Auvik Network Management (ANM) Reviews

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're a cloud service provider, so we wanted a solution that would proactively be able to notify us of potential issues. We have four core cloud platforms that we provide. We wanted something that could look at both the network connectivity as well as the infrastructure and storage layers.

As a cloud provider, it's of paramount importance that we're connected to the internet and the cloud in general. If the data collectors ever go offline, there's an alert that's actually sent out to us. Because of the alert tiering, we can have it so that that's treated as an emergency alert and it goes to a different set of critical recipients. We've had it where it's assisted us when we were having issues with one of our IP transit providers, and we were able to use the logs that it provided to demonstrate that we had a definitive issue with the provider and their connectivity. That actually enabled us to push back on the IP transit provider and get quite a substantial claim approved because we were able to demonstrate how unstable the link was.

The other element that it's helped us with is in predicting the future. And another thing that it allows us to do very easily is to track our bandwidth usage that's going in and out of each of the data centers. We've been able to use that information to trend and predict when we need to get upgrades in place. Funny enough, we have an order now where we're increasing our connectivity at one of our data centers tenfold and that's being driven because Auvik's enabled us to understand that we're rapidly approaching our threshold.

The mapping tool does make it easy and convenient to access and get console-level access quickly and easily because of the way it works within Auvik, it embeds the credentials. It's a couple of clicks of the mouse button and you're on a console session. You don't have to go through that rigmarole of what's the IP address, how do I connect, what do I use PuTTy, do I use Telnet? What are the credentials? With Auvik it's very streamlined, click, point, click and you're on.

We've saved on intangible costs. The overhead of managing three different open-source platforms has now completely gone. We just have a SaaS platform, we pay our fee, and it does exactly what it says it will do.

It carries a high value ratio on time-to-value. The interesting thing with the price model is that that value ratio could change. It depends really on if you have a hundred switches, it's going to be a lot more expensive than a client that's only got two large switches. But for us, we find it's very high value for money and good value for money.

The auto-discovery and the mapping are quite nice. We can see how our data centers are connected. That was one of the immediate appeals. 

The change control that's built into it for picking up network device changes and recording is something else that we found to be extremely useful.

It's extremely easy to use, although sometimes some features can be a little bit hidden. You have to know where to look, but generally nine times out of ten, it's very straightforward and quite intuitive.

Network discovery is very good. Like anything that does auto-discovery, it can at times get confused, but it's very easy to select to do an override. If it mis-detects a firewall as a generic network device, it's very easy to correct that on a manual basis. But that happens quite infrequently.

It automatically updates our network topology. We're quite lucky we don't have too many issues. It has given the guys on the desk confidence that they can see very quickly and access any system that we've got monitored. In the early days, we had a hesitancy to know if we could rely on Auvik, but over the last couple of years, it's proven itself time and time again. If it tells us there's an issue, we trust that.

In certain circumstances, it has decreased our mean time to resolution. The bulk of our issues unfortunately tend to be more of an application layer, which Auvik doesn't have visibility into.

Auvik enabled us to consolidate or replace other tools. In the early days, we used to use a SaaS platform called LogicMonitor, which we then reverted from and pulled to an in-house solution. That ultimately became three open-source in-house solutions. It was at the point that we wanted to look at something that could consolidate and give us more intelligence and that's where Auvik came into play.

We use network mapping slightly differently from a lot of MSPs who are more focused on using Auvik to maintain end-user environments. We're looking at it maintaining quite a complex data center environment. The mapping is good, but that can mean that it can get a little bit unwieldily. So having the ability to be able to have more manual control on how the map is organized, would be really useful for us. 

It uses SNMP in its discovery process and how it pulls in data. But today it doesn't have an SNMP trap facility so you can't have your infrastructure devices push alerts into Auvik. And that for us would be a big feature that we would like to see.

The single sign-on piece that they have is really good. That works really well for us. Everything else we're really happy with. They have the chain of control stuff and configuration management piece, which was really nice to discover. We never knew about that. That was one of those things that we fell across and then make use of that quite extensively.

We've been an Auvik customer for approximately two to two and a half years.

