Auvik Network Management (ANM) Reviews

We're using it just to monitor customer equipment and make backups for network device configuration changes. We're using maybe one percent of what it's capable of doing. We're trying to get some of our stuff straightened out since whoever set up our Auvik did not do a great job of organizing it.

I like the alerting. It integrates with our ticketing system. I like the fact that it integrates with our ticketing system so that we can open tickets and close tickets for network outages. 

I like that it can actually log in and make backups of multiple types of equipment. We have a lot of different customers out there with a lot of different equipment, and this one tool can actually log into anything. We haven't found one that it can't yet. It can log in to almost any piece of equipment and make backups for it, monitor changes, et cetera, if any network changes happen. We can also monitor network usage at different locations and check for overallocation.

It provides us with an intuitive interface that supports ease of use. Their website is very easy to use. This ease of use helps with troubleshooting network issues. We use the product a lot to troubleshoot. We don't use it as much as we'd like to. That's one of the aspects that we're working towards. It is capable of doing a lot more than how we're using it for currently.

They have a dashboard, and a topology map. I've used their topology map a few times. It actually shows you the connections between different devices. That has helped a lot in terms of finding how equipment is connected and finding loopholes in your network. This dashboard and network map give us a real-time picture of our entire network. I have found it to be very easy to work with.

It has helped us decrease our mean time to resolution, however, at this time, we don't really use it enough. I wish we were able to use it more. That said, I can see what the features are capable of doing. It's just that we haven't actually had that benefit yet.

The solution allows us to spend less time on setup and maintenance and less time on issue resolution.

The tutorial could be a little bit more comprehensive. Their online training is one area that needs improvement. 

I've been using the solution for six months. The company's been using it a bit longer. 

I've had zero experience with stability issues. 

The solution seems to be very scalable. 

Technical support seems to be very knowledgeable. They handle tickets in order once they come. They do everything fine. They've been able to resolve issues. Once, they just couldn't do something that we were asking them to do due to their policy. That said, it's fine.

Positive

I have used different solutions in the past. This is more network-oriented. If you know how to use either tool, you'll definitely realize the benefits right away. 

I was not involved in the initial setup.

Whenever we make a network change or whenever we add a device, it requires some maintenance.

I'm not aware of the exact pricing of the product. 

We're customers and end-users.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We are an Auvik reseller, and we manage Auvik instances for our clients. We use Auvik to monitor our customers' network infrastructure and troubleshoot any issues that may arise. Auvik is typically deployed on the data center side of a company. If they have multiple branches, we will deploy an on-premise jump box running the collector. We usually manage the corporate data center for each client and the network infrastructure for remote branches.

Our company has between 500 and 1,000 employees, and we have around 150 customers using Auvik. Those companies range in size from 50 employees to thousands.

Auvik provides an overview of a company's infrastructure that helps you identify and solve problems from a single pane of glass. Without Auvik, you would need two or three times as much work to log into these devices individually and look at the back tables. It's great for identifying when things go offline if the spanning tree has identified an issue. You can pinpoint where in the series of commands something has broken. Overall, we've probably reduced the related network monitoring work by one-third. 

Auvik is automating aspects that we hadn't even considered because it was too much overhead. Rather than reducing the time spent on tasks, it has enabled us to perform new operations that we weren't doing in the past. It's added a benefit in that way.

The visibility into remote and distributed networks globally Auvik provides is essential. If something goes offline, you can go back through the alerts, even if you can't access that device to look through the logs. It has saved me hours of time troubleshooting. I can do something that would've taken me an hour in 15 minutes. From my own experience, I've been able to resolve problems much faster and made myself more available for something that could have taken a lot longer.

Auvik keeps device inventories updated, especially if a new network element is added that we are unaware of, like an end user plugging in a switch at their desk or endpoints in general. We don't use Auvik often for endpoint management or visibility, but it's great for network infrastructure visibility.

Auvik allows me to filter by network elements, so I can get a quick glance at a customer's infrastructure without looking through handmade diagrams. It provides me with an overview of how everything is laid out. From there, I can really drill down into individual inventories and switch ports. For example, I can determine what the issue is, but I don't need to be on the premises and log into customer equipment. It saves a lot of time. The network visualization is pretty and fun to look at. 

