Auvik Network Management (ANM) Reviews

We use Auvik Network Management to monitor client sites for various network issues. Auvik provides us with a view of the entire network, including all connected devices. This allows us to visualize how these devices are interconnected and how data flows throughout the network.

A network topology map provides us with a near real-time picture of our network's activity. It constantly updates as scans run or new devices are added. Typically, within 30 seconds to a minute, the map reflects the new device, making it one of the most current representations of our network's state available.

The topology map is user-friendly. Nearly every element on the map is clickable, allowing us to zoom in on specific components with ease. This interactivity makes the map far more useful than a static image, as we can quickly drill down to the precise area we need to investigate.

Auvik's benefits were clear from the start. Previously, we lacked any tools to understand what was happening on our clients' networks. This made it difficult to work with potential customers. When visiting a site, we couldn't readily assess their needs and provide a quote for our services. Auvik's network discovery function was a game-changer. It revealed devices on customer networks they weren't even aware of, instantly justifying the investment. This level of visibility had been completely absent before. The previous tools we used were nowhere near as efficient. Additionally, Auvik's ability to monitor client sites and set up alerts provided invaluable insights, something else that was previously lacking. Overall, the value of Auvik was undeniable and immediate.

Auvik helps reduce the mean time to resolution of network issues. Auvik allows us to see exactly which device and port are experiencing issues. This significantly narrows down the problem area, especially in larger facilities. By pinpointing the exact switch and port, Auvik tells us precisely where to go to investigate and resolve the issue quickly, streamlining the process for the network team.

Auvik significantly reduces the time we spend on setting up networks, maintaining them, and resolving issues. Before using Auvik, our technicians had to perform lengthy site surveys. This involved the technician spending several hours at the customer's location, depending on the size of the site. During this time, the technician would physically examine network rooms, walk the entire building, and manually count the number of devices and their locations. This process required a significant amount of time analyzing the customer's site, including all the computers and other devices. In contrast, with Auvik, we can now map a complete network in under an hour. Auvik also automatically identifies the connected devices and the number of access points. This translates to a two-thirds reduction in the time a technician spends on-site gathering information.

The most valuable feature for us in Auvik is the network topology. This feature creates a visual map of all connected devices on the network, showing their location. This is incredibly helpful when we need to locate a specific device, as it significantly narrows down the search. Overall, the network topology is the functionality we utilize the most within Auvik.

The Auvik interface, while functional, doesn't feel as intuitive as some competing products. Compared to modern software, the design appears a bit dated. After using it for a couple of years, I've learned where things are located, but I still find myself occasionally clicking the wrong buttons because the layout isn't very logical. Overall, the interface could benefit from some improvements to make it more user-friendly.

The Ubiquiti line of network products is gaining significant popularity, but Auvik currently struggles to gather in-depth information from them. It's unclear whether this is due to a lack of communication between the two companies. It seems beneficial for both parties to explore a partnership to improve data availability. While Auvik emphasizes its close relationship with Ubiquiti, there's still an information gap compared to other vendors. It's difficult to say definitively if this is an issue with Auvik or Ubiquiti, but initiating contact between the right people at both companies could likely lead to a solution.

I have been using Auvik Network Management for two years.

Auvik Network Management is stable. We have never encountered a stability issue.

Auvik's scalability is very impressive. We haven't encountered any limitations on its capacity to handle our needs. In our experience, it seems to be adaptable for any size of network environment, from very small to extremely large.

Auvik's deployment process was straightforward. Their clear instructions, broken down into three steps, made it easy to follow. The system wouldn't allow us to proceed until the current step was completed, ensuring we didn't miss anything. There may have been some initial bumps a few years ago, but a recent deployment we did just a couple of weeks back showcased a noticeably smoother process. It seems Auvik has continuously improved its deployment experience.

While deploying the system, two people were involved. The second person's role was to ensure we were all in agreement on the desired functionalities and configuration. This was especially important for the advanced configurations, which went beyond getting the system to a basic functional state. The advanced configurations, such as defining the types of alerts and ensuring they weren't overwhelming, required a collaborative effort. It took a couple of people to sit down, think through them carefully, and analyze what truly mattered to avoid generating meaningless alerts.

The first deployment of our system did take a couple of weeks. This was because we were still refining the alerts and simply didn't know what to expect. We were unsure how background noise would affect the system's ability to detect silence. As a result, the initial deployment took longer to get everything configured exactly how we wanted it. Now, however, subsequent deployments are much faster. Typically, a new site can be up and running within a couple of hours, depending on the specific setup and credentials required. Overall, the entire process from start to finish is now generally completed within two hours.

The implementation was completed in-house.

Auvik offers two publicly available pricing tiers, but there are also additional options that require contacting a sales representative. Despite this, Auvik seems to prioritize customer needs. Their pricing models are generally clear and competitive. In fact, Auvik can sometimes be more affordable than some of the bigger players in the market. Through conversations with their sales team, we found that Auvik is willing to work with customers to ensure they can get started with the software, even if it means offering a customized license that fits their budget. This customer-centric approach was valuable to us.

