Auvik Network Management (ANM) Reviews

We're an MSP using Auvik to deliver a service for our clients. It's good at monitoring switches and networking infrastructure overall.

Auvik helps us troubleshoot, providing another way to look at a problem. Clients call in to tell us when something is working, and the cause of the issue is often unknown, so you need to attack it from different angles. Auvik offers another means to go in and look at the problem. If I know it's a network issue, Auvik will typically be the first tool I use to troubleshoot. It also provides excellent alerts. Auvik has reduced our resolution time by 25-30%

It has helped us with some low-level tasks. For example, if it's configured correctly, Auvik can monitor the age of VMware snapshots. Old snapshots can use up space on your server disk. Automating that task has been helpful. You can also automatically back up device configs. That's a level of automation that is hard to get in any other products, and I don't see ConnectWise Automation doing that. It can use WMI, too. 

In the past, we probably weren't backing up the configs as often as we should have. Typically, we would only back up the configuration when we upgraded the firmware. If you have the config, you don't need to rebuild it from scratch, so that saves hours of work. Previously, we had to check the VMware snapshots manually. We also tried an automated script that would send out an email. It didn't work well. Auvik was a significant improvement. Automation equals a roughly 50% improvement in our efficiency. 

The more complex the network, the more critical visibility becomes. Auvik helps a lot. We also use it for some smaller clients, but it's not all that beneficial for them. It's more crucial when you have multiple switches and a larger client.

In terms of delegating tasks to lower-level staff, Auvik seems like a tool that requires a certain level of networking knowledge. I don't think they need to be a Cisco-certified networking expert, but you need to know the basics like Ping, Traceroute, etc. It's okay for a level one engineer, but I think some were intimidated when they first saw it. Someone with extensive experience could get more out of it. However, they'll get more proficient once they start to use it.

Auvik does automatic device discovery, which is essential because you can pick up devices that are out there but unknown. I check it against ConnectWise Automate, which can automatically install things, but it's a more complicated operation. It's a little heavier. It's fitting for the devices to see if something responds, so it can inventory the device. If the SNMP networking is set up correctly, it will automatically add and monitor the device. 

It saves time because you don't need to add all the devices manually. That's the number one benefit. With Automate, you can automatically install the agent in a domain controller environment. However, some customers don't even have domain controllers, so you have to install the agent. We save 15-20 minutes per agent. It doesn't do as much as the other agent because it doesn't allow remote control, but it does allow us to inventory the device.

The stand-out feature is the automated config backup on networking devices. This automation is handy in a bind when a machine crashes, and you need to pull the config out of Auvik. 

The monitoring and management features are somewhat challenging to use initially, but you can figure it out after digging. It isn't hard for those with a high level of networking and computer knowledge. However, it's going to be difficult for some people.

Auvik provides a single pane of glass for all our customers in one portal. It's essential because many platforms are out there, and we can't have one for each client. 

After Auvik inventories a Windows device, installing a lightweight that would allow a remote connection would be excellent. A technician could use that agent to gain remote control over the client's computer, allowing us to troubleshoot remotely. 

If Auvik started doing that, it would be more competitive with ConnectWise Automate, making it more popular. They could probably charge more, too. More organizations would consider abandoning ConnectWise Automate altogether and only use Auvik.

The network visualization is a little plain. Still, I think it's okay for what it does. It's hard to script that to make it work properly, but I think it's getting better all the time. It has improved over time, and I think it's relatively significant, but not the end all be all. It is an excellent place to start because you can see where the connections are on the network, so you sometimes need to look at that. 

I have been using Auvik for four or five years.

I haven't heard of any significant issues or vulnerabilities. I know that Kaseya has had an enormous vulnerability, and SolarWinds had a huge one that affected governments. I haven't heard about anything like that with Auvik. So, I think it's pretty good overall.

Auvik scales well. You can always add more collectors. One of our clients had collectors at different sites, so it seemed to be quite scalable.

I rate Auvik support eight out of 10. I contacted them with a question a while back. It took them a couple of days to respond. The question related to a collector no longer supported on the OS. I had to install a new one. 

Positive

We used ConnectWise Automate, a competitor that offers some degree of automation for networking, but it's not like Auvik. ConnectWise is good at remote management. If the PC has an agent, you can connect to it quickly and monitor the particulars of the Windows PC.

Automate has some ability to monitor SNMP network devices and the like, but it never worked well. They have a probe that you have to install in a regular Windows system, but it's meant to be installed on a domain controller. You put it on a Windows box, and it runs these periodic polls to identify some of the networking devices. But it had some significant limitations. For example, sometimes, it was unable to go onto another network. If you had another subnet, it often wouldn't work for that, and they never improved that. 

I've done some deployments at the client level, where I've hooked them up in the collector. I've done some of that but haven't done the complete setup. I've configured nodes and endpoints. However, I haven't done the initial design for the whole tenant. I've only been involved with client setups.

It's relatively straightforward if you read the documentation, which is pretty good. The Auvik collector can get outdated and require an update. It was all relatively easy. If you get stuck, you can typically Google the answer and find it in a knowledge base. Auvik also provides internal training. 

