There should be better integration with other Broadcom products, like network performance manager. Currently, for every part of a product, you need a separate server environment. You have something for Spectrum, you have something for network performance, and you have something for NetFlow. There are a lot of islands and server farms with different technologies. They should be redeveloped to get one platform for all.
One thing I would like to see improved is that it doesn't really allow for multi-tenancy. If you're an ISP or an MSP and you want to use this tool to provide these types of fault management services to your customers, you would need a separate SpectroSERVER for each customer, and probably a separate OneClick Console. You would almost need a separate instance of the tool running for each customer. Whereas other tools have multi-tenancy built-in, out-of-the-box, and you can stand up one instance of the tool. They should definitely try to change that to make it multi-tenancy-friendly because it's not at all. They could also improve how events are managed and correlated in the system. They need to make event management and correlation something that works from a group perspective, versus having to go into all these files and manipulate certain portions of a file to effectively manage events. That should be something that comes through in an interface.
It would be helpful to have a business layer and the possibility to integrate with information like the location and business structure. It's difficult to analyze and configure. It's not a very smart tool. It's a little old, and there are other tools that are more efficient. From my point of view, the problem isn't the single tool itself because Spectrum and Zabbix are vertical tools for specific devices. So, Spectrum is vertical on a network. The problem is to have a correlation with the infrastructure layer, network layer, and business layer. In my experience, the client wants to see the business service. The business service works fine, but when there is a problem on the business layer – for example, the web service or CRM process flow – it's difficult to correlate the business issues with infrastructure issues. Now there are many APM monitoring tools. We have the artificial intelligence to correlate different alerts, aggregate alerts and give them to the client as a head-to-end picture. The problem with Spectrum is they still require effort to create the report to extract the configuration. This is a big limitation. I would suggest improving the web GUI to improve the device monitor configuration and to improve or to integrate the new tool for reporting. For example, it can be helpful to integrate with a tool like Grafana or another dashboard to have a layer for the reporting.
Works at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2022-03-22T16:15:20Z
Mar 22, 2022
We're trying to replace this solution with another product because it's too expensive and not very user-friendly; it requires training and takes some time to learn how to use it.
Senior Solution Director, DevOps at HCL Technologies
Real User
2022-02-09T07:47:00Z
Feb 9, 2022
One of the requests I've received from customers several times, which should be included in the next release of this tool, is the ability to export some of the topologies of DX Spectrum inside Microsoft Visio.
DX Spectrum could be improved by them getting rid of the Java console. It would also be better with Turkish language support. As for additional features, they release changes quarterly. Right now, the only thing I would like is Turkish support.
Senior Network Analyst at a transportation company with 201-500 employees
Real User
2021-05-31T18:04:34Z
May 31, 2021
For my use case, incident coordination was an area of improvement. The internal software engine for coordinating outages could use improvement because sometimes, we used to get false alerts for unrelated devices. They did a really good job of trying to make sure that you got one major alert and any of the subsequent devices downstream were just additions to that, but occasionally, the engine wouldn't properly catch the right things, and we used to get a flood of alerts. Its visualization can be improved. It doesn't have a very advanced GUI. It is very basic and simple, but it does work.
System Administrator at a government with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2021-01-22T20:56:27Z
Jan 22, 2021
The visual is good but it's a little archaic. I think it's the way it's compiled, because I've been struggling recently with deploying it in different departments. The software still uses a 32 bit library on the Linux boxes for installation. Every admin scratches their head when I ask them to install, 16 or 17 packages, 32 bit packages on a 64 bit architecture. Also, they dumped all the documentation from the old versions and re-tagged them with the new version and they haven't updated them for a few years. That's a bit of a problem. They need to get rid of Java and 32 bit applications proctors, and that would be good.
CSI manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2020-11-11T21:07:28Z
Nov 11, 2020
I think the management or configuration of devices needs some improvement. The ability to add new device families from different vendors also not easy. It's a bit difficult. I would like to see some historical performance of our devices added to Spectrum. That would be great. It's a live solution, not for historical performance. Reporting is also an area that could be better. The reporting tool they are using is called Jasper and it requires an official license to be able to work well. It would be helpful to have reporting included directly with Spectrum.