In our search for a network management solution, we explored various products, but none quite fit the bill. Existing options didn't offer the comprehensive functionality we needed. Ultimately, we chose Auvik because it combined several functionalities we desired.

One competitor, RapidFire Tools, offered some network discovery features. However, their access limitations were a concern. We needed a tool with deeper network access than what they provided, which wouldn't have been readily granted on our clients' websites. Another contender, Domotz, also emerged later, but their hardware requirement on the network was a deal-breaker for us.

Auvik, on the other hand, seemed to seamlessly work with any network-connected computer. Its scanning capabilities were far superior to both competitors. Additionally, the ability to map the network topology comprehensively without requiring extra hardware solidified our decision. We tested Domotz for three months and RapidFire Tools for a year. The year-long contract was the only option available. While both ran concurrently, our initial exposure to Auvik at an industry event presentation, sparked our interest.

Upon setting up the Auvik trial, we were impressed by the salesperson's ability to grasp our client needs quickly and demonstrate the tool's functionality effectively. This helped us realize the value proposition almost immediately. Auvik's superior feature set, compared to the others, stood out. The ease of setting up and getting started further solidified our choice. In fact, our team was convinced of Auvik's value before the trial even reached its halfway point. It was that good.

I would rate Auvik Network Management eight out of ten.

Some critical devices on our network are not currently billed for because Auvik cannot monitor our Ubiquiti firewall. This lack of monitoring means we can't even tell if a device is up or down, which is crucial information. Fortunately, we've found some workarounds to gather basic information about these devices for our Auvik network monitoring system. The good news is that the support representatives have confirmed these workarounds won't incur any additional billing. They've even offered to help us implement them. While these devices won't be fully monitored through their standard system, the support team has gone the extra mile to ensure we can still gather some essential information about their status within our network.

Auvik is a self-updating system. Once we set it up, there's minimal ongoing maintenance required. The only time we typically need to revisit the software is when we add new equipment to the network. In those cases, we simply ensure Auvik recognizes and inventories the new devices. Otherwise, Auvik runs seamlessly in the background. We only interact with it again when an alert pops up, notifying us of a network issue that requires attention.

The most important advice I can offer is to be prepared for the learning curve associated with Auvik's interface. Navigating the interface and finding specific features can be the most challenging aspect initially. However, once you become familiar with the layout, Auvik's capabilities are extensive. While the interface might not be as intuitive or modern as some users expect, rest assured that Auvik can handle any network management task you need it to perform. Just be patient as you become acquainted with its functionalities.

We use Auvik for monitoring and alerting on customer environments.

We lacked visibility into specific aspects of our Local Area Network. Therefore, we required a solution capable of monitoring and alerting us about port activity and other relevant information at the switch level.

Although Auvik does require some experience and knowledge within IT, it is easy to use. Auvik works relatively well with a great intuitive interface.

Auvik's ease of use makes it easy to get to the root of the problem.

Auvik's network map provides a real-time picture of our network as long as the agent is up.

The only waiting time we faced was for the agent's installation and subsequent discovery process. This typically took around 24 hours to ensure it had enough time to identify all network devices.

Before implementing Auvik, we could not readily determine switch outages. This necessitated manual inquiry and on-site troubleshooting. Fortunately, Auvik has cut our mean time to resolution down by 50 percent.

Auvik's reliability is impressive. It effectively alerts us to switch outages and high port utilization, making it a perfect fit for our needs. We are extremely satisfied with Auvik and have no plans to switch to another solution.

While Auvik provides us with good network visibility, there are some features we'd like to see implemented in the future. Specifically, we're looking for an alert system that notifies us when new devices are added to the network. For example, one of our customers experiences recurring issues with an unidentified router appearing on their network. Unfortunately, Auvik doesn't currently alert us when this ghost router appears.

I would like Auvik to alert on IP conflicts. Although it doesn't happen often, we sometimes see duplicate entries for IP addresses.

I have been using Auvik for six years.

We have never had any stability issues with Auvik.

Auvik is highly scalable. We currently use it on networks ranging from small shops with around 40-50 workstations to larger locations with 500-600 endpoints. I am confident that it can easily scale to even larger networks.

I have contacted Auvik's support team a few times and they were consistently great. Their resolution time was super quick.

Positive

The initial deployment is extremely easy. If we have an understanding of the customer's environment, the deployment takes five minutes and one person to complete.

The implementation is completed in-house.

Auvik's pricing falls within an acceptable range for us. While management typically handles pricing negotiations, I haven't heard any concerns from them suggesting Auvik's cost is excessive.

I would rate Auvik ten out of ten.

Auvik does most of the maintenance and they advise us before they do it.

I recommend trying Auvik with a trial version if possible, followed by the available Auvik training. While the initial training is not mandatory, I highly encourage newcomers to try the software first to get hands-on experience. This will make the subsequent training, if available, much easier to grasp.