After the collector is installed, populating the network map usually takes a couple of hours. It's ready to go in about two to four hours after. It also depends on the complexity of the environment and what you need to set up in terms of credentials and everything you need to pull the devices. 

Auvik does require some maintenance. Much of that is automated. However, if you're deploying it on an ESXi host, those collectors will shut down when the host is rebooted for Windows or VMware updates. Overall, it's a pretty low-maintenance product. 

Auvik gives us the ability to assess problems quickly and address them. We can also restore services faster with the backup configs and alerts as long as you have a mechanism to address alerts and someone watching them as they come in. If you have a system in place to monitor and respond to alerts, you can get a good return from Auvik.

I don't know Auvik's exact pricing, but I hear it was competitive. We provided Auvik-based monitoring for nearly free to a few of our clients to get them to sign up. A lot of these MSPs are monthly contracts, and they make the numbers work behind the scenes. I'm not in sales, so I don't know exactly how that works, but I think the contract is enough per month that we bundle it in.

The sales team tells the client that we'll give them Auvik so we can monitor our network and make our support a little more stable. It's a fantastic way for a company to get the necessary visibility and not worry about something going down. The story you're getting from the client is often inaccurate because they don't fully understand what's happening. 

For example, we had an issue the other day with a client who didn't have Auvik. They had some weird networking stuff and weren't onboarded properly. Auvik could help you onboard in an area where it would be beneficial when you're bringing on a client to figure out what they have because it's going to go in there. It will do a lot better with inventory and the devices there. It might find some that are unknown, but if you see something strange, you should figure out what it is and what it's doing on your network before ignoring it. So, that's a good example.

There are a lot of solutions out there, but I don't think there's another solution as good as Auvik. I've used Kaseya and ConnectWise, and I've had some exposure to N-able, so I'm pretty familiar with a lot of these similar products. I'm more familiar with the older version of Kaseya. PRTG is another one. I found PRTG difficult to use, but it worked pretty well once installed. 

I rate Auvik 8.5 out of 10. It's a good product. The more effort you put into Auvik, the more you'll get out of it, so do the work up front, and it'll pay off down the road. You'll see a switch that goes down, and then you'll know there's something wrong with the switch. You can either get someone onsite or try troubleshooting that switch remotely as best as you can. 

Whether it's a power cycle or whatever, you need to work with what you have. Auvik provides some powerful tools, but you need to do the work initially to ensure it's configured correctly and you're using all the product's functionality.

I do internal IT for a company and I use Auvik for most of my daily tasks as they relate to firewalls, switches, and routing.

The automation of network mapping enables junior network specialists to resolve issues directly and helps to free up senior-level team members to perform more involved tasks. It can be a key tool in environments where somebody who doesn't have a strong network skillset can go in and see, "Is it good, is it not?" and be able to make a decision on whether it needs to be escalated to me or not.

It also automatically updates network topology. One of the things that I really enjoy doing, when I first get into a new environment with it, is to watch it rebuild the map as it learns in real time. I can see its process and for me, as a very technical guy, that is one of the most entertaining things to watch, as it learns and updates the changes in a network in real time. It saves time maintaining network topology since the tool actually does it automatically. I have a high level of confidence that the information is correct, and it is immediately available. Just last week, I got a call from one of our internal auditors who needed to provide some information. He said, "Yeah, this usually takes a few weeks. Can you provide firmware information and serial numbers?" During our phone call, I was able to get into Auvik, pull the list, get it sent over to him and say, "Here you go. We're done."

Auvik has also decreased our mean time to resolution. Being able to go in and look at what's not broken, very quickly, and get that confirmed, means that I can look at what I actually need to fix. It eliminates a whole bunch of other problems and a whole bunch of checking. It has reduced our MTTR by up to 80 percent in some cases.

And because we've got it triggering PagerDuty alerts, if something problematic really fires off, I will know about it and be in the tool looking at what's going. I can say, "Hey, this is a problem we need to alert," or, "This isn't a problem and we just need to be aware," very quickly.

Another benefit is the TrafficInsights feature which shows network bandwidth usage without the need for expensive, in-line traffic decryption, and it does it very well. That is a very nice-to-have in my current role because we don't have issues with our network bandwidth. But in other environments that I've been in, where there were issues with bandwidth, it is a very well-put-together tool allowing me to find the answer and say, "This is what our problem is." It enables me to tell the business that we either need to spend more money on bandwidth, or we need to deprioritize a certain type of traffic. It gives that information in a format in which I can give it to somebody who is less technical than me. I can show them the graph and say, "This is what's going on and why."

TrafficInsights helps to show you where your system is experiencing performance issues around capacity and what is the busiest traffic. It can help improve network performance by letting me know exactly what's going on. It lets me see whether it is an application misbehaving, a lack of bandwidth, an upgrade that we need to make, or a configuration. It gives me these choices so that I know for real what's going on. In some cases, people "feel" that something is going on, but this gives me the facts to know what's going on. I would estimate TrafficInsights has improved our network performance by 50 percent.