DevOps Engineer at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees
Real User
2020-11-10T00:50:39Z
Nov 10, 2020
We have a huge environment and we have the event correlation set up. Event correlation only works per Spectrum server, for a huge environment more Spectrum servers are needed and the events are not correlated between the Spectrum servers. Broadcom has the intention to change this.
Senior Engineer - Networking at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Real User
2020-10-19T09:33:26Z
Oct 19, 2020
I have seen that there are some configuration issues with Huawei devices. Huawei devices are not properly supported, and there are incompatibility issues related to certain protocols. The stability could be improved. The rate at which our stability issues are resolved could be improved.
Techincal Support at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
2020-08-05T06:59:28Z
Aug 5, 2020
IP conflicts cannot be resolved automatically in the case where an IP address changes. This is one of the capabilities that SolarWinds has. There should be a facility to integrate with other monitoring applications that are currently running in the environment. For example, if a customer is already running SolarWinds then it would be helpful if integration between these two was easy to do.
This solution is too complicated to use for us, especially if you have many components. It's too big for us, which is one of the reasons that we will no longer be using it. It’s Cloud be difficult to upgrade from one version to the next.
This solution is missing the in-depth SDN correlation due to the late arrival of Spectrum VNA features and supported SDN networks. The various setups of the SDN networks are not always supported (yet) by the Spectrum VNA engine. Integration with non-Broadcom AIOps solutions is a known area. We want to make our own choice for the AIOps solution and do not want to be forced to use the Broadcom OI solution by default. For our size, a redundant based docker platform should be supported for large scale environments with more than 80,000 devices. This will have a very strong positive impact on the effort we need to spend in maintaining our large scale Spectrum solution and the related cost. The time to market for the new Spectrum solution will be reduced dramatically if this becomes available.
DX Spectrum is a complete event and fault management system for network operations teams. The tool provides powerful capabilities for managing your dynamic, complex IT infrastructure, which includes physical, virtual, and cloud environments.The technology allows you to manage and optimize the infrastructure and the professional services that operate on top of it. DX Spectrum is a unified platform that helps your company enhance network service levels while lowering monitoring costs.
DX...
DX Spectrum needs better documentation on its complex features.
DX Spectrum needs to incorporate faster support.
The product should provide performance management features.
The product is complicated to use.
The solution's pricing could be better. Also, the customization of its web interface needs enhancement.
There should be better integration with other Broadcom products, like network performance manager. Currently, for every part of a product, you need a separate server environment. You have something for Spectrum, you have something for network performance, and you have something for NetFlow. There are a lot of islands and server farms with different technologies. They should be redeveloped to get one platform for all.
One thing I would like to see improved is that it doesn't really allow for multi-tenancy. If you're an ISP or an MSP and you want to use this tool to provide these types of fault management services to your customers, you would need a separate SpectroSERVER for each customer, and probably a separate OneClick Console. You would almost need a separate instance of the tool running for each customer. Whereas other tools have multi-tenancy built-in, out-of-the-box, and you can stand up one instance of the tool. They should definitely try to change that to make it multi-tenancy-friendly because it's not at all. They could also improve how events are managed and correlated in the system. They need to make event management and correlation something that works from a group perspective, versus having to go into all these files and manipulate certain portions of a file to effectively manage events. That should be something that comes through in an interface.
It would be helpful to have a business layer and the possibility to integrate with information like the location and business structure. It's difficult to analyze and configure. It's not a very smart tool. It's a little old, and there are other tools that are more efficient. From my point of view, the problem isn't the single tool itself because Spectrum and Zabbix are vertical tools for specific devices. So, Spectrum is vertical on a network. The problem is to have a correlation with the infrastructure layer, network layer, and business layer. In my experience, the client wants to see the business service. The business service works fine, but when there is a problem on the business layer – for example, the web service or CRM process flow – it's difficult to correlate the business issues with infrastructure issues. Now there are many APM monitoring tools. We have the artificial intelligence to correlate different alerts, aggregate alerts and give them to the client as a head-to-end picture. The problem with Spectrum is they still require effort to create the report to extract the configuration. This is a big limitation. I would suggest improving the web GUI to improve the device monitor configuration and to improve or to integrate the new tool for reporting. For example, it can be helpful to integrate with a tool like Grafana or another dashboard to have a layer for the reporting.
