One area that could benefit from improvement is its performance. Instead of merely reporting on current events, the goal is to predict future issues and take proactive measures to address them.
The tool’s report feature created issues for us. We needed to gain skills to use that feature. The tool’s customization is not easy since you have to reconfigure the whole system.
In terms of the integrations and correlations, there is a huge opportunity to merge all of these tools into one in terms of analytics. This is a missed opportunities in the SolarWinds site compared to other products out there. An additional feature that would improve this solution is the ability to complete root cause analysis.
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve by having a cloud version. They have an observability platform but it still needs to be maintained by us.
Learn what your peers think about SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve the server monitoring and the web application monitoring features are not good. Microsoft SCOM has better server monitoring. In a future release of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor, they should add some additional features.
Senior Process Associate at Tata Consultancy Services
Real User
Top 5
2022-05-19T10:30:57Z
May 19, 2022
SolarWinds' interface is slow, and this is a global concern. Every SolarWinds user complains about the sluggishness. The response is slow. If you browse from one page to another, you have to wait. Our company is a massive user with plenty of licenses, so the performance issues could be due to the load per license. Ten thousand components can be mapped under one license. So SolarWinds needs to take care of the speed problem. It cannot be this slow. That is a huge complaint. Otherwise, the tool is good. It should also be easier to upgrade SolarWinds. AppDynamics is harder to deploy but easier to upgrade. So AppDynamics takes a lot of time and effort to install, but you can upgrade it in minutes. SolarWinds is the opposite. It's easy to deploy, but upgrades take forever. To date, nobody can complete it on time, so the production environment is sitting idle. The upgrade time matters because you only install the solution once, but you'll need to upgrade the solution repeatedly over the life of the product. A complex installation isn't an issue, but I mind if the upgrade takes too long because it's already in production.
SAM is missing code-level monitoring of applications and could be improved by adding detailed metrics in that area. SAM's software-defined network monitoring capability is also low and could be improved. In the future, I would like SolarWinds to add IoT functionalities.
Reporting is the only thing with which we currently have challenges. They have this in two ways. There is the report writer, which is the backend, and we also have web reports, which are on the console. So, they have removed the report writer for the backend reports, and we are making use of the web console, but most of the users are not finding it very interesting to use the frontend reports. I would like them to bring back the report writer. That's the key area within it to improve on the reporting. If they can bring back the report writer, then most users will actually be comfortable. I have some customers who are trying to export their report to an Excel format, but it is not possible because they said any report that has been done from the web console cannot be exported to Excel, but most of the customers need to export their reports to Excel. That's one area they need to work on.
Senior Officer at a international affairs institute with 201-500 employees
Real User
2020-11-18T19:04:39Z
Nov 18, 2020
In terms of the dashboards on offer, they should work to improve them. The types of dashboards that you get in terms of the graphs on offer aren't ideal right now. The pricing of the solution should be adjusted.
Systems Architect at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
2020-08-26T07:13:27Z
Aug 26, 2020
It lacks a user experience for measuring things like the end-to-end time for which a user waits for a specific response in the system. In the application layer, it has some very basic stuff. You have to build your own with manuscripts and things like that.
I am looking for more application insight-based widgets with the service. They currently have them for IIS, SQL, Exchange, and Active Directory. I would like to see additional application support for non-Windows servers. This would give us more flexibility in terms of monitoring customer applications.
The templates could use improvement. Currently, they are quite complex. They should have drag-and-drop functionality instead. It would make it easier to use. The technical support is slow to respond. They need to act on tickets faster.
These tools are made for evaluation and monitoring. They were developed some years ago and they are still evolving, and what I would like to see is that they are made cloud-ready as soon as possible. It would be good at this point to have it so you can run them and use them in the cloud. That is actually already possible, but I want to make sure that they continue to mature that type of development and enhance the product's capabilities. What can and will be added in upcoming releases is that the product will support a few more well-known database flavors like Oracle SQL server. I would like to see an extension of that capability to other database flavors including freeware environments like MySQL, Progress, and MariaDB. I know for a fact that they will be adding these capabilities in the future for sure, and that is a great step forward.