In multiple environments I've been in, we've been able to eliminate other tools and use Auvik as our single network management solution. In those environments, I've had up to five tools that I have been able to decommission by using Auvik. In that environment where there were so many tools in place, replacing them probably saved $100,000 a year.

Some of the key features that I get out of it are that it is a well-rounded monitoring solution, so I know when something fails—whether it's a device or a service on the device. But it also performs backup, in inventory, of some of the key things to control and manage the network.

And one of the best things about Auvik, and it's why it's one of my go-to products, are the remote access capabilities. Without a VPN and without any other way in, I'm able to get in and work on and troubleshoot my devices through the remote access console. It has multiple options for that and has been very useful and a huge time-saver. That's one of the killer features. It's one of my must-haves and that's why I like it so much.

In addition, for products in this category, Auvik's ease of use is one of the best. It's really built for people like me. I'm heavy into the parts of IT that are not server-related, including routing, switching, firewalls, et cetera, and it is organized for somebody like me. It is the network engineer's toolset. It gives me what I need upfront in a way that I understand well. Auvik speaks my language.

When it comes to its network discovery capabilities, It is the best that can happen. I've used it in multiple environments, and as long as I've got the right starter information, it can go find information in an hour that would otherwise take a person weeks. It's very good and very quick. I've been able to benchmark it against competitive tools and it is way more useful, giving me information that I actually need and can use.

The automated, out-of-the-box device configuration backup capability is one of the key features for me in Auvik. To manage a network, one of my key requirements is to be able to rebuild that network if something catastrophic happens. Having up-to-date backups is a must, and this is a tool that I count on to get that right, and it has always performed as I expect. I am able to very quickly and easily audit that the backups happen and I know that they're there. I can also restore to a previous point with very little hassle, if anything goes wrong. Compared to other backup solutions, it saves me 80 percent in terms of my time.

The logging features could be a little bit better polished, although that aspect is relatively new. It comes in as raw data, with different formats for different vendors. It's not immediately clear to people what's going on with some of that and you have to read through the codes. Some of the higher-end logging solutions, like Splunk, which is very expensive, can parse through it and correlate items better. Improvement to the logging features would be a value-add, but I'm still very happy that it exists.

There are a few edge cases where I have found support for devices to be a little bit lacking. I'm migrating away from Check Point right now and Auvik and Check Point do not get along at all, so it was very troublesome to get those put in place.

Another issue that I know is already in progress, but that will be very nice, is full integration with PagerDuty. I'm using email connectors right now that have a little bit of a lag, so once the APIs are in place between Auvik and PagerDuty, it will give me better alerting when something breaks. I know that's on the roadmap because I've talked to them about it.

Between two different companies, I've been using Auvik for about three years.

The availability is 99 percent. They do have maintenance windows where it's not available. I've been happy with their communication on the maintenance windows and they pick the times very well when it's not going to be available. I realize that everyone needs maintenance, but it works out very well.

I've used this for everything from companies that are in a single building up to a company that had offices in 20 time zones with almost 100 offices, some of them with 1,000 users, and it was able to scale up to that. I've never had worries about how big this can go.

Their technical support is fair to good. There have been a few times where I've had to escalate to somebody higher, when I thought the lower-level person should have understood it, but I've always ended up with a good answer.

The initial setup is straightforward and, as far as the product category is concerned, it's the most straightforward. I've used this in an MSP environment and I've done deployments into close to 30 companies with Auvik and it is, by far, the fastest way to do it for a fresh deployment.

We can get the initial install going in a few hours and we can be confident in the data in a week or two. Comparing that to other tools, it would be an initial deployment of a week or two and two months until we're confident with our data. It has probably reduced the time spent on setup by 90 percent. And when dealing with an MSP, it cuts down a client onboarding by at least a month, which lets revenue start coming in earlier.

The implementation strategy depends on the size of the environment that we're going into, but we usually put in collectors at key locations and first let them do their discovery and see what's out there. Then we'll tune them down so that the collectors are monitoring from the right locations. But we like to get as much data in as possible, initially, and then tune downward.

As a cloud-based solution, it requires just about no maintenance and that's one of the other benefits of Auvik. With other solutions, we have spent more time updating and babysitting the servers and fixing our tools, instead of fixing our environment. That's a major plus.

When I was first evaluating it and we were going through pricing models, I was able to make the case that, for a team of five, this would be better than adding a person to the team when it comes to getting work done.

When I was new in this environment, I was trying to get a lot of stuff together. I brought Auvik as a solution to my supervisor and said, "This is what we used at my last company," and he was familiar with my last company. He viewed them as very good at what they do. I suggested we take a look at Auvik. As soon as he got the pricing during the first sales call around Auvik, he said, "Sold. Well worth that money." They didn't even have to finish the presentation. He saw what was being offered and he also based his decision on the fact that I'd used it before. The cost easily made it worth it in his mind for what it would provide to us.

The pricing is fair for the value and time saved that you get out of it. The larger you go, the more sense it makes per device, because as you hit different pricing tiers, it becomes much more affordable per device.

