Auvik Network Management (ANM) Reviews

We use it as our network management tool and configuration backup utility.

It's made us a lot more aware of the network side. A lot of MSPs traditionally have been more server/workstation oriented, with some firewall-related activities, but when you bring in the network, it allows you to bring all that full circle and troubleshoot network issues more easily. And in the same way that a backup is important for a server, a backup is important for a switch or a firewall. If you lose one of those, you don't want to have to rebuild from scratch. Auvik provides that configuration backup.

The configuration backup has helped reduce repetitive tasks. With network, there's not as much daily touch as there is with PCs. The automation has primarily been around backing up devices and alerting on down devices.

It has also helped with visibility into remote distributed networks. As an MSP, most of our customers are remote networks for us. Auvik allows us to manage their networks, whether they're local or in the UK or anywhere else. We're able to manage those networks much better via this tool. It helps our network engineers focus on those networks.

In addition, it helps keep device inventories up to date. That aspect helps a lot because people don't have to always worry about whether somebody added a switch or an access point. It scans each day and sees new devices. While that doesn't save us time on a recurring basis, whenever we need to provide a report, we don't have to manually gather the information. We're able to print it out and provide it, rather than having to do manual counts. But that's on-demand and not frequent.

We have absolutely seen a reduction in our mean time to resolution for network issues, using Auvik. For instance, if an alert comes through that a server is down, and we're also getting information that a switch or a firewall is down as part of that, we immediately know we don't need to troubleshoot the server. The server is down because those network devices are down. It allows us to get right to where the problem is, versus having to work our way back and that cuts out a lot of troubleshooting time.

If we get an alert that an AP is down and a firewall is also down, it may just be that the AP is not able to report back because the firewall is not up to allow it to. That's where it saves us a lot of time. It allows us to look at root cause better. When you're looking at that map and you see three things with red alert banners on them, you know which one is the closest point out to the internet and that you need to look there first, versus what's behind it.

The network management piece has been the most advantageous. First, it alerts us about network devices that are under duress or having issues. Second, it has historical data. That allows us to go back, if, for instance, a switch is having problems, and see if it is something that trends at a certain time of the day or a certain day of the week.

For what we use it for, Auvik provides us with a single integrated platform because it ties into their ticketing system. That is very important. The more touchpoints that people have to interact with, the less likely they are to interact. Trying to get it down to as few panes of glass as possible becomes an important piece. We previously used multiple applications for managing our network, and switching to Auvik has saved our organization a good bit of time, day-to-day. It has saved us the equivalent of half an FTE.

It's also the best that we have found for helping to visualize network mapping/topology. It does a great job of that, hands-down. The mechanism that it uses to learn about the network seems to be more robust than some of the others. The interface is very clean and sleek. It discovers devices well and the relationships between them, and the general aesthetic of the portal presents that information. It gathers more data than most and it presents it wrapped up in a really pretty way. Others can draw out a diagram, but they're just not as elegant as Auvik.

The network visualization is intuitive. It classifies devices accurately and presents the links and the relationships well. Plus, if something isn't discovered the way you think it should be, it gives you the ability to manually adjust it. For example, sometimes wireless bridges don't really present well. They don't show a link between them. You have the ability to go in and make that association manually so that it presents correctly on the map.

I've been using Auvik for a little over three years.

The stability is strong. They announce maintenance well in advance and it's not frequent. We haven't had many issues. I don't recall that it just went down all of a sudden. Typically, it's only down around maintenance windows.

It scales well. We've put large networks on it.

The solution's technical support is good. We didn't have to interact with it a lot, but when we did, they were able to answer the questions.

Positive

We used PRTG from a German company called Paessler, but it did not provide configuration backup, so we used a different application to provide the configuration backup. We had to use two products to do that function before. That was part of the reason we switched to Auvik. Bringing everything into one application, and that application being able to integrate with our ticketing system, were the two big reasons.

The initial setup was very straightforward. If you have intermediate networking skills you will be comfortable doing it.