We haven't had any issues with availability. They do regular maintenance, but we always get proactively notified of it and it's never caused us an issue.

We use it to monitor two data center sites that have somewhere in the region of about 300 to 500 infrastructure devices in each and we never had a problem with it. My understanding is that if we went out to 20 data centers, it would scale without any issues.

It requires zero maintenance. We would have to do regular patch management with our on-prem solution. It wouldn't take up a huge amount of time, but it was something that had to be scheduled on a monthly or bi-monthly basis.

Technical support is extremely good. Any ticket that we've raised, whether it's a query or we feel that we've hit a bug, has been responded to promptly. They have an extensive knowledge base set of articles, which are invaluable for pointing you in the right direction.

We saw Auvik through one of our partners. We sell to IT resellers, and it was seeing the ease that they could actually access some of the information for a shared client that put us onto doing the evaluation. The one-week evaluation turned into a purchase.

The initial setup was very easy. We downloaded an OVF file, deployed, and connected. We had someone from their tech teams, once we had done the deployments, work with our service desk team and work through doing the initial config.

We had the collectors deployed in under a couple of hours and the configuration for each data center to set things up took us a week for each data center. That was a process that was hindered by us because we had to tweak and tune things to meet our requirements.

Compared to LogicMonitor, my experience was pretty much on par. The SaaS providers tend to have quite a streamlined model. You deploy a data collector, which they have as a single download, and then it starts to consume data into the SaaS platform. For SaaS to SaaS, it was pretty much the same. When you're doing your own on-prem deployment it's vastly more efficient. 

We think the pricing is actually really cool. Only certain network devices make the pricing really cost-effective for us. We can monitor 50 servers and essentially one server or 50 servers has no impact on costs. The one thing I think that's crucial is just to make sure that you understand how many billable network devices you have in your estate before you move forward.

Typically, in our environment, VM hosts, storage arrays, virtual machines, or physical like Windows or Linux machines, all have no impact on cost. The only things that really impact costs are our network switches and our firewalls.

My advice would be to verify that it can cover all the devices that you want it to monitor. For us, it does virtually everything that we need and the odd exception hasn't caused us any major problems. We're still able to do basic monitoring. We just can't sometimes get the level of detail that we want. Go back to the environment and make sure that you understand your network and your network devices so that you can make sure that it's going to give you the value that you want.

The biggest lesson we've learned from Auvik is that we had an assumption that because it talks to the devices and discovers them using SNMP as one of its main mechanisms, we assumed that it would do this SNMP trap feature. We were surprised that it didn't. It hasn't caused us any major issues, but we do welcome the day that that's actually added as a feature.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. Not a ten because of the lack of the SNMP trapping and the fact that it's got a lot of flexibility on the devices it monitors, but there are a couple of holes. It's not a big issue for us.

The primary use case is network monitoring.

One of the things that I like the most is being able to see what is connected to each switch port. If there are 300 switch ports, I can find out which port any given computer is connected to on the network, assuming it is physical. We then can label certain ports as uplinks, servers, or storage. It is easy to find where a lot of traffic is coming from because we can get to that individual switch level, which is a lot easier to do in Auvik than it is to do native in the equipment.

Remote accessibility of the network devices is the most valuable feature. I often have to log into switches and routers to make changes, and I can do so from any computer as long as I have an Internet connection. I don't need to have my laptop or a VPN. Auvik is faster.

Auvik automatically updates our network topology. The topology map is drawn in real-time. Seeing the network versus visualizing is helpful. With real-time and historical monitoring, we know when devices are offline or if there is high utilization, specifically with the SNMP monitoring and SSH monitoring.

Its network discovery capabilities are really strong. With the right access, it can detect additional networks, then scan those networks. 

It is easy to use, yet not easy to administer. If I am a technician, then I just need to log in to a switch or see what the network is doing and what it is connected to, which is very easy to do. If I am an administrator, then I have to maintain, clean, and label that environment. Auvik's utility in that regard is cumbersome. It is hard to find where certain things are configured. Also, it is sometimes hard to figure out why Auvik is doing what it is doing.

