Auvik Network Management (ANM) Reviews

Our primary use cases are for monitoring the network and backup for the switches and firewalls.

The daily backups monitoring and the notifications if something goes down have improved my organization.

Auvik has decreased our mean time to resolution. It's easier to find the devices on the network and pull out the information. Of course, the SNMP is also good to get the logs. It helps in the network debugging or if we have to find any problems. 

The backup feature is really good. The monitoring feature is the main reason why we use Auvik.

Auvik is really helpful and straightforward. I like the free training as well. It's easy to use.

It's done a pretty good job when it comes to its network discovery capabilities. It's pretty accurate. Although, we have a few VPNs and maybe a bit more complicated setup. It's complicated to do it the right way, but it's fine. It's not a big issue. 

We tried the traffic insights feature. My director uses it to report issues about traffic things. It shows the network bandwidth usage without the need for expensive inline traffic decryption.

This feature to check the bandwidth is good because we have a high bandwidth development, so it's hard to check. If we saw high bandwidth usage, it is not an issue for us because it's part of the development.

We use automated out-of-the-box device configuration backups. Before Auvik we didn't have any solution and we haven't had any script or task to do this. And it was one of the selling points for us to have the backups and see the differences between the configurations. So it's not to save anything. It was one of the reasons why we subscribed to Auvik.

I would rate Auvik's time to value for setup time, automated network mapping, and documentation a ten out of ten. 

The cost savings we have realized to the solution versus its cost is an eight out of ten because we haven't saved a lot but it improved our system. 

It's missing the license checker feature. We are using Salesforce and the license is a really crucial part of the development, and we have to monitor it. Now, I have to write a script and then run it on a random Linux box and get a notification if it's expiring. It's a really specific feature. I'm not sure Auvik will develop it.

We used Nagios for monitoring. Since it's an open-source thing, you can easily extend it with plugins. We had the license-checker in Nagios and I miss it in Auvik. There might be a solution to check this license. I just haven't had time to check it.

I have been using Auvik for around a year. 

We haven't experienced any stability issues. 

The scalability is pretty good. We have two studios and two offices and it works perfectly.

We have 50 PCs on one side and 200 PCs on the other side. 

We have one or two users actively using it. 

It requires zero maintenance. Nagios was a continuous polishing and setting up of stuff. Auvik is totally different. Auvik just works out-of-the-box. Nagios needs parenting.

We had one ticket and they solved it. That was our experience with technical support. 

We previously used Nagios. I liked Nagios, but Auvik has much more features. It's an enterprise product instead of a normal one. We tried Auvik, we liked it, and we bought it.

The initial setup was straightforward. My director implemented it and we have two collectors in our two offices. So it was pretty easy. We only had issues with the authentication.

It took around a week. It took one night for him to install it and we were able to fine tune it the next week. We are still learning it.

We did the deployment ourselves. 

The licensing is really good. I felt the price was a bit expensive, but it wasn't my decision.

Auvik only charges for certain devices and not the endpoints. We like the way it's licensed. 

We didn't evaluate other solutions. Auvik wasn't my choice. We had Nagios and we didn't replace it but we started slowly using Auvik and phasing out Nagios.  

My advice would be not to forget to set up the external IP because it was also a good feature.

I would rate Auvik a ten out of ten. 

We're a managed services provider using Auvik to monitor our clients' infrastructure. It is part of a set of tools that keeps us informed when something goes wrong, and we use it to build network maps. You can get an idea of what's happening on-site even if you're unfamiliar with the client's setup.

Sometimes it's the only thing on the network. It's competing with Ubiquiti if we have a Ubiquiti network. Not all the time, but sometimes. 

Auvik allows us to react faster to issues, so we're able to keep our SLAs. 
Depending on the issue, we're reducing our troubleshooting time to within 20 to 30 minutes. Some of our clients have one-hour SLAs, so that's an important turnaround.

We have much better visibility into our clients' networks, which is helpful when we're troubleshooting. When issues go wrong, we're more present. It helps us automate some low-level tasks. For example, it closes tickets on its own. 

