Auvik Network Management (ANM) Reviews

We use it for monitoring clients' networks.

One way it has improved our organization is with respect to managing switches for clients. We didn't have a solution before that would back up our clients' switches. So if a switch failed, and we didn't have a safe manual backup somewhere, we were scrambling to figure out what was configured on that switch: Were there VLANs, was there some advanced configuration that we don't have now and that we have to rebuild? With Auvik, we just grab and restore the config file.

There are fewer steps for us to do as an organization. We set the tool up and it does all the work for us. It's taking a lot of that manual leg work out. It has recaptured some time that we can give back to other tasks. I wouldn't say it's a huge amount, but it's still a good chunk of time.

And it has been extremely useful when it comes to visibility into remote and distributed networks, especially managing devices. Being able to log in to a switch without having to log in to a client-server, since you can do that from Auvik, has been extremely helpful for our IT team.

And our MTTR has been reduced by at least 50 percent because, as a switch goes down, we get the alert without having our client call us. We have the alert and we know what's wrong, which is great.

I like the switch device configuration backups.

Also, the monitoring and management functions of Auvik are pretty straightforward. I haven't really found too many issues with them. The ease of use is pretty valuable for us.

It also integrates with our ticketing system. We use ConnectWise and having that integration is valuable for billing and for all-around general management. Having one product that can integrate with everything is valuable because we don't have to worry about building out APIs or custom maps to do that for us.

Overall, it's very intuitive and very easy to find help on how to configure things. Their knowledge base is very deep. There are no issues there.

There is room for improvement on the development side. As new devices and models come out from different manufacturers, they aren't always supported by Auvik right away. For example, Sophos switches came out within the past year and we only have CLI support right now for those, so obviously Sophos configs cannot be backed up at this time through Auvik. It's an issue of being more proactive before products are released. I would like to see the manufacturers working with Auvik in advance, before new products come out, to make sure they're supported.

I have been using Auvik for three or four years now.

The stability has been great. Obviously, there are planned outages but they warn you about them ahead of time. There has been no issue where we needed to get in there and it was down.

The scalability seems great. We're still a small business and if we had larger clients our experience might be different, but for what we have it has been great.

We have it deployed in multiple locations. Each client's site has a collector installed and they have one, or maybe two, offices.

Auvik's technical support is a seven out of 10.

Neutral

This is really the first product that we've had that does full network monitoring. We used ConnectWise for machine management, but its network capabilities were somewhat limited. That's one reason we chose Auvik. The dynamic map of the network it provides and the ease of troubleshooting were additional reasons. It helps in pinpointing where issues are. When a switch is down we get that alert from Auvik and it definitely saves a lot of time for our help desk.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. It's definitely gotten better, but I didn't have any issues setting it up for our organization or for clients. The experience has been the same.

Out-of-the-box, it worked just as it should. After the collector is implemented, within the day the network mapping starts to populate. It's pretty much instantaneous.

Setting up other products was a lot more involved. Another product we used was SolarWinds, but it was something of a bear to set up. It's not really straightforward, out-of-the-box like Auvik. With Auvik we definitely saved on having to research licensing and then install software somewhere. We don't have to do any of that. It's all hosted.

For the most part, maintenance is handled by Auvik. Obviously, if new devices are added to the network, they have to be configured to talk to Auvik. But other than that, you just set it up and it's good to go, unless you change the credentials. Overall, we just set it up and sit back and watch it.

We did it in-house. It was just my boss and me involved.

The pricing seems fairly competitive with what may be out there. We haven't looked around too much, but the pricing is very reasonable.

We were set on Auvik right away.

Make sure that the networks you're going to be managing with Auvik all have managed switches and that those switches or devices are supported by Auvik.

Auvik does a fairly good job of mapping network topology. It's about 90 percent of what we need. There are some inconsistencies with port mapping. For example, it will discover that this switch is connected to this switch in this port, but sometimes it's inaccurate. There's some work to be done there, but overall, it's been extremely useful for us.

