Auvik Network Management (ANM) Reviews

We primarily use Auvik for managing and monitoring devices, including network devices, access points, and printers. We utilize Auvik's alerts to notify us of offline devices or any unusual behavior it detects, such as high interface utilization or low disk space. Additionally, we employ Auvik to automate the backup of our network switches.

We implemented Auvik because we lacked visibility into potential network issues, such as switch or access point utilization. While I have a wireless controller that provides some insights, Auvik unifies this information into a single, comprehensive view. This centralized visibility enables us to proactively identify and address network problems.

Auvik is deployed in a hybrid model because we have an on-prem collector that sends the information to the cloud.

Auvik is intuitive.

The ease of use provides me with peace of mind. It eliminates the need for me to independently explore certain aspects.

It has significantly reduced our mean time to resolution. For one particular issue, it saved me an estimated 10 to 20 hours at a minimum. Additionally, it has enabled me to respond to a handful of other issues one to two hours quicker.

We have been enabled to dedicate less time to the setup and maintenance of the solution and reduce the time required for issue resolution.

I have utilized configuration backups to replace equipment. I have employed alerting mechanisms to correlate user concerns with known alerts, enabling me to grasp the situation promptly. I can inform users of the need to replace toner cartridges or alert them to power outages caused by switch failures. Overall, this process aids in identifying the expected network status.

One of the primary advantages we observed with Auvik was the immediate availability of switch backups. This enabled me to seamlessly track configuration changes between backups. This was particularly valuable during the initial months when I was implementing numerous network switch installations. Auvik's ability to quickly adapt and incorporate new information is impressive. The only aspect that might require a time investment is understanding the normalcy of specific bandwidth or statistical data. However, this is not a learning process but rather a data-collection exercise.

The monitoring and backup are the most valuable features.

The Auvik network map and dashboard are not reliable enough to provide a real-time view of our network.

Metrics should be reported for individual devices rather than IP addresses.

I believe it would be highly beneficial to display the paths over which each VLAN is accessible on the network map.

I have been using Auvik for almost six months.

The stability of Auvik is excellent. The only time it goes down is when they announce it beforehand for maintenance.

Auvik should be extremely scalable. I have not seen any issues in that regard.

The technical support response time is slow. With 20 years in the service industry and nearly 30 in IT, I find that while the technical support representatives are polite, I sometimes feel more knowledgeable than they are. It's frustrating explaining my concerns to level one support only to have them escalate the issue to an engineer, leaving me in a communication limbo for potentially weeks.

Neutral

The initial deployment was uncomplicated. While Auvik itself was very easy to use, it requires SNMP to be configured correctly on all devices. This is the time-consuming aspect of the process. If SNMP is already configured on all devices and we have the necessary information, the setup can be quite straightforward and likely take less than an hour.

I was the only one from our organization involved in the deployment.

We used Auvik for the implementation.

Initially, I was an enthusiastic advocate for this product. I told many people about it and was very excited about its potential. However, once I started using it regularly, my enthusiasm waned somewhat. While the product does excel in certain areas, the recurring cost can be a deterrent. Overall, I believe the product is fairly priced, but I would consider it a better value if it were improved in certain areas.

If an alternative monitoring solution is not available, Auvik will take care of it. While we pay our MSP to monitor the servers, Auvik provides me with the essential information I need to stay informed about their status at no charge.

I would rate Auvik seven out of ten.

Auvik may require minor maintenance after adding or correcting connections, as some of these changes may not be displayed correctly.

Ensure the SNMP configuration is accurate, as Auvik relies heavily on it for network monitoring and management. Additionally, use managed switches instead of unmanaged switches to avoid potential network disruptions and complications.

Auvik is an excellent tool for monitoring all our infrastructure devices, particularly network switches, servers, etc. We also use it to manage assets such as printers and workstations.

We use multiple products in our system, and Auvik is one of the top tools when it comes to monitoring; it does its job well, and we're pleased with it.

The product significantly helps us; the real-time updates and alerts, and the rapid response time those facilitate, are beneficial. It gives us a lot of confidence knowing that if something goes down and needs to be fixed, Auvik will notify us immediately, and we can start working on a solution right away.

The solution's automation had a significant effect on our IT team's availability, especially when it comes to issues that may arise on the network. Automation provides us with real-time information, which allows us to resolve quickly.  

We've seen a massive reduction in our meantime to resolution (MTTR) with Auvik; having real-time problem alerts is a game-changer for us. 

