Elastic Observability Reviews

We use it to handle significant volumes of data sourced from various network monitoring protocols like NetFlow and SNMP.

We're capable of monitoring fleet-based applications as well as custom applications effectively. This capability provides us with robust performance insights, enabling us to pinpoint and address issues with precision.

The ability to ensure that the data is searchable and maintainable is highly valuable for our purposes.

The interface could be improved. Currently, the aspect that impresses me the most is the AI functionality. However, the pricing for the AI-powered APM feature is quite steep.

I have been using it for two years.

We are satisfied with the stability, as we never faced any issue with it.

The scalability is excellent, and we're quite satisfied with it. It's quite straightforward for us.

The technical support is actually very good. We haven't encountered any issues with it because our engineers are proficient with Elastic.

We initially experimented with a couple of other systems before settling on Elastic. I can't recall the specific alternatives we explored. After conducting an initial Proof of Concept, we proceeded to production with Elastic, and we're currently satisfied with it.

The initial setup is straightforward.

We have been using the open-source version.

If compared with Splunk, which is known for its high cost, Elastic is freely available as open-source software. I prefer Elastic because of its affordability. However, I acknowledge that Splunk is also a robust platform, albeit at a significant expense.

I would recommend it. Overall, I would rate it seven out of ten.

As we have access to all the features offered by Elastic Observability, we utilize it for APM, to provide support and manage our infrastructure, and even leverage it for our CRM needs. 

What I find most appealing is the end-to-end platform that seamlessly integrates with other solutions. Its diverse set of features available on the cloud is of significant importance. In a hybrid cloud environment, Elastic Observability stands out by optimizing data transfer and application architecture compared to single-location alternatives. The key feature is the powerful search capability, which serves as the foundational element for our business.

There is room for improvement regarding its APM capabilities.

I have been using it for two years.

It is a highly reliable and stable solution.

I would rate its scalability capabilities nine out of ten.

The initial setup isn't quite straightforward. Improving the user interface setup experience is an area where Elastic could enhance its offering.

The deployment timeline varies depending on the project's complexity. It usually takes anywhere from three to six months, with the duration heavily contingent on the project's current state and scope.

I would recommend to observe the APM market, as it's interesting to note the emergence of a new competitor specifically targeting robust and high-performance applications. I would rate it nine out of ten.

The architecture and system's stability are simple. The storage management behind the massive platform and the service speed are good.

There could be on-site support services available in the Middle Eastern region. Also, more web features could be added to the product.

I have been using Elastic Observability as a distributor for one and a half years.

The product is stable. There are a few occasional issues with the platform's stability.

The product's scalability is good.

I worked with LogRhythm and Rapid7 before. Elastic provides better security, comparitiviely.

The initial setup process is simple. Working on the dashboard is easy. For small to medium businesses, it can take up to 15 days; for medium to large businesses, it can take 30 days.

Elastic Observability's pricing could be better for small-scale users. It is very competitive and good for large-scale users. The node for the end user might cost around 16k. We'll allow them to implement all the modules Elastic can provide, from EDR to integration with the NDR. All of these features will take full advantage of the node. If we need to enable any other feature, we need a professional service from the experts.

I rate Elastic Observability a nine out of ten.

We use Elastic Observability for system monitoring, server monitoring, and application monitoring. I'm working on a project wherein I use the solution for capacity planning.

I have built a mini business intelligence system based on Elastic Observability. We show all the real-time transactions, the transaction type, the transaction amount, and different kinds of metrics based on different transactions. We've built something that helps our different teams working with the same stack make everything visible using Kibana. This helps the compliance team to track some Visa card transactions, etc.

Elastic Observability’s price could be improved.

I have been using Elastic Observability since 2015.

Elastic Observability is a stable solution.

Currently, Elastic Observability is scalable because the client needs to see things working before agreeing to scale the solution.

I am the only guy involved with the solution's deployment.

Users have to pay for some features, like the alerts on different channels, because they are unavailable in different source versions.

The project requires monitoring and tracking everything, including some internal services with the SAP application. The project manager needs the capacity planning dashboard to help him reduce the cost on the cloud.

Overall, I rate Elastic Observability a nine out of ten.

We use the product to monitor various data pipelines.

Elastic Observability helps us detect more pipeline errors. We were able to resolve 30% of the issues. It also helped us improve our e-commerce sales by 15%.

The product’s most valuable feature is Kibana. We can view and connect different sources to the dashboard using it.

There could be more low-code features included in the product. They should improve the machine learning system. Additionally, more features should be related to LLM. 

We have been using Elastic Observability for more than five years.

I rate the product’s stability an eight out of ten.

I rate the product’s scalability a seven out of ten.

The technical support services need improvement.

Neutral

We have been partners with Grafana and Datadog. Thus, we use those solutions as well.

The initial setup process has medium complexity. We require an expert in Elastic products to deploy it. The on-premises setup is complicated. However, the cloud deployment is manageable as they have good documentation and playbooks.

Elastic Observability generates a return on investment in terms of data availability. It proves to be beneficial.

The product’s pricing needs improvement. It is expensive compared to Grafana.

I rate Elastic Observability a seven out of ten. I advise others to get assistance from a specialist in Elastic products to use all the features effectively.

We use the product to monitor our infrastructure. 

The solution is open-source and helps with back-end logging. It is also easy to handle. 

Elastic Observability is reactive rather than proactive. It should act as an ITSM tool and be able to create tickets and alerts on Jira. 

I have been working with the solution for six months. 

Elastic Observability is stable. 

The product is scalable, and we have around 75 users for it. 

The solution's documentation is perfectly fine. 

Elastic Observability's installation is complex. The deployment can be completed in one to two hours. You need three resources from DevOps and cloud operations to handle the deployment. 