Our use cases are around network monitoring. That was our biggest challenge.

The most important thing to me has been the benefits around visibility. If I don't have visibility then I can't report on things and the tool doesn't work.

And when it comes to reducing repetitive tasks through automation, it has absolutely done so, for example, through the backup features and functionality. Also, from an auditing point of view, it has greatly helped us because we now don't find ourselves in a situation where we have to figure out who did what and when. It sends out reports on a user basis, meaning we know when a user was logged in. Those are all very cool features and functionality.

With the reduction in repetitive tasks for my team, at different levels, time has been freed up. Another factor in saving time is definitely due to the improved fault finding we can do now. Because we have a network map, when something goes wrong, such as what couldn't communicate with which device, it saves us good chunks of time.

The network monitoring and backups of specific devices are really impressive. We've seen very good responses from our staff regarding the backup functionality. You can add a product, such as a switch and, once the product is added, it backs it up for you.

The ease of use of the monitoring and management functions depends on what level of engineer you are and how you perceive it, but to me, it's quite simple to use and user-friendly. The overall intuitiveness of the network visualization is about eight out of 10. That aspect is actually quite good in the product. There are small tweaks and improvements that can be made, but overall, it is really good.

It also does change-tracking, which is a big aspect for us. If someone makes a change on a device, Auvik will report on it for us.

In addition, it helps keep the devices up-to-date. At a minimum, it gives us a monitoring feature on the versions of the devices. If it can't auto-update, the key here is visibility. As long as we have that visibility, there's a lot we can do with that info. The visibility saves us time.

And while it's not a single, integrated platform for everything, because I still use some of my other network tools to complete some other tasks, Auvik is a comprehensive platform.

I would like to see some improvements in some of the reporting functionality, meaning I'd like to be able to deep dive more into the reporting.

The reporting is still being scaled and built out and I would love to see some additional products being added to the stack. For example, Auvik covers certain types of firewalls, but I would like to see more enterprise stuff added to the stack. These aren't exact examples, but it may cover Sophos and FortiGate but not Palo Alto.

I have been using Auvik for about six months.

So far, I have found it to be quite stable. I haven't found the cloud provider to be offline and I haven't found that I was unable to log in to the cloud portal yet.

This is a quite easily scalable solution because it's a cloud platform. It's an easy rollout and the solution should be able to scale very simply. It shouldn't be difficult to scale out if we want more agents or more installs. It would be quite quick.

We have it deployed in a few different locations.

I haven't needed to contact their technical support yet.

We use different vendors' products and they have been troublesome or quite challenging. We did not have something that can do proper network monitoring around the devices themselves. We needed something that can scan the network, find the switches and devices, assign licensing, and then monitor them from there on out.

We're in the middle of transitioning, so we are still using the previous solution. It's a mix of SolarWinds and Darktrace. Those are two of the two bigger ones. This is a process, which means we won't jump to Auvik only and not use anything else, but we're finding it to be a great tool when integrated into our stack with the rest of the tools. We're definitely finding value in it.

Auvik is priced in the middle tier. We have customers using bottom-tier products and those who use what I wouldn't say are necessarily higher-tier products in terms of functionality, but more extensive products. For the way that it's deployed, where the pricing only affects certain devices—meaning there are some free devices, so that you don't pay for everything—it's quite nicely priced in the middle. It's not an overpriced product, but it's also not a very cheap product. It is in a good range of pricing.

If someone is concerned about pricing, in most cases the functionality makes a strong use case and it mostly trumps the pricing. Generally, functionality wins. If you give me a product that works really well and it's a little bit more expensive, I'll take it. It doesn't make sense to sacrifice functionality for pricing.

We didn't really evaluate other options. In our specific case, Auvik came recommended by one of my friends, so we started a trial and then used it from there. I wasn't necessarily looking for just this type of network tech. It was just a happy coincidence.

As for our team's visibility into remote and distributed networks globally, it has helped us somewhat. My team has started really integrating the product, but they've deployed it on a smaller scale at this point. It's not deployed on such a large scale yet.

Auvik, as a cloud-based solution, versus on-prem network monitoring solutions, is quite simple and intuitive to use. The cloud-based aspect is actually a very nice touch since some vendors require you to have an appliance onsite that they communicate with. It's very useful that it's a cloud-based application from an ease-of-deployment point of view. With no onsite appliance, there are fewer dependencies.

My advice would be to review and focus on the features and the functionality of the product. Don't necessarily, off the bat, just look at the pricing and say this is very expensive. With some customers, the first question is always, "What's the price?" without our having even said a word about the product. Take it for a test drive first, before you look at the pricing, so at least you know what you would be getting for that price.

We're an MSP using Auvik to deliver a service for our clients. It's good at monitoring switches and networking infrastructure overall.

