SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor vs. SQL Server Business Intelligence Manager

If you have a large number of users and computers and need a reliable database that will aggregate all of the computers and users into a single database. This allows us to keep track of who has logged into a computer, and log where that computer is located. SolarWinds is a fantastic resource that lets us keep better track of all the devices we have. Even after the device is disposed of we still have a record that this device was once ours so if there is an inventory question we can confirm that the device was ours but it has been disposed of.

BIDS works well if you're committed to using all MS products. It does take some serious consideration if you know you will end up working outside of that, such as working with AWS products.

Incentivized

• Monitor Azure Cloud Severs- We use SolarWinds SAM to monitor Active Directory and DNS on Several DCs published on Azure Cloud.
• Monitor Hyper V and VMware - SolarWinds SAM monitors applications on both Hyper V and VMware, while also monitoring the physical host machines.
• It also helps us monitor Warranty expiration for physical servers.

Incentivized

• Shows an excellent dashboard
• Allows easy monitoring of multiple instances
• Created an environment that can be self healing

Incentivized

• The get the best out of it requires a decent amount of knowledge of the product. In saying that, you could absolutely get the basics up and running using their how-to's and built in wizards, and with continual use find your way around and customise it further to your environment to best serve your organisation/objectives.

Incentivized

• Training is needed to understand and use all the feature
• Works well only with Microsoft products
• Not enough Tutorials available
• Features are more useful for larger organization

Incentivized

We are heavily invested in Solarwinds products for a reason. They are generally easy to setup and run with, requiring only some interfacing with support or help articles on rare occasions. They do what we bought them to do and we can't ask for more.

Incentivized

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor is quite easy to use and super versatile. It allows you to do just about anything you can through premade templates or through scripting. You can use an agent on the servers if you want to, or you can monitor through WMI or SNMP credentials. You can customize thresholds for alerting quickly, and you can configure alerts to be as complex or as simple as you want.

Incentivized

The tool works and monitors items 24x7, it only requires maintenance a little more frequently due to security fixes in the Windows operating system.

Incentivized

The graphical interface and the performance of the database leave a little to be desired, they could be better explored.Some functionality and screens do not work well depending on the browser used. The integrations never had any problems or caused crashes in other systems.

Incentivized

The SolarWinds support team is very well educated [on] their product and is very helpful and [patient]. We used the product, SolarWinds [Server and Application Monitor], and twice we encountered serious problems where the support team was very cooperative to help and resolve our issue in [a] timely fashion. Also, the extended support after hours [are] amazing.

Incentivized

It was sufficient to read their documentation and watch videos.

Incentivized

I am unfamiliar with other ways to configure it

Incentivized

Nagios requires far more manual work to configure than SolarWinds does, though that also encourages customization and perfect-fit solutions. Nagios also requires far, far fewer resources to run than SolarWinds: SolarWinds wants great gobs of memory and disk, while Nagios is refreshingly humble. Nagios starts working from the first minute, too, whereas SolarWinds needs lots of set-up time.

Incentivized

SQL Server [Business Intelligence] Manager works well with Microsoft products. It has several advanced features along with dashboards and alerts that can be configured to user's need.

Incentivized

It is hard to find the recommended SQL setup and convince others that is the way you should configure the server when you set it up

Incentivized

• Ability to sunset multiple legacy monitoring platforms.
• A single pane of glass across global locations (Enterprise Operations Console) simplifies monitoring for junior staff.
• A single toolset allows staff from across the global environment to share knowledge and quickly set up/modify monitoring.

Incentivized

• We've prevented several SSAS outages because of SQL Server Business Intelligence Manager's timely alerts.
• We've greatly reduced cubes calculation times with SQL Server Business Intelligence Manager's tuning features.

Incentivized