Auvik helps keep device inventories up to date, although that's not generally a time-consuming task with our clients. As an MSP, we handle small to medium-sized businesses. But if we were to grow, that feature would definitely help more.

I use it on a daily basis to monitor the portion of my network that is backbone.

I have cloud access, but the collectors are on-prem.

It allows me to see a lot of problems before customers do. By the time they're calling me to say, "Hey, I've got an issue", I can usually tell them I have already seen it and I'm already working on it. There are many times that I'll get information on the screen or I'll see something change and know about an issue even before I get a ticket or a phone call. The most recent one was that I had a site go down on a weekend. Because we're a Monday-through-Friday company, I came in early on Monday morning and, by the time others showed up, I was pretty close to having everything resolved. They called me to say, "Hey, this isn't working," and I said, "Yep, I know. I've already been working on it and it will be up shortly."

It frees up some of my time for higher-value tasks. The first thing I do when I come in, every day, is pull up Auvik. In that single pane, I can see what my network status is and whether any site is down or if it's showing me there are issues. If not, then I can move on to whatever else I need to accomplish for that day.

Another benefit is that it automatically updates network topology. When I change out parts of the network or upgrade to a new device, once I've got it set up with SNMP, it automatically reconfigures what I see on the screen, including where everything is connected. I don't have to do anything to make that happen. That saves me a lot of time.

And when it comes to the backbone, it has decreased the mean time to resolution in a significant way. And because it provides automated, out-of-the-box device configuration for backups, for almost everything I have, it saves me time, a good 10 hours a month, and on the order of a couple of thousand dollars a month.

The most useful features are that it allows me to see and monitor my entire network solution in one place. I can see if everything is up or down and whether I have any issues. That single-pane aspect is helpful.

In addition, so far I have found it to be super-easy to use. Since the setup and getting everything running, it has been really easy to use. Setting up collectors for the network discovery capabilities was super-easy as well. Once we did that, it pretty much took care of itself.

And the TrafficInsights feature not only shows me network bandwidth usage without the need for expensive, in-line traffic decryption, but it gives me which device is using the most traffic. It ranks devices by which are using the most CPU, memory, storage, and it keeps those up to date, non-stop. Most of the time I just have the main window open and it literally shows me everything that's important. TrafficInsights will also show me when a certain percentage of capacity for a particular device or network has been hit. That has helped me a few times, resulting in an upgrade of a few services for network connectivity because we were using more data than would actually flow. It has helped improve our network performance. I have 11 sites, overall, and after analysis based on Auvik, I increased the bandwidth for connectivity to the outside world for two of our sites because they were using more traffic than we were able to put through.

So far, I haven't had an issue with it. But I could see where they may need to add some more integration pieces with different vendors. For example, API keys aren't available for certain vendors. While everything that I have works with Auvik and gets monitored by it, there are a few network items I have that I would like to see deeper integration with, but the lack of that type of integration doesn't stop me from doing what I do.

I have been using Auvik for about nine months. Technically, I've been using it longer than that, but I've been using my implementation for about nine months. Previously, I was using it through an MSP and when we dropped the MSP I purchased an implementation for our company directly.

So far, I've had no issues with the stability. It just works.

I would assume it scales pretty easily. While I have 11 locations, none of them are massively huge. The number of devices I'm looking at and monitoring is probably pretty small compared to most businesses, but it seems to scale pretty well when I do add things.

From the occasions I have used their technical support, I would rate it very highly.

We had quite a few other tools that we were using or trying to use, and Auvik replaced them. By not using those other tools it is saving us $10,000.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward for me, but I had used Auvik before quite a bit through my MSP. But even if I had never used it before, with their help, it would have been pretty simple. The ease of implementation, network scanning, and setup were all super-easy.

Our deployment took a couple of days. I can't even compare the setup time for Auvik with the solution we had, which was NetSupport Manager, because I never did get the other system running. It just wouldn't work. The implementation was very convoluted and buggy. It never worked even close to the way I expected it to and I just ended up dumping it before I could get it running. The time savings associated with the setup of Auvik probably saved me over $10,000.

