Auvik Network Management (ANM) Reviews

We initially implemented Auvik Network Management because we lacked network visibility. During the trial, the traffic analysis feature unexpectedly revealed malicious connections. This pop-out function within Auvik allowed us to break down traffic and identify TeamViewer sessions by destination, ultimately helping us pinpoint the source. This unexpected benefit, along with its core alerting functionality, convinced our executives of Auvik's value.

While the network map offers near real-time, full visibility into our network, it's limited to managed switches. This means the current drawback lies solely with outdated infrastructure, and the most effective solution is an upgrade.

The interface is intuitive and user-friendly.

After deploying Auvik Network Management within a week, I gained complete visibility into our network traffic. Alarmingly, it revealed a significant amount of unauthorized software and social media usage, with Facebook alone accounting for a quarter of our traffic within just a day. This immediate insight allowed us to take swift action and shut down the problematic activity, demonstrating the clear value of Auvik from the beginning.

In my experience with entry-level technicians at our co-op, Auvik Network Management has been a valuable tool. It simplifies network mapping and understanding for beginners and even helps me proactively manage tickets. With Auvik, I can identify potential issues before they escalate into major alerts, or use existing alerts to create tickets for faster resolution.

Auvik Network Management helps us spend less time on maintenance and setup of the solution and less time on the issue resolution.

Auvik Network Management was a time-saver, but more importantly, it provided greater network visibility which ultimately improved security. Instead of spending time sifting through logs for issues, Auvik's features freed me up to implement solutions and proactively enhance network security.

The most valuable features are the traffic analysis and the network mapping.

The network map is great overall, but it loses track of devices when their IP addresses change. This means we have to manually remove them and let them re-add, or use static IPs. Every month, a bunch of devices change IPs and end up in a random category, disrupting the map's organization. That's my only complaint - otherwise, it's user-friendly and functional.

I previously evaluated one of Auvik's products, but it felt incomplete as a standalone SaaS offering. Ideally, Auvik would bundle this product with its other solutions for a more comprehensive network management experience.

Auvik Network Management needs to improve its operational technology coverage. 

I have been using Auvik Network Management for one year.

Auvik's stability is good overall, with frequent maintenance windows that haven't caused major disruptions for me. While these windows could potentially interfere during a security event, they are thankfully short and reasonable.

Auvik Network Management handled my network well. It discovered devices across multiple VPNs and even unconfigured switches with default settings. This scalability was impressive, as it automatically connected to various sites with limited access, saving me time and effort.

I contacted technical support as soon as I noticed the issue with Auvik not being able to automatically remap devices that changed their IP. 

Positive

While I previously used Cisco Firepower for its rule-based functionality, it wasn't a true replacement for Auvik Network Management. Firepower seemed redundant for my needs since Auvik already provided the network visibility I required.

Auvik Network Management's deployment impressed with its ease of use. Installing the collectors, entering credentials, and letting it discover devices was a breeze. While building a complete network map took a couple of days due to complexities like potential network loops, it began providing valuable insights immediately.

The deployment took two hours.

I took advantage of Auvik's three-hour technical support to configure alerts and receive a high-level overview of their Network Management platform, but I handled the actual deployment myself.

Auvik Network Management's pricing was surprisingly reasonable. Even my C-suite executives, who initially anticipated a much higher cost, found it to be quite fair.

Cisco Visibility provided better coverage for the operational technology side of my network compared to Auvik Network Management. However, Cisco's high cost was a drawback, while Auvik offered a more affordable option with the added benefit of traffic analysis and alerts.

I would rate Auvik Network Management ten out of ten.

Our entire IT infrastructure, including all servers and pretty much everything else, is managed by Auvik. The only area I'd like to improve is Operational Technology monitoring. Since our CNC machines run small Windows deployments, Auvik doesn't monitor them as effectively as an OT-specific solution would.

The only maintenance I need involves manually clearing out IP addresses instead of letting Auvik automatically refine and remap them, which can be frustrating. This can cause a device's IP to change several times, leaving outdated entries in a grayed-out section. It's a minor inconvenience but would improve the overall user experience.

Due to our focus on privacy, our company wasn't sold on Auvik's standalone SaaS solution, feeling it was excessive for our needs. While it excelled at shadow IT discovery and endpoint monitoring, it lacked vulnerability scanning and remediation capabilities. Integrating these features into their existing product would be far more valuable, allowing for automatic updates and patching alongside IT asset monitoring. While Auvik's SaaS product is okay, it wasn't the right fit for us.

Don't miss out on configuring Auvik's alerts! The default settings are overly broad, notifying you about everything from critical issues to minor inconveniences like low printer toner. Take advantage of Auvik's customization options to ensure you only receive alerts for important events.

We use Auvik for network troubleshooting and monitoring.

We needed more visibility into the networks we manage. Auvik's automatic network mapping was something that helped us visualize the Management Network. The benefits were immediate. We quickly identified a few problems and resolved them quickly. For example, some links were slower than expected, and we remedied those issues fast.  Without, Auvik we would need to spend more time troubleshooting.

Auvik has helped our junior technicians solve more tickets. We've encouraged them to use Auvik, which enables them to navigate a network visually. I think they would have trouble without that visualization. 

Auvik's visual mapping and search features have been very useful. We can locate precisely where each device is on the map. The network map provides a real-time picture of the network that offers total visibility. 

The interface is good, but it can be sluggish and difficult to use on a small screen. I usually need a large screen to navigate it when monitoring more complex networks.