There is a weakness with the network discovery capabilities, e.g., if it has access to virtual machines, then it is picking up on networks that don't matter. These are private virtual networks on individual computers, but Auvik doesn't know the difference. So, it is constantly coming up with new networks that it thinks it needs to scan. In my environment, I have 250 computers with probably 100 people who are running Hyper-V. Each one of those instances is creating virtual networks that it is getting discovered, then I have to tell it to ignore it. I have never seen the ability to say, "Ignore the networks or submits that look like this."

Sometimes, the UX is difficult to navigate for certain aspects. For example, I like to keep the generic devices out of the topology, so I often will purge those, but I only want to purge the ones that are offline. In the managed devices section, although you can filter by generic device, you can't filter by up or down status. You can only do that in the device section, not the managed device section. So, I have to take a picture of the generic devices that are offline, then navigate to another area where I can actually delete these objects, then select them using a picture. I can filter in one place, but I can't delete. Then, in the other place, I can delete, but I can't filter the same way.

At this company, I have used Auvik for a year and a half. Prior to that, I would say that I used it for about three or four years.

The stability has been fine. I get notifications for network maintenance and there hasn't really been an issue with that.

It requires no maintenance.

The major limitation is the multi-tenant aspect. For example, if I was to put this in a business that had six corporate offices, which is a pretty big business, I wouldn't want all of that under one tenant. I would want that under separate tenants for each location, but there would need to be an eagle eye view of the six locations from a high level, and you wouldn't get that in multi-tenant.

Auvik for MSPs is great because you can segment/isolate the different clients. However, Auvik gets overwhelming when it is a big business with multiple locations, hundreds of networks, and thousands of ports. I think that would be difficult to manage. If you are talking 5,000 to 100,000 switch ports, then you are talking about a lot of networks with a lot of different viewings and protocols. There really is a limit. There is almost no support for any kind of routing protocol. Where there is the Layer 1 and Layer 3 bars that tell you if it is physically connected or Layer 3 routed, the Layer 3 router should really include things, such as, what is the routing protocol that it found or the ability to see a trace route of how it is routed.

Sometimes the technical support is really good, and sometimes it is just terrible. Some of the gentlemen and gals are extremely knowledgeable when it comes to networking. They know the product and are very helpful. Then, some of them don't really get engaged in the support. They will just send an article/link, like, "Read this and do it on your own." I don't reach out to support because I can't find an article or do it on my own. I reach out because there is something I don't understand or don't know how to do. Making sure that they understand what it is that I am trying to accomplish requires a conversation, and some are willing to get on a phone call and some of them are willing to. The ones who are willing to get on a phone call are the ones that I have the best experiences with.

The initial setup was pretty complex. The company that I work for moved out of an office where we had 60 to 70 switches. Now, we are down to about 12. Therefore, the setup was more complex back then, although we only had one location. Now, we have one location and one data center. The deployment took four to six hours.

Auvik's setup time and automated network mapping and documentation provides time-to-value. It is very valuable in that sense. For a small environment, it rolls out for you very quickly, e.g., five minutes. Roll out the collector and let it do its scan, label one or two networks that are there, throw in the credentials, make sure it is identifying everything, and you are done. Then, it just kind of works. The amount of value that you get then in perpetuity to the relative installation is very high, but as a single IT company or an employee in a single company, that quick rollout isn't as valuable because I am only doing it once.

I did the deployment myself. I have used Auvik before, so I just set the collector using VMware OVA. I put a collector in our office, labeled the networks and set exemptions from the scan, and then just let it go. Obviously, I tried to enter all the credentials that I could at the time, but then I found I had to make modifications to group policy so the computers and servers could be accessed. So I probably just threw it out there and then added the credentials later. If I had to do it again, I would have put the credentials in first then threw it out there.

We are not making a profit on Auvik. It is an expense.

Although networking is only a small piece of what I am doing, it can be a time-intensive aspect. So, the time required is significantly less using Auvik than it is to manage the devices individually.