We were able to implement Auvik out-of-the-box, meaning it was immediately available for use without intervention. When we signed up, we were able to download the agents to put on each remote site and begin scanning and gathering data. Once we decided to go with Auvik, we were instantly able to go with it. Within 15 minutes, after the Auvik code was implemented, our network mapping began to populate. 

Within about an hour or two, depending on the size of the network, the map was pretty well displayed. For larger networks—we have some networks that are 1,000 nodes—it might take several hours for it to scan, discover, and learn the relationships. It asks you to authorize networks that it finds. You may initially tell it to scan a network, but based on that network being scanned and the devices on it, it learns that there are other subnets out there. You have to approve those for it to scan them as well. That's why larger networks could take several hours and up to a day or so.

We did it all in-house and it required three people. They were primarily split up between

• networking components: switchers, routers, and wireless infrastructure
• server/workstation infrastructure
• integrations, such as ticketing.

Auvik helps us, but as I mentioned, it's a lot more for point-in-time needs. If a switch is down and we need to get information on the alert and possibly pull the backup to put on a replacement device, or if somebody needs an inventory, we can pull a report. Those are very moment-oriented. 

I can't talk about time-to-value over days, months, or years, but once you set it up, it takes care of itself. It scans the network for new devices. Once you stand the product up and have it connected to your ticketing system, it's just a matter of using it when you need to use it.

Auvik is not cheap. They've done a great job, it's a developed product, but you pay for it. When you compare, it's definitely in the upper tier of pricing.

Auvik has two price points. One is their Essentials license, and the other is their Performance license which includes flow data. 

For example, you may have a network with 10 switches and a firewall, and you really only want flow data going through the firewall. Auvik requires you not only to put the device you want under a Performance license, but all of the other network devices that are billable devices have to go to that same Performance license. It gets expensive in a hurry, so we haven't taken a Performance license with them for that main reason. If we need to do flow data, we'll use a different product. I wish they allowed you to only license the devices you needed to have Performance.

We looked at Traverse Network from Kaseya. It was very similar to Auvik in terms of capabilities, but we thought Auvik was more polished. It seemed to be further down the road as far as how well it had been implemented.

And Auvik's cloud-based solution, when compared with on-prem network monitoring solutions, is better. It's hard to monitor something on the network locally because if you lose your internet connection, it can't report out, which is pretty important. That's why we like it more than on-premises solutions.

It's an easy user interface to work with. They've done a good job with the GUI and how to navigate it. That's not of huge importance to us because a lot of us have been doing network management for close to two decades. That means we've used a lot of tools and we are very familiar with them. But for entry-level techs, it's easier because they can do some things without knowing a lot of what we've had two decades to learn. It makes people with less experience much more comfortable using it.

The solution's automation hasn't had that much of an impact because a lot of our frontline people don't have to interact with it on a daily basis. They use it for point-in-time troubleshooting. It's not a huge help on that side. It's mainly the networking engineers, who would have to do things through other systems manually, whose time is saved.

From a product perspective, it's a 10 out of 10. It's just that you pay for the product. It costs a lot compared to others.

The biggest issue is that if you need NetFlow, where you can actually see more information about the packets that are traversing the network, you probably need to work through your cost model first. Auvik is not going to be the cheapest out there, not even close. It's going to be, by far, the more expensive solution. If that is a strong need of yours, it may not be the best solution. It does NetFlow really well, just like everything else it does. It presents it well. But the pricing model makes it a very expensive proposition to do the Performance licenses.

We used it for network monitoring and network health. We had it deployed at all of our sites. We are an MSP, and we've got about 30 different managed clients. All of them had an Auvik collector at each site to monitor the network for changes or infrastructure health. We have an RMM solution for remote monitoring and management of our workstations and servers, but that tool doesn't monitor network infrastructure. 