Also, the points on the network map will sometimes shift. They will be connected one way, but they will be connected a different way after I refresh. This doesn't happen often, but when it does, I question the reliability of our network map. 

We have used Auvik for nearly two years.

I've never seen Auvik crash, so I think it's 100 percent stable.

Auvik scales to where we need it to be, so it's perfectly scalable.

I rate Auvik's support seven out of 10. We contacted them about an issue with the mapping. The problem was complex, so it took a while to resolve.

Neutral

Before Auvik, we had another tool that was difficult to implement, so it wasn't deployed in many places. We also used UniFi's built-in network mapping, but that requires you to use only UniFi hardware. Auvik can integrate multiple vendors and do the same thing across the board.

Deploying Auvik was straightforward. It has an agent and uses SMP for the devices. We already had SMP enabled, so it was easy. We did it in-house, and it took about two months to fully deploy. About eight people were involved, including Auvik's support. It doesn't require any maintenance aside from onboarding devices. 

Auvik's pricing is decent. I forget exactly how much we pay, but we've never been dissatisfied with the value we get from this. The licensing model is palatable to us. I haven't looked at the licensing too closely, but I believe Auvik only charges for some devices, not based on the number of endpoints at each site. 

They also have an add-on product called SaaS Management. We did a demo but didn't purchase it.  While it's useful, I think there are too many drawbacks. We thought it was a little expensive and didn't feel we could get enough value from it to justify it. It was interesting but somewhat invasive and a tough sell to our customers. Considering the potential invasiveness and price, we decided not to deploy it. 

I rate Auvik eight out of 10. Auvik has a very short learning curve, so you can jump in and start using it.

As a network engineer, I rely on Auvik Network Management primarily for troubleshooting network issues. Auvik's visual representation of the network is particularly helpful, allowing me to gain a clear understanding of how everything is connected. Additionally, Auvik facilitates remote access to switches and firewalls, streamlining my troubleshooting workflow.

Our organization previously lacked any network monitoring capabilities. This made it difficult to identify and troubleshoot issues. We've implemented Auvik, which has addressed this challenge. Auvik provides us with valuable insights into our network health and allows for easy remote access to devices. This overall improves our network management efficiency.

Auvik has a well-designed and user-friendly interface. It's easy to navigate and understand.

The network map dashboard is a valuable tool because it offers a near real-time view of the network. Additionally, it allows for filtering elements. As a network engineer, my first instinct is to focus solely on network devices. I want to see switches, access points, and firewalls – a clear view of just those critical components. This filtered view usually provides me with a good understanding of the network's health. However, there have been instances where a device appeared on the map but wasn't actually being scanned. This highlights the importance of ongoing learning about the tool's capabilities. I'm confident there are features I haven't yet explored that can further enhance my network monitoring experience.

The network map dashboard provides full network visibility. I am able to see all the devices.

Auvik has been instrumental in reducing our mean time to remediation, which is a major reason I want to migrate all our customers to the platform. Without Auvik, I lack a clear view of their network, making it frustrating and difficult to troubleshoot issues effectively. Having all our customers on Auvik would provide a central vantage point to monitor and manage their networks, ultimately leading to faster resolution times.

Auvik allows us to spend less time on setup, maintenance, and issue resolution.

The most valuable feature of Auvik is the remote access functionality. It eliminates the hassle of manually remote accessing a PC and figuring out its IP address and password. With Auvik, everything is stored securely within the platform. It's as simple as a few clicks. I can easily launch a remote browser session or access the terminal directly through Auvik, saving me significant time and effort. Additionally, Auvik allows me to quickly configure SysLog settings and even view device configurations, like switch configurations, without needing to establish a remote connection. This is incredibly helpful for situations where I just need a quick glimpse of the settings. These are the functionalities I use most frequently at the moment, but I'm constantly exploring and learning more about what Auvik can offer.

The responsiveness of the UI can be sluggish at times. While I understand occasional lag when remotely accessing devices, the overall performance of the application itself could be smoother. In other words, it would benefit from improved responsiveness for a more seamless user experience.

I was working on a device in the AP that had disconnected from the network. I needed to troubleshoot the issue and wanted to find the switch it was connected to using LLDP information. Ideally, I wanted to know the specific switch port it was plugged into. Unfortunately, when the device went offline, Auvik didn't retain this information and it was lost. Having Auvik automatically save this data, even for offline devices, would be a valuable troubleshooting feature. This would allow me to quickly locate the device, even if it's currently disconnected, by looking up its historical connection details. Currently, according to the support team, this functionality is not available.

I have been using Auvik Network Management for one month.

Auvik Network Management appears to scale and handle large networks easily.

I've contacted technical support several times now. While the chat representatives are helpful, the escalation process has been slow. I opened a ticket a week and a half to two weeks ago and only just heard back. I understand they might be busy, but perhaps some additional resources could be allocated to expedite escalations.

Neutral

I would rate Auvik Network Management eight out of ten.

Auvik has been a lifesaver for me and I would recommend it to others.

I am the network administrator for our company, and we use Aruba Central but we're looking into Auvik to see what else we can do with it. We're seeing quite a bit of difference.

We have been using multiple applications for managing our networks. Switching to Auvik has been amazing. It has been impressive. Without Auvik, I go through five different applications every morning, clicking through everything. It's very irritating. I have Auvik open in front of me right now and it's simple.