The alerting is fantastic; if something goes offline, we're notified right away. It gives us a lot of peace of mind knowing the solution will alert us to issues automatically 24/7.

Once the solution is set up, the monitoring and management functions are straightforward to use. This is important because we want our systems to be as easy to use as possible for our daily operations. 

Overall, Auvik's network visualization provides us with a lot of information. The interface, icons, and mapping showing the icons and labels for particular devices are intuitive; the solution does a good job of providing us with the information we need in this respect.  

The product helped reduce repetitive, low-priority tasks through automation, which is a game-changer for us. Automation benefits our team and department, as well as other departments and business units because we can integrate their systems into our Auvik system. 

Auvik provides good visibility into our remote and distributed networks, although most of our infrastructure is local. We have data centers in different locations, and all our network devices are visible on the Auvik interface, including VMs, servers, and workstations. Everything can be integrated into our system.  

Comparing Auvik's cloud-based solution versus on-prem network monitoring solutions, being in the cloud is another game-changer. There can be some advantages with on-prem, but we prefer cloud-based, so it's great that we have that option. The cloud is the future, and everyone is moving in that direction, so that's a big plus for Auvik.  

The ability to subcategorize our inventories, between physical and VM servers, for example, would be a welcome addition. 

We've been using the solution for six to seven years. 

Auvik is very stable; we've experienced 99.99% uptime. It always provides us with the accurate information we need.

The stability could be better. Auvik can cater for many units and devices, but adding subcategories would make scaling easier.

The product has been steady since implementation, so we never needed to contact technical support.

I arrived after the solution was implemented, and before the implementation, I assume everything was done manually.

I wasn't at the company when Auvik was implemented, but as with all systems, the implementation can be tricky.

Auvik sometimes announces maintenance on their end, which is all done in the cloud, so the solution doesn't require any maintenance on our end. 

The pricing is fair; it's just the right price for what the solution provides.

To someone comparing network monitoring solutions but concerned about pricing, with the features and automation Auvik provides, it's on top of the game. There are some cheaper options, but Auvik is one of the top tools, and I recommend it to anyone with the budget.  

I rate the solution an eight out of ten. Auvik could be better, but overall, I highly recommend the tool.

We don't currently use the solution for managing device inventories. 

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 to manage our network, infrastructure, and servers across various locations. We don't use the automation portion of Auvik except for automated integration with our ticketing system. Auvik sends alerts, but we haven't set it up to resolve issues automatically.

In the past, we had to use the web UI or an SSH prompt to access a network switch and make modifications, but now we find that we can do that through Auvik. It saved us a significant amount of time by bringing everything under one roof. It's a big time saver to go to the Auvik website and make those changes. It's hard to quantify, but I would say it reduces the time needed by around 80 percent. We can respond to alerts and resolve them more quickly. I estimate that decreases our resolution time by about an hour per alert.

Auvik has also helped us manage our IT team. We have multiple people in the department, so it's also nice that Auvik creates a record of who checks the network equipment. I can find out precisely who checked and cleared an alert or who might have tunneled into a piece of equipment to make changes. The audit trail benefits us greatly.

We get alerts about any issue that's happening in the infrastructure. We're able to take those alerts. If it's a low-severity issue that can be fixed over time, we can assign it to a lower-level engineer. The critical alerts go to higher-tier engineers who can respond accordingly. The Auvik platform makes it very easy. Some alerts come in by default. Many of them are already pretty well-tuned to detect what's critical and what is just informational. We've built on their current alert system with a few modifications, but those alert systems allow us to prioritize who resolves the alerts. I don't think the device inventories save us time, but it's nice to see our count. 

The ability to map out the network topology is one of the top features I like about Auvik. It's one of the best on the market. They have a feature called Loopback Detection, which has helped us, in many scenarios easily detect that without having to physically go to the location to see if there is a loopback somewhere. 

The monitoring and management features are easy to use, and the documentation Auvik provides is clear and easy to understand. We set up a collector, and it's on its way. We have never had any trouble. It's great because even my junior engineers can set it up without a problem. Auvik offers a single integrated platform for managing our devices and infrastructure in one place. It isn't essential, but it's nice to have.

Although the network topology is excellent, it has a hard time picking up some devices on the network. A device might not be fully supported, or Auvik is unable to pull all the information from it. 

The only other problem is the SNMP logging credentials. Sometimes, when I input these credentials, logging into the devices takes a decent amount of time to see if the credentials work. It would be fantastic if they could improve that.

I have been using Auvik for about three years.