Auvik is billed by network device. They've got a very clear-cut definition of what is a device and what isn't a device, and that's very convenient. Anything like a server, or a phone, or an access point, is not billed but they are still captured for data, which is very useful. Auvik is very upfront that the solution is not a good server monitoring platform, but it's a fair server monitoring platform and that comes along for free with everything else. My server guys have another system they use for monitoring servers, but they find being able to look at Auvik as well has been a huge value-add.

I have used LogicMonitor, PRTG, the N-central suite, the ManageEngine suite, and the SolarWinds products.

In terms of the differences between those solutions and Auvik, I would summarize them this way: Auvik is a tool built for the network guys, primarily, whereas a lot of other tools are built for the server guys first and then add in network. It's a tool really built for what I care about and it values my time. I'm able to get it put in fast, I'm able to use it fast, and my information is fast. It lets me do more with less.

Definitely go through the proof of concept testing. The results speak for themselves. It's a fully rounded product and everyone I know who has used it has been happy with it.

When you're first deploying it, understand how you need to set up your locations. Otherwise, you're going to end up redoing work. If you're in a larger environment, you need a little bit of knowledge about where things are to be able to put stuff in the right places. If you're small, you can just drop it in and be super-happy with what it gives to you.

Overall, compared to everything else out there, it's a solid 10 out of 10. I haven't found anything that gives me what I need better.

I run an engineering team with a dynamic cloud-based environment. I was interested in tools that can help me understand what we have deployed. 
There are about five people administrating it. In terms of the number of locations, it's hard to say. We're a distributed remote team, but we have multiple cloud environments. We don't have locations in the physical sense of the word anymore.

One of our core objectives is to understand the services and systems deployed in the cloud. It's not always obvious. I'm hopeful that Auvik will help.

Having a single platform is somewhat important. It's also essential to integrate Auvik with other solutions. However, I don't think there's a situation where one tool can be the single integrated platform within a space. I checked out the API and the integrations around that. It all looks good, but I didn't use it that much. I did some basic integrations, but I don't think having a single integrated portal product is everything. The right amount of features are integrated into Auvik, but it doesn't need to have everything integrated, and nothing ever will be fully integrated.

We use various tools, including our homebrewed management scripts, some monitoring tools, and cloud portals. They aren't all applications per se, but we have various overlapping tools. Switching to Auvik would save us some time, but some key hangups prevent us from proceeding with it. 

The automatic discovery would help us avoid repeated configuration steps. The automated device inventory feature is potentially valuable. Employees are expensive, and we want them focused on high-value tasks. 

Visibility is crucial. Auvik has alerts that help us be proactive by telling us when something is behaving abnormally. 

The automatic discovery feature is the most valuable, but I've got some issues. The monitoring and management functions are effortless. It couldn't be more straightforward. We use lots of tools, and they need to be as simple as possible. Auvik has an advantage there because I certainly would pick it over something else. However, we often find ourselves using functions that aren't so easy to use because we need them, and they're the only option available.

The network visualization was intuitive enough, but it's hard to say because the network I was testing had a reasonably flat structure. It was good for what I was doing, but I don't know how that scales.

We use a service called Tailscale, a peer-to-peer private networking tool. My biggest issue with Auvik was getting it to scan devices across the Tailscale network. I suspect it's not supported there. That would be a valuable extension for us.

I haven't used Auvik for long. I did a demo for about a day where I set up the features and played with the interface extensively.

Auvik is highly stable.

I haven't stretched Auvik's capabilities, but it's been fine.

I rate Auvik support a six out of ten. They were very responsive, but I didn't feel that the answer was quite accurate.

Neutral

We had a mixture of cloud consoles and self-management scripts. I saw Auvik advertised and thought the automatic discovery sounded handy, so I took a free trial.

I run the engineering team, so I wouldn't do the deployment, but I manage the people who would. It's pretty straightforward, and I implemented Auvik out of the box. It takes very little time to deploy. I could see devices within an hour. I spent most of the day playing with configurations, adding SNMP credentials, and exploring. I could get something running in half an hour to an hour. Auvik was much quicker to set up than some other tools. 

I'm concerned about the price. It seems quite expensive.

I rate Auvik a seven out of ten. Currently, it doesn't work for us because of the limitation on Tailscale. If it weren't for that, I would give it a perfect ten. Unfortunately, it doesn't meet our needs, so I can't score it too high.

The setup was smooth, and you can tell they've put a lot of thought into helping people with that. I'm curious why all the devices have API keys next to them when I know some devices don't have APIs. It wasn't clear what that meant. Maybe the way the APIs work could use a little bit of polish.

We use Auvik to create a graphical representation of our network. It's easier to trace issues when we know what's connected at a glance. Auvik gives us alerts when a device goes offline, and we use Auvik to identify the place in the network path where the issue lies. Was it a core switch? A downstream switch? Was it not a switch at all?