It definitely reduces repetitive tasks with its automation. One of the biggest things is the mapping records widget. With our current system, I have to do the mapping. If we replace an item or we change an IP address, I have to go back through everything and change what I've done. I go through the five applications in the morning to figure out my APs, my Cisco equipment, my Aruba equipment, my Blancco Management, et cetera. Auvik saves a lot of time and a lot of repetitive work.

I can go into it and get a configuration file. With some of our other solutions, because not all of our switches are Aruba, I then have to go to the switches to pull the configuration files. With Auvik I see all of them here. It doesn't matter what brand it is. It saves me a lot of time.

The automation Auvik provides has allowed us to see areas that we need to fix, which, of course, is very important. And it has reduced our MTTR because I see things more quickly and I see things through Auvik that I can't see through Aruba.

It would improve things a lot for us [if we continue beyond our trial of the solution]. It noticed a drop on my network at the instant it was happening and sent me a notification. We had a couple of devices that were questionable and Auvik said, "Hey, you have Raspberry Pis on your network." To me, that's very important. I don't like Raspberry Pis because they are easily hacked and I don't want them on my network. So far, what I've seen with Auvik in terms of notifications has been great.

Another benefit is that it keeps device inventories up to date. It notifies us about firmware updates and about what we need to change, which is nice and has saved us time. It tells us everything. I like it because if, for example, the device is a phone, it tells me the subnet that it's on and the IP address. It's great.

We are trying to get a full package together to go to our vice president and say, "Hey, this is what Auvik has done for us and we need to continue." Right now, we have five different software tools that we're trying to use and manage things, while Auvik is one. I'm fighting very hard to get Auvik.

One thing I like about it is how it maps the network. It shows all my devices and it shows everything that is possibly connected to the network. Most of our network is in the cloud and the mapping starts with basic internet, where it is. It gives me how many devices or switches are connected, and what is connected to each switch, including how many printers are on it. We have Blancco Management and our backup servers, and Auvik tells me how many of those are connected. It gives me everything. At this minute it shows me that 346 devices are connected to our network and what they are. That's beautiful, and I didn't have to do it. I have had to go and map out, by hand, every device on the network with what IP address it's set to. That's a pain.

And the visualization is very eye-catching. It's easy to use and very self-explanatory. If something is eye-catching it makes people go into it more. I really like that.

I also like how it even tells us that printers are low on paper.

To me, it's very simple to use the monitoring and management functions of Auvik. We were setting up the SNMP with Auvik yesterday and everything on it—setting up our firewalls with it—is very simple.

It also seems to be a single, integrated platform. We have 26 switches and hundreds of devices and it has detected everything. So far, we're very pleased with it. I take care of our network in Oklahoma City and in Memphis. Being able to see everything in one place is very important. With Aruba Central, I'm only able to see the switches in Oklahoma City, and I can't even see my APs because my APs are not Aruba. Aruba only lets you see Aruba. With Auvik, I'm able to see all the types of devices that I have, which is extremely important.

We have a lot of remote users. It's nice that we're able to see them and keep up with what's going on there. That visibility is extremely important. We have a very small IT team and we have to stay on top of things quickly. Ours is a larger company and, with a small IT team, things can get away from us very quickly. It's nice to have that full visibility and those upfront notifications so that things don't get away from us very quickly.

The window view could be improved. For instance, if I'm in inventory and I'm looking at my devices, I don't like the way the window splits at the bottom. I want to be able to choose the way it appears.

Similarly, when it shows me all the devices on my network, I don't like the fact that I can't adjust the display to the way I want it. I can increase it, but it's very difficult to move up and down to see that part of it.

We've been on the free trial of Auvik for 12 days.

I'm very impressed with the stability of Auvik. I have not had it go down or had a major issue. I haven't even had a small issue with it.

We spoke to some people from Auvik and their support is very friendly. They're very helpful and very knowledgeable. I was extremely pleased with them.

Positive

We currently use five other solutions.

The price that Auvik is offering us is a little bit steep. I'm hoping we can figure out something else about the pricing, but right now, it's a little bit steep.

My boss has been looking at five or six different solutions and he came across Auvik. He asked me to check it out. I brought it in and started using it and, so far, overall, I like Auvik the best.

When comparing network monitoring solutions and there is a concern about pricing, my approach is that you get what you pay for. The functionality is extremely important to me. The pricing is extremely important to my VP. You need to write out the pros and cons based on your needs and figure out how the pros and cons compare with your budget. But I would suggest you give Auvik a chance.

I like Auvik's cloud-based solution much better than having an on-prem network monitoring solution. We still have a couple of servers that are not cloud-based. I like the cloud much better.

If you are looking for any type of monitoring software, make sure that you find a product that sees every type of device on your network. Auvik even shows me the redundancy that I have on there. For a network administrator that's very important.

We're an MSP, and we have deployed it to monitor the customer network and environment and make sure that the configurations are backed up and know when things were done.

It's easier to manage than what we used before, and licensing-wise, it's easier to understand what you're going to be paying for and not.

It has reduced repetitive low-priority tasks through automation, especially configuration backups. The time saved depends on the customer and how many configuration changes we make. It's difficult to measure it.

Previously, we didn't have visibility into our remote and distributed networks globally, but now we definitely do. This visibility is important. At this point in time, it's an invaluable piece of what we do. So, it's very important at this point in time.

Automated configuration backups and automated network diagrams are the most valuable.