Enterprise Solutions & Services Head at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
2019-11-13T05:29:00Z
Nov 13, 2019
When you implement SolarWinds on a larger scale my customers complain about the speed. It's slow. This is an issue that has been going on for a long time that hasn't been properly addressed by SolarWinds. In a bigger architecture, the portal is still slow. They will have to look into it and see how they can improve it because this is the biggest complaint the customers have. In the next release, I would like to see improvements made to the reliability and the issue with the speed, especially the slowness with their browser-based solution.
Group Chief Technology Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Real User
2019-09-29T07:27:00Z
Sep 29, 2019
The custom reporting needs to be improved. Some custom applications cannot be monitored, and a lot more applications need to be included. The supported list of applications is very limited. For example, it supports the Windows version of JD Edwards, but not the Linux version of the same solution. Since it is the same application running on a different platform, it should work. The price of scaling this solution needs to be improved. I would like to have better support for Linux, and not be as dependent on Windows Servers. Even for non-Windows applications, it uses a Windows Server.
I had a problem with the price for a client. It was hard to understand the infrastructure and how many devices and how much storage they could get. In the end, we found a different license model for them. They should incorporate more artificial intelligence. There should also be more predictive features.
IT Leadership, System Management at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
2019-07-28T07:35:00Z
Jul 28, 2019
We don't need additional features. The network performance monitors and configuration monitors work well for our company. We also use different software for server monitoring. So far, the solution works well for us as-is.
We cater to all organizations in Nigeria. Most of the financial institutions in Nigeria are currently using this solution. Cellphone companies and telecommunication are also using it. The beautiful thing about the solution is, the OEM listens to customer reviews. The updates come very frequently, and most of the feedback that customers give is integrated within the upgrade or the update. I think that whatever concerns were have already been treated by the OEM. There is one feature that is a report writer. And they are currently trying to take it out from being a stand-alone application and integrating to the web. This doesn't give us the flexibility and it doesn't expand what we can get when it comes to reporting. So, putting it on the web is going to make it difficult to get some information. Leaving it where it is now will help us a lot.
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) delivers powerful application and server monitoring capabilities for IT pros, enabling them to diagnose and troubleshoot performance issues faster. Do not let slow applications and downtime impact your end-users and business services. Pinpoint the root cause of application issues across various layers of the IT stack. SolarWinds SAM is affordable and easy to deploy, use, and customize. You can automatically discover your system's environment...
The current script monitoring feature has limitations, especially when dealing with custom scripts.
One area that could benefit from improvement is its performance. Instead of merely reporting on current events, the goal is to predict future issues and take proactive measures to address them.
The product needs to reduce its price.
The tool’s report feature created issues for us. We needed to gain skills to use that feature. The tool’s customization is not easy since you have to reconfigure the whole system.
In terms of the integrations and correlations, there is a huge opportunity to merge all of these tools into one in terms of analytics. This is a missed opportunities in the SolarWinds site compared to other products out there. An additional feature that would improve this solution is the ability to complete root cause analysis.
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve by having a cloud version. They have an observability platform but it still needs to be maintained by us.
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve the server monitoring and the web application monitoring features are not good. Microsoft SCOM has better server monitoring. In a future release of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor, they should add some additional features.
SolarWinds' interface is slow, and this is a global concern. Every SolarWinds user complains about the sluggishness. The response is slow. If you browse from one page to another, you have to wait. Our company is a massive user with plenty of licenses, so the performance issues could be due to the load per license. Ten thousand components can be mapped under one license. So SolarWinds needs to take care of the speed problem. It cannot be this slow. That is a huge complaint. Otherwise, the tool is good. It should also be easier to upgrade SolarWinds. AppDynamics is harder to deploy but easier to upgrade. So AppDynamics takes a lot of time and effort to install, but you can upgrade it in minutes. SolarWinds is the opposite. It's easy to deploy, but upgrades take forever. To date, nobody can complete it on time, so the production environment is sitting idle. The upgrade time matters because you only install the solution once, but you'll need to upgrade the solution repeatedly over the life of the product. A complex installation isn't an issue, but I mind if the upgrade takes too long because it's already in production.