Monitoring and management in Auvik are relatively easy once you've had somebody show you how to do it or you've taken some classes. It's not entirely intuitive initially, but I find it relatively simple to use now. 

I would like to see some better training or public resources. It's not just Auvik's fault. Our company has a responsibility to explain the toolset and everything it can do. Many of our engineers don't realize how powerful it is. Due to a lack of documentation about Auvik's capabilities, so much can go over the heads of engineers who don't spend much time with it.

Most engineers are fine with taking some time to learn how to use it properly, but there are several engineers who don't know how to use it without spending the time. Auvik misses out on the wider base of engineers that could actively use it.

I don't know how long the company has been using it, but I have been using it at my current job for roughly a year and two years at my previous job. 

I've never really had a stability problem with Auvik, and if there ever is an outage, it won't be the end of the world for our clients.

The scalability is pretty good. It depends on how your company is scaled, but I believe Auivk can scale well. At the same time, our environments don't change too much, so I can't speak about huge enterprise environments.

We had a homebrewed solution that I've used before. I don't remember what it was called, but it also used SNMP credentials for monitoring networks. We also had a platform called ConnectWise Automate that managed some infrastructure, but it does not manage the networking part of the infrastructure. It mostly managed servers and hosts and some endpoints. It's huge that Auvik can reach all of those.

The previous solution was on-premises. Auvik's cloud-based solution makes it a lot easier, especially for a distributed enterprise. We have so many different customers with data centers, so it's crucial to have the ability to monitor and manage the solution remotely and switch through different tenants under our primary client login. It's a pain if I have to log in to someone's network and pull up their on-premise monitoring system, especially if part of their network is down and that tool is not accessible.

I am involved in deployments of Auvik for new customers or when customers open up new sites. Deploying Auvik is straightforward. It was initially implemented before I started with this company. When we acquire new clients, I set up the network probe and pull their tenancy into ours. The network map populates about two hours after you deploy the connector. 

It takes about 15 minutes to install the collector, then you need to ensure that you have all the correct device login information and SNMP credentials. That can take a long time depending on the number of devices, and the type of credentials. You also need to ensure your documentation is correct. That process can take anywhere from half an hour to a full day.

Auvik requires some maintenance, but it mostly just works. You need to comb through it once in a while if you're swapping out device infrastructure or spinning up sites. If things are being added to or removed from the network you need to ensure that it's representing your environment accurately.

To make an educated comparison, I'd need to know the other tools' capabilities in pricing. I'm not in management, so I didn't evaluate competing products, but I do know that Auvik saves a lot of time for critical responses and maintaining network inventory.

I rate Auvik eight out of 10. I recommend first deploying Auvik in a scaled test environment, so you can break things without impacting the customer. You should see what it can do and how you can troubleshoot using it. I was sold on it once I saw the value in the response times.

It is used for network monitoring.

Auvik hasn't really improved things for us. We tried Auvik, but it didn't meet our needs.

I found the ease of setup to be a helpful feature. The appliance was quite quick to get running. The fact that Auvik is a cloud-based solution, as opposed to an on-prem solution, meant there was one less thing to worry about. I didn't have to configure another device or provision a server and support it myself. It was easier having it supported by someone else.

The interface is also quite nice. Another part that is very easy to use is the monitoring and management functions. Ease of use is awesome.

The overall intuitiveness of the visualization was very good.

I require the monitoring of Linux devices and it doesn't support them. Although we've done a trial, we're not going to carry on with it. We've already gone with another product.

Also, seeing the topology is quite useful, but it's not really suitable for a large enterprise.

It also wasn't able to inventory everything. We're using Lansweeper, which pulls the serial of every single IP device, but Auvik only seemed to be interested in SNMP. It didn't care about non-SNMP devices. The solution needs to move past just having SNMP. If it could have other ways, like an agent, that would make things easier. The lack of being able to communicate with non-SNMP devices was the issue.

I used Auvik as a trial for a couple of weeks.

It was very stable. There were no outages that I was aware of.

Because it's cloud-based, it scales almost infinitely.

I didn't need to contact their technical support. The documentation was quite good. It was quite easy to get going.

Our current product was out-of-support, so we were looking for alternatives.

The initial deployment was very easy. We used the VMware template. It took under an hour after the collector was implemented for the network to start to populate. The actual deployment took about 20 minutes.

