I have worked with the cloud model, and I have also worked with the data center model. Its setup is of moderate complexity. You need to install different components, such as Remote Collector and Appliance Manager. So, it is a bit complex, but it is manageable. All discovery tools are complicated to implement. You need to set up the target environment. Your discovery tools should be able to reach the whole target environment. So, a few challenges are there.

On average, it takes two to three days. It is a one-man job, but you would need some support if you are doing the data center implementation.

In terms of maintenance, if your Device42 appliance has less resources, such as RAM or CPU, you need to check whether it is running fine or not. If required, you need to increase the RAM or CPU. You also need to monitor your remote collector. If any of those are disconnected, your discovery will stop. You need to do the maintenance after every two weeks.

Setting up Device42 wasn't complex, but you must complete some prerequisites to get it into production. The initial installation itself is straightforward. It's a server on an appliance. After that, you must set up and configure the solution and run auto-discovery. Finally, you need to build a robust script for REST API to push all the required data for Device42 through REST API. 

Total deployment time, from testing to production, took about a month, and I mostly completed the job alone. Device42 is one server located in an environment, and you also need to deploy some remote collectors to gather information from other sites. Those collectors are not in the same environment but are deployed remotely to send Device42 the information.

After deployment, Device42 doesn't require much maintenance. For example, if disk usage is growing, we need to free up disk space. We also install upgrades every few months or so, but there isn't much real maintenance work.

The solution is usually installed using a pre configured VMware image supplied by Device42 itself.

The initial setup for Device42 was straightforward because you have guides you can follow, plus the Device42 support team will go on weekly calls with you for the setup process. You can even go on biweekly calls with support if you need to.

Integrating Device42 with the company's system and getting started on it was easy, so I'm giving the initial setup a rating of nine. The total time it took from start to finish to have a fully functioning Device42, including the planning, was seven months.

Setting up Device42 is straightforward. It's an OVF you give to the VMware team. They start it up, and you can configure it with the memory, CPU, and disk space you require. You can deploy it in 10 minutes, but the planning might take days. 

You need to talk to the networks and infrastructure teams about where to put it. Once the customer signs off, I create a solutions design document with a diagram of where to put it. Next, I ensure the security and network people are happy with its location. The implementation is fast, but it requires some time to plan where to put it.

I create all the network diagrams, but you need someone else to build the server and implement it, so it takes at least two people to do it. However, you might need several teams to ensure the customer is happy with the deployment. Implementing it involves the network, infrastructure, and security departments. They only need to sign off on it. 

Device42 requires regular maintenance. They do product enhancements, and bug fixes every two weeks. BMC and ServiceNow did not release enhancements that often. They release new features roughly once a quarter. 

We installed Device42 on a virtual server and deployed remote collectors. The initial setup was easy. We handled the deployment in-house. After the deployment, it ran by itself, but we had to install periodic upgrades. 

The initial setup is straightforward but, at the same time, depending on your business and the complexity of the infrastructure, it can become complex. Not the actual implementation of Device42, but to get Device42 to the point where it can do the discoveries on your infrastructure can become complicated, depending on how your infrastructure has been set up. But to actually get Device42 up and running, in terms of just the appliance, is very easy.

Our deployment took six to eight months. Getting the appliance running was very quick, but to get all of the integrations done, and working with all the different teams to allow the agentless discoveries to happen, and configuring firewalls, policies, etc., it took that long to get it all in place and to make sure that the data that we're capturing is actually useful and correct.

The implementation strategy was quite straightforward because we didn't have anything else before. We started from scratch to capture everything, starting from the network layer and going up to the server storage layer, and then the application layer.

The initial setup is very easy. I rate the ease of setup a nine out of ten. It would be very easy to set up if we knew how things work.

I found the overall process of the initial setup straightforward, but certain parts lacked direction.

The install guide could be a bit better. I ran through it to see where to start. Once I figured it out, we connected with support, figured out where to start, and got a plan together. Now, it's been going smoothly. However, when you first start and install the application, you log in and it's like where's the best place to start? For example, "How do I get from here to everything tracking and linking up?" The answer: It depends on your environment. A segmented approach may be more helpful, which support definitely cleared up.

We are still in the configuration phase. A lot of that is due to the lack of time put into getting this configured. The deployment phase probably took a couple of days. We are still working on the configuration phase. A lot of that is due to our own equipment not being supported anymore. We're in the process of infrastructure upgrades now, which doesn't exactly help.

The implementation strategy is to get it installed, then do whatever initial adoption we could (which was "Secrets"), as we're trying to get our network onto it. As we're going through a network infrastructure upgrade, this is a bit chaotic right now but the goal is to start with the network then flow down towards each specific server and VM that we have. On the opposite spectrum, we want to start with our rooms, then build those out into building our data center and racks, meeting in the middle. We're still in the configuration phase, which has been slow.