As an individual IP company, Auvik is a little bit pricey. It is a little expensive, but as an MSP owner, I have a small side business. So, I'm an Auvik customer in that sense too. In that, I think it's reasonable to pay $10 to $15 a device or less depending on the endpoint. For the amount of capability that it has, it is very reasonably priced.

There are devices monitored at no charge, such as:

• UPS batteries
• VMware ESX hypervisors
• Wireless access points
• Printers
• Dell EMC iLO cards.

I would probably compare Auvik to PRTG Network Monitor. I think Auvik is a lot faster than PRTG Network Monitor. I am not a very big fan of other solutions. I have never really tried them. 

Auvik gives us inventory. I don't think PRTG Network Monitor does that. So, I can integrate Auvik with our IT Glue cloud status, then we have an inventory of network devices that we don't have to manually create. It saves some time there. PRTG Network Monitor doesn't do that.

PRTG Network Monitor is easier and simpler to set up because it is not trying to do everything that Auvik is trying to do. Once you point it at a device and give it the credentials, it just starts monitoring. At the same time, it doesn't show the relationships between other devices; it doesn't show those connections. It is not an apples to apples comparison. 

We haven't had any SolarWinds Orion products. Now, we wouldn't buy that at all. Auvik is far easier than Orion.

My team members aren't really using it. The other guy is kind of a junior IT guy, and I think it is still intimidating to him. My boss is a higher level engineer, but he is too busy managing to do anything technical. He just relies on me to tell him if there is anything he needs. He mostly wants the solution for the monitoring. He wants to know when a hypervisor module is failing or a hypervisor server goes down.

If you don't put in the credentials, Auvik can't log in and grab those device backups. Once you put those in, then it is automated. It logs in and grabs the configurations. Although, Auvik doesn't support all devices. So if you don't think you have certain types of hardware, it doesn't do anything for you.

Networking has a high learning curve and Auvik lowers that learning curve. It doesn't eradicate or eliminate it though. You still need a pretty strong level of understanding of networking in order to understand the GUI visualization that it is presenting. Just like any other tool, the time invested is largely going to determine the quality of your return.

Auvik has a little ways to go, but I still highly favor it, so I would rate it as an eight 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.

We primarily use it to monitor our clients' networks. We are also using it as a monitoring tool for some of the clients for whom we manage VMware clusters. We are utilizing Auvik log gathering and alerting. It is like a poor man's VMware monitoring tool.

Auvik's network map along with its dashboard gives us a real-time picture of our network. It is nice. I like how it changes. Based on how big your screen is, it expands to fill in the free space, and as it understands the environment better, it gives you a nice topology. You can see that this device is connected to that device through this port and everything else. It gives you a lot of information in a very clean, concise manner.

The network map does get cluttered if you have a very large environment and you are not tearing it down to smaller sites or smaller chunks. I know early on when we started using it, we would have clients who had MPLS connections, so we were scanning all seven sites in one Auvik site. It was definitely unwieldy because of the number of devices there. Once you get an idea of how you can search and filter, it gets a little bit easier. In our experience, it was better to start creating multiple sites and breaking out each of our clients' sites into a sub-site. Even then, some sites were quite large, so we had to delve into it. It can get messy, but it is something that we worked through.

It gives you full network visibility assuming that you are setting up your devices correctly because, with the bad data in, you are going to get bad data out. You need to get into all your switches, firewalls, and everything else and make sure that SNMP is configured correctly. You need to ensure that your logging is pointing to the right IP and that creds and other things are correct so that Auvik is able to ingest the data correctly. Auvik can then provide a good map of what it is seeing and where all your devices are. It is definitely not a quick and easy setup if you have a fairly large environment. If you have an environment where maybe you have never set up SNMP, there is a little bit of heavy onboarding, but once it is in and Auvik is collecting the data, it is a good product.

We could see its benefits within days of having all the environments configured correctly, sending logging data, and having SNMP configured correctly. Within days, Auvik was able to collect the data, connect to all the devices, and see how switches were connected back to the core and how the traffic flowed. We started getting good data and performance metrics on port speeds and things like that fairly quickly. It was pretty quick.