We deployed it in a test network. Obviously, we were not going to let an unknown product loose on the entire enterprise network.

It was just me involved in the deployment and there was no maintenance required.

If you're a small company, Auvik is probably quite reasonable. But we've got 500 servers, so pricing suddenly became a lot more of an issue. There needs to be better bulk pricing for it.

We evaluated Nagios and Spiceworks as well. We decided to try out Auvik because we were looking around and wanted to try everything we could.

Make sure that all your devices are SNMP-capable before implementing it.

Auvik was quite good at what it did, which is monitoring SNMP devices, but it didn't have enough there to monitor an IP generic device. If it wasn't SNMP, it didn't really work. It needs more agents and more monitoring methods.

I used to work at a managed service provider, and we needed a network topology mapping solution and discovered Auvik. So, we tried it out, and then we used Auvik until that MSP was bought out. I left the MSP world and became a network engineer at Greater Nevada Credit Union, where I'm now.

We pretty much use it for topology mapping. We use it for mapping out the network and then monitoring the availability of the network infrastructure devices. There is also alerting whenever there are problems. So, we basically use it for monitoring, alerting, and troubleshooting. We also use it for configuration management and automated backup.

It is a managed solution, so they handle all of the platform upgrades and all that stuff. We have got whichever version they have got.

It alerts us whenever there are problems, such as a site is down, an individual device is offline, or there are performance issues. So, it provides alerting and assists in troubleshooting when there is not a site-wide or a network-wide issue.

When they started it, Auvik was intended to be an MSP-focused tool. So, you set up different networks in Auvik as if they are distinct entities or different companies. I've deployed Auvik such that it treats all of our different locations as different networks, even though everything is basically tied together in one big wide area network. The net effect here is that network discovery is so effective it discovers all of the same subnets over and over again across all different networks that I have configured in Auvik. It normally wouldn't be a problem in an MSP world because those networks are not connected to one another. It is kind of an annoyance for me, but it really just kind of highlights how effective it is. Its discovery mechanism is very effective. I haven't had too many scenarios where Auvik didn't discover a particular subnet. It mostly just boils down to whether or not we've configured the network correctly so that something isn't just like a hidden Easter egg. 

Prior to Auvik, we weren't tracking any kind of KPIs relative to the network, performance, uptime, etc. There wasn't even the ability to do that because there just wasn't a solution in place. Now that we've implemented this platform, it has given us the ability to do so after our IT organization reaches that maturity level. The ability is there, and the data is there, but we're not there yet. So, it has given us the ability to track those kinds of KPIs. Beyond that, given that we are a 100% Cisco network, it very simply tracks contract status, support status, and all that stuff. I can very easily run a report and confirm the software and the firmware version that all of the devices are running to make everything consistent and get all of our switches and routers on the standard software version. We're approaching that templatized network look. It is one of the things that I could have done manually. I could physically log in to every device and figure out what they're on and then go through the upgrade process. Now, it's a little bit more simplified because I can just run one report and see that everything is on different versions. I can then standardize the version across the board.

It automatically updates our network topology. There are certain things that we have to do as dictated by the NCUA. We are a credit union, and the NCUA is the federal regulatory body that oversees our operations. When we get audited every six months or so, the NCUA basically has a long list of things that they check. They'll say, "Are you performing configuration backups of your network devices?" I would say that we do, and they would ask me to show it to them. For that, all I got to do is bring up Auvik and say, "Here's the device. Our entire network is managed by this platform, and here is an example of a configuration backup for a particular switch. Here is every configuration that has changed since the platform was implemented." Directly above that pane in the browser window is the topology. One of the other things that they ask about is if we have network topology diagrams to which I say that we have but not in the traditional sense. Once upon a time, most folks just manually maintained Visio diagrams of how the network was physically and logically connected, but you just can't rely on those because of the network changes. In a network of this size, probably not a single day passes when I don't make a configuration change. The help desk folks also go and deploy a new workstation regularly, and Auvik automatically discovers those new devices and automatically updates the maps. So, it is a living document at that point, which makes it useful because it is always accurate. I don't have to manually go in and add a new device. 