In our solution, configuration was easy because we can automate this configuration over all the servers in the world and roll out the configuration in the agent. It's done in a few minutes.

For a very small installation with a few devices inside, the tool is too big. If you have a few different devices and are using cloud virtualization and cloud applications, then it's a good tool. Though, it is not specifically for this. It is a good quality tool, which is easy to manage.

The initial setup was very easy. It was restoring a virtual machine image. It gets delivered as a virtual disk file. Spin it up on your choice of hypervisor and it's ready to go instantly. For us it was ready to go, full-production. I'm sure there are some scenarios where it could get a little bit more complicated, but ours has always been very simple. It was deployed as a virtual machine. We didn't have any wrinkles.

Even with version upgrades that have had breaking changes — and that we had to do backups and restores for — even that hasn't been that terribly difficult. I just I told the people that use it, "Hey, we're going to be down for about 20 minutes," and ran the upgrade and everything was good.

In terms of a learning curve, it's relatively straightforward. There are a few things here and there that, when you come across them, seem a little bit backward. I can't remember specifically what those issues are, other than the purchasing one I mentioned. But it's mostly straightforward, mostly easy to use.

I took over the solution because a project that I was working on was put on hold. They handed this solution to me after the initial setup was done, and I ran with it from there.

The deployment is easy. I did it myself. You don't need a lot for this application. I handed it off to two or three people because they also are doing other things. This way, they can share the load. Once you get everything set up, it just runs. It is not like it needs a whole lot of constant handholding.

For deployment, you need to roll out the servers, install the software on them, and get the firewalls opened up. Each company will be different on how long stuff like this takes. You could have something up and scanning servers in a couple of weeks.

The deployment strategy that we used was hitting environments that needed to be moved to the cloud first. Once that is done, then they will to start expanding into other areas.

It is very easy to setup Device42. 

I don't know about its deployment, but in terms of maintenance, every now and then, we need to do some upgrades. We recently applied certificates. So, there was a little bit of downtime. That's where maintenance comes in.

I was one of the main stakeholders when we decided to choose an asset management tool. When we decided to use Device42 it was mostly because of its ease of use and that it is easy to implement. We had some meetings with other companies that provide asset management tools. With all of them, there would have been months of implementation with an implementation team to help us. It would have been a big project to implement these applications. With Device42 it was easy. It was easy to install, it's easy to manage, and easy to understand how it works. That's one of the things we like with Device42.

Our implementation of Device42 took a few months. After one month we had 80 percent of our infrastructure in Device42, and the last 20 percent took a little bit longer because we had to discuss things with security. Within three months we had 90 percent in the solution and, after six months, we had 100 percent in it.

We were looking to have automated discovery to be sure that when new devices come in, they would be automatically ID'ed in Device42 and we wouldn't need someone to add them. In one month we automated most of the implementation.

I took over the solution last year. I set up the whole thing up again from the ground up at that time. The setup was straightforward. The documentation was there. You just followed a few steps to get it up and running.

When we redeployed, it took approximately a week. It took a half a day worth of build, then a week to discover all our assets.

Our implementation strategy in the beginning was to start with each office and redefine what their needs looked like, then scan each network which had devices on it.

The initial setup was straightforward and very easy. We have the main appliance on GCP, with the agents distributed all around: on-premises and in other cloud environments. The deployment took half a day. I did the deployment myself, and then the networking team opened all the required ports and did the user creation, et cetera.

There is no maintenance required, as far as I am aware, other than making sure it's up to date.

The initial installation is easy. Where it gets complex is when you're configuring the environment for the customer. The initial installation, therefore, is really straight up. It's just handing the IOS to the virtual machines, and you're good to go. It's the subsequent configurations on the platform, where you have the platform, and there's configuring, you're discovering assets, et cetera, that's when it gets difficult.

The setup was easy. We are used to using these kinds of tools — not specifically inventory or IPAM tools — but we have installations of solutions that collect things and give us information. So for us it was very easy.

The PoC was ready within one week, where the data was in the system and we got information from it. In production it has taken more time because we have different kinds of devices and every device or every brand requires a new configuration. For example, HPE enclosure devices take a lot of time to configure, although VMware was easy to configure as were network devices. But when you move to a new brand you may have more complex tasks to do.

When we did the PoC, we focused on it as an IPAM solution. In the PoC we saw the benefits of the hardware inventory. So we changed plans in the middle of the PoC. When we focused on IPAM at the beginning, everything looked fine, it was quick. But when we saw that the inventory is available in this tool we moved the PoC toward the hardware inventory. So the deployment took more time than we planned because of the change of plan.

In the beginning, I didn't really know a whole lot about it, so it was a little complex. But once I got a good understanding, it was very intuitive.

We were up and running within a couple of days and when I reached out for some assistance, Raj Jalan actually called me. He's the CEO of the company and it was really nice to get that kind of support.

Our implementation strategy was to get it up and running as fast as possible.