SAM is missing code-level monitoring of applications and could be improved by adding detailed metrics in that area. SAM's software-defined network monitoring capability is also low and could be improved. In the future, I would like SolarWinds to add IoT functionalities.
Reporting is the only thing with which we currently have challenges. They have this in two ways. There is the report writer, which is the backend, and we also have web reports, which are on the console. So, they have removed the report writer for the backend reports, and we are making use of the web console, but most of the users are not finding it very interesting to use the frontend reports. I would like them to bring back the report writer. That's the key area within it to improve on the reporting. If they can bring back the report writer, then most users will actually be comfortable. I have some customers who are trying to export their report to an Excel format, but it is not possible because they said any report that has been done from the web console cannot be exported to Excel, but most of the customers need to export their reports to Excel. That's one area they need to work on.
The stability, flexibility, and ease of use could be improved. The performance, integration, and pricing could be better as well.
In terms of the dashboards on offer, they should work to improve them. The types of dashboards that you get in terms of the graphs on offer aren't ideal right now. The pricing of the solution should be adjusted.
It lacks a user experience for measuring things like the end-to-end time for which a user waits for a specific response in the system. In the application layer, it has some very basic stuff. You have to build your own with manuscripts and things like that.
I am looking for more application insight-based widgets with the service. They currently have them for IIS, SQL, Exchange, and Active Directory. I would like to see additional application support for non-Windows servers. This would give us more flexibility in terms of monitoring customer applications.
Support for the IBM Mainframe is needed.
The templates could use improvement. Currently, they are quite complex. They should have drag-and-drop functionality instead. It would make it easier to use. The technical support is slow to respond. They need to act on tickets faster.
These tools are made for evaluation and monitoring. They were developed some years ago and they are still evolving, and what I would like to see is that they are made cloud-ready as soon as possible. It would be good at this point to have it so you can run them and use them in the cloud. That is actually already possible, but I want to make sure that they continue to mature that type of development and enhance the product's capabilities. What can and will be added in upcoming releases is that the product will support a few more well-known database flavors like Oracle SQL server. I would like to see an extension of that capability to other database flavors including freeware environments like MySQL, Progress, and MariaDB. I know for a fact that they will be adding these capabilities in the future for sure, and that is a great step forward.
When you implement SolarWinds on a larger scale my customers complain about the speed. It's slow. This is an issue that has been going on for a long time that hasn't been properly addressed by SolarWinds. In a bigger architecture, the portal is still slow. They will have to look into it and see how they can improve it because this is the biggest complaint the customers have. In the next release, I would like to see improvements made to the reliability and the issue with the speed, especially the slowness with their browser-based solution.
It would be helpful if the solution could integrate more with the security compliances, like this IDSS, etc.
The custom reporting needs to be improved. Some custom applications cannot be monitored, and a lot more applications need to be included. The supported list of applications is very limited. For example, it supports the Windows version of JD Edwards, but not the Linux version of the same solution. Since it is the same application running on a different platform, it should work. The price of scaling this solution needs to be improved. I would like to have better support for Linux, and not be as dependent on Windows Servers. Even for non-Windows applications, it uses a Windows Server.
I had a problem with the price for a client. It was hard to understand the infrastructure and how many devices and how much storage they could get. In the end, we found a different license model for them. They should incorporate more artificial intelligence. There should also be more predictive features.
We don't need additional features. The network performance monitors and configuration monitors work well for our company. We also use different software for server monitoring. So far, the solution works well for us as-is.
We cater to all organizations in Nigeria. Most of the financial institutions in Nigeria are currently using this solution. Cellphone companies and telecommunication are also using it. The beautiful thing about the solution is, the OEM listens to customer reviews. The updates come very frequently, and most of the feedback that customers give is integrated within the upgrade or the update. I think that whatever concerns were have already been treated by the OEM. There is one feature that is a report writer. And they are currently trying to take it out from being a stand-alone application and integrating to the web. This doesn't give us the flexibility and it doesn't expand what we can get when it comes to reporting. So, putting it on the web is going to make it difficult to get some information. Leaving it where it is now will help us a lot.