The one feature we need is that when something goes down, we need a phone call, a text message, or something like that, not just an email alert. This is something they don't do. So, we have another service that does that for us. It would be nice to have that integrated into this, but at the moment, we have a way around it, which is with another partner of ours. It's not like we have to sign up to a new service for it, but it would definitely be nice if we can set up more detailed alerting schedules and things like that. However, we have found a way to make it work.

The automated network maps are really nice. Sometimes, I wish we could make the manual tweak to them because sometimes, it doesn't quite get what the network is like, but overall, it's doing a great job. It's a lot easier than doing it manually. Where it misses the mark is that we would want to make some manual tweaks, which is not possible, but the overall intuitiveness of the network visualization is pretty good.

Auvik helps to keep device inventories up to date, but I just wish it would be easier to sync with our overall inventory software. At the moment, most things live in Auvik. We would like to think it should be possible, but we haven't been able to get that to work. So, there's still some improvement to get there, but overall, it has definitely been an improvement.

Syncing the assets that are in there through a third-party program definitely needs some improvements. There should be better synchronization of its assets to different asset management platforms. The alerting capabilities can definitely use improvements. We use third-party for that at the moment, and then the way they look for performance on network equipment is really heavy on heavily used devices, such as firewalls. It taxes certain equipment pretty heavily when it does performance monitoring. So, the SNMP calling that it does can be way improved.

I have been using this solution for about five years or so.

Its stability is very good.

Its scalability is good so far. We use it for a variety of different customers but not all of our customers. We have about 20 sub-customers in our portal at the moment, and they are across the US with multiple locations in some instances. So, it's deployed in a variety of different ways.

I have interacted with their technical support. I would rate them a seven out of ten. In the beginning, they were way better and closer to a nine. Lately, it's been less.

Neutral

We were using LogicMonitor. At the time, LogicMonitor was overly complicated for what we needed it to do and also more expensive.

It was straightforward. We've deployed it at 20 different customers so far, and there was probably one instance where we needed to make some network changes for it to work. For most customers, we needed to add SNMP credentials and things like that, and generally, it just worked. When we get the correct credentials in place, after the collector is implemented, network mapping starts to populate immediately.

In terms of the time and cost to set up and maintain Auvik versus our previous solution, the previous one was also cloud-hosted. So, there was no maintenance cost there. So, it's the same, or it's virtually none because it's cloud-hosted.

In terms of maintenance, it's just set up and go. Auvik takes care of all the software updates, and you don't need to worry about anything. With an on-prem solution, you normally need to do the upgrades and everything yourself. However, some high-compliance customers can't give any data to the cloud providers. If we need to have something on-site, we can't use Auvik. That's the only issue we have, but for everything else, it's an advantage to have it in the cloud rather than to self-host.

We did it in-house. We are the integrator for other customers, and we've done more than 20 installations of it.

We have different people doing different deployments. It depends on the complexity of the network, how many searches we need to add SNMP entries to and gather credentials for, and things like that, but generally, it takes under an hour to set up the site and the collector.

We have definitely seen a time-to-value with this. I don't have the metrics, but I know it does what it needs to, and it saves time.

We have seen a reduction in our mean time to resolution (MTTR), but it's very difficult to know how much because previously, we didn't get alerted or knew of any issues going on. Now, we do, and now, we mainly get alerted before issues become issues. So, we can prevent them from ever cropping up, but it's very difficult to put a number on that.

The pricing is good, but I haven't looked at the pricing in a while. So, I don't know if it has changed or not. As far as I know, the pricing is still where it should be. I have no issues with it.

We didn't look at other solutions. It was recommended by a partner of ours. So, we looked at it. It did what it needed to do, and that's why we went with it.

If you're considering it, just install the trial, and it'll sell itself.

It's pretty easy once you get to know it. It's not that difficult. If you want to get into the advanced details, as with any software, it takes a little while to get used to all the advanced options, but in general, it's pretty easy to use. Its ease of use is important, but more important is that it works if something happens, which it does.

I am not sure about the effect its automation has had on our IT team's availability. It's difficult to say how busy they would be with or without it, but I would think it would have had a positive impact.

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten.

We used PRTG as our network monitoring stack and SolarWinds network configuration manager. SolarWinds has hacked a couple of years ago, so we have been left with PRTG but no configuration management. PRTG doesn't do network monitoring very well, but it's suitable for server monitoring. I had known about Auvik for quite some time and decided to give it a look. We tested it and got insights into our network we had never seen before. We have three disparate physical networks, which provide insight into how everything is interconnected.

We have 55 users spread out over all our locations. Our sales staff is remote, but we have a primary site with two physical networks and a disaster recovery site co-located with one physical network.

Auvik has made things more accessible, and we're much more agile in dealing with problems when they arise. It has also given us an extraordinary amount of visibility into the connections of the physical network. We've found many issues that we didn't know existed before.

We've probably saved around an hour each week using Auvik, but it varies. We're typically looking at the network stack to troubleshoot a problem, which doesn't happen that often. I usually log into Auvik when there are alerts unless something is misbehaving. However, I log on to Auvik at least once or twice a week to look at some of the net flow things or get a feel for what's going on in the network in general.

Auvik helps us keep our device inventories up to date, which has saved us time. We're a company in the financial sector, so we regularly go through compliance audits. Having a centralized location for configuration management is helpful because we don't need to spend time doing that manually throughout the year. The cloud solution enables us to have our configurations offsite in case of a disaster. That is a benefit. 

