• As I mentioned in one of the other points: "Simplicity at its best".
• SolarWinds is easy to implement and simple to use and manage.
• As a system admin or network admin, you would just love this tool. It's not complicated and the features available can perform most of the activities that any other tool can.
• Licensing costs are lower.
• It provides a great global forum (THWACK), which is a single pit stop for all queries.
• Customer portal or technical support provides a great amount of help and are they are proactive towards the issues that occur in the system.
• Bug fixes and new versions (with great features) are released quite frequently. SolarWinds just launched themselves into the cloud as well. It isn't an on-premises tool anymore and can be hosted on the cloud.

Note: We are not using VMware VMAM and SRM in our setup. I work for a big client who is distributed geographically and we have separate teams to handle the infrastructure. My primary role is to only take care of server infrastructure.

We have a separate VMware team who does the job for us in the virtualization space. I have evaluated VMAN in the past and it definitely is a great tool that provides a deep dive into virtualization space. We do manage virtual machines and ESX boxes on a SAM instance, but we do not have an extended module like VMAM to support the same.

I have used STM in the past for storage monitoring. It’s a similar case where we have a separate team for storage and they are using Netcool to manage the traps coming from storage devices. Hence, it is not managed via SolarWinds. It is out of my scope of work in the current role.

I rate SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor six out of 10.

I can say that my company has integrated SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor into ServiceNow, and because of this, we are getting proper alerts. My company also gets alerts via Telegram and other sources. I have not seen any major issues in the product related to the alerting feature.

There are no issues with the integration capabilities of the product, and it provides value.

I need SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor to explain to our company the benefits of the product.

The dashboard part of the product is okay.

I rate the overall tool a seven out of ten.

For small to medium-sized enterprises, SolarWinds SAM is definitely worth considering. It offers a strong price-performance ratio, making it an attractive option. While there are more advanced products available in specific areas, SolarWinds stands out for its comprehensive coverage of infrastructure, networks, and applications. The choice between an all-in-one tool like SolarWinds and a combination of specialized tools depends on the organization's architectural preferences and needs. Overall, I would rate it seven out of ten.

I try to always follow the processes and things exactly to a T. I don't think we had any major issues with the product. It has room for improvement, but overall, it does most of what we need to do on a day-to-day basis. Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

SolarWinds SAM is suitable for small to medium enterprises but not for large ones. I'd advise those implementing it to ensure things are configured properly and keep only what you require on the dashboards. I would rate SolarWinds SAM as seven out of ten.

I rate SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor an eight out of ten.

I have been working on application performance and servers since 1992. One tool cannot solve all the problems. We have multiple tools to find the root cause. All application performance monitoring tools have basic features. Not many solutions have correlation features. It helps us understand what is happening and why a particular problem has been triggered.

I am well versed with other technologies similar to SolarWinds. I know SolarWinds could do better. If I knew only SolarWinds, then it would be amazing. The other tools are futuristic. I will recommend the tool depending on what the client needs. Overall, I rate the product a six out of ten.

I would rate the product an eight out of ten. 

SAM is an easy-to-deploy solution. You need to plan your monitoring strategy well because if you want to monitor a large number of servers, you need to plan and decide what exactly would you like to monitor. Because things can get pretty complicated, especially when it comes to application monitoring. The solution gives the flexibility to decide as to what you would like to do with their monitoring platform. You shouldn't go blind and say that I want to monitor everything.

My advice to those new to the solution is they should be aware of all the templates that they provide. The template is one of the powerful aspects of this tool, it consists of all the monitoring requirements that anyone can have.

I rate SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor a nine out of ten.

I am using the version that was released before the latest version. The solution can be put on-premise or on the cloud. The product is set up for a lot of things. The product can be used depending on our area of interest, be it network, server, or application. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

Improvements come as we are moving forward. Requirements also change with time.

There were times when we used to be a complete physical infrastructure. Most of the customers have now moved to a virtual infrastructure.

The requirements are also changing. In the last ten years, what I have seen is that SolarWinds is improving its product as per the demand of the customer.

SolarWinds is easy to implement and it has most of the information the customer is looking for, and the dashboard has the wow factor.

I think that every IT team should have to courage to try to implement it by themselves because it is not difficult.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate SolarWinds SAM as a ten in regards to the total cost of ownership and quality. But being more modest because there is room for improvement I will rate it a nine.  

I would highly recommend this solution to users.  

I would rate it a nine out of 10 so that they improve on the report.

If you need a starting point, SolarWinds is a good start.