We are still rolling out access to the solution for different levels of our support team. Those who do have access to it have found it beneficial to be able to see the data that they would not normally have access to.

Auvik has helped to decrease our mean time to resolution. We are not tracking that per se, but for the few issues that came up, we went to Auvik to review performance metrics. That minimized the amount of time it took to resolve whatever we were looking at because we had the data given by Auvik. We were not blindly trying to figure out what was going on by using a device's features.

Auvik allows us to spend less time on the setup and maintenance of the solution and less time on issue resolution. For some of the clients that we have brought on and utilized Auvik with, there has been a little bit of onboarding. We had to go and change SNMP settings or just enable SNMP, community strings, etc. We had to repoint the syslog so that it is pointing to the Auvik collector. There has been onboarding time there, but in the long run, because of the data that we get out of Auvik, it reduces the amount of time it takes to look into issues. So, there is a wash and probably a net positive, where we take less time to deal with issues because of Auvik than the time it took us to get it set up.

I love the ability to remote into network gear such as switches and firewalls directly from the Auvik dashboard. We do not have to get into a jump box or VPN to a client. We can get a nice, secure terminal session straight to any network that we are monitoring and managing through Auvik. I can access that directly from the Auvik dashboard. That is probably one of the biggest benefits since we got it. It saves time. We do not have to look up passwords for a random jump box in a client's environment.

Most of the past frustrations have either been resolved or were more about how I was trying to figure things out. They were not necessarily an Auvik problem. I have been pretty happy with the usage. I have not come across a pain point that was a deal breaker.

They can maybe provide some more best practices or guidance around how large a network should be. They can provide some cutoff points, such as, if you have 30 network devices, you might want to chunk that into a smaller subset or site. They can help you better plan and design how to create your Auvik sites, especially if you have a large environment. Most of our client environments are less than a dozen devices, but we have come across a few where they have had 60 switches. It has been interesting dealing with so many devices and seeing all the data that Auvik can provide with so many devices in one single pane.

It has been about a year since I have been exposed to it, or maybe a little bit longer.

I have never experienced any lagging or crashing with the product. With the amount of updates and the communication that they have about when they are doing updates or when they are having issues, it has been easy. Everything is well communicated. They do a good job with it. I have not experienced the product crashing on me or something like that.

The scalability is pretty good because right now, we have maybe 40 or 50 base sites in our environment. A lot of those base sites are multisite sites. We probably have 60 to 70 total sites that we are managing through Auvik. There have been no slowdowns or hiccups. Everything has been good.

I have contacted their support. There was a problem trying to get a device recognized in the dashboard or send data to the dashboard. It might have been a networking issue, not necessarily an Auvik issue, but they were helpful from what I remember.

The quality of their support was good. It was not necessarily a system-down type of scenario. It was not a high-priority ticket that I put in, but from memory, they responded in an adequate amount of time to the question I was posing. For the scenario, their support was good.

Positive

I have not used any similar solution. The closest thing I have used would be Meraki, but that is Meraki-centric. It is not something that you can use with anything. That would probably be the closest thing to the single pane of glass and seeing how everything is interconnected. It is a hard comparison because the Meraki dashboard is made for Meraki software. I like Auvik a little bit better just because it does not necessarily matter which network equipment is there. With Auvik, we are utilizing clients that have multiple kinds of network hardware such as Aruba, FortiGate, Cisco, etc. They have anything and everything. Auvik has been very good at giving us that guidance into what is going on in the environment.

It is cloud-based with on-prem collectors at all of the different client sites. There is usually a service installed on a virtual machine somewhere unless we have a physical management device in their environment, and then we put the collector on that. Aside from the collectors in the actual environment, the service is cloud-based.

Its initial deployment was easy. There is obviously a learning curve when you get new software. It took us a while to understand all the features and abilities that Auvik provides, but the initial standing up of the site, getting the collector spun up, and adding network devices was pretty quick. It probably took thirty minutes.

The implementation took a couple of days the first time. Now, when we bring on new clients, the time depends on how large an environment is, how many switches and other devices are there, and whether they have already configured SNMP across the LAN. On average, a normal new client takes 8 to 16 hours to stand up, set up the Auvik sites, get collectors posted, and start ingesting data after setting up all the settings on the switches to point to the collector. It is a decent amount of time. It is not too much, but it is not necessarily super quick.