Its monitoring and management functions are very easy to use. With some of the other solutions, their built-in database of OID markers isn't great, and you need to manage all of your own MIBs. With a lot of competitors, if a device isn't in its catalog, we need to go and add it to the catalog ourselves, which is a big challenge, whereas Auvik has a phenomenal database behind it, and it is generic, which is another benefit of Auvik. It's not vendor dependent. So, whether you're using Cisco switches, Ubiquiti switches, NetGear switches, TP-Link devices, Hyper-V or VMware, FortiGate firewalls, or Barracuda firewalls, Auvik typically supports them. It has very broad support.

Its integrations are exceptional. The multitenancy in it is also phenomenal. It's very easy to jump from one client to another while also keeping those clients separate. So, if you have someone who is only managing a couple of sites, that's all they can see. They can't see everything else, but someone with a little bit more access can see all of the sites. Being an MSP, we have a lot of different sites that we're accessing. When we have a co-managed environment, a tech for client A can go in and see all the information relating to client A, but they won't be able to see anything for client B.

The time that it has saved is almost impossible to measure. For example, we had a client, and their firewall had failed. We picked up a new firewall. We were going to go set it up, but the last backup that we had on the client's server was from a year and a half prior. It was well out of date, and it was missing a lot of the recent changes. With Auvik, we were able to go in and download the latest backup and restore it instantly. It has saved all those hours that we would have spent troubleshooting or finding missing rules, as well as the management time of having a tech periodically go in and do all of those backups. Because the whole system is automated, it's very hard to measure how much time we saved, but it is a lot of time.

It is the best in class for visualizing the network mapping/topology of the organizations we were monitoring. It is extremely intuitive. One of the big things is everything is all color-coded. So, whether a connection is layer one or layer three, it is very easily highlighted with a blue line versus a gray line. If it is wired versus wireless, there is a solid line versus a dotted line. All of the device types have their own category associated with them. So, if you're looking for a firewall, you just look for the red dot, and you can pick that up pretty easily. If you're looking for a switch, you look for the orange dot. Finding devices on it is very intuitive.

They also had a great feature of being able to collapse and group some of the devices. If you had ten security cameras connected to one switch, rather than having ten little black dots on it, it was able to group them into one item saying security cameras, and you can click on it and expand. It's something that I didn't think about that much when I was using the product because it seemed normal and intuitive. Moving away to a different product that doesn't have the same mapping level or the same features has made the switch a little bit more difficult. You can still get there at the end of the day where you can find the devices, but it is just not as easy.

It was absolutely helpful in reducing repetitive, low-priority tasks through automation. That goes back to things like backups. The fact that it would automatically go through and do the backups, and we didn't need to spend the time to go through and check that was phenomenal. The remote internet connection checks were very useful. ISPs can be very difficult to work with when you're trying to discuss service or packet loss or interruptions. Rather than telling the ISP " We're experiencing this issue," the reports coming out of Auvik gave us a great ability to go to the ISP and say, "Hey, here's some more data. We're dropping packets at such and such rate." Auvik gives you historical benchmarks and reports, and because we already have got the history of it, to troubleshoot, the ISP doesn't have to start gathering reports from that point.

If you have a client that has two locations and a data center, Auvik can group all of those collectors into one client, and you can have a larger view of all three locations and how they interact with each other in one overarching network map, whereas Domotz splits it into three separate locations. Domotz is great in the sense that you get one flat rate per site, but what it won't do is that it won't integrate those sites together. They would be three separate agents that need monitoring within Domotz.

The remote access feature was very useful. If a client's server was offline, we didn't need to VPN in or go to the site to turn on the servers. Auvik gave us the ability to turn on the server remotely without having to go anywhere. It saved us time on that side of things. Over the four years that we were working with it, on average, it has saved us about 150 hours.

Auvik has a phenomenal granular access model where you can even make your own custom role. If you have a co-op student and you want them to only have read access, that's easy to set up. If there is a more experienced person, but they're only allowed certain sites, it is very easy to restrict their access.