It has decreased our meantime to resolution primarily because I'm notified of problems much quicker. Previously, if there was a problem, a user would call the help desk to look into it. If the help desk wasn't really sure about what's going on, they escalated it to the network guy. I then looked into it and said, "Oh, I see." Now, instead of that, I'm getting a notification from the tool at the same time a user notices a problem, and then I start looking into it. By the time the help desk hits me up, I'm like, "Yeah, this should be good now." So, in that capacity, it has definitely improved the meantime to resolution. It has probably cut our resolution times in half.

It helps us to put out fires before people/end users even know there is a problem. There have been some scenarios where it has alerted on things, and there was no perceived impact by the end-users. If there was a failed power supply in a switch that maybe had redundant power supplies, we would get a notification that one of those power supplies has died. We can then proactively replace that failed device before the spare tire blows out, and the network goes down.

We're a credit union, and we've got an online banking website, ATMs, ITMs, etc. We have another department that handles all of those member or customer-facing technologies. Previously, if there was a network outage somewhere, it used to be that they were basically unaware of it until they started getting reports that members are calling in and saying that the e-branch is down, and they can't log in to the e-branch. That team does not use Auvik, but I have included them in the outage alerting. So, they get an email when a branch goes down, or there are problems. They don't get notifications for high broadcast traffic, but when there are obvious problems, they get a notification. For example, when a site goes down, we know that the ITMs aren't going to be working, and they're going to get notified at some point by members, but Auvik would have already sent them an alert saying that the XYZ branch is down. So, they can already anticipate that there are going to be ITM issues because the whole site is offline.

It provides automated, out-of-the-box device configuration backups. These are just compulsory administrative tasks for the stuff you rarely need, but if you ever need it and you didn't have it, you're in a big problem. It does the automated backup, and it does it so reliably that I've never manually managed configuration. If I was doing that manually, it would probably take five minutes per device to do a configuration backup. Across a hundred devices, it would be 500 minutes a month. So, it saves me a fair amount of time. It also saves me needing to employ somebody to do a very repetitive task. This is what technology does. It replaces dumb functions so that humans can go and do things that are not so easily automated. The device configuration part also saves money, but the only reason that it saved money was that it was something that we weren't doing before Auvik. We were not spending money to backup configurations because we were not really backing up configurations. So, it didn't really replace anything. It just implemented something that needed to be done but wasn't being done.

It enabled us to consolidate or replace other tools. We got rid of the managed service provider and saved approximately 100K a year, and it replaced SolarWinds and Uptime. Uptime was another platform similar to Auvik, but it was nowhere near as feature-rich. We're paying around 17K a year for Auvik, and SolarWinds and Uptime combined were probably in the neighborhood of 25K a year. So, it has saved around 8K a year.

It is useful for configuration management and automated backup. It is one of my favorite features because it is low-hanging fruit, and it is easy to accomplish, but on a network where we've got infrastructure devices in hundreds, it is an arduous task to keep on top of. Auvik does it all automatically, so that's probably one of my favorites because it is important, and it just does it automatically. I don't even have to think about it.

It is incredibly easy to use. That was one of the things that helped motivate. We were basically told that we couldn't use SolarWinds anymore, and we had to adopt something new. I already knew Auvik, but considering that I'm the only network engineer here, the simplicity of the platform was important so that the rest of the IT team could use it to find information. It was important to have an interface that was intuitive and the information that was accessible and usable by folks who weren't networking nerds.

Given that you can deploy it so quickly and so easily, its time to value is very quick. I can start getting meaningful information out of it almost immediately.

Sometimes, we get requests for exporting a map of the network. I can export a map, but it exports it as a PDF, which is basically just like a drawing. There is no context. When you're looking at the map, you can hover over things and you can drill in devices and see all kinds of information, but when you export it to a PDF, it is just like a flat image. It is a picture of it, and if you don't know what you're looking at, it doesn't necessarily make any sense. This may be something that has already improved. The exportability piece was one thing that was kind of like a gripe, but it is not all that important. If NCUA wanted to see proof that we have network topology diagrams, I can just show them the tool. Worst case scenario, I can give them read-only access to log into our Auvik tenant, and then they can see for themselves all of that stuff.

Currently, with Auvik's support, I'm troubleshooting some of the information gathered on Cisco devices through SNMP V3. Auvik is not able to pull some of the important information that it uses to draw the map, which is kind of shocking because it is Auvik. So, it is their platform, and it is monitoring Cisco devices, which are obviously very prevalent in the world. Auvik is having a hard time gathering such important information over SNMP V3, which is a networking standard, and on super popular device brand and model. They're actively working with me on that piece. It seems that network device management using SNMP V3 could use a little tuning.