The fact that Auvik is a cloud-based solution is crucial because we're primarily a cloud-based company monitoring multiple clients across several sites. The cloud functionality is handy because we get visibility across distinct companies all from one location. 

Monitoring is probably the most active asset Auvik does for us. If a particular device on the network goes down, we have that granularity to see which network element is causing the problem. 

The integrations don't give us too much trouble. It all works with Auto Task reasonably nicely. Once it's set up, it'll close out in Auto Task too, which is great. The network visualization is excellent if you build it out and tweak it, so it reflects the truth. You'll get most of the picture if you let it automatically populate. Once it's built out, the network map is decent.

The network visualization is pretty intuitive. There's not too much going on with the network map there, and you understand what a network looks like. I think it's pretty straightforward.

Auvik doesn't communicate very well with Ubiquiti devices and will incorrectly flag facets as down. Compatibility with Ubiquiti is my biggest pain point with Auvik.

I have been using Auvik since I joined this company in July 2022.

I haven't had any issues with Auvik's stability.

Auvik seems fairly scalable. It works for all of our clients, ranging from 10 devices to a few hundred. It works well for small to medium-sized businesses. 

I give Auvik a solid seven out of 10. I might rate it eight if the Ubiquiti issue wasn't always bugging me. It tells me Ubiquiti devices are down when they're not. I recommend giving it a try. If you are trying to track multiple sites and multiple clients, it's worth a look.

We're an MSP, so we function as the IT company for multiple clients, and we primarily use Auvik for monitoring and troubleshooting network issues. It's deployed across various locations, from small to medium-sized businesses, plus one school system.

Auvik improved our organization by allowing us to stay on top of issues with our clients. It alerts us in a timely manner and allows us to react proactively. In many cases, we get alerts that something is going on before the client realizes it.

The solution affected our IT team's global visibility into our remote and distributed networks, which is helpful. It's great because we can access the Auvik portal anywhere in the world. The visibility it provides is essential, especially for our technicians and engineers working from home.  

Auvik helps us keep our device inventories up-to-date, as it pulls in all the devices on the network and sorts them. We can filter by Mac address, IP address, type of OS and more. This helps tremendously in helping our teams focus on high-level tasks and delegating low-level tasks to junior staff. Most low-level alerts go to our junior admins, which allows them to develop experience and learn the product.    

Auvik keeping our device inventories up-to-date helped save us time and allowed us to find devices we didn't know about when onboarding a client.

We have seen a reduction in our mean time to resolution (MTTR), primarily because our customers don't need to call us; we get alerts and tickets through our ConnectWise portal when Auvik detects an issue. This speeds up our time to repair because we are alerted of problems almost immediately and can start working on a solution.    

The topography and historical data are excellent; the latter essentially allows us to see back in time, which is helpful as users don't always report issues promptly. The ability to go back and look at historical data is a good feature.

It's easy to use the monitoring and management functions; everything is intuitive and self-explanatory. The feature set is more important to us than ease of use, as we work with many intelligent people. However, ease of use is helpful for our level one help desk personnel, who aren't used to using network tools like Auvik. In addition to being intuitive, the ease of use flattens the learning curve for our less experienced employees.   

Regarding Auvik helping to visualize our network mapping/topology, it's elementary. It places devices logically in a topology that's easy to understand. We can collapse and expand elements, making it easy to find information and devices in the system. I rate the tool ten out of ten for the overall intuitiveness of network visualization. Everything is worded perfectly and makes perfect sense to anyone working in the IT field.     

We have seen time-to-value with Auvik; it helped us on many occasions when our clients had network problems. It assisted us in ironing out those issues.  

The performance could be better; it gets a little clunky and slow-moving at times, and I wonder if that's due to the VM or if it's just the nature of the tool.

Another issue is the solution sometimes signs users out at inopportune times without warning. I'll be working in one window perfectly fine, and I would have a second session open in another window, which can time out and force me to log back in, even though I'm still logged on to the platform in another window. That can be frustrating.

I've been using the solution for about six years. 