We're trying to replace this solution with another product because it's too expensive and not very user-friendly; it requires training and takes some time to learn how to use it.
One of the requests I've received from customers several times, which should be included in the next release of this tool, is the ability to export some of the topologies of DX Spectrum inside Microsoft Visio.
DX Spectrum could be improved by them getting rid of the Java console. It would also be better with Turkish language support. As for additional features, they release changes quarterly. Right now, the only thing I would like is Turkish support.
It's not a great performance management tool. Its reporting capabilities are not very good at all.
The solution could improve by allowing the ability to monitor the network shortly after installing the software and adding an auto-discovery function.
For my use case, incident coordination was an area of improvement. The internal software engine for coordinating outages could use improvement because sometimes, we used to get false alerts for unrelated devices. They did a really good job of trying to make sure that you got one major alert and any of the subsequent devices downstream were just additions to that, but occasionally, the engine wouldn't properly catch the right things, and we used to get a flood of alerts. Its visualization can be improved. It doesn't have a very advanced GUI. It is very basic and simple, but it does work.
The visual is good but it's a little archaic. I think it's the way it's compiled, because I've been struggling recently with deploying it in different departments. The software still uses a 32 bit library on the Linux boxes for installation. Every admin scratches their head when I ask them to install, 16 or 17 packages, 32 bit packages on a 64 bit architecture. Also, they dumped all the documentation from the old versions and re-tagged them with the new version and they haven't updated them for a few years. That's a bit of a problem. They need to get rid of Java and 32 bit applications proctors, and that would be good.
Integration with some other tools, and integration with some Network Packet Broker, need some improvement.
I think the management or configuration of devices needs some improvement. The ability to add new device families from different vendors also not easy. It's a bit difficult. I would like to see some historical performance of our devices added to Spectrum. That would be great. It's a live solution, not for historical performance. Reporting is also an area that could be better. The reporting tool they are using is called Jasper and it requires an official license to be able to work well. It would be helpful to have reporting included directly with Spectrum.
We have a huge environment and we have the event correlation set up. Event correlation only works per Spectrum server, for a huge environment more Spectrum servers are needed and the events are not correlated between the Spectrum servers. Broadcom has the intention to change this.
I have seen that there are some configuration issues with Huawei devices. Huawei devices are not properly supported, and there are incompatibility issues related to certain protocols. The stability could be improved. The rate at which our stability issues are resolved could be improved.
IP conflicts cannot be resolved automatically in the case where an IP address changes. This is one of the capabilities that SolarWinds has. There should be a facility to integrate with other monitoring applications that are currently running in the environment. For example, if a customer is already running SolarWinds then it would be helpful if integration between these two was easy to do.
This solution is too complicated to use for us, especially if you have many components. It's too big for us, which is one of the reasons that we will no longer be using it. It’s Cloud be difficult to upgrade from one version to the next.
This solution is missing the in-depth SDN correlation due to the late arrival of Spectrum VNA features and supported SDN networks. The various setups of the SDN networks are not always supported (yet) by the Spectrum VNA engine. Integration with non-Broadcom AIOps solutions is a known area. We want to make our own choice for the AIOps solution and do not want to be forced to use the Broadcom OI solution by default. For our size, a redundant based docker platform should be supported for large scale environments with more than 80,000 devices. This will have a very strong positive impact on the effort we need to spend in maintaining our large scale Spectrum solution and the related cost. The time to market for the new Spectrum solution will be reduced dramatically if this becomes available.
It needs better integration with other CA products.
OS monitoring needs to be better developed, as well as their services, e.g., cluster monitoring, URLs, etc.