What is our primary use case?
We initially got Auvik to monitor our network devices and equipment mainly for outages and that sort of issue. We have integrated its alert system and email-to-text solution from a local New Zealand telecommunications provider so that our IT staff can get text alerts to their phones. It's quite handy because you're not constantly monitoring your email. So for our different alerts, we get texts now as well as part of that. It might be on the weekend or something like that, and you're not sitting there monitoring your emails, so texts are a bit easier for our on-call IT person to get a text, and then they can check out what's going on.
One of Auvik's services we use is TrafficInsights. It's reasonably new and wasn't around when we first got it. We can feed all the logs into there to see what connections are going and where things are connecting to the environment. It's pretty useful from a security perspective. For example, you can search and see when a specific IP address might have come into your environment if you need it to do an audit or a review. We generally use it for audits or checking where certain things are connecting from around the world. It's a good security feature we can use when we're worried about a device talking to a particular IP address. We can see how long it may have been talking to that. We haven't actually used it for network bandwidth as such.
Auvik also acts as a config register, connecting and pulling the configurations of switches. It's good to have that stored there. If we need to restore or roll back to a particular config, those are saved somewhere else in addition to saving it manually before we make changes.
How has it helped my organization?
Auvik has definitely saved us time. You don't have to go to a room somewhere and figure out what's under what. It's scanned, so it shows you everything, including what interfaces are hooked into what devices. If you didn't have that, you'd need to go into a room to look at a fizzled connection and find where it plugs into. Auvik has decreased our average time-to-resolution. For example, if we have an internet outage in our office. In that case, it shows that an internet connection has gone offline and tells us when we've got a failover internet circuit with different providers.
In the past, we wouldn't have even been notified if we swapped over to one of the other internet connections. When troubleshooting, we know right away when something isn't working or hasn't come up online. We can see which connection is active or current and which is offline. I can't say precisely how much time we've saved using Auvik, but from a year's perspective, I've probably saved a couple of weeks' worth of time. It's reduced the amount of time I spend manually performing tasks like documentation, mapping things out, and troubleshooting. Auvik's features help us address issues before they become a problem for our users. For example, we have a resource usage alert that pops up when there's a sudden increase so we can jump on it. We can stop a non-essential service from taking up a lot of resources and could potentially freeze the server or device. It saves a lot of time addressing the issue after the fact while preventing potential impacts and outages.
It includes automated out-of-the-box device configuration backups for most things, including most generic Cisco functionalities. These have also saved us time. Before I joined the company, they had a separate service for that. They were paying for something else on top of other solutions. Having that all in the one system saves time as well. You don't have to worry about doing it manually. When we make changes to devices, it automatically rolls over to the next one. You can have a log of the dates and times when it changed, and you can set up notifications for when the configuration changes. You can investigate if it changes when it shouldn't have. Without that, you wouldn't even know it has changed without looking at it, but then I don't think you would anyway.
Our team is pretty small. We only have a small IT shop within our business, but we still have our services with Auvik. It makes it easier for them to fix problems quickly without trolling around and finding other documentation. They can jump in there and see the alerts on that map, giving a bit more information. It saves the rest of the team from constantly having to look at the networking.
What is most valuable?
Auvik is easy to use and provides us with an abundance of information. It can show what devices are connected to the network and the specific interface that it's connected to, saving us a lot of time. It's helpful if you're trying to troubleshoot and the documentation isn't a hundred percent up to date, like if you take over from someone else, and there's no documentation about how a specific device connects. If it's in Auvik and the network is set up, you can jump in there and find what it's connected to. It even maps it out for you in a pretty little diagram at the top.
It's comprehensive. You load up a network, and it picks up pretty much everything. That makes it easier to use without having to do too much pumping. In terms of discovery, we only use it for certain things, such as our network gear and our servers. It picks up everything. You do have to do a bit of filtering and some tie-up to make sure you're not seeing stuff you don't want for your specific use case, but that comes down to what different people use it.
Auvik is constantly scanning automatically in the background, and if there's a new device in the network, it'll pick it up. You have to make sure that you have credentials or the right port sector so it can pull the correct information. It may be able to see the device, but it may not necessarily get the information from it.
TrafficInsights has helped us identify and troubleshoot performance issues. When we're doing maintenance, you can monitor it live and ensure that the performance isn't being affected too much. If it is, we can pause and decide to reschedule when there's not so much going on. With TrafficInsights, we can view the information and do something with it. In the past, we couldn't easily find that information. We'd have to dig through individual policies or logs, like on a firewall, for example, whereas it's now all in one place. That made it easier to be able to view that rather than clicking and moving between multiple places.
What needs improvement?