The stability is excellent as long as the network, VMs, and hardware are suitable. Running low-quality equipment would affect the stability and user experience.

The solution scales well. Once you reach around 2,000 devices, a second device is required on the network to offset some of the performance issues that come with that, but it scales easily. It would just be a second OVA running on a box.

The technical support is excellent and very quick to respond. They helped us with an issue concerning performance hits in some equipment due to the frequency of the scans Auvik was running.

Positive

We evaluated some trial solutions for other network management tools, and they didn't fit us. SolarWinds NPM was a resource hog, and it wasn't cloud-based, so we ended up going with Auvik because of the ability to use it in the cloud.

We primarily used the in-built networking tools from each vendor. Switching to Auvik saves us about 20 hours because we can see all the relevant data and manage the networks from a single pane of glass.  

The initial setup was straightforward; it consisted of deploying an OVA which searches for the Auvik instance in the cloud and locks it in once authorized. It's between three and five steps, so it's quick to get up and running.

After the collector code was implemented, our network mapping started to populate almost immediately. However, we had SNMP set up, which needs to be done ahead of time for network devices. The solution pulls in devices and connections via ICMP based on the network it discovers. It may draw in limited details initially until the rest of the details are set up, but IP-based devices are pulled in very quickly. 

In terms of time to set up and maintain Auvik, it's about the same as other tools. It's all about the underlying network configuration. It didn't take much time because I ensured the network was prepped for any potential security monitoring tools we put in place. I didn't have to go in on the back end and set anything up because it was all waiting to go.

The solution requires a little maintenance on the VM side. Performance-wise CPU and RAM maintenance can increase performance. Other than that, the tool essentially runs itself. 

I can't speak to the cost; I'm an engineer. Auvik has a subscription-based pricing option, and the other solution we evaluated had high upfront costs. 

We evaluated Orion and WhatsUp Gold and found that Auvik works much better for us because it allows us to have all our clients in a single plane of glass under our company. With the other products, we would have to set up separate instances at each site and manage them individually from onsite.

I rate the solution eight out of ten. 

Auvik provides a single integrated platform, though that's not as important to us as cost, ease of use, and support, in which the solution excels. We're intelligent people who work with different platforms, as our clients don't have cookie-cutter set-ups at every location. If Auvik weren't a single integrated platform, that wouldn't be much of a hindrance for us.

We haven't used Auvik's automation capabilities.

Auvik's cloud-based solution works as well or better than on-prem network monitoring solutions. The cloud solution depends upon the internet connection at the opposite end but logging in remotely to manage on-prem tools faces the same challenge.  

It works as well, even better. But of course, your Cloud solution is dependent upon the internet connection at the opposite end, so your mileage may vary. But you're still limited by that with on-prem solutions as well, if you're logging in remotely to look at those tools. So it faces the same challenges as the on-prem solutions.

We use it for our small and medium businesses, specifically for data collection. We also use it for network mapping.

It's super helpful in the sense that you can look at the network and it shows you a graphical representation, so you know exactly how things are connected. It helps us stay more organized and more up-to-speed on what is in our clients' networks.

It helps keep device inventories up to date. The amount of data you get from it, whether it's network maps or the overall client information, helps you to solve tickets. We have two tiers for our tickets and we have a NOC team that assists us as well. That is how we run the business and the simpler tickets can be handled by the junior engineers.

Also, its ability to visualize network mapping and topology works extremely well. It's very comparable to SolarWinds, which is what I used in a previous position.

The whole troubleshooting process is made easier, and automation is part of that troubleshooting. And its automation has made us more available because it's enabling us to cut down on the time that it takes to resolve a help desk ticket.

We have absolutely seen a decrease in MTTR, thanks to the amount of data and the network maps. If an engineer is looking at a particular client location, they're able to ascertain, fairly quickly, where devices are located and how everything is connected. It just makes the whole troubleshooting process much simpler.

The data collection, as a whole, is valuable. 

The reports seem to be really comprehensive as well. There's a lot of information in terms of the make and model of a specific piece of hardware, IP address, subnets that a device is located on, and network map. It's a single, integrated platform and that is very important because the more tools that you can build into one product suite, the easier it is for your engineering staff to learn it.