Auvik is highly stable, and they communicate well about the maintenance windows. I don't think I've ever had Auvik go down in the middle of the day. It's very reliable.

Auvik is extremely scalable. They have options for scaling to multiple sites. I don't know if there's even a theoretical limit to its scalability.

I rate Auvik's support a ten out of ten. They're super knowledgeable. They typically have an answer for any question I throw at them.

Positive

Setting up Auvik is very straightforward. We started with a trial, and from there, we could follow the guides to get everything set up. Our initial trial deployment was out-of-the-box, but once we purchased it, we reached out to Auvik to get it perfected. 

Our deployment team consisted of me and one other person, so there were two people to deploy to every site. It was quick once everything was set up the way we wanted. It was a staged deployment, so it took longer than usual. If I were to do it right now, it probably wouldn't take longer than an eight-hour day.

We deployed it ourselves with vendor support. We got everything set up and configured the way we wanted in an hour or so.

I don't know if time-to-value is necessarily a metric I would consider because it's mostly internal, but from a productivity standpoint, we can respond to IT issues faster. I don't see it in my organization, but I can totally see how companies that support multiple clients could see a time to value.

I believe that Auvik is one of the most expensive tools, but it is also the best.

We tested various solutions, but Auvik was our first choice. However, I wouldn't say we tried other solutions in the same depth as we used Auvik. It was three years ago, so I'm having difficulty remembering names. There was another solution that was part of the ticketing system we use. We tried that because it was built in, but it was subpar compared to Auvik.

I rate Auvik a ten out of ten. If you plan to implement Auvik, you should deploy it in a testing environment to ensure it's running perfectly and customize the alerts that you want to get. With the out-of-the-box configuration, you will be getting alerts that you might not necessarily care about. If you take the time to go through those alerts and set everything up, it will probably make your life much easier.

I use the monitoring on a daily basis. I receive the alerts. We have two monitoring software solutions and Auvik complements the other one. We use Auvik to cover the gaps in the other one. We get alerts from both sides.

Working at an MSP, I come across very different networks. No two are quite the same. Auvik makes it really easy for me to get a logical outlay of what switches are connected to what switches and what equipment is connected to what equipment. It takes a lot of the detective work out of the equation for me.

Without a doubt, it has affected the visibility our IT team has into remote and distributed networks. Having everyone in one portal, they click on their client and, as long as we have it configured properly and we're getting that accurate picture, it's absolutely incredible. That visibility is fantastic. We'll hop on a call and the other guy will also log in to Auvik. We can say, "Hey, search for this. Look at this path. The VLAN is everywhere except on this device. What are we going to do here?" It really helps us out with collaboration and brainstorming.

Auvik makes it much easier to trace connections and log in to a switch without having to jump through all those extra hoops. It makes logging into switches accessible for some people who may not be comfortable with that.

The network mapping, the logical layout, is the part that I love the most, showing what switch is connected to what switch. I couldn't live without it. That is the big selling point for me. If somebody asks me a question about a network, I log in to Auvik, 100 percent, to look at their network before I can make any decisions or answer any questions. The overall intuitiveness of the network visualization is excellent. I don't know how I lived without this solution before.

Most people will also use Auvik for one of my favorite functions that it provides, the remote terminal. That's pretty much the preferred way as far as management goes. We still have people logging in to a service locally using SSH and getting into networking equipment. But personally, in the last year, I have really shifted over to Auvik-first management for my tasks.

In addition, we are all about consistency, and having one unified platform is very nice. Familiarity breeds efficiency. It's important to use a unified platform because you're going to know where things are at for all your clients. You're going to know what you're looking for and where your tools are. That's why I've been shifting to Auvik-first to administrate my network devices. I could be at any one of 150 clients in a day, remotely, and Auvik makes it such a breeze because they're all showing up in one platform.

I have a love-hate relationship with the network mapping. Navigating around the map on more complex networks is pretty painful if you're showing endpoints. I know there are filters to knock it down, but sometimes that's not enough. It handles like "early-90s Java."

For instance, I just pulled up one of the clients that I work with a lot. When I get a view of the entire network, it's highly complex. I see a lot of it. When I filter it down to just network items it's great. That sure helps simplify it. But actually trying to get around, for example, if I need to go to the right, I can't quite grab things and move them. It's just not super responsive. 

I would love to be able to use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out on the map, but instead, it scrolls the page, which it's fine. But sometimes it resizes the map too. I have a really high-power system and that map resizing sometimes even chugs my computer down.