Network mapping is the most valuable feature. It's handy to see which devices are connected to what ports. The net flow stuff and traffic insights are also helpful. The network mapping is a little better than average. That's one area where PRTG falls short. It's tough to use. Auvik makes that a bit easier. 

Auvik's initial setup and discovery were effortless. Tuning the alerts takes a little bit more work. Ease of use is essential. Usually, there has been some alert, or we need a specific piece of information promptly. It must be easy for us to find that information.

The integrated platform is a nice-to-have, but it's not essential because we only have three sites: primary, guest, and DR. I only use Auvik for the primary site. For an MSP, the integrated single pane of glass would be a huge deal. 

I would relegate the network map to its area instead of being the focus of every page. The network map is in the front and center of the UI. I would rather have the option to look at it when I need it instead of having it on every single page. It's beautiful, but I don't need it on every page.

We've been using Auvik for about four months now.

I have found Auvik extremely stable. They do a lot of scheduled maintenance, but it's almost always on the weekends, so it doesn't impact us. 

Auvik looks incredibly scalable. We scaled it out to three sites without any problem.

I rate Auvik support seven out of 10. I want to give them an eight, but eight seems too generous. 7.5 is kind of where I want to be.

Neutral

We previously used PRTG and SolarWinds Network Configuration Monitor. SolarWinds got hacked, and their software was janky at best. It worked, but only because we didn't put a lot of load on it. We finally decided to find a solution that worked. We got along without it for about a year before realizing we needed a solution.

PRTG is an excellent server monitoring solution but a poor network monitoring solution. It does the job, but it's not good at it. Auvik is a fantastic network monitoring tool that does everything PRTG does, plus all the things that SolarWinds and CM did. It took the place of two different products. PRTG is usable, but it would take me 10 minutes to do something Auvik can do in a minute. Auvik is light years better in terms of usability and simplicity.

Setting up Auvik was surprisingly easy to do. The initial installation took a day or two, but it took a couple of weeks to start seeing the results I wanted.  The network map started to populate within 24 hours. It was so much easier than PRTG was and a lot faster.

I deployed it by myself. The involved tasks included setting up virtual machine collectors, modifying the firewall and ACL rules, setting up accounts, doing SSO, going through the training, and training my team.

I did the setup myself with a little bit of help from Auvik support.

It took a little time to get it up and running, but now that it's running, it hums along and does its job. I don't have hard data about our ROI, but we've seen value from Auvik. For example, say we had a bandwidth problem where traffic was slowing down on one of our guest sites. It would take me 15 to 20 minutes in PRTG to look at the net flows and figure out who was doing what. It takes me a minute or two in Auvik. That is a huge time saver.

I was under the impression that it was costly in a larger environment, but I was very wrong. It's pretty reasonable. The pricing is much better than I thought it was because it's based on network devices, not devices. That was a key thing that I did not know.

I like that it's flexible. If we have a device that we need to spin up for a month, we pay a little extra that month, and it goes back down. We don't have to renegotiate the contract or pay that amount forever.

We also considered Zabbix, but that seemed like a ton of work.

I rate Auvik nine out of 10. I've heard of Auvik for 10 years, but I always shied away from it because of the size and complexity of the networks I work with. I figured it would not be cost-effective because Auvik is a big name. However, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be when I looked at the quotes. The value for the money is high, so if you think you can't afford it, look into it anyway because you might be surprised.

I'm one of the biggest Auvik fans out there. I have used it personally, and I have brought it to every single company since 2015 as a product offering or for the internal use case. I currently own a firm, and I am yet to talk with Auvik. When the time comes, I will absolutely be doing its implementation for my company, and I will be offering Auvik to my customers.

I did its implementation for a company in the November of the last year. NetFlow was one of the biggest use cases, and it was for monitoring the type of traffic inside the network. We were also able to do a lot of Syslogging, and with one pane of glass, we were able to remote into the various routers and switches that we had.

It was deployed via Windows services and not as a virtual box inside VMware, which is probably better. We also had a cloud collection point, which was also a failover in our Chicago environment. I was deployed for five different sites along with the NetFlow application.

Auvik provided one of our clients the ability to see the network in its entirety. We were seamlessly able to implement an encryption deployment because we could see the whole network from a bird's eye view. It was internally implemented, so it didn't really help us in terms of performance, but it improved the productivity of the project on which we were working.

In terms of whether the automation of network mapping enabled junior network specialists to resolve issues directly and freed up senior-level team members to perform higher-value tasks, as an IT Manager, it has allowed me to delegate tasks. What was nice was that a lot of people were annoyed that Auvik just didn't combine everything, and everything was slow when Auvik did combine the whole map. When we broke it out the way Auvik told us to, which was by the site, it allowed me to actually assign a small networking team of two or three personnel essentially to that specific location. Everybody knew what exact equipment they were responsible for, and then it just trickled down to all of the other systems and processes. This made the communication more effective. We could hand off jobs and shifts at almost a seamless rate. When it came to documentation and password inside of Auvik, I knew and felt that they were secure. It has definitely decreased our mean time to resolution. It improved our overall productivity by at least 20%.

Its TrafficInsights feature shows the network bandwidth usage without the need for expensive, in-line traffic decryption. Most of the time, I'm able to get a pretty detailed kind of report or visionary on it. This feature is extremely important. From a managerial standpoint, we wanted to know what people were doing. The pandemic was huge for a lot of work for home people, and we wanted to know what our employees were doing on their computers at home. While they were connected to the VPN, Auvik provided us the ability to see whether they were watching Netflix and things like that, or what other type of bandwidth they were taking up. It was very amazing. We were canning people over it, and we were utilizing it to kind of take a temperature of our culture.