It's extremely simple to use the monitoring and management functions of Auvik. Anybody with just a general IT background would be able to use it without a problem. This aspect of the solution is extremely important. As we're training new people, it's nice to have tools that are simple to use yet powerful enough to give you insight into your client's network. It would be a great tool for delegating low-level tasks to junior staff because there are so many built-in features and you get so much information out of Auvik.

Nothing really stands out in terms of a lack. If you want to be nit-picky, I don't know that there are any remote tools for directly connecting to workstations through Auvik. If there is, I have not used them, so adding a remote tool would be helpful.

I started with my current company about three months ago and that's how long I've had experience in Auvik.

It's extremely stable. I haven't had any issues at all. It seems rock-solid.

We have it deployed across at least 30 clients' systems, so it's definitely a scalable solution.

I have not had to call technical support yet because the product is fairly simple and straightforward.

The ROI would be high. Although I don't handle any of the billing our company receives, from a technical aspect, there is a lot of value from Auvik. I couldn't tell you how long it took to implement because I wasn't around for that, but the usefulness that I get out of Auvik is obvious.

I don't know what we pay for Auvik. But whatever the price is, it's worth it because we're getting a lot of value from it for that price.

In terms of technical insight, if you're looking for good insight into your client's environment, Auvik is a great solution.

Auvik has definitely impressed me. It seems like it's very lightweight, yet it gives you a lot of features.

Auvik is our monitoring solution; we're an MSP, so we use it to monitor multiple medium-sized enterprise clients. It's primarily used by the network team, though other teams log on occasionally. We have five users in our company. 

Auvik helps us manage our clients better, and it's all from one web page, so we can switch between clients easily without having to log into different systems. We can also remotely access their networks, which is handy. 

We previously used multiple solutions for managing our networks and switching to Auvik resulted in time savings of approximately 20%.  

Auvik increased our IT team's availability, especially as we can look into issues remotely and from our phones if we're away from a PC. All our teammates can log into a webpage instead of installing applications on their computers, which is nice from an availability point of view. We have seen time savings in the area of 10%. 

The solution helps us delegate low-level tasks to junior staff; we send alerts to our NOC team, and they help triage some of the lower-level ones. If they can't resolve it, they escalate it to us. The delegation capability is essential, as it saves us a lot of time.   

Auvik helps keep device inventories up-to-date; we can set it to scan the network, and the information updates automatically. It saves about 30% of our time.

The solution keeping device inventories up-to-date helps our teams focus on high-value tasks and delegate low-level tasks to junior staff.   

The best features are the alerting and monitoring. 

Using Auvik, we can remotely access our clients' devices or networks, which is an excellent feature.

The solution also allows us to do backups, check usage, and do SNMP polling for device statistics all in one pane of glass, which is nice.

Auvik's monitoring and managing functions are easy to use, especially as I did some webinars. We need the service, so ease of use is critical.  

Auvik provides a single integrated platform. 

Auvik provides a basic network map, and as long as everything is working correctly, it draws a little topology table, which is a nice feature. 

Auvik helps to reduce repetitive, low-priority tasks through automation, primarily our backups, as that's a repetitive task. From a backup point of view, the solution handles everything, and we only need to verify once in a while, so we have time savings of 90% in this area.   

I want to see improvement around backups; we had a case where we created a ticket for online support, and they were able to set up backups for one of our devices, but they were unwilling to do the same backup script with a different device. The script uses the same code, just a different model number, and the engineers weren't willing to add it to the other model.

We've been using Auvik for about a year. 

Auvik is a stable platform. 

Auvik is scalable, though we have one client with many devices, and it can sometimes be slow to load some of the data.

The technical support is excellent; I've logged several tickets with them, and they always resolved my issues.

Positive

The company previously used an in-house system, but that was before my time. Auvik has been in place since my arrival. 

I wasn't involved in the deployment, and the product doesn't require any maintenance on our end, as Auvik Networks Inc. handles that in the cloud. 