In addition, I would love to be able to drag assets and place them where I want to, maybe on a session-by-session basis. Sometimes, if there are a bunch of devices to the left or the right of the core switch or stack or router, the connections blend together. I would love to be able to grab a device or a device group and drag it out of the way a little. It would still maintain the links between the icons, but the ability to place the icons where I want them, spread out a little bit, would be really cool.

I've been using Auvik for just over two years.

I have a very positive impression of its stability.

We had some kind of database error with accounts last year but that was resolved in a reasonable amount of time.  And I do see maintenance banners up for planned downtime, but I can only think of one or two times that I thought, "I really wish I had Auvik, but it's down right now." It's such a rarity so I'm not complaining. 

The stability is very good as far as I'm concerned.

Aside from making the map too big, the scalability is great.

We have it deployed in about 150 locations.

I haven't needed to contact customer support. It's intuitive enough that I've been able to get through it on my own.

I did not use another solution previously. I actually spent a decade saying, "Man, I really wish there was something out there like this." When I saw Auvik, my jaw dropped.

I was not involved in the initial setup but I have installed the agent.

To my knowledge, there is no recurring maintenance. Occasionally I need to move an agent or restart an agent if it stops responding, or restart a server.

Part of the value of Auvik comes from being able to trace connections graphically and visually, rather than having to manually back-trace MAC tables. That alone saves enough time for me.

The only other thing I've ever heard of that is comparable to Auvik is something called The Dude. I looked it up once. I don't get intimidated by technology, but that was pretty intense and I never looked back. When somebody showed me Auvik, it blew my mind because it was pretty much exactly what I'm looking for.

Install it on more than one client, make sure that you have your network scoped properly for scanning, and enjoy. Also, make sure you have your SNMP set up on all your devices. That's the hard part.

Within the last year, we made it a requirement for all of our clients to pay for an Auvik license. This is required software for us, going forward. That's a win.

Although I don't know anything about the pricing, I would definitely say look into Auvik. If the price is right, I understand why our organization has made it required, per client. If I was doing this on my own, Auvik would be a requirement for me as well.

In our organization, everybody uses it and everybody recommends it. Everybody says, "This is the way to go." Everybody hears about the efficiency, ease of use, and what's going to cause the least amount of stress. Everybody here likes it.

We are an MSP. We've got about 500 clients. So, multitenancy is pretty important to us. We're only interested in monitoring and managing network devices, and we define that as switches, routers, access points, and ESX hosts. Even though some of the things that we traditionally consider to be a computer—such as a laptop, a workstation, or a server—appear in Auvik, we do not do any management of them there.

The RMM platform that we're currently using is wonderful when it comes to servers, laptops, desktops, and all that, but it is absolutely horrible for properly detecting or identifying a network device. In other words, SNMP to properly identify a device flat out did not work and does not work in our other solution. Auvik fills that gap and does a pretty good job when it comes to that. We have always used multiple applications, and it comes down to finding out what the strengths are of a particular application. Auvik does a great job when it comes to networking devices, but we couldn't do nearly as much as what we do for servers and workstations. So, we use it according to its strengths and our other tools according to theirs.

Auvik is a SaaS-only product. There is no on-prem version. There are some definite pros and cons to it. Having to rely on someone else to handle all of the security aspects of something that's SaaS, especially in today's world, can be a little bit nerve-racking. When it is on-prem, you've got full control of ingress and egress. You can lock down the firewall and do all of that good stuff, but at the same time, not having to mess with all of the infrastructure and the things that are required to make a product function is pretty valuable. So, we don't have to worry about storage space, server speed, etc.

It provides a single pane of glass, which is very important. We service around 20,000 endpoints, and they include network devices and computing devices. The fewer places our technicians have to go to get information or address an issue, the better it is.

It has definitely given us a much better inventory of the devices that are on client networks. It has also got a fairly decent API integration with other products. We also make use of Meraki products, and through the API, we're able to pull those and all of their data into Auvik.

It is very good for visualizing the network mapping/topology. The network map and visualization of what's going on are really good. For somebody who is not a network engineer but needs to troubleshoot something, it is invaluable. If they're on call and it is the middle of the night, being able to look and see whether there is a switch loop or something weird going on is invaluable.

It is very intuitive in terms of network visualization. It is almost like an org chart. You can see the ingress point at the very top, and then you can see what's connected to other things. It visually flows very nicely from top to bottom to give you a quick idea of where things are.