Auvik helps us troubleshoot, providing another way to look at a problem. Clients call in to tell us when something is working, and the cause of the issue is often unknown, so you need to attack it from different angles. Auvik offers another means to go in and look at the problem. If I know it's a network issue, Auvik will typically be the first tool I use to troubleshoot. It also provides excellent alerts. Auvik has reduced our resolution time by 25-30%

It has helped us with some low-level tasks. For example, if it's configured correctly, Auvik can monitor the age of VMware snapshots. Old snapshots can use up space on your server disk. Automating that task has been helpful. You can also automatically back up device configs. That's a level of automation that is hard to get in any other products, and I don't see ConnectWise Automation doing that. It can use WMI, too. 

In the past, we probably weren't backing up the configs as often as we should have. Typically, we would only back up the configuration when we upgraded the firmware. If you have the config, you don't need to rebuild it from scratch, so that saves hours of work. Previously, we had to check the VMware snapshots manually. We also tried an automated script that would send out an email. It didn't work well. Auvik was a significant improvement. Automation equals a roughly 50% improvement in our efficiency. 

The more complex the network, the more critical visibility becomes. Auvik helps a lot. We also use it for some smaller clients, but it's not all that beneficial for them. It's more crucial when you have multiple switches and a larger client.

In terms of delegating tasks to lower-level staff, Auvik seems like a tool that requires a certain level of networking knowledge. I don't think they need to be a Cisco-certified networking expert, but you need to know the basics like Ping, Traceroute, etc. It's okay for a level one engineer, but I think some were intimidated when they first saw it. Someone with extensive experience could get more out of it. However, they'll get more proficient once they start to use it.

Auvik does automatic device discovery, which is essential because you can pick up devices that are out there but unknown. I check it against ConnectWise Automate, which can automatically install things, but it's a more complicated operation. It's a little heavier. It's fitting for the devices to see if something responds, so it can inventory the device. If the SNMP networking is set up correctly, it will automatically add and monitor the device. 

It saves time because you don't need to add all the devices manually. That's the number one benefit. With Automate, you can automatically install the agent in a domain controller environment. However, some customers don't even have domain controllers, so you have to install the agent. We save 15-20 minutes per agent. It doesn't do as much as the other agent because it doesn't allow remote control, but it does allow us to inventory the device.

The stand-out feature is the automated config backup on networking devices. This automation is handy in a bind when a machine crashes, and you need to pull the config out of Auvik. 

The monitoring and management features are somewhat challenging to use initially, but you can figure it out after digging. It isn't hard for those with a high level of networking and computer knowledge. However, it's going to be difficult for some people.

Auvik provides a single pane of glass for all our customers in one portal. It's essential because many platforms are out there, and we can't have one for each client. 

After Auvik inventories a Windows device, installing a lightweight that would allow a remote connection would be excellent. A technician could use that agent to gain remote control over the client's computer, allowing us to troubleshoot remotely. 

If Auvik started doing that, it would be more competitive with ConnectWise Automate, making it more popular. They could probably charge more, too. More organizations would consider abandoning ConnectWise Automate altogether and only use Auvik.

The network visualization is a little plain. Still, I think it's okay for what it does. It's hard to script that to make it work properly, but I think it's getting better all the time. It has improved over time, and I think it's relatively significant, but not the end all be all. It is an excellent place to start because you can see where the connections are on the network, so you sometimes need to look at that. 

I have been using Auvik for four or five years.

I haven't heard of any significant issues or vulnerabilities. I know that Kaseya has had an enormous vulnerability, and SolarWinds had a huge one that affected governments. I haven't heard about anything like that with Auvik. So, I think it's pretty good overall.

Auvik scales well. You can always add more collectors. One of our clients had collectors at different sites, so it seemed to be quite scalable.

I rate Auvik support eight out of 10. I contacted them with a question a while back. It took them a couple of days to respond. The question related to a collector no longer supported on the OS. I had to install a new one. 

Positive

We used ConnectWise Automate, a competitor that offers some degree of automation for networking, but it's not like Auvik. ConnectWise is good at remote management. If the PC has an agent, you can connect to it quickly and monitor the particulars of the Windows PC.

Automate has some ability to monitor SNMP network devices and the like, but it never worked well. They have a probe that you have to install in a regular Windows system, but it's meant to be installed on a domain controller. You put it on a Windows box, and it runs these periodic polls to identify some of the networking devices. But it had some significant limitations. For example, sometimes, it was unable to go onto another network. If you had another subnet, it often wouldn't work for that, and they never improved that. 

I've done some deployments at the client level, where I've hooked them up in the collector. I've done some of that but haven't done the complete setup. I've configured nodes and endpoints. However, I haven't done the initial design for the whole tenant. I've only been involved with client setups.

It's relatively straightforward if you read the documentation, which is pretty good. The Auvik collector can get outdated and require an update. It was all relatively easy. If you get stuck, you can typically Google the answer and find it in a knowledge base. Auvik also provides internal training. 

