expanded to the other offerings of the product.

The most valuable features for us are the huge number of network devices it can monitor. It has a lot of useful features, not only the basic things like measurements of CPU, disk, and memory, but it also has the ability to measure net flow.

Also, we've found their good support to be valuable.

It help us to monitor a large variety of network devices and servers from our customers.

In the area of server monitoring, it has some areas for improvement. For example, when you need to measure the CPU usage on Windows servers, it does not have the option to measure the total usage of CPU, only the measure of each core or CPU. Total CPU usage is something that's important to us.

I've used it for three years.

The vendor helped us with deployment.

Yes, we had stability issues. Specifically, when we update to a new version, it often affects the reports that are created.

We did not have any scalability issues.

Customer service is a 10 out of 10.

Technical support is a 10 out of 10.

In my previous job, we used ManageEngine. In this new job, we have always used SevOne.

I wasn't involved in the initial setup, so I don't know.

We implemented it with a vendor term. Their expertise was very high.

I don't know if we evaluated other options because management chose this solution.

It's a good option, particularly because of SevOne's support.

The most valuable feature for us is its flexibility to handle different systems and different functions. We use it for networking, service systems, PDU's, and anything that's available for SO&P.

We had multiple systems when I first got here. We use SevOne to stabilize our system and standardize our operations around it. It's simple enough for me to hire administrative-level employees who can function in a capable manner. And I save money, too, because I can hire less-expensive employees who don't need to have high levels of education and a lot of training.

We've also been able to move away from having a dozen systems, databases and collections station. I've got a distributed architecture now based on an appliance. I also have less things to have to patch if there's an issue.

The way they handle their data migration while upgrading the system needs to be simplified and standardized. I don't want to have to bring out professional services to help me when I upgrade to a new server. Every upgrade we've done -- and we've done them all -- have been highly disruptive and extraordinarily difficult. Upgrades of new systems should not be this complex. I have 125 appliances in my environment. The migration really needs to be performed in the most non-disruptive manner as possible. I can't afford anything less.

I've also found a horrible flaw in the migration process where the database is now using redundant disks. The operating system is not, so if I lose my operating system disk, I lose my system. That's a significant weakness because they basically rate controllers. Everything is rated a 5 except for the OS disk.

I'm not sure why this is the case. They have improved their reporting capabilities significantly over the years. I would like to see them continue, even to the point of maybe introducing a standalone reporting server. Either that or allow me to extract data into a data warehouse so that I can get more extensive reporting functions.

We're having that issue now where I am trying to extract data, so instead of keeping years' worth of data on the system, I keep three months of live data and then move the data offsite. It's been very difficult in the way they store data. It's inconsistent with the way other vendors do it, so it's been difficult.

We've used it since 2008, so about 8 years now.

We've had a few issues pop up here and there, but generally it's been a stable product. My biggest complaint now is that I've got 70 systems I have to upgrade with no simple way to do it. I'll have to get professional services involved, and that's going to be expensive.

Technical support is very knowledgable. There are some really very bright people there. I think, though, that some of their designs have restricted their ability to provide a flexibly response. That could be argued either way, good or bad. They are typically very reactive to issues as they are discovered and we've found ways to resolve most issues as they come up.

We had an aging infrastructure and we were looking for alternatives. Other products required DBA's, administrators, and developers. However, SevOne packaged everything together in a simple enough manner so that I could maintain a workforce and which was capable of operating the system without building and maintaining the entire infrastructure.

We have an ROI as our licensing price point is very reasonable. We're roughly five times the size we were when we first started using this product.

Slow Data and SNMP Data help us figure out who is talking to whom and for how long from a network-traffic perspective.

It provides us with more data to be informed of the traffic on our network.

We would like heat mapping and more detailed data, but in a general sense the initial mission was to get a more informed viewpoint of traffic in our network, and they knocked that out of the park in terms of those elements.

We have been using the solution for about a year.

It was very easy.

9/10

Setup was very complex as there were issues with the device pipes. We needed a lot of intervention and technical assistance.

Fantastic – for money laid out vs. what you’re getting back, it's been great.

What made SevOne very attractive is that you pay as you go – you don’t need to buy something for $100,000 just to get started. You can start low and build up as you go and as you see how the product works. We started with $5,000 to $10,000 and, once you see that it works, you can jump in.

Make sure it's compatible with the networking devices you have. I think they had a code bug that is now corrected because we haven’t had any problems with our devices and the application in a while. I assume they fixed this issue – but check that it interacts with the network appliances you have.

SevOne is a great solution because it is fully scaleable.

Since 2009, it's been important in the company to identify areas of opportunity and prevent events that affect the services of the company. It has the potential to find more than 300 computers at once, and this is when you have multiple devices, and it gives great speed for each metric values in time.

It detects trends in metrics that prevent saturation, high temperatures in data centers, and provides visibility into the fantastic elements that help make the verification of real-time events.

• Prevention
• Planning
• Service quality
• Problem analysis to help reconcile the part of the services provided

Since 2009.

No, everything is very transparent in the implementation of the solution because it is an appliance. Everything is integrated at the application level, including the database and hardware.

It is very stable.

It's very scaleable, as you just add an appliance and it's immediately available to users. Also, its integration with other appliances is very quick and transparent to end users. We started with only one, and have grown over time to more than 15 appliances very quickly.

The level of service is friendly, and we have various means of contact- forums, the SevOne community, phone, website, face-to-face with regional sales engineers. The only thing missing is to have it in Spanish.

The level of knowledge of support portion is good. Complicated cases have engineering that support the first tier if necessary. Their responses are fast and efficient.

We used a solution called MRTG that has limits in its history. It was limited, and did not have many features such as sending of traps and capabilities such as speed. It lacks good management teams, and we would find it very difficult to manage them with the previous solution we had.

The initial configuration is very simple to implement could say it's something like Plug and Play, this solution is very user friendly and you are increasingly making improvements , many of them taken into account users

The level of implementation and sales for our case was good since we directly directly with the managers. The people in sales and implementation are currently trying to meet our expectations in a very effective and efficient way. We've had excellent treatment and care.

It analyzes events affecting the services we provide to our customers, and it helps to plan improvements that are reflected in customers satisfied with the services we provide , be clear at the executive level quality of services we are providing.

The level of price to functionality ratio is more balanced because, as an appliance it doesn't care about hardware or database that we would otherwise use. This directly helps SevOne engineers who are responsible for this, and avoid those areas that indicate there is a problem at the application, database or hardware level.

We had an evaluation of the best solutions and found that SevOne fit us best. It gave us more opportunities, and better performance than the other solutions. The best part that I see is its patented multiple elements is impressive and very efficient.

It is a very efficient and highly recommended solution. Its stability is great and gives you a great view of all the elements of your organization. Also, the ability to publish charts on websites is one of the things that are used.