OpenNMS Meridian vs. VMware Skyline

Large network environments with few types of devices. The system is great but getting all of the MIBs loaded and to try and create unique rules /alarm type. Alarm correlation is doable but it takes too much manual work and XML configuration. I do enjoy the dashboard and surveillance categories.

Incentivized

Well suited to analyze DDoS attacks on my application. This helped me to gain visibility into the traffic. Enhanced reactive and proactive support, Privacy and Security, Dashboard view, Inventory, Proactive findings, Skyline log assist, Upgrade recommendations & Operational Summary Report (OSR). Its Holistic view and Integrated reporting also helps a lot.

Incentivized

• When we used OpenNMS you could download the base package for free and configure it fairly easily for your own environment. You can't beat that kind of price break.
• OpenNMS had a very nice looking GUI that was easily navigated and fairly straightforward to understand and configure.
• There were a wide variety of add-ons available for download and implementation.

Incentivized

• Easy setup
• Stable
• Data collection

Incentivized

• It takes a fair amount of experimentation to fine tune information collection.
• Configuration can be quite cumbersome with a steep learning curve. It would be nice if more of this could be done via the web dashboard.
• The reliance on Java will put some users off. However, in fairness, it does mean it runs on a wide variety of hardware.

Incentivized

• Sometimes the recommendations do not make sense.
• Sometimes the advice is general, but not for us.

Incentivized

It's super easy to use.

Incentivized

Although Grafana is in no way an alternative to OpenNMS's full functionality, it can be integrated with other solutions (including OpenNMS itself) to offer the graphing and data visualisation aspects of OpenNMS. In this regard, Grafana is more flexible, and some would say prettier, than OpenNMS's graphing. For the best of both worlds, I'd recommend using them both!

Incentivized

I've used other products such as VMAN and such yet Skyline is different. This is not aimed at your virtual machine's internal usage but at the VMware / Hypervisor level. This looks and monitors at hardware drivers, VMtools versions, and VM hardware versions. If you have Horizon it will look at versions and current vs minimum driver versions.

Incentivized

• We've been able to improve our customers' experience.
• Because we're able to respond to issues quicker, we're able to better meet our SLAs.
• We are able to see smaller problems and address them before they become big problems.

Incentivized

• VMware Skyline has no cost except for the small footprint the appliance VM uses.
• Zero cap cost, unlimited returns. WIN WIN!

Incentivized