We will buy a premium license after POC. 

I rate Elastic Observability a seven out of ten. 

We usually use the solution in our production environment to monitor production on Rancher. I'm a DevOps engineer.

The design is good and they provide great support with plenty of documentation available online.

Using this solution is quite complex and there's a steep learning curve if you've never used it before. 

I've been using this solution for a couple of months. 

The solution is stable. 

We have around 50 users, so the solution is reasonably scalable. 

We still use Instana, Grafana and Prometheus for the other environment. Elastic provides a better solution for our needs and has more features than the other solutions.

The initial setup took around a month or so because we are an enterprise company so there were some complex issues that we needed to solve. We don't really have a specific monitoring team for Elastic.

Licensing costs are reasonable and we definitely get our money's worth. 

I rate this solution nine out of 10. 

Elastic APM is a kind of log aggregation tool and we're using it for that purpose. 

Elastic APM is very new so we haven't explored much on it, but it's quite interesting. It comes with a free offering included in the same license. So we are looking to explore more. It is still not as mature as other tools like Kibana, AppDynamics or New Relic products related to application performance monitoring. Elastic APM is still evolving, but it's quite interesting to be able to get all the similar options and features in Elastic APM.

In terms of what could be improved, Elastic APM's visualization is not that great compared to other tools. It's number of metrics is very low. Their JVM metrics are much less while running on CPU memory and on top of that you get a thread usage. They're not giving much on application performance metrics. In that respect, they have to improve a little bit. If you compare that with other tools, such as New Relic, which is also not giving many insights, it would be good to get internal calls or to see backend calls. We are not getting this kind of metric.

On the other hand, if you go to the trace view, it gives you a good backend calls view. That backend call view is also capturing everything, and we need some kind of control over it, which it does not have. For example, if I don't want some of the sequence selected, there should be controls for that. Moreover you need to do all these things manually. Nowadays, just imagine any product opted to do conservation manually, that would be really disastrous. We don't want to do that manually. For now this needs to be either by API or some kind of automated procedure. If you want to install the APM Agent, because it is manual we would need to tune it so that the APIs are available for the APM site. That's one drawback.

Additionally, the synthetic monitoring and real user monitoring services are not available here. Whereas in New Relic the user does get such services.

The third drawback I see is the control site. For now, only one role is defined for this APM. So if I want to restrict the user domain, for example, if in your organization you have two or three domains, domain A, domain B, domain C, but you want to give access to the specific domain or a specific application, I am not sure how to do that here.

Both the synthetic and process monitoring should be improved. For the JVM, Java Process Monitoring, and any process monitoring, they have to have more metrics and a breakdown of the TCP/IP, and the tools are giving me - they don't provide many metrics in size. You get everything, but you fail to visualize it. The New Relic only focuses on transactions, and Elastic APM also focuses on similar stuff, but I am still looking for other options like thread usage, backend calls, front end calls, or how many front end and backend calls. This kind of metric is definitely required.

We don't have much control. For example, some backend calls trigger thousands of prepared statements, update statements, or select statements, and we don't have any control. If I only want select statement, not update statements, this kind of control should be there and properly supplied. The property file is very big and it is still manual, so if you want control agent properties you need UI control or API control. Nowadays, the world is looking for the API site so they'll be able to develop more smartly. They are looking for these kinds of options to enrich their dashboard creation and management.

I'm new to Elastic APM, but I do have very good APM knowledge since I have been using APM almost 10 years and Elastic APM for just two years. I see that Elastic APM is still evolving.

Elastic APM's technical support is pretty good and we have a platinum license for log aggregation. They respond very quickly and they follow a very good strategy. They have one dedicated resource especially for us. I'm not sure if that is common for other customers, but they assigned a very dedicated resource. So for any technical issue a dedicated resource will respond. Then, if that resource is busy or not available someone will attend that call or respond with support. In that way, Elastic support fully understands your environment.

Otherwise, if you go with the global support model, they have to understand your environment first and keep asking the same question again and again. How many clusters do you have, what nodes do you have, these kind of questions. Then you need to supply that diagnosis. This is a challenge. If they have a dedicated or a support resource they usually don't ask these questions because they'll understand your environment very well because they have worked with you on previous cases. In that sense they provide very good support and answer the question immediately.

They provide immediate support. Usually they get back you the same or the next day. I think it's pretty good compared to any other support. It was even very good compared to New Relic.

There are two advantages to Elastic APM. It is open source and if somebody wants to try it out in their administration it's free to use. Also, it has full stack observability. For full stack observability, Elastic is the best tool compared with any other tool like New Relic or AppDynamics or Dynatrace. I'm not sure about Dynatrace, since I never worked with it, but I have worked with AppDynamics and New Relic. However, with their log aggregation side, there is still a lot to get implemented here.

I'd like bigger flexibility. That means we would get all the system logs, all the cloud logs, all the kinds of logs aggregated in a single location. On top of that, if they could have better metrics for handling data together it would give a greater advantage for observability. The Observability platform is pretty good because you already have logged data and information like that. If you just add APM data and visualize, you will get much needed information. How are you are going to visualize and how are you going to identify the issues?

For this purpose, Elastic is best. If you are really looking for an observability platform, Elastic provides both of these two options, APM plus log aggregation. But still they have to improve or they have to provide APIs for synthetic monitoring, internet monitoring, etc... If I think about synthetic monitoring, you can't compare New Relic with Elastic today. Elastic is much better.

These are the improvements they have to look at. They support similar functionalities of synthetic monitoring, so it's not a hundred percent APM friendly, but if you look at their observability platform, their full stack observability together with their log aggregation, Elastic APM is a greater advantage.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Elastic APM an eight out of 10.