We did it all in-house. A few technical people from Auvik assisted us, but I do not believe we pulled a third party in on it.

For a new client that we bring on, it is usually a one-person job. We assign a tech, and they get it going. It is simple enough that a single engineer can handle it unless you are organized a little differently, and then I could potentially see multiple people being required. Generally, a single person who understands Auvik management and dashboard has basic networking skills, can go in and change SNMP settings, and set up logging can easily handle it on his or her own.

For us, it has been good. I do not get too much into the pricing side. We are an MSP, so we have a number of clients, and we are utilizing Auvik as a way for us to be able to better manage and support our clients. The more clients we bring into Auvik, the better the pricing, so we have been happy with how it is.

There are critical devices in our network that are monitored by Auvik at no charge. That is why we have been using Auvik for some of our VMware cluster management clients. We can add VMware servers to the Auvik dashboard and get basic monitoring and up/down alerting by utilizing Auvik, but we do not pay for them because they are not network devices. That has been a nice additional feature. We have way more network devices that we are monitoring, but being able to add those in and not having to worry about additional costs has been nice.

The data you get out of Auvik is only as good as the data you put into it. So, you need to make sure that you are scanning the subnets that you need to scan. Ensure that you are scanning everything in your environment, you have all your devices configured for SNMP, and you have syslog set correctly out the gate. That will set you up for the best usage of the product and get the best data out of it.

It is pretty good in terms of ease of use. Over the last year or so that we have used it, it has improved here and there, not drastically, but in terms of little annoyances that I cannot even think of right now. It is definitely easy to understand once you go through basic training for how the dashboard is laid out.

I would rate Auvik Network Management a solid nine out of ten.

We use Auvik to discover devices on the network, to get a good layout of the network, and to have the solution back up the configuration of certain network devices. We have it deployed to each individual client so that we can map out each of their networks. When a device breaks, we get an alert from Auvik, and then we deal with it. We have the alerts set up for high-value tasks or high-importance devices, such as a network switch going down. We use something else for remote management, but Auvik does all the other work.

Auvik provides a single integrated platform for our organization which is super helpful.

Before Auvik, our network was a little bit of a mess. Sometimes we would use an application, and other times we wouldn't use anything. We wouldn't know anything about the network. As a result, it was all over the board.

The solution gave us the ability to see the network's layout, which gave us a better understanding of how it worked. Auvik can help identify where a device is plugged in and how it is accessing the network. This can help troubleshoot any issues with devices not working properly.

Auvik's mapping is great. It is one of the better-looking mappings that I have seen. Having the mapping available visually is great. It is super helpful for the techs to be able to pop open Auvik and see where everything is plugged in.

Auvik has affected our team's visibility into our remote and distribution networks globally in a positive way, making the network easier to manage.

It helps keep our device inventories up to date. When a device breaks, we get an alert from Auvik, and then we deal with it. We have the alerts set up for high-value tasks or high-importance devices, such as a network switch going down. We don't use Auvik for low-priority tasks at all.

I love that Auvik can automatically back up the configuration of switches and firewalls.

It's not difficult to use the monitoring and management functions of Auvik, but it's not entirely intuitive either. Once we get the hang of it, it's simple enough.

We have other solutions that keep our inventory up to date, therefore using Auvik to keep inventory up to date for us is redundant. However, I see how other people would use the solution because it scans the network constantly and keeps the inventory up to date. Auvik can save time. 

Auvik requires almost zero maintenance.

I would recommend fixing the visual layout of the screen. I dislike not being able to zoom in and out with the mouse wheel. To zoom in and out, we have to use the plus and minus buttons on the side of the screen. I also recommend not having the device constantly refresh while we're looking at it. At times, we'll be trying to figure out where things are and devices will suddenly start moving back and forth. Sometimes we want the information to pause so we can check the layout.

I wish there was a way to reduce the cost somehow.

I have been using Auvik for a few years.