And when it comes to maintenance, it doesn't take up any of my time. Since the initial setup of the collectors, I haven't had to do anything. All my equipment is done and monitored. If I add a piece, I obviously have to set it up to get hit up by Auvik. Other than that, I don't have to maintain anything other than do the normal maintenance for my servers, which is where the collectors sit.

I only used Auvik to help with the setup.

The time-to-value, for me, was almost immediate. Once we started implementation, I was able to start seeing stuff even on day one. And by the time we had it fully implemented, I was already seeing value out of it.

And if I compare the cost savings we have realized by using the solution versus its costs, we're on the positive side.

The pricing is pretty reasonable for what we get. It's billed by certain, core network devices that it monitors, but I'm not billed for all the devices it monitors. For example, wireless access points and small things like that, throughout the network, are not billed. They mainly charge for firewalls, routers, and switches.

I haven't seen any costs in addition to the standard licensing fees.

I researched other solutions, but because I had already used Auvik and I liked what they had. That research was more, "Hey, what's out there?" but I was not really interested beyond that.

What sets Auvik apart is the ease of use. Once it's set up, it gives you that single pane. That's the first thing I look at when I come in the morning and it tells me whether I'm good or not.

Go for it. It's a really good solution. 

We use the tool for network diagrams and troubleshooting, which has been helpful. One of the main issues we had before ANM was the lack of up-to-date network diagrams. With its dynamic function, we solved this problem. We also use it to troubleshoot network incidents such as APs going down and for automatic backups.

There are many things I like about the product. It's cloud-based and automatically refreshes the network container. We like the automatic backups and the comparison between backups. It's straightforward to set up, and it integrates with many protocols.

The tool provides an intuitive interface that's easy to use. The search box is particularly helpful—we can search for everything from MAC addresses to IP addresses to interface names, making it easy to find any device.

The network map and dashboard give us a real-time picture of our network. It's pretty easy to use these features to gain visibility, though we've had some minor issues with Meraki devices due to their lack of support for SSH and SNMP.

The solution has helped us automate our processes and integrates well with ConnectWise so that we can get alerts in our CRM and via email.

We noticed the full value of ANM after a few months, as we needed time to train and understand the system. It has helped our technicians due to its many capabilities and the data it collects. After about a month of training, we were able to share some of the senior team's workflows with junior team members.

ANM has helped us decrease our mean time to resolution by about 20 percent.

I'd like better integration with Meraki and a history feature for network diagrams. If a device fails on Saturday, we can't find it by Monday. A history or PDF export of diagrams would be great to see how devices should be connected.

I have been using the product for eight months. 

I rate the tool's stability as nine out of ten (it gets cloggy with large diagrams). 

We use the product on the cloud. Deployment was straightforward with the setup guide, initially taking about one month with a team of five people. Now, each new deployment takes about 15 minutes. We use it across many client enterprises and sites, with Windows, Mac, and Linux devices and multiple network brands. About ten people in our organization work with it. The cloud version needs no maintenance, but on-premises agents need checking.

The tool has saved us about 15 percent in return on investment.

The tool's pricing is reasonable. 

I recommend ANM for its updated network diagrams, ease of use and implementation, and high availability. Overall, I'd rate it nine out of ten.

We're an MSP, and we handle and monitor the network for many different organizations. So, we use Auvik for any client that has on-prem resources such as firewalls, switches, and servers. It's basically for any client that has a physical office.

We used it mostly for alerting and to have visibility over resources on a network. It's centralized oversight over what's going on.

The network map is really good. It gives us a good idea of the topology for new sites as we deploy the software. The ability to remotely connect the network devices is great. If we don't have direct access we can pretty much just do it from anywhere that we have an internet connection to. That's really helpful.

My team does the knowledge training. They have a university, and when we have new staff, they take the Auvik certification course. Otherwise, there is a lot of stuff to do in the solution and a lot of things to see. Without training, people will have to guess their way around it. Maybe they will see some basic features, but to actually leverage it to the fullest, you do need to take the training.