The TrafficInsights feature is helpful in showing where your system is experiencing performance issues. When we have a network problem, I'm able to see where and what's causing it. Back in October, we had some sort of network storm on our layer 3 in Chicago, and we were able to pinpoint different types of traffic going on. It was nothing, and packets were coming back at zero bits and different bits, and it was just noise. We were able to figure out that there was a loop somewhere. We had to physically go down and examine it, but without it, we probably would have chased our tails around or spent a lot more money than we did to resolve the issue.

The TrafficInsights feature has helped in improving our network performance. It improved our understanding of the network and what was going on. It helped us utilize other tools that were in place to block traffic, allow different traffic, or redirect different traffic.

It provides automated, out-of-the-box device configuration backups. I had to go in and do some configuration myself, but it was very simple. It automatically pulled the configuration from the device, and I could download it from Auvik. It probably saved me a couple of hours a week. At $100 or $200 an hour, it could save you a couple of thousand bucks a year.

It has definitely enabled us to consolidate and integrate other tools. Auvik integrates really well with other tools such as Lucidchart and different PSAs such as ConnectWise. With that, I can just utilize more functions inside these solutions. I don't necessarily have to have my Lucidchart. It integrates well where I don't have to add any more products. It is kind of that last missing link theme. It takes away from having to purchase a Visio chart, individually go and pull network reports, or have a product at each site that does that. It has this overarching big brother side. Not having to spend on these tools has probably saved us $10,000 to $20,000 annually in licensing costs. These are the software that you got to get rid of, and they are probably about $10,000 per piece.

NetFlow is probably one of the most valuable features. Since starting with Auvik, and seeing how far it has come, NetFlow has been one of the most valuable features. This feature is important because as a network administrator, you always want to examine what type of traffic is going on. You can limit users from watching Netflix on a route, or you can also pinpoint malicious activity going on in the network. So, I really do find Auvik to be a utility, not only from a network standpoint but also from a security standpoint. It provides a very good security feature in a way even though it is not branded like that.

Towards the actual Auvik side or the networking side, one of the most valuable features is its capability to quickly go out, discover, and have the intelligence to either utilize known usernames and passwords (when it comes to SNMP) or ask for the proper credentials. If they weren't provided, then it provides information about how to go retrieve them. When you examine the whole workflow or compare it to SolarWinds Orion, which got hacked, Auvik blows it out of the water because of this feature. This feature is important because when you're monitoring multiple locations and managing multiple employees, it is important to have that piece fit inside of that business continuity. I like to involve those things in security and business continuity when I am selling, deploying, or implementing it, thus making it the culture behind the product.

Its network discovery capabilities are very impressive. The discovery piece is amazing. I don't know if they have an AI or some type of advanced intelligence inside of their program that helps with the discovery piece. I haven't seen anything that discovers products that well and is able to label them, tag them, and pull as much information about them. I don't know what drives that engine, but I'm just absolutely blown away by it. It is cool.

Its ease of use is great. I was very pleased with how the junior employees, and even a couple of senior employees who had not worked with the product, were able to jump in, learn quickly, and work through the interface.

Some of the automation pieces for discovery still need a little bit more improvement. I wouldn't mind seeing some more security features as that's the world we're driving into. I know Auvik probably wants to try to keep itself separate because that's its brand, but even if they brought on board another brand that was able to plug into them, it would benefit us. It would lower some more network security costs if as a company, they are a one-stop shop. They have already got the network piece going. If they improved in that area and focused a lot on that, they would gain me as a customer, and they would probably gain a lot of others.

I have been using Auvik since 2015. 

I've been pretty impressed with its stability. I've been with Auvik for such a long time, and they've improved over the years. That's why I have nothing bad to say about them. Its stability in 2015 was great, but now with the redundancy and this cloud thing that they've got going, it is even more impressive.

They've improved it in that area a lot. It is scalable now.

In the previous job, we only paid for 20 billable endpoints, but we had more than 100 endpoints. We had three users. My title there was a senior systems architect, and then I had a network engineer under me. Above me was my boss who was the Chief Information Officer. 

If I had to rate its usage on a scale of one to 10 with 10 being eight hours a day and one being twice a week, they would probably fall in the five range. They probably use it four out of five days and for an hour or an hour and a half a day.

Currently, I don't have it as an offering in my own company. We are brand new, and I just opened this firm this year in February. As we get the ground and the ball rolling, we will be an Auvik customer within the next six months for sure.

Their technical support is the best. You can talk to an Auvik support technician about something Cisco-related. They don't have to, but they are very knowledgeable in that technology, which is so impressive. 

I'm glad, and I'm sure that Auvik hires nothing but educated people, which is probably why it's just that much better of an experience. I can talk to them, and they know what I'm talking about. A lot of the things that we talk about are complex things related to the Cisco technology, FortiGate, etc.

In the previous job, we had a third-party firm called Transcendent, and they resold SolarWinds Orion, but it was not good. I replaced it shortly with Auvik after Orion was hacked, and then we integrated their team into the product. We had it all on-prem, but we utilized this hybrid thing that Auvik had. If our on-prem collector went down, we weren't completely blind. We had redundancy built into it.

It makes me so much happier to be an Auvik customer and a champion of the product. I'm really glad that Auvik hasn't been touched like SolarWinds Orion. It gives me the confidence to keep utilizing and selling their products.