After the collector is installed, populating the network map usually takes a couple of hours. It's ready to go in about two to four hours after. It also depends on the complexity of the environment and what you need to set up in terms of credentials and everything you need to pull the devices. 

Auvik does require some maintenance. Much of that is automated. However, if you're deploying it on an ESXi host, those collectors will shut down when the host is rebooted for Windows or VMware updates. Overall, it's a pretty low-maintenance product. 

Auvik gives us the ability to assess problems quickly and address them. We can also restore services faster with the backup configs and alerts as long as you have a mechanism to address alerts and someone watching them as they come in. If you have a system in place to monitor and respond to alerts, you can get a good return from Auvik.

I don't know Auvik's exact pricing, but I hear it was competitive. We provided Auvik-based monitoring for nearly free to a few of our clients to get them to sign up. A lot of these MSPs are monthly contracts, and they make the numbers work behind the scenes. I'm not in sales, so I don't know exactly how that works, but I think the contract is enough per month that we bundle it in.

The sales team tells the client that we'll give them Auvik so we can monitor our network and make our support a little more stable. It's a fantastic way for a company to get the necessary visibility and not worry about something going down. The story you're getting from the client is often inaccurate because they don't fully understand what's happening. 

For example, we had an issue the other day with a client who didn't have Auvik. They had some weird networking stuff and weren't onboarded properly. Auvik could help you onboard in an area where it would be beneficial when you're bringing on a client to figure out what they have because it's going to go in there. It will do a lot better with inventory and the devices there. It might find some that are unknown, but if you see something strange, you should figure out what it is and what it's doing on your network before ignoring it. So, that's a good example.

There are a lot of solutions out there, but I don't think there's another solution as good as Auvik. I've used Kaseya and ConnectWise, and I've had some exposure to N-able, so I'm pretty familiar with a lot of these similar products. I'm more familiar with the older version of Kaseya. PRTG is another one. I found PRTG difficult to use, but it worked pretty well once installed. 

I rate Auvik 8.5 out of 10. It's a good product. The more effort you put into Auvik, the more you'll get out of it, so do the work up front, and it'll pay off down the road. You'll see a switch that goes down, and then you'll know there's something wrong with the switch. You can either get someone onsite or try troubleshooting that switch remotely as best as you can. 

Whether it's a power cycle or whatever, you need to work with what you have. Auvik provides some powerful tools, but you need to do the work initially to ensure it's configured correctly and you're using all the product's functionality.

We use it to onboard new clients to get a baseline idea of what their network looks like and a picture of what we potentially need to upgrade or replace or get rid of entirely. And for existing clients, we use it for network troubleshooting to figure out if there are any loops in the network or, if we're seeing high packet spikes on specific interfaces, to track down the lags in the network.

We use it for small business networks, mainly SonicWall firewalls and HPE networking gear.

Auvik has helped us diagnose a lot of really painful network issues. We left it because it was a little too pricey for us at the time, but over time we realized the amount of labor involved in diagnosing even the smallest of network loops or broadcast storms is impossible without a tool like Auvik. It has taken some of our network problem-solving tickets from 10 to 15 hours down to two or three hours. We eat the cost of Auvik and, frankly, it's worth every penny in that regard.

We are also now delegating tickets for the network, moving more tickets to our tier-two engineers from our tier-three engineers.

Something Auvik does really well is provide a single integrated platform. That's very important for us as a managed service provider. We really need single-pane-of-glass for all of our programs. Auvik makes it super simple to have sub-tenants and you can then view high-level details from the "parent" tenant, which is our MSP interface, while also diving deep into the client-side and having full access there for assigning client-level permissions. For our co-managed clients, we can get their engineers in alongside our engineers to both view and manage the data.

Another great part of the platform is that it helps keep device inventories up to date. That's where we get an initial map of the network during client onboarding. We can then use that over time and say, "Okay, this switch is hitting the warranty." Auvik can detect the serial number and check the warranty status. We can prompt ourselves to call the client and say, "Hey, we should replace this before you run out of service." To an extent, this feature has created more work for us, but it's work that we need to do. It's notifying us that these things are expiring when, previously, we just didn't know. It's saving us the time of manually checking, but we weren't necessarily doing that consistently before Auvik.

The visualization of network mapping and topology is good, but it's not as customizable as I would like. I'd like to be able to adjust the images that are used for different vendors, for example. There are some improvements that could definitely be made, but it's definitely better than a lot of other programs in the market.

Also, the general feature set could use some work. For network mapping and network alerting, it's great for what it does. But it could provide more monitoring, such as jitter monitoring, which it doesn't have, and round-trip time for packets. I would like to see more network detail on the actual traffic that's flowing through the network. Maybe they could also provide some additional flow support.

It has some room for improvement, but especially since we first used it in 2015, it's come a long way. I'm really excited to see where they go next with it.

We started using Auvik in 2015 for about a year. We then left it and just started using it again about six months ago.