I probably started to use it in 2016 or 2017. 

It is very stable. There were occasions where I got a notification that Auvik failed to pull a device for its configuration information to see if there was a change, and then, it'll magically resolve itself after 15 or 20 minutes. So, there were some instances that made me wonder why that happened, but, generally, it has been very stable. I don't know if I've ever seen an Auvik outage.

It is super simple to scale. To add a site, we deploy all of the equipment. After the equipment is deployed, I deploy a collector at that new site, and we're off and running.

The only folks that use the platform are in the IT department, but we've also got another department in the technology wing of the organization. This department handles all of those member or customer-facing technologies, such as online banking website, ATMs, ITMs, etc. They do not use Auvik, but I have included them in the outage alerting. So, they get an email when a branch goes down or there are problems. The cybersecurity team also uses it a little bit, and we also have our systems engineers, who actually manage the server infrastructure. There are probably about 15 users across those different roles.

It is being used everywhere across the entire network. There is nowhere to really increase its usage. As things change, they may warrant increasing its usage. There are probably some opportunities to increase the use with TrafficInsights and things like that. 

Aside from the ticket that I'm working on right now, I didn't have to reach out to them too much. So, the jury is still out, and we'll see how they do on this. They haven't given up and are still looking into it. So, for now, I would give them a solid eight out of 10.

When I joined this organization, they didn't have much for monitoring the network, but they had already purchased SolarWinds licensing. When the SolarWinds breach happened, we got a kind of edict from the NCUA to discontinue any relationships that we might have with SolarWinds. So, I said, "Okay, not a problem. I know Auvik." We adopted Auvik, and we've been using Auvik since then.

Its initial setup was very easy. The configurations were already in place on our network devices to allow management over SNMP. All it took was to deploy the tool and then give it the necessary information to begin the network discovery. After that, it just started populating information. So, it was very easy.

Auvik doesn't use anything in terms of how it interacts with the network. It doesn't use any proprietary stuff that you really have to learn. It uses the same protocols that everything else uses. So, there wasn't any complicated platform-specific stuff that we needed to get in place to make it work. Deploying the tool is as simple as installing software or spinning up a virtual machine. It took us about a day. It was very quick.

Its setup was much quicker than other solutions because you don't have to set up the front-end. All you got to do is deploy little collectors. You don't have to set up the interface you interact with or set that server up. That's usually the part that is a real pain because you have to spin up your own servers, and you got to install the software and give it enough resources. The interface is clunky and slow, and you've got to tune the virtual machine. That's obviously applicable to any hosted service, but that was definitely a contributing factor to the speed and the ease of deploying it. It was like everything is there, and you just got to start plugging your information into it and let the collectors discover and plug it in for you.

In terms of the implementation strategy, with Auvik or network monitoring tools, we, sort of, have two different approaches. The first approach is that we can deploy it so that one collector or one group of collectors monitors the entire network, and we have one map that shows the entire network. Prior to working at GNCU, I was working at a managed service provider, and GNCU was one of our customers. I had done a lot of project work for GNCU, but they were not a managed customer. So, we didn't deploy our toolset on their network, and therefore, we didn't have any visibility. However, in order to do some of the project work that I was planning for them, I needed that kind of information. I needed topology, and I needed to know subnets and things like that. So, we temporarily deployed Auvik back then into GNCU's network. We just deployed the collector, and let it discover the entire network. We gave it about a day to go and do all that discovery and draw the whole map out. After that, I kind of realized it was clunky because the map was so big. It was detailing the network that spans around 30 different locations. 

Another approach is to break each site down into its own network instead of doing one big network map. This is the approach that we followed when we implemented it at GNCU back in December. In this approach, each site is its own customer, which made the map for each site much smaller. It also made it much easier to navigate and see the things that we wanted to do. So, in the end, this was the approach that we ended up using. It is nice that you have that option instead of having just one way.

In terms of maintenance, it is like a platform. We don't maintain anything there. The only thing that we do is that when we make changes to the network or deploy a new device, we need to go in and make sure that Auvik discovers the new device, and it is able to log in, make a backup of the configurations, and start pulling it over SNMP. The platform itself requires zero maintenance.