It has reduced the visibility of our IT team in a positive sense. We like our techs to be able to work under the hood and not disrupt clients, and it definitely provides a lot of the right remote tools that are needed to go in and address issues or provide updates, firmware, and things like that, but visibility for us is really not a key. As an MSP, we do have a number of ways to provide evidence of the value that we bring and the work we have been doing under the hood, such as the number of patches that have been successfully applied and things like that. 

It does a very good job of keeping device inventories up-to-date. It helps our teams focus on high-value tasks, which goes back to the initial configuration of determining which alerts are high priority and which ones are just standard response and maintenance. They were very easy to configure.

Auvik keeping our device inventories up-to-date has saved us time in a huge way. A part of the value that we provide is that we help our clients develop a five-year tech plan so that they can start to budget. Having an up-to-date and accurate inventory of all of those network devices feeds into those reports through our own automation on the backend. So, it is very valuable.

It is a combination. The discovery portion of it is extremely valuable. It allows us to get a good inventory of what is actually on a client's network. You can turn on TrafficInsights, which is basically a NetFlow feature, for troubleshooting. It allows you to get more detailed information on what's going on with a particular device. So, you could determine why a client is complaining that the internet is slow at 1:00 p.m. every day.

Its interface is very sluggish, and that's probably its biggest impediment. 

It is easy to set up. However, with the wizard-like setup, the choices are lacking. So, there is a lot more that we feel like we could be doing. If it is outside of their pre-configured monitors, you start getting into a level of difficulty.

I have been using this solution for close to three years.

It is very stable. There is sluggishness in the interface, but it is rock-solid.

There could be some potential problems with scalability. We took on a client not too long ago that was fairly close to enterprise-level. We were forced to break them up into different geographic sites so that the web interface would present smaller chunks at a time. That was because it simply fell to its knees if you tried to open up the full site for this particular client. It was just too much for the interface to handle, and that was definitely a negative because it would've been really advantageous for us to see the full network map as opposed to seeing only small pieces of it.

They do a solid job.

Positive

We used to use PacketTrap, and it had basically gone end of life. It had a lot of good features. It was an older product. There was a one-time payment upfront for it, and there were no recurring fees. Those were the days, and those days have gone. Because PacketTrap was the end of life, we were forced to go for something to take care of our clients.

Switching to Auvik hasn't saved us any time. It also hasn't reduced our mean time to resolution (MTTR). That's because the product we had before was solid. It had just aged and had to be replaced.

It is easy to set up. 

We have seen time-to-value with Auvik. Despite the sluggishness of the interface, it has definitely provided a significant amount of value for us.

Its pricing is definitely competitive with everything else that's out there. If somebody has not shopped for a product like Auvik for a while, there's probably going to be some sticker shock because it is not cheap, but that's true for all the products that we looked at.

Its pricing is fair based on what I've seen for everything else that's out there in the market. They're certainly not looking to gouge people. For whatever reason, network management products are just expensive. Before this, we were using a product for which we had paid a one-time payment upfront. We had paid for it and bought it for years and years. There was no additional cost for us. So, we definitely suffered from sticker shock when we started shopping around.

There were quite a few. We looked at around seven different top-level products. We did product reviews for around a year. We were looking for something that was the best fit for how we tend to do business, and Auvik came at the top.

We have a checklist that we go through when we're evaluating a product, which includes:

• Things that are important to us and are required in a product
• Its integration with our other systems

A good example is that we use ConnectWise Manage for our ticketing system. So, it has to have full integration with that. We have multiple teams that handle different verticals, and each one of those teams has its own board. A lot of the products that we evaluated claimed to have good integration with ConnectWise Manage, but when we were really getting into the nitty-gritty of the evaluation, we came to find out that they could only send tickets to one single board. That was a deal killer for us right there.

Having a good, robust API is also very important to us. Again, some products would claim that they had a good API. We would go in and research it only to find out that you could get the minimal amount of information possible, which is a no for us. There is an API, but it is not useful.

Ease of setup is extremely important to us. Some of the products were very complex to go in and set up and configure. In addition, not all products provided the ability to set certain rules that would be global at the top of our hierarchy so they would automatically be applied to all clients below. Fortunately, Auvik has that, and we were able to make really good use of that hierarchy and inheritance to our advantage.

I would advise negotiating as hard as you can on price per agent because that did help us do a fair amount of pre-planning. This would have been true for any of the solutions that we looked at. You need to know how you plan on grouping your clients, or how you plan on organizing. Knowing how that structure is going to flow makes a huge difference in your onboarding time.

It hasn't helped us reduce repetitive, low-priority tasks through automation. There is almost no automation. It is great at learning. It is great at visualization and things like that, but there is no automation in there. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten. There are areas where it could do better, but all things considered, it is a good, solid product.