The dashboard and the network map give a real-time picture. It is really good so long as you have the credentials for everything. I don't really have any complaints. I think it's really helpful. It has been a lot of use for us in the past. Regarding things such as suggestions, it tells you where you have devices you do not have credentials for. That's something you can see if you go to the discovery settings. 

The benefits were realized pretty immediately. The benefits are very self-evident. The only thing you have to do to see the proper benefits is make sure you have a good setup. It's important to know how to deploy things, which credentials to add, etc. Otherwise, the topology will not be of much use. You will not get the configurations. However, if you have the proper knowledge of how to set this up, it's great.

We do not give our entry-level technicians access to Auvik most of the time. It's usually for tier-two technicians or our network engineers. However, it does help them with the Epic training. Before we are going to give entry-level permissions, we have them take training, and the training gives them a lot of information on the network on how to use the platform. 

Auvik helps decrease our mean time to resolution. What's good about Auvik is you can define thresholds where you can close alerts. So, if something goes down, you can see the condition. That definitely helps us take time out of the resolution process and lowers our oral ticket numbers.

In terms of the dashboard, maybe seeing on the map, for example, if you have an access point that's connected to switch one, and the access point you do not have credentials for, that could help us make management a bit easier. However, it's not terrible. It's just something to make it easier.

It has a monitoring feature. Besides just monitoring the network, you can tell Auvik to monitor a host name, like a domain name or an IP address on the cloud, and it just pings the IP address and gives you information. I feel like that's something that could potentially be improved a bit. For the service monitoring feature, we can check for port status or cloud ping checks. We can check against domains and against IP addresses in the cloud. That's a feature that has been of a lot of use to us. However, it is a little bit lacking in some features compared to other solutions that we have also used in the past. We used to use another solution, and we wanted to transition this service over to Auvik since Auvik does largely the same thing. However, as we were migrating, we noticed specific features were missing, and we could not add some of the monitoring back into Auvik since there were some technical limitations. For example, if Auvik has an IP address for the domain you want to monitor, and if the domain does not respond, it will take it as the services down, and it's going to trigger the alert at that point. It does not check when giving out a ping request. It checks by just making an HTTP request to the website. However, basically, some websites that we manage do not respond back to ping requests based on safety settings and so on. So, we have to do HTTP checks to check if the service is up. However, Auvik does not support that at the time. 

I've used the solution for two years. 

Mostly, it works well. We do have some sites that seem to stress the platform a bit. We might have been over the edge when it happened, and that's the only time I have seen performance issues. 

It's really easy to scale. Previously, and I'm not sure if this is true any longer, you could not turn a single site over to a multi-site and vice versa. In that case, you may need to delete your current site, or sites, and migrate things over. 

Technical support is really good. They are really quick. I have no complaints. 

Positive

I've also used Datto. However, Datto provides actual infrastructure, whereas Auvik is just monitoring. They aren't quite the same. 

Setting up the solution is not difficult. We just have to make sure we have credentials for everything on the network. However, that's something that comes from our clients. As long as we have the credentials, it's pretty quick to set up. We had everything set up in about two weeks. 

However, if someone is not tech-savvy, they will see many unfamiliar terms. If someone has knowledge of API integrations, they'll have an easier time.

We tend to need two people for each deployment. Someone will take care of provisioning and collecting, and someone will do the technical setup within the platform.

There isn't really any maintenance needed. There may be alert tuning. Auvik does come with a lot of alerts that are already pre-built in. Some we disable, some we modify, and some we just create from scratch. 

I do not handle the licensing aspect of the solution. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten with my biggest complaint being the documentation and knowledge base, which is difficult to navigate.

Auvik is a tool that discovers all the networking assets within our clients' sites. Many other tools do this, but we like how Auvik integrates into our existing infrastructure. The primary use case is discovering all our networking devices, managing them, and setting up alerts. We use Auvik with a combination of other tools. It's integrated with our ticket management system where most tickets are escalated. 