I don't have any insight into the cost, as another department handles that.

I rate the solution eight out of ten. 

To someone comparing network monitoring solutions but concerned about pricing, I'd say Auvik is a good solution, and I recommend it.

Comparing Auvik's cloud-based solution versus on-prem network monitoring solutions, cloud-based is more straightforward and always available, so I prefer it over an on-prem tool.   

Our visibility into remote and distributed networks is about the same as before.

I advise anyone evaluating Auvik to try their POC, as it's straightforward to install and get working.

We primarily use Auvik for network discovery, visibility, management, and minor monitoring.

The solution's alerts led me to discover network aspects I wasn't aware of.

The SNMP discovery features are impressive; few products are as robust in their abilities, and it discovered objects I didn't think it would.

Auvik's management and monitoring functions are straightforward to use, though I'm tech-savvy, and this ease of use is important.  

The product increased visibility into our remote and distributed networks, and that's paramount to us.   

Auvik is a helpful tool for keeping device inventories up-to-date, which helps with delegation if the organization has the staff. 

Auvik keeping device inventories up-to-date saves time, as it's much more advantageous than having to do a facility tour in person, manually checking all the devices and adding them to s spreadsheet, for example. We do that for auditing purposes, but the solution makes keeping devices up-to-date much more manageable.  

The trial could be longer, especially for attracting small and medium-sized businesses like us.

The pricing model could also be improved, as the unlimited selection isn't unlimited. The billing work on the build devices and components, and I've tried to set up the solution in a few different configurations, resulting in multiple build devices each time. Therefore, I question the cost-effectiveness for a business of our size.

We've been using the solution for over a week on a trial basis. 

The solution seems stable, though I haven't been using it for long enough to fully evaluate that. 

Auvik seems scalable, and the initial deployment was straightforward. I can see how it would be difficult in a complex environment with multiple locations.

I have never had to contact tech support thus far.

We didn't previously use a different third-party solution; we use what we built in-house or what's available as part of our equipment.

The initial setup was very straightforward; it took me less than an hour to deploy Auvik on our network. 

Compared to other solutions, Auvik is much faster to set up; it was almost immediately available for use following deployment.

For small businesses with many devices, the tool is potentially unaffordable. Auvik Networks Inc. is competing with other companies offering very expensive products. Still, there's a gap in the market and potentially a lot of lost revenue for smaller customers, especially those with complex IT environments.

Auvik would be worth the money if we continued past the free trial if we were a bigger enterprise. From a value perspective, automation and related features could be very valuable.

There are a few solutions on my list to evaluate, but I still need to get around to them.

I rate the solution seven out of ten. 

I haven't had long enough to evaluate Auvik for its automation capabilities or to determine if there has been a reduction in our meantime to resolution. 

We are a managed service provider, so we use the solution to monitor our customers' network environments.

Auvik provides a single integrated platform for network monitoring, but we integrate with other platforms for ticket generation and another dashboard we use, BrightGauge. 

The alert generation is excellent; we need to be able to look at a customer's network and see if there are any issues we should be aware of, like emergencies and offline devices. Auvik provides this and alerts us to issues before the customer calls about the problem. We had a case where a device failed, the solution notified us right away, and we were able to use the automatic backup configuration, which we restored to a replacement device.

The monitoring and alerting are the most valuable features. 

The automated configuration backups are another excellent capability. 

Auvik provides excellent visibility into our remote and distributed networks, which is especially helpful when onboarding a new customer. The solution offers great insight into the network we're taking over from a single pane of glass. This gives us situational awareness, allowing us to address issues, find credentials, configure, and correctly monitor network elements.

The solution's monitoring and management functions are more challenging than needed; the interface is sometimes unintuitive and confusing. That may be because I've never had formal training with the tool, so it can be difficult to navigate sometimes. This can be frustrating, as I sometimes need to go back to square one and follow multiple steps to get back to where I've just come from. For example, to access a list of devices I was just looking at because there isn't a direct path back.