Our primary use case is to have a monitoring solution for our managed service clients. That was something we were offering, but we weren't really doing well on that front, in terms of having a proactive monitoring solution. That was the primary pain point we were trying to fix.

The main benefit is that we are able to offer better proactive support. Previously, we would deploy a lot of Meraki firewalls and we wouldn't really have proactive support on that. Meraki only offers email alerting, so alerts would come in by email and we wouldn't see them and we'd have to devise other means. With Auvik, we provide a quicker turnaround time for network issues. 

It also enables our lower-tier techs to support everything. Normally, especially on the network side, the lower-tier techs are not as able when it comes to conceptualizing the network and visualizing how it's set up. Auvik's dynamic mapping really helps flesh that out. Even less-technically-oriented clients are able to look at Auvik and understand how their network is functioning, at least at a basic level.

In addition to the overall efficiency improvements due to the proactive alerting and the dynamic mapping, the ease of exporting the data that Auvik provides is a big benefit. There are several options throughout the product that allow you to export your data as an Excel spreadsheet. That means you can get the data that Auvik is using to show you everything. That makes it very easy to do asset inventory or to assess the end-of-life of certain products. It takes a lot of the human involvement out of those processes.

Also, in the past, there was a lot of effort that we'd have to put into keeping assets and inventory up to date, and it was mostly through manual data entry. Auvik cuts a lot of that out. Once you have the network monitoring set up, it has all that data that we would normally have to manually enter into ConnectWise, specifically. Now, that information can carry over automatically. So instead of having to do 10 or 15 clicks, and a bunch of typing for each configuration, you just get the network monitoring set up and set up the inventory syncing, and it happens in a couple of minutes.

By keeping inventories up to date, it saves us time. We heavily utilize ConnectWise configurations for determining contract renewals and we're able to focus more on that aspect, and less on ensuring accurate counts.

Another benefit is the ability to use the connector as a "jump-box "and get into other devices. Previously, we would have to either VPN into a network or get into the network through some other remote means, to troubleshoot and configure. But with Auvik, you have the ability to do quick, one-off troubleshooting commands. A technician can do that. You can also get into all the network devices and computers through Auvik itself.

And given the way it alerts, and how it shows the product, it does produce a lower mean time to resolution. 

Auvik has a dynamic mapping feature. Once you get things loaded, it will show you how everything is connected. It also shows the alerts on that map, making it a very quick and human-readable way to dig into it. Overall, that visualization is really nice, especially the dynamic facet. You don't have to make those connections manually. Auvik does all that automatically. The mapping is very intuitive. The filters have a little learning curve, but even the part that isn't immediately intuitive is not hard to pick it up.

Other useful features are the typical ones, like configuration management. It will keep track of configuration changes on devices and log them.

The alerting is also definitely important. The solution integrates well with ConnectWise Manage and with Opsgenie, which we use for alerting techs after-hours.

It primarily monitors network devices by SNMP and command-line interface. They only charge for network devices, such as wireless LAN controllers, firewalls, switches, and routers, but they'll also grab and monitor printers through SNMP, Windows devices, and Windows hypervisors through WMI credentials.

Auvik also has a really good feature for keeping device inventories up to date. We haven't used it too much, because of the way that we've set it up. Auvik ends up overriding some of the stuff we do internally, but it has a very good way of keeping assets and inventory up to date. The most useful is the ConnectWise integration. It can find certain values, like serial numbers and it will either produce it if it doesn't exist or create a configuration in ConnectWise to match the device. It's really good for keeping all of our products up to date with the information.

I would like to see more extensive syslog capabilities. It can ingest syslogs and I think it can alert based on quantities of messages. You can also look back at some of the messages, but it's not a forensics level syslog.

Also, when it comes to mapping and visualizations, there are some imperfections. If Auvik can't exactly deduce how something is connected, it will show an inferred connection and that makes the map a little messy, but with the preset filters, which you can use to only look at network devices or known connections, you can get all the clutter out of there. Overall, it does a great job, but it would be nice if it had a better export feature. You can export it in a usable format, but it's not on the level of a Visio drawing, if you are trying to produce a network diagram. There's a lot of "in-Auvik" usability, but not necessarily outside of Auvik.

I've been using Auvik for a little over a year.

We have had no issues of note, in terms of stability. There may have been one incident, but it was so minor that we don't even remember it. We have not had outage issues. They're usually pretty good about notifying you about outages and, usually, there are no adverse effects.