Auvik makes troubleshooting more manageable and the workflow smoother. When troubleshooting an outage or a node that went down, we can immediately identify the problem. It reduces the time we spend troubleshooting, allowing us to spend more time on other tasks, which is a roundabout way of saying it makes us more efficient. I'd estimate that it reduces the time we spend on these tasks by about 30 percent. 

Troubleshooting is just like anything else. You always focus on the tools you use the most or the ones that are the most effective. Auvik is one of the top two we use for specific issues, namely network outages or known downs.

Auvik improves our visibility into your remote and distributed networks. It provides quick visualization, so we don't need to log into any individual switches. We can do everything through Auvik, especially port tracing. We need to see what device is connected to which port. This can be easily done within Auvik.

It also helps us delegate tasks within our IT team. As soon as we locate where an outage lies, we can instantly determine whether it needs to go to a low-level technician or a higher one based on what we see on the network map or alert that Auvik triggers.

It doesn't automatically keep our network inventories up to date because we still need to enable SNMP on the device. But once it's in the inventory, it's easy to manage with the existing devices we already have.

A cloud-based solution reduces our hardware costs because we don't need to deploy a VM for monitoring. Also, we're a managed service provider, so we would have to have an on-prem solution for each client, which would be cost-prohibitive.

I like Auvik's alerts. We can configure the alerts for a specific timeframe, i.e., we can set it to alert us when devices have been offline for a specific amount of minutes. If a device or port is flapping, we can ignore it or allow only the first alert to come in and mute the subsequent alerts.

The monitoring and management are quite straightforward. I rate it nine out of 10 for intuitiveness. During onboarding, we went through how to set everything up. It's a set-it-and-forget-it solution, and we can use templates to move forward with other devices that we add based on our documentation.

Auvik is one of our go-to solutions, depending on the issue. If we see a device go down, we usually get an alert from Auvik or our RMM solution. Auvik lets us trace graphically to know where the issue could lie, reducing the amount of troubleshooting we have to do.

It's a single platform but isn't integrated with anything besides our PSA. I don't think it needs to integrate with anything else other than our ticketing solution. 

Auvik could be more customizable. Also, the network map isn't as clear as it could be. I don't know if it's even possible, but it would be nice if Auvik could pick up on dumb switches. I don't know if that's possible based on SNMP, but if they can figure out a way to do that, it would make our life much easier.

Our organization has been using Auvik for about a year.

We've never had any downtime outside of their regular maintenance windows. They always notify us in advance when there will be maintenance. Even when they're down for maintenance, it's after hours, so we don't notice. 

Scaling Auvik is pretty simple. We just activate SNMP, put the credentials in devices, and we're set once the Auvik collectors are in place.

I'd rate Auvik support seven out of 10. We haven't needed to reach out to them much. I can only recall around three or four times in the past year that we contacted them. They've been pretty good. We have only used web-based support, not phone support. 

Neutral

We were using Nagios, but it was getting too pricey. Nagios also provided more information than we needed. Auvik provides SNMP, which is fine for our purposes. With Nagios, we had to install agents on each node to recognize it. If we could activate SNMP, we'd get more reporting from Nagios when we install the agent, but it wasn't intuitive how to do that. 

Once it was slotted in place, there wasn't much of a learning curve at all, so we saw an ROI right away.

We looked at Zabbix. Zabbix had a free tier, but it had absolutely no support. We went with Auvik because of their support.

I rate Auvik nine out of 10. If you want simplicity, Auvik is probably the way to go.

Zabbix has a free tool, but their paid solution is actually quite expensive.

We needed a solution to monitor all of our systems. We were using another system, but it wasn't up to par. Auvik gives us everything we need plus some. Right now, we're using it to monitor all of our virtual machines and switches. We can do configurations on any of our switches directly through Auvik.

Right now, another engineer and I currently use the solution. We're going to allow other IT staff to view it, but nobody else will have access. There will be another five staff members who will see all of the data.

We're able to have a visual dashboard in one central location, so we don't need to have multiple dashboards. If we're going to configure an API, we can have it displayed on a board for our team to see. We didn't have anything like that before, so the ability to see insights on a dashboard is very important to our organization.

Auvik has saved us 50% of the time we used to spend because we get notifications fairly quickly.

We have seen a reduction in our MTTR. We notice that some of our devices are going offline five minutes sooner per incident than when we would first get reports.

The most valuable feature is the ability to see usage alerts on all of our devices. That's not just from our servers, but on all of our machines and user computers.

The ability to see utilization at one central location is easier than having multiple windows. We couldn't configure alerts on everything because it just wasn't available. Auvik provided the solution for us.

The use of the monitoring and management functions is of a medium difficulty level. With some aspects like trying to filter devices, it's a little cumbersome to type in the product. You have to click and apply it like a filter. When you click on the search button, it automatically populates it. It's a different step, so it's a little cumbersome and slow. The interface is quite slow, but that's likely due to it being on the cloud.

Auvik provides a single integrated platform. It's very important for us to have a single integrated platform because the interface shows us everything: all of our interfaces, switches, servers, and virtual machines. We can see it all in one central location instead of needing to pull up multiple windows.