We deployed Auvik at a new client yesterday evening, and we can see almost everything within the network now. We've had access to the firewall. After a bit more configuration, we can see the network map populate.

Auvik's network maps and diagrams are solid. Once everything is fully dialed in and the network devices are properly speaking to Auvik, you have a perfect network diagram. 

The solution is easy to use.  Learning Auvik only requires you to play some games on your machine, but there is no steep learning curve. There has never been a time when I didn't understand something about the technology. I don't think the learning curve would be high for someone without a technical background. It's so intuitive you don't need to dive deeply into various menus to find what you want. 

Auvik gives you a real-time picture of your network. I've never designed a network map that captures every data point, but Auvik does that. A network map gets cumbersome for end users because you see everything. You might see 25 to 100 nodes connected to an access point. If you are having issues with the network map, you can zoom in on the area you want to focus on.

To get the details about applications in Traffic Insights, you need to dive into the applications as a general category. You can see the users using the application, but I cannot pull each component into the report. Let's say I'm going to an end-user or a client. When I print a report, it comes out with 10 pages about the usage, resources, etc. 

I want to see details about the resources I use, and I can't do that. We have this data in a graphical format, and we can get the data provided in Traffic Insights by using other components within Auvik. I want a detailed report that we could present to the client. I was told at one point that we could produce this through integration with another solution. We tried that, and it didn't work. We did a service ticket again and spoke to the relevant persons, but there were false positives. 

They should pull the Traffic Insights feature until they're finished developing it. I cannot generate a report. It's all about monitoring, not configuring or backing up anything. It's just about monitoring, so I can't pull the report. Traffic Insights should be able to do that. 

The network map could be more customizable. You can decide whether you want a comprehensive map or only want to see the core network features. It all depends on the shape the end-users want for the network map. It's not the traditional shape that we're used to in IT. They could introduce something where the map can adapt to new shapes.

I have used Auvik for two years at two organizations. 

I rate Auvik support eight out of 10. They're great. Auvik responds to feature requests. A while ago, there was a useful feature missing, and Auvik jumped on it. 

Positive

The onboarding went smoothly. Some of Auvik's team helped us. It was very quick. The core solution was deployed within a month. 

Auvik offers a solid value because it only bills for the core components like switches, firewalls, etc. It isn't billing for every discoverable device. The cost is manageable. Many critical devices are covered but not billed. I would consider all of the clients' assets critical. We don't have a tiered system. 

I rate Auvik eight out of 10. 

We use Auvik to monitor if our network equipment goes down.

We implemented Auvik to be proactive in case the internet connection or equipment goes down.

I occasionally use the network map to identify new devices connected to the network. It provides a real-time visualization of our infrastructure. Additionally, the map initially displays a collapsed view, requiring expansion for detailed information.

Auvik significantly reduces our Mean Time to Resolution, especially when devices malfunction. Now, I receive immediate alerts, eliminating the need to wait for phone calls or emails from someone reporting a downed access point or camera. This was especially helpful in a case with our D-Link access points at one of our sites. When these devices fail, they don't completely shut down; they keep rebooting, broadcasting the Wi-Fi network, and then disconnecting users. Before Auvik, this repetitive cycle could go unnoticed for days, leading to frustrated users and disruptions.

We see the benefits of Auvik fairly quickly. 

The quick alerts in the event the equipment goes up or down is the most valuable feature.

When port utilization rises beyond a set threshold, an alert will be sent to allow for proactive network planning and distribution adjustments. This could also help identify heavy data users.

The user interface is not intuitive. For example, when a device fails and I need to replace it with a new one, I'm required to delete the old device from the system to prevent recurring alerts about its downtime. While I was able to find instructions on how to do this in the knowledge base, the process itself is illogical. It necessitates navigating to the "Discovery" menu, which seems counterintuitive for deleting an existing device. A more intuitive approach would be to enable deleting a device directly from the list of all devices, eliminating the need to access a separate menu labeled "Discovery" for an already discovered item.