The scalability is great. It's designed for an MSP, so adding more clients is extremely easy. We have yet to have an issue. Granted, we're probably not one of their larger deployments. Maybe at scale, when you get bigger, there are some issues, but so far, with our setup, we've never had any issues with scalability.

It is a cloud solution with an on-prem agent that you deploy at each site. We have it deployed for about 30 clients, and there are multiple collectors per client.

So far, the tech support has been great. The only issue is that they have up to a 24-hour turnaround. Typically it's not that long but it's only available during business hours. For any type of issue we have, we can typically wait that long.

There would be an issue if a high-paying client had some sort of emergency situation.

Positive

We were dabbling in PRTG Network Monitor. We were not using it in the same way but we would use it for occasional troubleshooting and gathering the same kind of data. That was what we would recommend before having our own product: to do a PRTG instance, given they give you the first 100 sensors for free, which covers a lot of niche issues.

The initial setup is a straightforward process. After the Auvik code is implemented, it starts to populate network mapping within 10 minutes. Our average time for a full deployment is about an hour and a half.

At a lot of the places where we initially put it in, we didn't have great documentation on what was in that environment or how to get into the devices. If that information is already there, and especially if you have already had a solution in place, it should take less than an hour to get a site completely into Auvik.

There is no maintenance of the solution required at our end. Our support team of about 10 utilizes Auvik pretty frequently in the day-to-day. And client-facing managerial types, like chief information officers, use it quarterly to pull data and information. Other users include anyone else who needs to do troubleshooting or needs information. We have systems and network administrators who occasionally look at it, just to get a feel for the network.

The time-to-value was instantaneous. Once we got the deployment done, it immediately allowed us to better support networks in a proactive manner.

We were looking at a few options but it was hard finding the right balance. Some options had a lot of customization and you could get into the nitty-gritty. LogicMonitor was the primary example, but price-wise it was too much.

The other ones were open source and would have taken too much of a personnel investment. We would have had to dedicate someone to the role of understanding, maintaining, and updating the product.

Auvik hit a really good middle ground in that it had the usability and the features that we needed. And it's updated by them so we just have to use it. It's really an ideal solution given our setup.

Another reason that we picked Auvik was that its pricing is very good. The only non-open-source solution that had better pricing was PRTG, but Auvik had it beat in ease of use. All-around, Auvik has a really great price for the market.

In addition, the cloud aspect of Auvik is extremely useful in that we don't have to worry about downtime. We had a bunch of on-prem appliances at our main site, which wasn't really set up to be a data center. There would often be issues with unexpected downtime that would affect us, client-wide. Having Auvik in the cloud helped us immensely. Not having to worry about the infrastructure or the updates definitely takes a load off of our team. Those are areas where we previously had to put in notable effort.

The deployment of Auvik is much quicker than PRTG, given how PRTG sets up its agents. And once you pay for Auvik, there is no additional cost. SolarWinds is a little more complex and doesn't fit the same niche as Auvik. SolarWinds is more focused on a single enterprise, whereas Auvik is more MSP-focused.

We really needed something for reading logs, so we can go back in time, and also something to monitor our network and our infrastructure in real-time. I use it for everything as far as monitoring in real-time goes, to see what's going on in our network, along with Kace. 

It's deployed on-premises, but it's using the cloud to get to you. You can use it on-premises, but we prefer the cloud.

Its network discovery capabilities are very quick and very precise. It really drills down and finds different devices. It found devices I didn't know existed. As a network administrator, that is horrifying. Our team is pretty small and we were hired to tighten things up. Auvik has helped us to do that. It has taken a while, but we found some little switches that people put in years ago that I didn't even know existed.

In addition, it has decreased our mean time to resolution. Something that would take me a couple of hours now takes 30 minutes.

For what I do, the real-time monitoring is the most important feature. When I log in, I can drill down into the network where I'm seeing the issues. It sends an email, "Hey, I cannot communicate with the server." Sometimes it's a false positive, but when I see it several times, there is something else going on and I drill down into that.

It also automatically updates network topology. Once it discovers something new, and we allow it, it will update it within the interface. Then, when you log in to the cloud, it shows it. It's kinds of neat. It shows you exactly where things connect. We can see and connect the dots. It shows you, for example, that this switch has access here, which has access there. And maybe you didn't want it to have access there. It helps you drill down and say, "I didn't want to go this far."

It does out-of-the-box backing up of your running-config for your routers or for your switches. If I need it, it just takes seconds. I can just go to our Auvik port in the cloud, and it's there.