In terms of the impact of this level of maintenance on our operations as compared to other solutions I've used in the past, with SolarWinds, when a new version came out, we had set it in a way to kind of automate it to an extent. When an update was available, we would upload it manually, apply it, and make sure that everything was working. It wasn't overly arduous. There were patches, modest updates, and stuff like that. For full version upgrades, a lot of times, it was easier to just deploy a new server, install the new version, and then get it set up. We don't have to do that now. It is almost like a thing that you used to do back in the day before SaaS solutions.

We implemented it ourselves.

We have not done an ROI. I also cannot quantify exactly how much it has saved because I don't remember exactly what we were paying for SolarWinds, but it is similar to what we were paying for SolarWinds. When we were using SolarWinds, after we had got it deployed and configured the way that we wanted, we probably wouldn't have ever gone back to Auvik, despite me knowing it and liking Auvik. That's because we had already made the investment in that platform, but then the breach happened, and we had no choice. So, there wasn't a meaningful saving in switching from SolarWinds to Auvik. 

Prior to me coming on board, GNCU had kind of outsourced the network part to two different organizations. One of those organizations just did the monitoring and management piece. They were charging us about 100K a year for that managed service. By implementing Auvik, we basically duplicated what they were doing, which has a very measurable impact. I didn't have access to their platform, so I needed something that I could use to monitor and manage the network. So, by getting rid of that managed service provider, we saved approximately 100K a year.

Their licensing model is basically per managed device. You pay X amount per managed device, and managed devices are limited to switches, routers, firewalls, and wireless LAN controllers. So, the only things that we pay for are our switches, routers, firewalls, and wireless LAN controllers, but there are orders of magnitude more devices that Auvik manages that we don't pay for. It also manages servers, workstations, and phones. Auvik will gather KPIs from anything that is connected to the network if it can be managed via a standard like SNMP or WMI. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

Auvik doesn't nickel-and-dime. SolarWinds nickel-and-dime you to death. Everything has a different license, and you needed that license for every device, no matter what it was, down to even the interface level. It was ridiculous. Auvik does it monthly. So, it is per device and per month with the option to pay annually at some percent savings, which is what we do. We pay annually right now. It is something like 17K dollars a year.

Auvik might have even been a little bit more expensive than SolarWinds, but that was only because we had not added some of the things that Auvik did to the SolarWinds licensing. So, eventually, the SolarWinds product probably would've been a little bit more expensive if it was like an apple to apple comparison in terms of features.

I had checked ThousandEyes. I had also checked Cisco DNA Center, which was more costly, and the network was just not there yet. Some of our devices don't support management via Cisco DNA Center. So, we were not there yet. Someday, I'd like to be able to get there, but for what we needed, Auvik was just the easiest answer.

I would advise others to check it out. It doesn't hurt. They give you a two-week free trial. You can kind of just say that you want to try this, and then, you try it. There is no haggling back and forth with sales. They give you access to the platform for two weeks. For us, I had done the trial just to get it implemented, and then, they extended the trial for us free of charge for another two weeks so that we could get all the approvals in place to adopt the platforms and start paying for it. They make it super easy, so try it out.

The automation of network mapping has enabled junior network specialists to resolve issues directly and freed up senior-level team members to perform higher-value tasks, but it is not because of the tool. It is because of the proficiency level of our team. We don't have junior network staff. There is just me. Our help desk folks are our junior staff, and it is just not in their wheelhouse yet. It goes back to that organizational operational maturity. We've got like the help desk that helps the end-users, and then we've got the engineers who deploy and are kind of like that highest escalation point. It kind of goes from zero to 60. They check something out there, and the help desk will get a ticket saying that it must be a network thing. It just comes right over to me. I'll try to use those opportunities as a teaching opportunity to show, "Hey, log in to Auvik, and then you can see here that the device is online. We've got some other monitoring tools that we use as well for workstations in virtual infrastructure to see that it is not a network issue, and here's how you can dig through Auvik to see it." It increases the proficiency level of our staff. The tools kind of assist with that change and with them improving. A network engineer can tell the help desk guy until he is blue in the face about how things work, but when you have something to kind of visualize, you can look at metrics and performance indicators. It, kind of, helps in providing a little bit of context to the topics that I'm talking about, and then, they can, kind of, use those things. So, the proficiency definitely is improving, and the tool helps with that.