Some device placements appear inconsistent with their logical locations, like network switches. For example, I might see devices related to the same switch cluster scattered across different areas of the map. This inconsistency in positioning for co-located devices confuses me.

Setting up a new site or viewing device configurations, particularly those involving SNMP and similar protocols, often requires significant technical knowledge. I believe simplifying this process would be a major benefit, but I'm unsure if Auvik can do so.

I have been using Auvik for almost one year.

Auvik is stable.

Auvik is scalable.

One of my sites experienced an issue where the internal internet connection port on the firewall had been changed. Consequently, our Auvik agent wasn't capturing any traffic data, affecting our utilization reports. I contacted tech support to troubleshoot, but the email-based communication proved ineffective. While I appreciate their attempt to help, I would have preferred a phone call or a remote session for a quicker resolution. The back-and-forth emails with unclear instructions simply became time-consuming, and eventually, I had to prioritize other tasks. This made me realize that offering a remote session option early on in the support process would be incredibly beneficial for customers like myself. I am unsure if it's a language barrier or the location of the support team, but encountering this email-centric approach with several companies has led me to believe it's a preferred communication style for some tech support teams. However, for me, it's not the most efficient method. While I give their technical knowledge a high score of nine or ten, I feel their support delivery falls short at around three or four. Instead of sending me emails with links to lengthy documents, a 10-15 minute support call could have resolved the issue quickly. Ultimately, spending hours reading manuals and troubleshooting without success feels like a waste of valuable time. Therefore, I recommend exploring the implementation of a remote session option for enhanced customer service and increased efficiency.

Neutral

The initial deployment was straightforward because it was done by the Auvik techs.

Two Auvik techs implemented the solution for three of our sites.

The price is reasonable.

I would rate Auvik an eight out of ten.

No maintenance is required.

The biggest requirement to use Auvik from a technical perspective is having SNMP knowledge. The rest is straightforward.

I use it as a first line of information gathering. When properly configured, I am able to quickly diagnose and troubleshoot issues from the network's infrastructure level and go up to servers and other devices.

Auvik has helped to decrease my mean time to resolution. If configured correctly, it definitely takes 10 to 20 minutes off resolution. I am able to diagnose things at least 15 minutes faster than I would manually.

I like the feature that allows us to remote access and remote troubleshoot many of the devices, including terminal Windows.

When it tries to build the topology, it does it in a way that is usually incorrect. It cannot validate VLANs correctly, and it is a bit cumbersome. When we have a known topology, it makes it completely different. The network maps are not accurate.

It does not always give a real-time picture of your network. It all depends on how it was configured. I have seen proper configurations, and they look fine, and then there are other ones that are completely broken. For example, I have several clients with mixed equipment, but the topology map shows switches that are on top of the map, whereas firewalls are technically on top. It does not see them correctly. At times, it puts random switches not even connected to anything, even though we know they are physically connected in the topology.

If we are able to manually move devices on the topology, that would be great. It would be amazing if the network map could be manually redrawn. I have submitted this as a request previously.

I have been using Auvik for the last five years.

I have not seen any stability-related issues.

In my opinion, it would be a very scalable product.

I have not contacted them in more than four years. I only contacted them once very early on when I was asking about being able to move things.

To my knowledge, we did not have any solution that would be a comparative analysis of what Auvik provides. In recent months, I have come across a similar topology and diagnostic tool that is built into Fortinet's security appliance. It is a bit similar.

A similar networking map topology that I used to use was when we would build things in Visio and have them as interactive maps.

I was not involved in its deployment. 

In terms of maintenance, it does require maintenance. We have to update devices. When there are changes being made, we have to go back in and make sure that things are updated. Password maintenance needs to be done every so often, and our collectors need to be changed out every once in a while. We have some communication errors with them, so we have to do some troubleshooting with those. That is a bit of internal maintenance.

I was not the person who made the choice.

If you are a managed service provider, it is one of the best tools, and I believe it is worth the investment for senior engineers to do critical troubleshooting. It will take an application champion to make sure that it is configured properly, but it is very powerful for those who deal in the managed service provider workspace.