There haven't been any outages that have affected us. I've seen some status alerts from them saying, "Hey, we're conducting maintenance," or, "Hey, we had an emergency outage," but they have never been at a time when they affected us.

The scalability is fine. It's just a matter of adding new clients. It takes some time for each client, but that's true with every solution. It scales well because, especially once you get the setup down for one client, it's pretty easy for future clients.

Their support is quick to respond. I haven't had to reach out to them for a while now, but when I was reaching out to them during and shortly after onboarding, they were prompt, with same-day or next-business-day response times.

Positive

Between Auvik in 2015 and now, we were just using the built-in network device mapping of ConnectWise Automate and we just found that wasn't enough. It wasn't efficient and it just missed too much.

The initial setup was straightforward. We just followed the documentation. I had also done it in 2015. Although I didn't remember doing it back then, doing it again was really quick. I got one of our other network engineers involved to help at one point and he picked it up really fast. It's super easy to set up for high-level engineers, but I wouldn't necessarily trust a level-one tech with setting it up to the standard necessary to get it set for future use.

There is definitely some technical knowledge necessary. I couldn't task our tier-one techs, necessarily, with setting it up super quickly, but the documentation is good enough that, as long as you can follow documents, you can get through it. Speed is an issue there. A higher-level network engineer can speed through it really quickly.

The overall intuitiveness of Auvik's network visualization is fairly good, but that's where the configuration side comes in. If you don't configure it well from the beginning, it can be a mess to understand. So you need to have that higher level of knowledge to take care of that. But as long as you set it up right from the beginning, a tier-one tech can go in and look at that network map and see how things in the network are all connected together.

Once the Auvik collector was implemented, it said it would take about 10 minutes to populate the network mapping. I waited about 12 minutes and it wasn't done. I came back about 20 minutes later and it was done, so it took about 30 minutes, at most.

There is much less work in setting up Auvik versus previous solutions we have used. Maintenance consists of periodic checking to make sure all the credentials are still right. It uses usernames and passwords, so if you change your password and you don't update it in Auvik, things will stop working. So we check on that. Also, when you install new devices, they need additional setup in Auvik. It's not a tremendous amount of work, but there is some.

Auvik pays for itself. Network monitoring tools are all expensive. They take in a lot of data and they do a lot of processing. If you're hosting it yourself, it's going to be an expensive license. If they're hosting it for you, it's going to be expensive hosting. At the end of the day, unless you're paying employees minimum wage, which you shouldn't be doing, the network monitoring tool is going to save more hours of employee labor than the cost of the software.

We saw value from Auvik within five business days. We were really pushed when we set it up, and we pushed Auvik saying, "Hey, we need this now. We've got a client issue that we need to solve." They got our instance to us quickly, we got in there and got it set up in two or three days and we got that issue solved within five business days of contacting Auvik to get the solution. It was insanely quick.

The pricing is kind of steep, but it's worth the price. There's no beating around the bush. It's an expensive solution, but it's really the best solution there is for us.

We did some superficial looking at SolarWinds products and PRTG, and Kaseya has some products, but Auvik, at least in the MSP industry, is our standard. We did the demo and we were sold instantly.

It's fairly easy to use the monitoring and management functions of Auvik. I wouldn't say ease of use is one of our highest priorities. As an MSP, we need to cater to the lowest common denominator in our staff. We need to be able to tell our tier-one techs to at least get into this software to review the data—maybe not configure it—but at least review and understand it. Other tools, like PRTG or Nmap, just give you that data, but you need to be a network engineer to even read through it properly and understand it. Auvik really brings that down so that a junior can review things. Configuration, not as much, but that's not a limitation of Auvik, that's a limitation of network devices in general.

As a cloud-based solution, Auvik works well. The probe sends us a lot of data, but it's all tech-space data. There is constant traffic from your network to the Auvik servers, but it's not gigabytes of traffic data. We haven't had any issues with it. I definitely think that there's value in having an on-prem network solution, both for the sake of security and for being able to have a bit more access to the network than just a probe and then the cloud server architecture, but it works well for what we do.

We use it for monitoring our entire network. We head off a lot of problems with some early alerting on either storage or high utilization, thus we can get in front of problems before anybody notices. We have the solution tied into our help desk system so the alerts open up help desk tickets, then the guys look at it from there. We use it for troubleshooting devices that are not reachable. We also use it for backing up our firewalls and logging into all of our network equipment.

It has cut down on some of our major issues. We are very reliant on our printers, printing title documents, etc. The early alerting on those printers, i.e., when they are having a problem, has been enormous. For example, if somebody has a closing going on, we can avoid them having issues with printers.

The solution helps us put out fires before people or end users even know there is a problem.

The solution automatically updates network topology. The network topology has been great, not only just for troubleshooting things, but also for training. I can show newer or not-so-experienced guys what a network looks like from the top down. Also, we have used the network diagrams for our audits, where we just kind of print it out and hand it to them. It satisfies all of those requirements.