We have not used the TrafficInsights feature. We have a cybersecurity team, and they have a tool called Darktrace, which is TrafficInsights on steroids. It has got some AI or machine learning built into the platform, and it does some really gee-whiz stuff. Because of the presence of that tool, I haven't gone into configuring TrafficInsights yet. It is on my list of things to do because it is just convenient to have all of your data that you might want to access available in one window, as opposed to having to log into another device and learn how to use another device or another tool. So, eventually, I'll get around to that TrafficInsights so that the information is available.

If there is anything that Auvik has taught me, which is also one of my general rules of thumb, is that when something is not working as expected, it is not necessarily a problem related to that thing. For example, if it is a problem that I'm having with Auvik, usually it is not indicative of a problem with Auvik. Similarly, it is not necessarily a problem on the network that is impacting users. It tends to point to something not being configured correctly on the network. It kind of highlights our own mistakes.

For an advanced network operations center, Auvik is very easy to use and super easy to deploy. It is intuitive, and its features are very useful to an extent. When it comes to a more advanced network team, there are things that Auvik doesn't do. Doing those things would make it awesome, but they would just make the platform more complex and probably less easy to use. So, for the fundamentals, Auvik does a fantastic job. Once you go beyond the fundamentals, Auvik still does a pretty good job, but there are some things that I would not be surprised that the platform will never do. That's because it is not intended to be Cisco DNA Center. It is intended to be a broad platform that supports everything to a degree. 

For an unsophisticated or a very small network team, I would give it a nine out of 10 because of ease of use. A managed service provider is a good example because the folks who consume the product are not network specialists. They primarily used it for backup, mapping, KPIs, and assisting in troubleshooting. For mid-range organizations, it is a solid nine. For advanced networking teams, it is probably a five because it is not going to give you all the information that you want. It is not going to do all of the things that you might want it to do, but the things that it does, it does very well.

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.

We are using Auvik Network Management to monitor switch configuration and usage.

I'm looking to improve my network visibility by implementing effective alerts and enabling remote CLI access for switch management.

Auvik's user interface is user-friendly. While I'm currently fine-tuning the setup after a quick initial process, everything seems logically placed and easy to find.

The network map and dashboard's design are appealing, though the layout might need some adjustments. I suspect this is because my network insights aren't fully configured yet, preventing the system from automatically placing everything in its optimal location.

We can see a real-time picture of our network that reflects changes as they are being made.

I would rate the ease of use of the dashboard and network map seven out of ten.

Auvik provides full visibility into our network.

We saw the benefits of Auvik on the first day.

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

The in-app remote terminal and alerting system are Auvik's most valuable features. In less than a week, it identified previously unknown issues on our network.

It would be helpful to be able to send CLI commands to multiple devices in Auvik simultaneously.

I'm currently going through the process of setting up and getting acquainted with Auvik Network Management software.

Auvik's stability is great; I haven't experienced any unexpected session terminations or unresponsiveness, which is a major factor in our consideration of it as a potential replacement for Aruba Central.

Auvik scales easily by allowing us to deploy additional collectors throughout our network infrastructure. If the system seems overloaded, simply adding another collector is straightforward, especially with their virtualized management system. They even provide a user-friendly OBA to simplify the deployment process.

Our previous network management solution, Aruba Central, fell short in several areas. The interface lagged significantly, it could not provide the level of detailed network insights we require, and its user interface was not user-friendly.

Auvik stood out on the Gartner Square. The demo that we were given by our sales rep was impressive, and then moving into the actual trial that we're working on now. It has checked a lot of the boxes that we are trying to fulfill.

Auvik's initial setup was easy, taking only 45 minutes to an hour to get basic functionality like alerts and configuration changes. Now I'm refining it for better visibility, but the core functionality was up and running quickly.

The implementation was completed in-house.

Auvik is a good product and worth the premium price tag for a lot of people.

Auvik does monitor some of our critical devices at no charge.

I would rate Auvik Network Management eight out of ten.

No maintenance is required.

Building successful connections requires understanding your specific environment – its current configuration, ideal setup, and the unique adjustments needed to make everything work together seamlessly.