Auvik automatically updates the network topology at an interval of approximately 60 seconds, and you can also go in there and forcefully update it. We, however, never really relied on that technology. You could click on a spot, and it was a 50:50 shot if we had to move in and relabel it, which was better than SolarWinds where you get a 10% chance of getting it right. So, you're doing 90% of the configuration in SolarWinds versus having to do 40 to 50% in Auvik. That's why Auvik is better.

It was pretty complex. When you are setting up Auvik, you can set up the collector, which is straightforward. However, when you are trying to set up your router and switches, you have to have at least an associate-level degree in Cisco networking, for example, to understand the commands and the things that you need to do to prepare your router or firewall to work or integrate into the Auvik system. You need somebody who knows networking. When it comes to finding those people, they're expensive. It is probably cheaper to go through Auvik's offering at that point. If you have them on staff, utilize them. So, it is complicated, but it is no fault of their own. Auvik was easy, but they can't really control Cisco or the other people who have their technology.

The deployment probably took about two weeks. In terms of comparing the setup time of Auvik with other solutions, Auvik allowed me to do it from one location and in my chair. For other locations, I probably would have had to travel at least twice with a SolarWinds solution. I would have had to deploy it on physical hardware at that location and then use my Cisco DMVPN to make everything toss, which isn't really all that cool or modern. So, Auvik saves me traveling time and money, and I am able to do it from one location. Such cost savings probably translate to $10,000.

Our implementation strategy was to start with our home office, which was our data center here in Milwaukee, and then to set up a redundant site in Chicago. We discovered there, and then we went by the office and deployed it office by office through discovery. We didn't move to the next office till every piece of equipment was accounted for, labeled, and documented.

I have not used any third-party integrator. I did it myself. I also did all the maintenance, which included server maintenance, different updates, patches, backups, etc.

They weren't like that, but I can tell you that they've made it.

The cost for all the devices that we were billed at in my last job was about $2500 annually. It wasn't much.

It has the most reasonable pricing as compared to any product out there. I can't complain. It is amazing. It allows me to bundle inside the package what I charge customers per user per month. I don't charge them per device anymore. That's not how we do things in the industry. It is per user per month. The way Auvik is charging us allows me to do it. For example, if they charge $250 for a certain number of seats, I'm just going to write the costs onto per user per month. I have a few leftover licenses to use, which allows me to go out and make some more sales and give some freebies at some shows. So, it makes me very flexible. I am very happy with it.

It is billed by network devices. You could choose which billable device you want. What is really nice is that if you don't want one switch to be billable and the other one to be billable, you can do that. You just won't have the features that the billable switch has, which isn't horrible. Sometimes, you don't need that. What I'm really happy about is that Auvik doesn't force things on you and doesn't say, "You have to have all of this," and that's a great business model.

Sometimes, you can get overages if you go over your agreement per device, but they don't try to nickel-and-dime you on it. They're very reasonable, and it is easy to go in and look and see. They harp on it too. They ask you to go in and check and make sure you have what you want because you have this many licenses.

They didn't evaluate any other product.

To anybody utilizing it internally, I would advise going through Auvik directly. You'll pay a little bit more, but you'll have the support as an IT staff unless you want to come through a company like me. Auvik has just recently opened up their company to accept companies that want to utilize it internally. As a consultant with the landscape that I'm looking at right now, I advise Auvik to keep pricing in the same way.

I would advise taking your time and doing your implementation right the first time. You're going to gain more knowledge about your network, and the people coming after you are going to be able to support your network that much easier. 

Its ease of use is great, but I firmly believe that if you don't have experience in networking, you're going to fail. If you don't take the time or pay the money to sit down with Auvik and have them teach you to utilize the tool, you're doing yourself a disservice because of what and how inexpensive it is to get the tool and how valuable it is to have their time to teach you how to utilize the tool. They have an implementation team that will walk you through it. You have to pay for this service separately. I utilized this service once, and I've been able to implement it myself. I would highly recommend that somebody without experience should pay for this service at least once in their career.

It doesn't really help us put out fires before people or end-users even get to know that there is a problem. That could be because of the customers that I've had. However, Auvik does allow me to pinpoint the problem right away. I may get the alert two minutes later than my customer alerted me, but I'm able to get a fast resolution in place right away. It is easy. So, that's what I'm very happy about.

As a seller of Auvik, the cost-savings that it provides allow me to be more mobile. I don't have to hire as many employees because I can have them sitting in a chair watching a dashboard, which saves cost. If I'm a customer myself, I don't really see cost savings, and it is just another tool for my IT guys to be successful. So, it doesn't really save costs, but at the same time, it has a positive impact on the network.

As a consultant, Auvik has shown me the habits of end-users or IT staff. For example, Auvik has been able to pick up on rogue, small six-port switches that get plugged in somewhere under somebody's desk. I am also able to see the weird things that get plugged in or turned on in the network. I am also able to have conversations, but it is just weird to see how that technology or software translates to the behavior of these people. It is kind of neat.

Its time to value is what it is. There is a cost to everything, and there is really no value when it comes to implementation. Especially with how I am going to have it implemented in my environment, I have to ask somebody with a reasonable amount of knowledge, and he is going to cost me $80,000 to $100,000 a year to go out and implement. It is just a cost, and there is really no way around it.

I would rate Auvik a 10 out of 10.