Auvik is very reliable. I've seen the solution break a couple of times, but it's rare.

The scalability is great. It can handle small networks and humongous networks.

I had a question that was answered by technical support quickly.

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward. It was very simple, we installed the agent and let it scan out of the box.

It takes under ten minutes for Auvik to start network mapping once the collector is implemented.

The implementation was completed in-house using just me.

Auvik helped speed up network troubleshooting. And having the layout can help us figure out where devices are when somebody's unsure, remotely. The solution definitely improved our time.

Depending on the situation we occasionally see a reduction in our MTTR. If there's a network issue, Auvik can help with troubleshooting, significantly reducing our time.

Auvik is expensive but worth the cost for a network management solution.

It can get expensive quickly if we monitor a lot of devices, which is unfortunate because we have a lot of devices to monitor.

Auvik is definitely the leader in the visual layout field. We looked at SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor, but it didn't have the feature set or reliability that Auvik offers.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

Auvik is deployed across multiple locations. We're an MSP, and we have multiple clients, each with separate networks. We installed an Auvik agent for each of those clients.

Before using Auvik we must have all the credentials in our hands. It makes the deployment easier.

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 originally purchased Auvik to map our network because I didn't have any kind of network diagram. I thought this would provide a better view of our network. 

In the past, we had several solutions for monitoring our network. Switching to Auvik saved quite a lot of time. We have a small team with limited resources, and we saved a lot of time trying to do all this. It has increased our IT team's availability by about 40 percent. When we implemented Auvik, we didn't have a network admin, so Auvik helped fill that void. Auvik provides a general idea of the network layout and our infrastructure, allowing me to work with third-party and in-house engineers.

Auvik has helped us automate repetitive tasks and streamline processes. For example, it's easy to recognize when we need to upgrade our firmware or patch something. It has reduced our resolution time because it can take time to resolve issues if we don't have a network diagram. Auvik's cloud SaaS model saves money because we don't need to maintain devices or pay for overhead on our end. 

I like that Auvik keeps track of our contracts for the network devices and tells us what updates are needed. Using Auvik is pretty straightforward. We've gone through onboarding a few times there with the representative. It's easy to use if you have a good grasp of network administration.

It has a nice dashboard that rolls a few solutions into one. That integrated platform is crucial because we don't need to navigate multiple dashboards. It's a single pane of glass. Auvik's interface is intuitive and gives you an understanding of what to look for.

The discovery of devices in your inventory could be more automated. It doesn't find anything without an SNMP string. If you have an SNMP string, it'll find it for you and keep it in the inventory. 

We've been using Auvik for about six months.

I rate Auvik 10 out of 10 for stability because we haven't seen any issues.

I rate Auvik support 10 out of 10. We have had ongoing contact with Auvik support. They check in with us periodically to make sure we're doing good. That's pretty consistent.

Positive

We started with Auvik.

Setting up Auvik is straightforward. I implemented it by myself with some guidance from the vendor. It was a matter of running a wizard and ensuring we had the right credentials. We used the out-of-the-box configuration. After deploying the collector, our network map started populating instantly, but we allowed 24 hours to ensure the collector had run its full course.

We gave it about 24 hours just to make sure. It started populating almost instantly, but we wanted to make sure that we had everything there and that the collector ran its full course.

We had support from a vendor consultant who helped with the setup and followed up with routine maintenance. The service has been great. 

Looking up every device to see if it's on contract or renewal takes time. Auvik provides a single pane of glass with all your devices, which saves considerable time. I estimate it's an 80 percent reduction. 

Auvik is a good product for the price. The license is reasonable. We took a chance on it and figured it would work for us. It did even more than we expected. 

The closest network mapping solution was SolarWinds, but it couldn't offer the same visibility into firmware updates, contract renewals, etc. SolarWinds was a lot more expensive, too. Price was the deciding factor.

I rate Auvik 10 out of 10. I would recommend it for companies looking for an easy way to get their network mapped and features like device contract management and inventory. Auvik's ease of use and price are the most important factors, especially for small teams. 

You should do a proof of concept before you deploy it.