You have to use MFA with it, always. And it's constantly updating for security, and that's very important in today's environment.

This is not even a bad issue, but when Auvik can't get to your network or can't get to a device for whatever reason, it does send you alerts. But sometimes we get false positives, which every now and then is not a big deal. But it would help if they made it a little easier to suppress some of the alarms. But that's really a feature I don't have to have. Sometimes more is better. If you had to twist my arm and to make me come up with something, that would be it.

We bought Auvik in the fall, about eight months ago.

Generally, we have not had an issue. If it's going to be offline, Auvik will tell you well ahead of time that they're going offline for maintenance. It's almost never down. It's only been down twice and the most recent time it was back up very quickly.

It's very scalable. I would definitely give it five stars on that. In our environment, it's looking at 1,562 devices.

I've only had to use their technical support a couple of times and they were top-notch. They were polite and, both times, it was a very dumb question on my part and they didn't make me feel dumb. They are very sharp men and women.

We didn't have a solution before Auvik, other than manual scripts that fit our needs until we grew. Once we grew and it got so overwhelming, Auvik really helped with that. It was very robust, but it wasn't all over the place. When it was said and done, we really loved the whole platform. It was very user-friendly.

It tells you right out-of-the-box the credentials that it's going to need, such as SSH, your logins, et cetera. You set up the network that you want it to go monitor and, with the IDs and passwords, it pulls all the information in. You have to open up and allow Auvik in from your firewall. There are some prerequisites you have to take care of to use it and you may want to suppress a few alarms, out-of-the-box. It took a couple of days and then it had what we need, right there. 

It took some getting used to, but I started figuring things out. And they were always available for any questions that we had.

Currently, it's just our director,  the engineer, and myself who are using Auvik in our company. We're looking to get everybody more access but we just haven't gotten there yet. I'm still trying to figure it out myself, to learn more as I go with it. 

As a cloud-based solution, it requires no maintenance on our side, unless we have to update a password. But there's nothing for us to do in Auvik in terms of maintenance.

For me, part of the return on investment is just knowing it's there. If you need to pull back for litigation, or our 911 facilities are down, that's when you get your return on investment. You don't know how much your return is because it prevents stuff from happening, stuff that could be very costly.

The time to value is excellent. It's worth every penny that you pay for it. It will save you money. It might not be something that finance or an accountant can see, but if you look at what it's preventing, or what it's helping you monitor in the long run, where downtime and the like could be an issue, it helps you get ahead of the game and you're saving money in that way. We're government, so we're not making money outside of taking your taxes, but at the same time, it is saving money. You may not be able to put a dollar value on it, but I can tell you, you are saving money.

For me, it's security. That is why we have it; for security and to help prevent something from happening that would cost a bunch of money. That's where it saves you. And for auditing purposes, it helps you with litigation.

I didn't deal with the pricing of it. Our director did. It took some back and forth negotiating, but we did get close and came to a compromise. Definitely look for your sales rep to take care of it. They really went out of their way to help us out so that we could get the product.

We looked at several products, including Splunk, NetScout briefly, and PRTG. SolarWinds was a product the company used before I got here but we just didn't use it after I started.

With Auvik, I really like the reporting. That's really what sold it, along with the layout. It was just easier to get around and it made more sense. I don't have to sit down and really study logs. And it works in real-time. Some of the other products took a while to give us the reporting, but with Auvik it is right there. If I have an issue with, say, a switch or there is a network where everything is going down at times, Auvik has a great reporting tool and I can just pull up my reports. I can see all the problems I've had. And you can pinpoint things. It tells you, "Hey, you might want to look here. And these could be the reasons why this is happening." The other products didn't do that.

The auditing of the syslogs was important to my director. That was a big selling point for her and that's how we finally got her to buy Auvik. She really likes those for auditing purposes. It was exactly what she was looking for. And for the rest of us, the engineers, it had what we were looking for. It does it all.

My advice is to use their technical support. Yes, you can learn it on your own and it will help you, but don't be scared to use their technical support. Their support is top-notch. Most of them have probably forgotten more about network security than you have ever known about it. Use them. They want to help you. They have training available, so use the training. They offer it to you as part of the package. Watch the videos and do the training, but do not be scared to use their technical support. They're there to help you.

For what Auvik's doing with the switches, I use it all the time. I always look at my emails for any reporting that it does. I usually know a site will go down, because of alerts from Auvik, before anyone calls. Anything from Auvik goes to my alarm. As soon as it reports, I know they're down, even before they call. I use it a lot.