Be sure to know how many objects or element you plan to monitor to determine the licensing and the topology of your environment to help scale out your deployment. If you have those down, you’ll be able to up in running in no time

Additionally, a nice thing about SolarWinds is that the company always looks to improve their products. Since they regularly update the software for stability and new features, it’s not easy to pinpoint items for improvement. Through the Thwack community, they get great feedback from customers for feature improvements as well as ideas to use the product better in ways beyond original intentions. My experience is that if a feature directly impacts my daily routine, then the product needs improvement. So far, any issues I’ve had in the past have been rectified by Support, added as feature to correct, or new enhancements that never allow me to face problems reports by others.

Before you install, join THACK and start talking to other users. The tool is very powerful and offers amazing monitoring options, if you have someone who knows what good monitoring should look like.

Take advantage of the various custom properties to refine monitors and you will have an amazing monitoring platform.

Install it, compare against others, and you will always find SolarWinds beats them for the ROI.

You must also factor in the savings from being able to train general IT staff how to support the tool.

It doesn’t matter how great a tool is, if you can’t find an admin to run it. Anyone can figure out SolarWinds if they have any sort of APM background. Many other tools can’t say this.

On the customer portal, two types of training videos are available for users. One type includes pre-recorded videos providing a detailed overview of the platform's features. These videos are divided into three to four parts, each lasting around three to four hours. Users can invest their time in these sessions to understand the system's functions. I rate it an eight out of ten. 

• Spend the time to examine the recurring issues in your infrastructure. Are there one or two things that come up repeatedly?
• Determine what data would help avoid the problem.
• Implement monitoring, alerting, policies, and procedures that collect and make use of that data.
• It’s about shifting the work from responding to your customer’s problems to correcting systems and conditions before your customers even notice.

Go onto THWACK (the SolarWinds user community). You will find training, help, and advice from many who have been there before. It is one of the premier user communities that many out there need to emulate!

DO IT!!! You will not regret it. This product is so helpful, out-of-the-box. Even for larger environments, you have a very short roll-out timeline, fantastic benefits, and results.

We're just a customer. We don't have a business relationship with the company.

We're using the latest version of the solution.

For small, small businesses, this solution will be good. However, if you want to go more complex, I would advise you to potentially explore other options.

So far, I would rate the solution at an eight on a scale from one to ten. We are still exploring its capabilities. It's still pretty new to us. 

I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. This product is good as a server-side monitoring tool.

We are using the latest version of the solution. I believe it is version 12.5.

If a company would really like insight into its database utilization or performance and why their servers are slow or why the database is not giving a proper response, this solution will help. It's perfect for revealing bottlenecks. You will have more visibility once you will install it in your environment. The solution will no doubt help other companies resolve issues very quickly.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

If you are looking for a single pane of glass to monitor Windows products then SolarWinds is your product. However, it is not best of breed. 

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

SolarWinds has a network for applications, for virtual infrastructure and every other thing we can think of. Users can look for a module that would suit their company they can buy it and integrate.

If you are looking for end-to-end visibility in your infrastructure I think SolarWinds should be the place you to go. They've got you covered.

I would rate this solution at 9.5 out of 10.

It's a decent solution for on-premises servers.

I would rate SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor an eight out of ten. It needs application-level monitoring and performance output. 

I would rate this solution a 9.5 out of ten. My clients are satisfied. 

Even you have your own monitoring system, you need to try others to judge well and know where you are standing. Just visit the website and download a 30-day trial version.

SolarWinds user community, THWACK, is a very informative one where users share their experience to solve problems and suggests development for all SolarWinds modules.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. 

I would not recommend SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor and would rate it at six on a scale from one to ten.

There are several tools included in this solution including AppStack (Application Stack Management), PerfStack (Performance Analysis), and NetPath (Network Path Analysis).

This is an open platform so if there is something that it does not support then you can write your own scripts. You have the ability to include metrics from different systems, which is very good.

In summary, I like this product and I recommend it. SolarWinds is one of the best products on the market and if they eventually support the IBM Mainframe then it will be perfect.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Don’t go with the “dive in and figure it out” approach. You’ll spend months, if not years, straightening SAM out. Take the planned approach; organize your servers and your IT services, identify what you want to monitor such as the Windows services, events, ports, SNMP traps, Syslog messages, etc and create your alerting rules. Understand your dependencies so that you can create your enterprise views and maps. Align the Orion Platform to be more than a monitoring tool. Use it for EA, capacity management, configuration management, asset management, and others.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We use the on-premises deployment model.

I would recommend the solution. It needs the proper sizing before implementation, and if you have done the proper sizing then you're all good.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We have about 1,000 users on the solution.