Auvik could have better compatibility with more devices. The devices that we're using are essential within our network infrastructure. It would be great to access the full range of features that some of the other ones do, such as the device configuration backups and the configuration change alert. But there are always new devices coming out, so they have to work through getting the compatibility in the first place.
It makes too many attempts to connect to devices when it's online. You want real-time alerting and that sort of thing, so it has a lot of active connections going on behind the scenes. It creates quite a bit of talk on the network when it's connecting to a device. When it's trying to connect to one for the first time, it tries all the credentials you have saved within your credential library, and that isn't always ideal. If you're on the device, you can see that there have been a lot of failed login attempts because it's just trying another credential that it shouldn't use.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been using Auvik for about a year and a half.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
When we need Auvik, it's there. There is quite a lot of maintenance that goes on behind the scenes. We get alerts when Auvik is unavailable due to maintenance, but that's also a good thing in cybersecurity threat environments these days. Being in IT ourselves, we know how important that is.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It's simple to scale up because you can add a whole network or office environment into it quickly. If you don't need it anymore, you can delete it. It's very scalable.
How are customer service and support?
I would rate Auvik support eight out of 10. I've opened a couple of support tickets when we've needed certain things. They respond pretty quickly. We've also had chats with them throughout the setup process. The account managers have helped us get questions answered or pointed us in the right direction.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before I joined the company, they had a PRTG system, which is similar in terms of the overall goal. But I had Auvik, which is a lot easier. It's all there. As long as you've got the network and a user to connect to something, then you're basically on your way, and you don't need to do much with the collectors either, which is the thing that talks and you install it and make sure it can talk to the right places on the network. You pretty much let it do its own thing.
Ease of use and functionality were probably the main things that made us switch. PRTG is a product that requires you to set up a lot of things manually. There wasn't specific device compatibility. It was just standards, whether it was the way a device connected or the protocols through which it is connected to the device to pull the information. Auvik sets things up and has specific compatibilities with devices and a much nicer view to see the information that the old product didn't have.
How was the initial setup?
Setting up Auvik is straightforward. It has decent documentation and specific instructions on how to configure it to work with compatible devices. You're not trying to follow some document for a completely different device and apply it to your device. There's lots of information to use to help you with that configuration process as well.
I can't say precisely how long it took to set up, but you can get a whole network mapped out pretty quickly. I've set up a few offices around the country. It took me a couple of hours to get everything fully monitored and plug the information in. To set it up, all you do is check a network, scan, and get some credentials. That takes less than an hour. Then you're just waiting for the information to start going in. With other products, you sometimes don't even know where to start, to be honest. If I were trying to do the same thing on another solution, I might end up spending an extra day on it for the same sort of setup, whether that's a whole office environment or setting it up from scratch.
We did the implementation ourselves. In the first year, there was a local reseller who sold it to us, but they didn't help us implement it. We have a four-person team for everything, so we take turns doing different things. In terms of maintenance, there isn't a lot we need to do on our side. Once we've got it set up and doing what we need, then there isn't a considerable amount. The only time we need to perform any maintenance is when we're setting up new equipment. On the other side, Auvik does its maintenance. So we'll get emails about them completing maintenance and the service availability and that sort of thing.
What was our ROI?
It's hard for me to estimate the return because I don't know what that service costs, but Auvik has replaced the separate service we formerly used for device configuration as well as our old network monitoring solution. I don't know the difference in cost between Auvik and our old solution, but Auvik saves a lot of time, and time is money.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I'd say Auvik's price is reasonable. I don't know how much we paid for the old one, so I can't compare the two. But I think it's a good value, considering all the time saved and the information you can get from it. The license is billed according to the number of network devices. It bills you based on a few specific types of devices, like switches, routers, and other network devices. We're not even using all of our device allotment at the moment. I think Windows servers and machines and that sort of thing aren't counted as part of that licensing. We aren't charged for servers, I believe. We have a virtual environment, so all of our servers and virtual machines within that aren't part of that licensing scheme.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I think they were looking at about three solutions at the same time. They did a few trials a couple of years back. I can't remember which ones. I think there was a Solomon solution. They decided to go with Auvik because of all the information it displays and the ease of use.
What other advice do I have?
I'd probably give Auvik an eight out of 10 at the moment. We're still waiting for them to become compatible with all of our devices. If they had that compatibility, I'd probably rate it nine or 10. For those thinking about adopting Auvik, I would say go for it.
My advice is to put time into setting up the alerts because that's one of the best parts about it. If you have those alerts set up, it's going to save you a lot of time. You don't even need to go into Auvik to investigate. With that notification, the process comes a behind-the-scenes method for resolving those alerts. You should have a plan so your IT team knows what to do when one of those alerts is triggered.
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.