We're an MSP using Auvik to monitor our customers' networks for outages and other issues. Our clients are mostly large enterprises in the UK. 

Auvik has improved our monitoring of contracts for service outside of normal business hours. If anything goes offline after hours, we can alert our engineers immediately, so they can get it working as fast as possible.  

The solution has helped our junior technicians solve more tickets. They can log in at our office and see what's happening and then contact the customer about it. It saves us a lot of time because it can tell us the status. Sometimes, we'll finish troubleshooting halfway, and the device will return online. Without a solution like Auvik, we might not notice it's online, so we will waste time trying to fix it. I don't have a precise figure, but I would estimate that Auvik reduces our resolution time by about 30 percent. 

Auvik allows you to set maintenance windows and notify users when something is offline. Auvik's interface is easy to use, but maybe that's because I've gotten used to it. The layout is clear. At the same time, there are so many features that it's complicated. The dashboards give us a real-time overview of the networks. It's simple and easy to use as you give it access to your network.

Setting up the maintenance windows can be a bit complicated. 

We have used Auvik for three years.

I rate Auvik nine out of 10 for stability. It's definitely stable. We barely need to touch it. It goes offline every now and then, but that doesn't happen often. 

I rate Auvik 10 out of 10 for scalability. 

We don't rely on Auvik's support. There's a lot of documentation available, but we seldom need to use it because it's easy to use and the interface is intuitive enough to figure a lot of it out. 

We previously used Meraki's monitoring solution, but it doesn't send alerts the same way Auvik does. Auvik is better for that.

Setting up Auvik is pretty straightforward. I can build and deploy Auvik alone in one day. It requires some updates and configuration changes but no significant maintenance. 

I rate Auvik Network Management nine out of 10. I recommend Auvik for network visibility and any type of network monitoring. 

We use Auvik for network mapping. It helps us to understand the layout and where things are so that we can troubleshoot the flow of data, where something is on the network, and why it might be having an issue.

Before Auvik, I had to go on-site to the client's offices to physically trace all the cables manually and draw the network map on a diagram tool. That would take a long time, and there was potential for human error. When something changed, I had to go back and update the map. It took hours. With Auvik, the devices quickly populate the screen, and I can click through them. That's incredible. It's a huge time-saving troubleshooting tool. We realized Auvik's benefits immediately. Once I understood the features, the benefits were very clear.  

Auvik has sped up our resolution time in many ways. When something is offline or something is wrong with a site-to-site connection or a switch, we can easily go in and see what's happening. We can identify what's connected and what may have been disconnected. It's more often used on the tier two side, but the tier one techs aren't using it. 

I like having a remote tunnel where I can access web interfaces inside a network, whether it's a DVR, an NDR camera system, a printer interface, or an IoT device that has a local web interface. I love being able to tunnel in straight through Auvik instead of having to VPN in or remote to another. It's more straightforward and makes troubleshooting that device more accessible.

Auvik gives us a real-time picture of the network. In the past, when we did things manually, it was never up-to-date. Auvik keeps everything updated. The network map is accurate in the sense that it generates the correct data. Sometimes, we need to update it with the SNMP credentials. If we're feeding it the information it needs, it's highly accurate.

Auvik's interface is decent overall, but I wish I could get more of a full-screen map layout. That would be helpful. Overall, the flow of everything on the screen is good, but I would like a more full-screen, immersive user experience. There are too many menus around. It would help to have the ability to sift and move through it more easily, but there's too much stuff in the way.

I found the search feature somewhat frustrating. For example, let's say I'm searching for an IP address. Even though this thing exists, it doesn't do a good job of showing it to me. 

We have used Auvik for nearly six years.

Auvik is stable. We haven't had any problems. 

Our customers aren't growing quickly, so scalability means rolling Auvik out to new clients or clients adding new devices. If we're talking about adding new clients, it's easy to implement. If we're talking about clients adding stuff to the network, it's automatic, so we don't need to do much besides inputting the credentials.

Before Auvik, I constructed manual network maps. We are using other remote management tools like Kaseya RMM. It's a different type of tool that overlaps in a few areas. 

I was not directly involved in the deployment. After deployment, it requires very little maintenance. We only need to deploy the Auvik collector and ensure it's running. 

I rate Auvik nine out of 10. I suggest reaching out to their customer relationship people. They're super personal and helpful. Take advantage of them.