Auvik helps us visualize the network mapping and topology for our organization. The ability to see all of our switches and what's connected to the switches is very helpful for us because not only can we see the device, but sometimes we can even see the device name. When we have an issue, we don't have to try to find it with an IP because we can already see the name of the device.

The solution helps reduce repetitive, low-priority tasks through automation. There are certain tasks that we know are repetitive, and we can't do anything because of the way that the system is built. We can suppress those unless they are over a certain threshold. There are other notifications that we always look at when they pop up.

The user interface could be a little bit faster, and there should be a legend on the map. Trying to filter devices could be easier. Those are probably the top three improvements I would like them to address.

I would rate the overall intuitiveness of the network visualization an eight out of ten. There are some aspects that could be better mapped out or better described. Some connections are confusing to look at. We don't know why one is yellow and why one is blue. It would be nice to have a legend included on the map.

I have worked with Auvik for about two and a half months.

The stability is top-notch.

It's highly scalable and available because it's on the cloud. As long as the correct configuration is done, it's highly available.

Technical support is very good. Our questions were answered right away. It seemed like they already knew what we were going to ask. Maybe they were just judging the situation by the deployments that they've done.

I would rate technical support as ten out of ten. 

Positive

We used Libre, but it wasn't giving us what we needed. Auvik gives us the ability to monitor the network.

The setup was straightforward. We implemented Auvik out-of-the-box. It was immediately available to use. The moment we connected our entire network, it was up. There were some configurations that we had to do on the backend, but it was pretty straightforward. The moment we connected, it was immediately available.

We required two people for deployment, including an engineer and myself. Our responsibilities were to make sure that our credentials were correct, our host was the correct address, and that we could connect to it. We also made sure that certain settings were turned on.

It doesn't require maintenance primarily because it's on the cloud, so Auvik takes care of that. If there was any maintenance, it would just be with our devices on our end.

Auvik is fairly priced. The cost is what we expected considering network management. The benefits outweigh the cost for us.

We evaluated other options, but they didn't offer what we needed.

I would rate this solution an eight and a half out of ten. 

Comparing Auvik's cloud-based solution to an on-premises network monitoring solution, I would rate the usefulness a ten out of ten. I would rate the interface an eight out of ten. I would rate the speed a six out of ten because when it's local and on-premises, it's faster because it doesn't have to go through the cloud or through Amazon.

The benefit outweighs the cost because we're able to see everything in one central location. It gives us one interface to do multiple functions.

The time it took to set up and maintain Auvik was twice as long as our previous network. With our previous solution, we just connected our devices and that was it. Auvik took a lot more time.

We use it for monitoring clients' networks.

One way it has improved our organization is with respect to managing switches for clients. We didn't have a solution before that would back up our clients' switches. So if a switch failed, and we didn't have a safe manual backup somewhere, we were scrambling to figure out what was configured on that switch: Were there VLANs, was there some advanced configuration that we don't have now and that we have to rebuild? With Auvik, we just grab and restore the config file.

There are fewer steps for us to do as an organization. We set the tool up and it does all the work for us. It's taking a lot of that manual leg work out. It has recaptured some time that we can give back to other tasks. I wouldn't say it's a huge amount, but it's still a good chunk of time.

And it has been extremely useful when it comes to visibility into remote and distributed networks, especially managing devices. Being able to log in to a switch without having to log in to a client-server, since you can do that from Auvik, has been extremely helpful for our IT team.

And our MTTR has been reduced by at least 50 percent because, as a switch goes down, we get the alert without having our client call us. We have the alert and we know what's wrong, which is great.

I like the switch device configuration backups.

Also, the monitoring and management functions of Auvik are pretty straightforward. I haven't really found too many issues with them. The ease of use is pretty valuable for us.

It also integrates with our ticketing system. We use ConnectWise and having that integration is valuable for billing and for all-around general management. Having one product that can integrate with everything is valuable because we don't have to worry about building out APIs or custom maps to do that for us.

Overall, it's very intuitive and very easy to find help on how to configure things. Their knowledge base is very deep. There are no issues there.

There is room for improvement on the development side. As new devices and models come out from different manufacturers, they aren't always supported by Auvik right away. For example, Sophos switches came out within the past year and we only have CLI support right now for those, so obviously Sophos configs cannot be backed up at this time through Auvik. It's an issue of being more proactive before products are released. I would like to see the manufacturers working with Auvik in advance, before new products come out, to make sure they're supported.

I have been using Auvik for three or four years now.

The stability has been great. Obviously, there are planned outages but they warn you about them ahead of time. There has been no issue where we needed to get in there and it was down.

The scalability seems great. We're still a small business and if we had larger clients our experience might be different, but for what we have it has been great.

We have it deployed in multiple locations. Each client's site has a collector installed and they have one, or maybe two, offices.

Auvik's technical support is a seven out of 10.

Neutral

This is really the first product that we've had that does full network monitoring. We used ConnectWise for machine management, but its network capabilities were somewhat limited. That's one reason we chose Auvik. The dynamic map of the network it provides and the ease of troubleshooting were additional reasons. It helps in pinpointing where issues are. When a switch is down we get that alert from Auvik and it definitely saves a lot of time for our help desk.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. It's definitely gotten better, but I didn't have any issues setting it up for our organization or for clients. The experience has been the same.