Auvik has not empowered our entry-level technicians to solve more tickets on their own because we do not allow our entry-level technicians access to Auvik.

It took me some time to learn the product and know exactly how it worked and how it was deployed. After I learned some of the nuances that were inside of Auvik, I was able to see remotes and things like that. It did take a few months of training to really understand it. A lot of it was self-paced. There was no sponsored training, so I had to learn on my own.

I would rate Auvik a solid seven out of ten.

Its main use case is network monitoring, specifically for some of the essential elements of our network. It monitors more, but we're really after those essential elements.

We were able to track down a couple of misconfigurations that were minor but we had missed. We now have a much stronger, clearer understanding of network health at a quick glance, and we're quickly able to diagnose.

It provides a single integrated platform. That was one of the reasons that we ended up checking it out. I had too many network elements, and I couldn't monitor it all from one place.

It has affected our IT team's visibility into our remote and distributed networks. 

Automatic alerting is probably the most valuable. Its network visualizations are fairly intuitive. It's pretty straightforward. 

The setup was not difficult. It was time-consuming. It took a little time to get it set up, but once it's all set up, it's pretty simple.

I'd probably like a little bit more mapping functionality. It gives me a visual overlay of the way that one network segment links to another, but I can't adjust it. Everything is at an equal distance, which makes sense, but I'd probably group some of the things closer and further as it reflects in reality, but I can't do that right now on their system.

We've been using it for about six months.

They're very good at alerting us to weekend maintenance. It seems to only be weekend maintenance, so I think highly of their stability.

We only have two sites, and neither of them is huge, but so far, the scalability seems just fine.

I've contacted their tech support. They were fantastic. I'd rate them a ten out of ten.

Positive

I did previously use a different solution. I had tried a similar competitor. I cannot remember the name of it, but I wasn't happy with it. Once my year expired, I decided to not keep it.

It was very straightforward. It was time-consuming but not complex.

We were able to use elements of it immediately out of the box. VLANs, some of the fine-tuning, and some of the more minutia definitely took some legwork, but immediately out of the box, some of the elements started popping up. It was pretty cool to see items popping up right away.

To fully deploy the solution, it took a couple of weeks, but that was not a couple of weeks of only focusing on that.

When comparing the time and cost it took to set up and maintain Auvik versus our previous solution, it was faster in terms of time, but the cost was higher. However, it was worth it.

We did it all by ourselves. It was just me. I probably spent two or three days of full-time work doing it.

It is deployed at multiple locations. In terms of maintenance, there is a collector that runs on our server. I don't know if I'd call it maintenance, but it is somewhat dependent on at least one piece of hardware staying up here on our campus.

We have seen a reduction in our mean time to resolution. 

I appreciated the way Auvik's pricing scaled with the size of my network. We're a non-profit, and they gave us a non-profit discount. I didn't do an exhaustive comparison, but I felt their pricing was pretty reasonable. I'm a cheap guy when it comes to spending in a non-profit, but I did feel that what I was getting out of them was a good value for my dollar.

I've tried prior applications. I had been trying to find one single method. We went for Auvik because of the good support and good sales. They did a good job at sales, showing me the system, and walking me through things. They were very responsive and good at follow-up. They took good care of me.

I'd advise being aware of all of your VLANs and making sure that the server you're going to run or the machine you're going to run the host on has proper access to all elements of the network. If you have separate segments, it's not going to catch those things. So, you may have to open up some pathways from various VLANs back to whatever server you're running this on.

We haven't done a ton of automation, but it looks like it could help to reduce repetitive low-priority tasks through automation. Similarly, we haven't utilized device inventory much from them. I suppose it would be network device inventory. It wouldn't be endpoint inventory.

In terms of comparing Auvik's cloud-based solution versus the other on-prem network monitoring solutions, I'd probably consider it to be a hybrid. That's because there is still monitoring software that has to run here, but the GUI is all in the cloud. It's similar, and it's nice, but it's not life-changing.

I'd rate it an eight out of ten.