We are a multinational company in almost 55 countries. One of the reasons why we selected Auvik was we wanted to have insights into our networks. Ultimately, we can control them at a central level. Auvik was the best fit because it has:

1. A cloud-based solution using a SaaS model. 
2. Visibility into end users using tools. 
3. Terminal auto-connect, where we can connect devices from Auvik. 
4. Some sort of an audit. 
5. Backup consultations in the tool, which it maintains. 

It has really eased our life in terms of network operations.

It is improving our network operations in 55 countries, including the US, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Oceania. 

Auvik automatically updates network topology. Since it automatically updates the topology, we proactively know what is happening in a country or our branch offices. It also alerts us if there is a topology change, e.g., if it discovers anything new in that country. So, it has reduced the number of failures in our operations. We went from being reactive to proactive. So, we are no longer reacting to what is happening and others are doing. This has saved us about two to three hours a day. We used to spend two to three hours every morning checking the firewall and router logs for malicious behavior.

The automation of network mapping enables our junior network specialists to resolve issues directly, freeing up senior-level team members to perform higher-value tasks. The type of views that we have Auvik automatically discovering has helped our operations, as issues get resolved at Level 1 or 2 with the help of the topology. They don't go to Level 3 until they are serious. 

Auvik has decreased our mean time to resolution. Around three years back, there always used to be a heavy load on Level 3. Nowadays, in a month, there are maximum two tickets that reach Level 3. They all get sorted out in Level 1 and 2.

The most valuable feature is the auditing part. Whenever we are doing any changes, it captures those changes. Date-wise, if we want to refer back to them, we just need to view the date when we did those changes and it will give us a comparison of what has been changed from the last concept. 

The Auvik terminal's service is a value-add to our operations.

It is very user-friendly. It is easy to use, understand, and deploy. My guys have not taken any training from Auvik, but we have learned the systems quite quickly. Because it is user-friendly, you don't need professional training for it.

Auvik's network discovery capabilities are awesome. It not only discovers the network, but it also gives you a map by designing how your network will look like in your environment.

Auvik has very good alerting modules. If a connection or device goes down, it alerts us right away. A good part of that alert is it has some sort of intelligence mechanism. For example, if the router or network device has some sort of malicious activity or critical issue, then it alerts us upfront. It will say, "Hey, you have some issues that you might need to check." It alerts us to critical elements before something bad happens. 

They need to improve the reporting system. They still don't have a proper reporting system in Auvik. They have built a dashboard in Power BI using APIs, but they should build some sort of report within Auvik itself. If Auvik fixes the reporting or comes up with a good reporting module, it will change the game.

I have already talked with the CEO of Auvik about this. He agreed that he will be working on getting some reporting systems in Auvik. As of now, they only have reporting via Power BI, and it is an additional cost to get the Power BI licenses. Another drawback, the Power BI reporting is not that accurate and you really have to struggle to get the reports.

I have been using Auvik for three years.

It is a SaaS-based tool. Auvik takes care of their hosting environment. So far, I found this solution to be more stable compared to other tools that we have used on-premises.

The scalability is good. An important thing about Auvik is that this tool is available from anywhere. For example, we are in a pandemic situation today and forced to work from home. Auvik gives us the capability to do our network operations from anywhere. This is one of the important features that I like about Auvik. For the on-premise solution, you have to make sure you are in the company network and have the VPN connected with the resources.

In my department, we have 46 people using it.

We are expanding Auvik into other countries. For now, we have expanded it into Europe and Asia as well as starting to expand it into the US. So, we will have a long journey using Auvik.

Their technical support is good. They need some improvement. They are not quick. Whenever we raised an issue with Auvik, which was two or three times, the technical support was a bit slow in responding to our issues.

We used to manage the firewall and routers manually, connecting to the countries' VPN. Today, we don't need to have them connected. We can just manage it from a single Auvik console. This has really changed our network operations. 

The initial setup is an easy, straightforward process. You just need to download the Auvik collector, and it is just three steps: next, next, and next. Then, it is complete. From the employee perspective, it saves you at least four to five hours. Other tools take people  a working day to deploy one site. Whereas, Auvik takes just a few minutes. The reason for that is they have their automated discovery capabilities, where you just put in your SNMP credentials.

I deployed myself in five minutes.

Three years ago, we used to work out of the office for hours doing maintenance, like patching and upgrading tools. My guys are no longer doing night duty for operations like that. We don't do any maintenance on Auvik because it is done by Auvik.

Compared to other products, Auvik's pricing is more feasible since you get all its features. You pay for licenses on a per network device basis. It monitors hypervisors, but does not bill for that. There are no additional costs, which is something that I like.

We did evaluate a couple of tools, both on-premises and cloud, then we decided to go with Auvik.

Auvik works smoothly compared to other tools. It also discovers the entire network in a respective area, then Auvik maps it automatically and gives you a good topology. This was a key factor in our decision.

Auvik is for any networking department. If you have a very complex network or a lot of devices that need to be monitored, Auvik would be the best fit. Auvik is not for a simple environment. If you have 10 devices or 10 branch/site offices, then Auvik is not a good fit because it will become expensive.

We are still in the testing phase of the TrafficInsights feature, which gives you full visibility into what is happening on your network. Also, the TrafficInsights feature will help you to say where protocols or services are consumed heavily. In the long run, it helps you to optimize your bandwidth based on your country consumption. It gives you a lot of details and integrated traffic insight, which we unfortunately need to hold back on because of data protection laws. 

It doesn't configure out-of-the-box automatically. That is a manual job.

For an enterprise environment, I would rate this solution as 10 out of 10.