I've had some issues where the solution repeatedly discovers a device I don't want to manage and alerts me about it. This is probably me not using the tool correctly, or it could be Auvik recognizing the device in different ways.

The solution sometimes finds networks and devices it sees, but I don't know where to begin looking to try and find out where it could have seen these from. Therefore, I want to know the path or details about the discovery, where the tool discovers a new network, and what way it takes to get to it and find that it's available to scan.

I also want Auvik to identify itself differently on networks because we have some firewalls that identify it as a potential risk, not only because of what it's doing but also because Auvik can present like a foreign intrusion into the network, which scares some of our customers.

We've been using the solution for almost two years. 

The stability is excellent; we've never had a stability issue.

The tool scales well, though we have yet to push its limits. We can manage multiple customers, and it's a tenant-based solution, so Auvik is as scalable as we need it to be.

I never had to contact tech support. 

We used MS Power Automate to monitor some of the devices we now use Auvik for, and Auvik does a better, more thorough job. We've also used the Kaseya VSA platform for monitoring. Still, Auvik is geared more towards the network, discovery, and monitoring aspects, which works better for us than other platforms.

I wasn't involved in the initial deployment, though I've been involved in the deployments to some customers' networks. In terms of maintenance, there are specific tasks we carry out as part of our obligations as an MSP around monitoring Auvik, but we don't need to do any maintenance with Auvik itself.

I'm an engineer, so I'm unfamiliar with the cost of Auvik and the other options on the market. My advice to those concerned about pricing is to do their homework and compare all the offerings. They could also demo Auvik to see if it meets their needs and justifies the cost.

I rate Auvik seven out of ten. 

A monitoring solution like Auvik is essential for any MSP, but other contenders exist in the marketplace.

Regarding reducing repetitive, low-priority tasks through automation, we're not currently using the solution for that. We could benefit from this area, but we have yet to leverage the capability.

As far as helping to keep device inventories up-to-date, I imagine the solution would help, but we don't use it for inventory.

As to whether the solution reduced our mean time to resolution (MTTR), I don't have access to those reports, but it's unlikely it impacts our resolution time. We don't continually monitor Auvik or have a staff member dedicated to working with it full-time. If we took advantage of the automation, I can see how the tool would reduce our MTTR, but we're not currently leveraging it as effectively as we could be.

My advice to others evaluating Auvik is they will need the hardware to run the collector at customer sites.

We use it for alerts, to a degree, but we mostly use it for networking, monitoring, and triage.

Originally, what really was good about this particular solution was its ability to give us an alert, should something be down, based on simple networking such as pinging. There are a lot of other solutions out there now, but Auvik was, originally, the main source of our networking alerts and it automatically gave us tickets so that we could triage issues.

In a specific service situation where we have a failure, Auvik can save us a lot of time because it can remotely give us a picture of where the communications have stopped in an environment. It gives us the opportunity to put the eyes of a more senior team member on it, someone who is more experienced in networking, to assist somebody who is onsite to determine where the problem is likely to be occurring so that they can solve it much quicker. Many hours are saved for a higher-tier technician because they don't have to be physically onsite. They can use this utility to assist somebody who is there and helps reduce our MTTR.

Another benefit is the reduction in time spent doing repetitive or low-priority tasks, thanks to the automation. By also alerting us when an issue has self-resolved, it saves us the time of triaging an issue when it's not necessary to investigate it. It's helped us be more proactive, and at the same time, has given us an overview of things that have self-resolved.

The visibility we get is vital to my team. Any type of clarity, communication—even background monitoring—are all important. There are a lot of other tools, including SIEM and monitoring tools for networking, that are more advanced and have a better outlook on what's going on. But all the communication, information, and metrics are important for us to get a better picture, even when we're looking back to try to figure out client stability and hardware needs.

And Auvik has probably had an effect on our IT team's availability by helping us know about a client's problem and enabling a proactive approach to resolving it. If, for example, something is going up and down, up and down, we will get an indication of that via the alert system and the way it notifies our ticketing system, giving us trends. That gives us the opportunity to be proactive because we can resolve a problem before it becomes a complete outage.