The automation of network mapping enables junior network specialists to resolve issues directly, freeing up senior-level team members to perform higher-value tasks. We have our map up on a board in the office.

The alerting is the most important feature. 

Once it is set up, it is very easy to use.

Its network discovery capabilities are awesome.

TrafficInsights has given us better visibility. In the past, the TrafficInsights feature has helped show us where our system is experiencing performance issues. We have had high firewall utilization reported, and it appeared as, "These are the traffic insights that you are asking about." We had some high firewall usage issues. We were able to take it down to a single device that was copying files that it shouldn't have been at the time. We were able to find that using the TrafficInsight dashboard.

A room for improvement would be integration with our help desk system.

At my company, we have been using Auvik for a year. Personally, I have been using it for three years.

Stability has been great.

The maintenance requirement is just adding new devices and occasionally configuring a new appliance that it doesn't recognize, such as giving it a name. There is a lot less maintenance with this solution compared to other solutions that I have used.

Its scalability is good. There are no issues with it. We have Auvik loaded on everything.

There are four of us who work with it. I pretty much handle the maintenance of the solution. They tell me what needs to be done, then we kind of do it together. They are mostly just in Auvik looking at the alerts, etc.

The technical support has been fantastic. We used them a lot in the beginning. Recently, we have not used them as much. We use them now for adding a new site, which was a billing question. The technical support has been able to quickly answer everything that we have sent to them.

It was a straight-up replacement for PRTG. We switched to Auvik for the ability to do the network mapping as well as the ease of using the network mapping. Switching solutions didn't save us money on licensing, though. 

The initial setup was straightforward.

It took three months from the beginning to have it running the way it is right now.

The setup time for this solution is similar to other solutions that I have used or evaluated.

It took some assistance from Auvik's support desk, but it was easy to set up.

Auvik has decreased our mean time to resolution for the issues that it alerts us on.

Auvik provides automated, out-of-the-box device configuration backups. We didn't have to do anything. It was all out-of-the-box. The automation of the backups saves us an hour a device. We were backing up once a month previously, and that took about half an hour to an hour per device. We have about 30 devices. So, it has saved us approximately 15 hours a month because we don't have to do this manually anymore. It is saving us about $18,000 to $20,000 a year.

Easily, within the first few months, you will start getting your money back. It has saved us a lot more than it cost us.

The pricing is in line with everybody else, but you get so much more. 

Auvik is billed by network device. They bill our firewalls and networks. However, there are devices that are not subject to billing in our environment, such as PCs, phones, and printers.

We did look at other solutions. We looked at PRTG's newer solution and HPE's native solution. We went with Auvik because of the network mapping and its ease of use. I also have experience using it from a previous job.

When you are stuck, I would recommend using Auvik support or their professional services, which are very good. It makes life so much easier.

Auvik TrafficInsights shows us network bandwidth usage without the need for expensive, in-line traffic decryption, but this is not critical for us.

In the network monitoring world, the solution is 10 out of 10. It is the best.

I have used Auvik on our local network and our remote network over VPN, and I used it to look for physical devices automatically on our networks.

The main benefit I'm seeking from Auvik is automation. I want to automate the process of pulling resources from our network. I am trying not to do things manually. I would also like to pull information from cloud systems, but I can't do that now. 

It doesn't take long to set Auvik up, and it accurately maps all my network devices. It's rare for a product to simply work the first time. The trial was super easy. I turned it on and let it go. It told me where I had to add login information, and then it just worked, so I think it's pretty good.

I haven't used Auvik in production, but I've been testing it by disabling devices to see how the network map updates. It updates very quickly, so I know immediately when something goes down. Based on my limited testing, I can say that it's ready to go if I put it into production. 

Auvik is effective at scanning the network. It pulls information from devices automatically using the devices' login credentials, creates a network diagram, and displays the network logs. Interestingly, Auvik can manage hardware life cycles. You can see which devices are reaching the end of their lives.  It does a built-in audit, but the solution's strength is automated discovery. Auvik does this really well.

Auvik is easy to use. It's probably one of the best. The network map is something that has been undervalued in these solutions. They're often a secondary thing that network admins are left to build out on their own, and they don't work properly. With Auvik, the network map updates quickly on its own automatically, so it's quite helpful. When there's a problem or disconnection, you know, somewhere, it shows up right away. 

The network map updates in real-time, and I quickly started to trust that it's showing the correct information. It's constantly updating. It's easy to use and set up. You don't need to maintain it. It maintains itself. If the hardware in the system is disconnected or disabled, it continues to update the map.

Auvik only covers the physical network devices. It doesn't include remote apps working in the cloud, but I'm hopeful that they'll have that at some point. It maps virtual machines and physical devices but not low-level cloud systems. 

I've done a couple of trials with Auvik. I did a trial about a year and a half ago. I just did a trial for a few days last week.

I haven't had any issues with Auvik's stability or seen anything weird about performance. Network scanning could be hard on a network, but this has been consistent and reliable so far. 