Out-of-the-box, it worked just as it should. After the collector is implemented, within the day the network mapping starts to populate. It's pretty much instantaneous.

Setting up other products was a lot more involved. Another product we used was SolarWinds, but it was something of a bear to set up. It's not really straightforward, out-of-the-box like Auvik. With Auvik we definitely saved on having to research licensing and then install software somewhere. We don't have to do any of that. It's all hosted.

For the most part, maintenance is handled by Auvik. Obviously, if new devices are added to the network, they have to be configured to talk to Auvik. But other than that, you just set it up and it's good to go, unless you change the credentials. Overall, we just set it up and sit back and watch it.

We did it in-house. It was just my boss and me involved.

The pricing seems fairly competitive with what may be out there. We haven't looked around too much, but the pricing is very reasonable.

We were set on Auvik right away.

Make sure that the networks you're going to be managing with Auvik all have managed switches and that those switches or devices are supported by Auvik.

Auvik does a fairly good job of mapping network topology. It's about 90 percent of what we need. There are some inconsistencies with port mapping. For example, it will discover that this switch is connected to this switch in this port, but sometimes it's inaccurate. There's some work to be done there, but overall, it's been extremely useful for us.

Auvik helps keep device inventories up to date, although that's not generally a time-consuming task with our clients. As an MSP, we handle small to medium-sized businesses. But if we were to grow, that feature would definitely help more.

I use it on a daily basis to monitor the portion of my network that is backbone.

I have cloud access, but the collectors are on-prem.

It allows me to see a lot of problems before customers do. By the time they're calling me to say, "Hey, I've got an issue", I can usually tell them I have already seen it and I'm already working on it. There are many times that I'll get information on the screen or I'll see something change and know about an issue even before I get a ticket or a phone call. The most recent one was that I had a site go down on a weekend. Because we're a Monday-through-Friday company, I came in early on Monday morning and, by the time others showed up, I was pretty close to having everything resolved. They called me to say, "Hey, this isn't working," and I said, "Yep, I know. I've already been working on it and it will be up shortly."

It frees up some of my time for higher-value tasks. The first thing I do when I come in, every day, is pull up Auvik. In that single pane, I can see what my network status is and whether any site is down or if it's showing me there are issues. If not, then I can move on to whatever else I need to accomplish for that day.

Another benefit is that it automatically updates network topology. When I change out parts of the network or upgrade to a new device, once I've got it set up with SNMP, it automatically reconfigures what I see on the screen, including where everything is connected. I don't have to do anything to make that happen. That saves me a lot of time.

And when it comes to the backbone, it has decreased the mean time to resolution in a significant way. And because it provides automated, out-of-the-box device configuration for backups, for almost everything I have, it saves me time, a good 10 hours a month, and on the order of a couple of thousand dollars a month.

The most useful features are that it allows me to see and monitor my entire network solution in one place. I can see if everything is up or down and whether I have any issues. That single-pane aspect is helpful.

In addition, so far I have found it to be super-easy to use. Since the setup and getting everything running, it has been really easy to use. Setting up collectors for the network discovery capabilities was super-easy as well. Once we did that, it pretty much took care of itself.

And the TrafficInsights feature not only shows me network bandwidth usage without the need for expensive, in-line traffic decryption, but it gives me which device is using the most traffic. It ranks devices by which are using the most CPU, memory, storage, and it keeps those up to date, non-stop. Most of the time I just have the main window open and it literally shows me everything that's important. TrafficInsights will also show me when a certain percentage of capacity for a particular device or network has been hit. That has helped me a few times, resulting in an upgrade of a few services for network connectivity because we were using more data than would actually flow. It has helped improve our network performance. I have 11 sites, overall, and after analysis based on Auvik, I increased the bandwidth for connectivity to the outside world for two of our sites because they were using more traffic than we were able to put through.

So far, I haven't had an issue with it. But I could see where they may need to add some more integration pieces with different vendors. For example, API keys aren't available for certain vendors. While everything that I have works with Auvik and gets monitored by it, there are a few network items I have that I would like to see deeper integration with, but the lack of that type of integration doesn't stop me from doing what I do.

I have been using Auvik for about nine months. Technically, I've been using it longer than that, but I've been using my implementation for about nine months. Previously, I was using it through an MSP and when we dropped the MSP I purchased an implementation for our company directly.

So far, I've had no issues with the stability. It just works.

I would assume it scales pretty easily. While I have 11 locations, none of them are massively huge. The number of devices I'm looking at and monitoring is probably pretty small compared to most businesses, but it seems to scale pretty well when I do add things.

From the occasions I have used their technical support, I would rate it very highly.

We had quite a few other tools that we were using or trying to use, and Auvik replaced them. By not using those other tools it is saving us $10,000.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward for me, but I had used Auvik before quite a bit through my MSP. But even if I had never used it before, with their help, it would have been pretty simple. The ease of implementation, network scanning, and setup were all super-easy.