When you have the alerting set up properly and you have the integration set up properly with a ticketing system, the end result is that, if you have a service desk triage team to determine who gets assigned a ticket based on the criticality of the situation, everything works together. The alerts notify us by creating a ticket. A ticket is then triaged by my service desk team, and they send it to a responding team. Human interaction is necessary in our design, but it does help that Auvik has a lot of automation in it.

Port mapping is probably the most vital purpose that I use it for. My team has a lot of different needs and they will use it for monitoring server performance issues and the like. But the most important functionality for me, over the years, has been port mapping when I'm trying to figure out where a network has stopped responding.

And as an MSP, we have an overall client management portal through Auvik, so we can get to everything from one spot. That's important when we are looking at solutions for clients, giving us some sort of unified reporting and access to clientele.

It's also pretty good when it comes to visualizing network topology if you take the time to manually make sure the access to individual hardware is configured. On an automated level, it helps to some degree, even for sites that are not fully configured or maintained. It's pretty helpful. And from an experienced-networking-engineer standpoint, the intuitiveness of the visibility is pretty good. From what I've seen from my entry-level technicians, their first response is that it's a bit confusing. But I don't think this is really an entry-level program.

It requires a lot of hands-on maintenance when it comes to cleanup. That's probably the biggest problem I've had because I don't have a dedicated resource to manually clean up stale records. I have a customer where it shows 4,000 devices because of the duplication of devices that I have to clean up.

I have recently found that the way that they bill, based on what they detect and what you're managing, is not self-cleaning. It requires that somebody intervene to resolve that. I'm a little challenged with the cleanup of devices for a client and the need to manually maintain it. A lot of manual cleanup is necessary.

We have been using Auvik for over five years.

I don't think I've had any outages with Auvik. I have to give it a 10 out of 10 for stability.

It has the ability to scale, but with the number of billable and managed products in mind, and the fact that it takes so much manual cleanup to get it properly situated for a larger client, I would knock the scalability down to about a seven out of 10. We have to manually figure out the billable devices and manually clean up configurations all the time, making it less scalable.

We deploy it to any client that has advanced networking. If they have multiple sites, that's where the design is most effective: larger clients that have multiple sites, even a dozen sites. We utilize it for networking that has switched stacks or multiple locations.

The communication with their technical support has been pretty solid. They usually respond quickly.

Positive

When it comes down to it, sometimes we require direct access to networks. We used other utilities like N-able products. Other types of programs like that would be useful. Otherwise, you're doing port scanning, either from the switches themselves or from third-party utilities on individual sites, from whatever server or access you have to the site. It's much better in that respect.

Prior to N-able, we used basic utilities, launched individually at customer locations, such as Nmap and Wireshark, where we were looking for network activity and details. All of them were manual applications that were installed and run at the time of need, instead of automated reporting.

I don't know why we moved to Auvik specifically, but we review products regularly. We probably had a presentation by the vendor and then there was agreement that it was the best way to move forward. But we utilize it at the same time that we use many other products for network monitoring.

If Auvik is properly manually managed by my team, there is value from it. If it's just left to run and not manually configured, monitored, or adjusted, then we don't see value from it.

From a client perspective, pricing is always an issue. Nobody wants to pay more than necessary. You need to be aware of the number of billable managed products, because they will greatly increase the cost of Auvik, based on your clientele and what you're managing.

I don't think pricing and licensing are communicated well by the Auvik team, as far as billable products go, until you get the bill. Once you get the bill and you realize you're being monitored for a bunch of things you didn't necessarily want to manage or control, you then have to take the time to manually reduce those managed products so that they're not part of your cost. It's clunky and not quite what I had hoped for.

Overall, I think it's been much better than other utilities I've used previously as far as giving me an overview of switch stacks, switch connectivity, and access to networking.

Maintenance is very manual. It's not the agents that require installation updates, it's the general interface. The configurations, or the inventory, have to be cleaned up manually and that's a lot of work.

My advice would be to keep an eye on billable products, most importantly, and be prepared to assign a resource who is dedicated to cleanup and configuration.