We monitor some large systems, but for our trial, I only gave it access to about 50 devices. We monitor about 2,000 in total. 

I rate Auvik support nine out of 10. During my last trial, I asked them for help, and they remotely connected to my Auvik instance to provide help immediately. I didn't need help this time. 

I've used many network monitoring solutions over the last 30 years. Auvik's biggest advantage over the others is the easy setup. As soon as you install it, Auvik asks for some basic credentials and starts scanning. it just works. That's pretty rare. The interface is clean and easy to use. 

The only disadvantage is that it doesn't capture cloud activity. To be fair, that's outside their wheelhouse. That isn't a capability they advertise. It's more like something I would like to see, but it's not really what they do. So it's kind of unfair to request that.

Auvik's time-to-value was extremely good. Other solutions require a lot of manual work and config file setup. I spent considerable time determining the connections between devices, and often the connections aren't configured correctly on other systems. Auvik sees the interconnections between devices quickly and correctly.

Deploying Auvik was straightforward, and we completed the setup in under 20 minutes. Our network has a few parts. There are local and remote components. There are also some remote connections, so we had to pivot the remote subnets. Within an hour, we had the local and remote networks, including network devices, firewalls, etc. 

I am not familiar with the details about Auvik's pricing. I know that there are billable devices and some that aren't billable, which are displayed on the dashboard. You need to see all the devices to get the full picture of what the network is doing. It's all part of the network. If something is missing, it won't work properly. 

I rate Auvik eight out of 10. When deploying, you should have all your network credentials ready. That's all it needs. Make sure whoever is installing Auvik has access to all the systems you want to monitor.

I run an engineering team with a dynamic cloud-based environment. I was interested in tools that can help me understand what we have deployed. 
There are about five people administrating it. In terms of the number of locations, it's hard to say. We're a distributed remote team, but we have multiple cloud environments. We don't have locations in the physical sense of the word anymore.

One of our core objectives is to understand the services and systems deployed in the cloud. It's not always obvious. I'm hopeful that Auvik will help.

Having a single platform is somewhat important. It's also essential to integrate Auvik with other solutions. However, I don't think there's a situation where one tool can be the single integrated platform within a space. I checked out the API and the integrations around that. It all looks good, but I didn't use it that much. I did some basic integrations, but I don't think having a single integrated portal product is everything. The right amount of features are integrated into Auvik, but it doesn't need to have everything integrated, and nothing ever will be fully integrated.

We use various tools, including our homebrewed management scripts, some monitoring tools, and cloud portals. They aren't all applications per se, but we have various overlapping tools. Switching to Auvik would save us some time, but some key hangups prevent us from proceeding with it. 

The automatic discovery would help us avoid repeated configuration steps. The automated device inventory feature is potentially valuable. Employees are expensive, and we want them focused on high-value tasks. 

Visibility is crucial. Auvik has alerts that help us be proactive by telling us when something is behaving abnormally. 

The automatic discovery feature is the most valuable, but I've got some issues. The monitoring and management functions are effortless. It couldn't be more straightforward. We use lots of tools, and they need to be as simple as possible. Auvik has an advantage there because I certainly would pick it over something else. However, we often find ourselves using functions that aren't so easy to use because we need them, and they're the only option available.

The network visualization was intuitive enough, but it's hard to say because the network I was testing had a reasonably flat structure. It was good for what I was doing, but I don't know how that scales.

We use a service called Tailscale, a peer-to-peer private networking tool. My biggest issue with Auvik was getting it to scan devices across the Tailscale network. I suspect it's not supported there. That would be a valuable extension for us.

I haven't used Auvik for long. I did a demo for about a day where I set up the features and played with the interface extensively.

Auvik is highly stable.

I haven't stretched Auvik's capabilities, but it's been fine.

I rate Auvik support a six out of ten. They were very responsive, but I didn't feel that the answer was quite accurate.

Neutral

We had a mixture of cloud consoles and self-management scripts. I saw Auvik advertised and thought the automatic discovery sounded handy, so I took a free trial.

I run the engineering team, so I wouldn't do the deployment, but I manage the people who would. It's pretty straightforward, and I implemented Auvik out of the box. It takes very little time to deploy. I could see devices within an hour. I spent most of the day playing with configurations, adding SNMP credentials, and exploring. I could get something running in half an hour to an hour. Auvik was much quicker to set up than some other tools. 

I'm concerned about the price. It seems quite expensive.

I rate Auvik a seven out of ten. Currently, it doesn't work for us because of the limitation on Tailscale. If it weren't for that, I would give it a perfect ten. Unfortunately, it doesn't meet our needs, so I can't score it too high.

The setup was smooth, and you can tell they've put a lot of thought into helping people with that. I'm curious why all the devices have API keys next to them when I know some devices don't have APIs. It wasn't clear what that meant. Maybe the way the APIs work could use a little bit of polish.