Accedian Skylight Initial Setup

Sylvain Germe - PeerSpot reviewer
Application and Network Performance Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

The initial setup of Accedian Skylight can be very difficult for someone that does not know anything about networks.

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MW
President at AIP US, LLC

It's straightforward. Because there's a lot of information that they're collecting, it will take a bit of time to set up, especially for each end-to-end connection that you want to monitor. With active monitoring, you have to set up a new system, which does take a little time to set up. 

We have about 15 locations. That takes probably two weeks to deploy.

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MO
Network Architect at a recruiting/HR firm with 501-1,000 employees

It's hard for me to say anything about the initial setup because we did it seven years ago. At that point in time, I had some help from them. But it was, in my opinion, pretty easy. This solution is for hardware network or data center guys. It's not for a simple user who is not going to understand anything about it, at first glance anyway. But for the people it's made for, it should be easy for them to figure out what's going on. Putting in capture ports is easy, defining zones, defining VLANS, etc. is easy. As soon as you have done that then you already have something functional, and you get a lot of information out of it.

Even starting with a reasonably simple configuration is going to make a huge difference when you start using it for troubleshooting - and you are going to find issues. The question is not whether you will find issues. The question is, do you have time to figure out these issues, and are they your issues? You can fix your issues and send issues that are not network related to the other teams, and let them figure them out, if they have time.

The length of time for deployment depends. The last deployment of the new system was pretty much a copy-paste operation. It took less than one day. In the beginning it took me about a week, figuring out configuration. 

That's another thing that's interesting. You should better think in advance about how you're going to configure all your zones. Zone configuration is interesting for the matrix, and if you don't put your configuration into an easily readable setup, it's going to be hard to get interesting information about that matrix. And that matrix is actually quite interesting to have. It's probably very slow as well because, if you're like me, you have an enormous number of zones, a few hundred zones. It's not so easy to show a matrix with a few hundred zones on the browser. So zone configuration is pretty important. The way I do it is, I have my internet, I have my internal LAN, which I split into voice and into data. I split my data into locations, etc.

I can easily see the difference: Is it voice/data, is it client/server, internet/local what is the location...? If you don't do that correctly with sub-zones or the like, it's going to be way harder to figure things out.

It has always been me who is the only one who does deployments. My colleagues use Skylight also, but they are more into looking up some stuff. They don't really configure it.

Maintenance is also just me but it's pretty easy. If you want a new version, you go to the website. The hardest part is finding the link, where is that .bin file? Sometimes it's pretty hidden in a document. They could put it more easily in Salesforce, because now it's hidden in the release notes or in another file somewhere. And it's usually not on the first page either. Somewhere in the last pages you usually find something like, "Here's the location where you can download the file." I'm not saying it's hard. I'm just saying it's the hardest part. In a way, it's a good thing because you do have to read the release notes.

As soon as you find it, you download it and upload it to the machine, wait for it to say it's done, and then you need to reboot. Ten to 15 minutes later, it's working.

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DF
Director at PlexNet Pty Ltd

It is quite straightforward and very simple to set up.

We were having some issues setting up a couple of centres because we have NAT firewalls. We were having some issues getting connectivity to some of them. Therefore, we were using Accedian to look at other problems in Accedian to troubleshoot, e.g., what ports are being requested to be opened, then work out some of the firewall NAT rules. So, we actually used Accedian to check out Accedian. It was extremely easy to use for troubleshooting.

If you want to start looking at different types of metrics or adding a site, you just have to program it up in SFP, send it out to site, get someone to plug it in, and redo it. So, if you want to start putting more sites in, you could probably do that relatively quickly. If you want to start looking from an analytics perspective of doing more detailed analysis, setting up IP ranges for different sites and types of applications, then that would take a little bit of time.

Generally, even in dashboard creation and certain dashboard configurations, you might want to do a little tweaking. You could probably spend another two or three days just doing the finer points, but the beauty about it is all the data is there and been collected. You can basically push in the new definitions and get that information back into it anyway. You are not losing data, as it's all been collected. It's just a different way of viewing it. After that, once you've got it going, it's set and forget unless you want to change to a different type of application, roll out a new application, or have a different site coming online. 

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AB
Manager IT Production Service at a maritime company with 5,001-10,000 employees

The initial setup was easy and simple. It took three hours to deploy with the network configuration because it is important to configure the network to collect data for the probe.

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VN
Business Development Manager at ISTT

The initial setup is not too complex.

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JB
Network Administrator at CHR Citadelle de Liège

The initial setup of Skylight is very easy. It takes about ten minutes. In ten minutes the server is running and it's collecting information. That ten minutes is when you have a physical version. For a VMware version it takes about one hour to deploy it, but it's very easy. 

The initial deployment is easy, but for the rest, day-to-day, there is work: To configure the zones, the critical networks, critical applications, it's day-to-day. The initial setup is easy, but afterward, I worked on it for about an hour every day. The configuration is ongoing.

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BJ
Freelance IT Consultant at SPW (Service Public de Wallonie)

The initial setup was straightforward. It was a fast installation. The deployment took less than five days.

We had to identify where to put the probes because we could put them on a physical connection or on virtual connections. We have a network which is quite complex, with more than 200 sites and two data centers. So the first question to answer was where to put the probes. After that was decided it was easy. We put the appliance in the rack and we asked the network team to cable the connection with the router. It was simple.

The setup required one person from the external consultant and we dedicated one network engineer for a couple of days. After installation, maintenance of the solution requires half a day per month; maybe four or five days a year. It's minimal. And when there is an update, deploying it is quite straightforward. It's not a big deal, it takes one hour.

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BP
Senior Tachnical Lead at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees

The initial setup for Accedian Skylight was easy. Anybody can install the solution because the excellent documentation makes life easy.

Deploying Accedian Skylight takes a maximum of four hours. The process can take one hour, but if something goes wrong, it could take four hours.

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BP
Senior Tachnical Lead at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees

The initial setup of Accedian Skylight is simple. Anyone can complete the implementation because the documentation is detailed.

When upgrading a customer's production network, typically it takes approx eight hours, though it may be as little as two or three hours depending on the customer's requirements.

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it_user192357 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

The initial configuration is very simple. There is a little information you need to understand to render the solution operational, only the time it takes to receive traffic, but it still requires a good mastery of the infrastructure to customize the product and analyzse the data.

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it_user184044 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer with 501-1,000 employees

It was simple but a bit long, because one has to create all networks, objects, flows and so on… But once it’s done, it’s very smooth.

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it_user201624 - PeerSpot reviewer
Network administrator at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

The documentation is clear enough to permit a rapid installation and configuration. The video tutorials were appreciated.

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it_user186786 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Information Technology at a healthcare company with 501-1,000 employees

Pretty simple.

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it_user192582 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Systems and Networking with 501-1,000 employees

The installation was done by Securactive and was not complicated.

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AM
Engineer at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees

Setup was easy to understand and can fit into most network scenarios.

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AM
Engineer at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees

Initial setup is easy.

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it_user195477 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT with 501-1,000 employees

A bit complex caused by the Avaya problem.

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