Our deployment took a couple of days. I can't even compare the setup time for Auvik with the solution we had, which was NetSupport Manager, because I never did get the other system running. It just wouldn't work. The implementation was very convoluted and buggy. It never worked even close to the way I expected it to and I just ended up dumping it before I could get it running. The time savings associated with the setup of Auvik probably saved me over $10,000.

And when it comes to maintenance, it doesn't take up any of my time. Since the initial setup of the collectors, I haven't had to do anything. All my equipment is done and monitored. If I add a piece, I obviously have to set it up to get hit up by Auvik. Other than that, I don't have to maintain anything other than do the normal maintenance for my servers, which is where the collectors sit.

I only used Auvik to help with the setup.

The time-to-value, for me, was almost immediate. Once we started implementation, I was able to start seeing stuff even on day one. And by the time we had it fully implemented, I was already seeing value out of it.

And if I compare the cost savings we have realized by using the solution versus its costs, we're on the positive side.

The pricing is pretty reasonable for what we get. It's billed by certain, core network devices that it monitors, but I'm not billed for all the devices it monitors. For example, wireless access points and small things like that, throughout the network, are not billed. They mainly charge for firewalls, routers, and switches.

I haven't seen any costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

I researched other solutions, but because I had already used Auvik and I liked what they had. That research was more, "Hey, what's out there?" but I was not really interested beyond that.

What sets Auvik apart is the ease of use. Once it's set up, it gives you that single pane. That's the first thing I look at when I come in the morning and it tells me whether I'm good or not.

Go for it. It's a really good solution. 

We use Auvik to monitor if our network equipment goes down.

We implemented Auvik to be proactive in case the internet connection or equipment goes down.

I occasionally use the network map to identify new devices connected to the network. It provides a real-time visualization of our infrastructure. Additionally, the map initially displays a collapsed view, requiring expansion for detailed information.

Auvik significantly reduces our Mean Time to Resolution, especially when devices malfunction. Now, I receive immediate alerts, eliminating the need to wait for phone calls or emails from someone reporting a downed access point or camera. This was especially helpful in a case with our D-Link access points at one of our sites. When these devices fail, they don't completely shut down; they keep rebooting, broadcasting the Wi-Fi network, and then disconnecting users. Before Auvik, this repetitive cycle could go unnoticed for days, leading to frustrated users and disruptions.

We see the benefits of Auvik fairly quickly. 

The quick alerts in the event the equipment goes up or down is the most valuable feature.

When port utilization rises beyond a set threshold, an alert will be sent to allow for proactive network planning and distribution adjustments. This could also help identify heavy data users.

The user interface is not intuitive. For example, when a device fails and I need to replace it with a new one, I'm required to delete the old device from the system to prevent recurring alerts about its downtime. While I was able to find instructions on how to do this in the knowledge base, the process itself is illogical. It necessitates navigating to the "Discovery" menu, which seems counterintuitive for deleting an existing device. A more intuitive approach would be to enable deleting a device directly from the list of all devices, eliminating the need to access a separate menu labeled "Discovery" for an already discovered item.

Some device placements appear inconsistent with their logical locations, like network switches. For example, I might see devices related to the same switch cluster scattered across different areas of the map. This inconsistency in positioning for co-located devices confuses me.

Setting up a new site or viewing device configurations, particularly those involving SNMP and similar protocols, often requires significant technical knowledge. I believe simplifying this process would be a major benefit, but I'm unsure if Auvik can do so.

I have been using Auvik for almost one year.

Auvik is stable.

Auvik is scalable.

One of my sites experienced an issue where the internal internet connection port on the firewall had been changed. Consequently, our Auvik agent wasn't capturing any traffic data, affecting our utilization reports. I contacted tech support to troubleshoot, but the email-based communication proved ineffective. While I appreciate their attempt to help, I would have preferred a phone call or a remote session for a quicker resolution. The back-and-forth emails with unclear instructions simply became time-consuming, and eventually, I had to prioritize other tasks. This made me realize that offering a remote session option early on in the support process would be incredibly beneficial for customers like myself. I am unsure if it's a language barrier or the location of the support team, but encountering this email-centric approach with several companies has led me to believe it's a preferred communication style for some tech support teams. However, for me, it's not the most efficient method. While I give their technical knowledge a high score of nine or ten, I feel their support delivery falls short at around three or four. Instead of sending me emails with links to lengthy documents, a 10-15 minute support call could have resolved the issue quickly. Ultimately, spending hours reading manuals and troubleshooting without success feels like a waste of valuable time. Therefore, I recommend exploring the implementation of a remote session option for enhanced customer service and increased efficiency.

Neutral

The initial deployment was straightforward because it was done by the Auvik techs.

Two Auvik techs implemented the solution for three of our sites.

The price is reasonable.

I would rate Auvik an eight out of ten.

No maintenance is required.

The biggest requirement to use Auvik from a technical perspective is having SNMP knowledge. The rest is straightforward.