Icinga vs. SolarWinds Network Automation Manager (NAM)

If you're running bare-metal in a datacenter and your hosts are fairly static, it's probably okay to use something like Icinga to monitor your systems. In general, I would not recommend using any monitoring software based on Nagios (Icinga is a fork of Nagios) due to the outdated concepts inherent in those systems. There are a number of good SaaS monitoring solutions which are superior and several open source projects which implement an automation-centric approach to monitoring

Incentivized

Solarwinds NAM is well suited if you want following - 1. Monitor multiple vendor devices from single tool. 2. Multiple capabilities from one umbrella tool. 3. Easy and default integration with ITSM Solution. 4. API driven architecture and hence automation can be done easily. If you planning to monitor SD-WAN devices then Solarwinds may not be good solution as it does not have in-built pollers for the same like for devices v-manage, viptela etc. In this case either you have to leverage native solutions and integrate with Solarwinds or use different solutions.

Incentivized

• I think Icinga has a great search feature. I can always search for the hosts, host groups, or check names. When using just regular Nagios, I don't recall being able to do this search.
• The fact that I can use Active Directory or LDAP for logins is a great feature.
• If you are familiar with Nagios, it's very simple to combine the two products to get a polished finished product.

Incentivized

• Fault and Performance Monitoring
• Devices Configuration Backup
• IP Address Management
• Voice Infrastructure Monitoring
• Users Ports monitoring
• Netflow Traffic Utilization

Incentivized

• Decluttering - the dashboard seems to get very overwhelming
• Segregation - would be helpful to split environments or clients into different areas
• Alerting

Incentivized

• Support for more call infra provider vendors
• Cloud Network Monitoring
• Event Management
• Predictive Intelligence using AIOps and ML

Incentivized

Icinga is a solid solution which does everything it promises. It is backwards compatible with most Nagios instances, making the transition very easy. Once you get the hang of installing new plugins and editing configuration files expanding its monitoring capabilities are easy.

Incentivized

Icinga was initially a fork of Nagios. Over time, the configuration language was replaced with something more programmatic. This configuration language is one of the big sellers of this product. It allows flexible, quick configuration of large sets of hosts and services with minimal input. Comparing it to other products like WhatsUp Gold, Zenoss, Zabbix, etc., it stands out as incredibly flexible. Adding additional features to Icinga can be as simple as searching for them online. And if they don't yet exist, there is a full API available for custom extensions.

Incentivized

Solarwinds is cost effective and easy to install and maintain solution. Anyone can install and operate the same whereas other tools like LogicMonitor, Microfocus needs specialized skill. SolarWinds provides rich MIB OID support that means you do not have to worry about devices supportability, in case there are new vendor with new MIBS then also you do not have to worry about this as Vendor itself does that part whereas other tools like Microfocus does not support this and LM do have MIB complier itself. Parameters are already enabled in SolarWinds and hence less chance of customization required. Whereas Microfocus and LM requires customization efforts. Solarwinds does not have SD-WAN so does Microfocus but LogicMonitor seem pretty good in SD-WAN comparatively.

Incentivized

• With one check you know which applications are faulty e.g. after an upgrade. Which is big time saver
• You easily detect outages ion the applications so that your customer ideally does not even realize there was an outage.
• Detect if the environment does deliver the same result as in the same time as before to detect shortages.
• Additional information when debugging. Saved us several hours where we could simply point to a database which was slow.

Incentivized

• Our Network Health has improved with Proactive Monitoring
• Cost reduction on additional products like PowerBI for Reporting
• Service Now Integration was easy enough and hence less efforts and cost

Incentivized