Auvik's SSO integration is one of the best I've ever seen. When we were first adopting SSO, Auvik was the first vendor we integrated it with because Auvik was able to get SSO set up where it's one per user or per tech. It's not a big bang migration, and you can have a trial with a couple of techs first, and if it works, roll it out to more.

We had integrated Auvik into ITGlue. When we're onboarding a new client, rather than having to manually add each device into ITGlue, after Auvik has scanned the network and picked up all the devices, we can import all the devices from there. From an accuracy standpoint, being able to import devices saved us from the manual entry and saved us from user errors, such as mistyping a map address or something else.

It definitely reduced the mean time to resolution. The spanning-tree notifications from it were helpful. We've had a couple of instances where a client found a cable that they thought was just loose, and they were being helpful by plugging it in somewhere, which created a loop on the switch. We got to know about it from Auvik. We knew which port it was plugged into and what the solution was to fix it instantly. It reduced our mean time to resolution to about a quarter of the time. We were able to fix things that would've taken an hour to resolve in 10-15 minutes.

Auvik is phenomenal for network monitoring as well as for other functionalities such as remote access or backups. A really cool feature that it has is that it takes a backup of all of the configurations automatically. Auvik periodically, most probably on a daily basis, logs into all the switches and firewalls that you have on-site to see if there is a change, and when there is a change, it does a new backup of the device. It logs changes for you. If you start experiencing some issues, you can go back to those logs to say, "Oh, there is a change made last week, Thursday," and with Auvik, you can just roll back to that snapshot nicely and quickly.

Its UI is really intuitive. It's really easy to get a hold of it. It's very easy for non-technical people to understand. One of our problems with some of the competitors is that they've got a fairly grayscale UI. It sounds very pedantic, but the color scheme of Auvik made identifying which devices were which and how they were connected to each other easy. It was a very useful feature that is underrated. 

Another feature that worked really well for us was the remote access tool. If we needed to log into one of the network devices, we didn't have to jump on a server, workstation, or local device, or connect through a VPN. Auvik was able to give us direct UI access to any device on the network.

It is amazing in keeping device inventories up-to-date. It mostly keeps them up to date as things change. There were a couple of hiccups where a device would get replaced and the mapping would break, and we'd have to go in and fix the mapping. It was with devices that Auvik couldn't fully discover or devices that would change frequently, such as cell phones or other devices on the network that are dynamic and change all the time. The integration would just show up with an IP address and a MAC address. There was no other information in them, which wasn't very helpful. They were the devices that Auvik wasn't able to discover fully. If they had full SNMP or SSH credentials and Auvik knew what the device was and it was matched correctly in Auvik, then Auvik could push it through.

It is not at all cheap. We migrated to Domotz because of its pricing.

We used it for about four years, and we just migrated away from it.

It was probably one of the best ever. I went to school with three other guys. When we graduated, three of them went to work for Auvik support. Full props to the support team. They are phenomenal. I would rate them an eight out of ten. There's always room for improvement. I do wish that they had more open-source pfSense support. There were a couple of things that I was hoping would come out as features but they didn't.

Positive

We didn't have a solution in place. Auvik was our initial solution, but now, we have migrated away from it to Domotz because of pricing. What really triggered it for us was that our firewall of choice is pfSense, which is open source. Auvik, by default, would categorize pfSense as a Linux server, which is essentially what it is. We would then manually categorize it as a firewall. Firewalls are on the list of billable devices for Auvik. However, we weren't being billed for them because Auvik was originally categorizing them as Linux servers. When we were onboarding the product, we mentioned this to our account manager, and we told him that none of our firewalls are being categorized as billable devices. The account manager at the time said that it was a bank error in our favor, and because they were not able to categorize it properly, they were not going to bill us for those devices.

We then costed out our offering with it and had that set with all of our clients. Recently, Auvik was able to fix that bank error, which essentially doubled all of our prices. This makes for a very hard conversation to go to clients and say that we need to double our prices to them because our vendor has doubled our prices. That was a challenge. 

I'm okay if you're going to double our prices, but the support for pfSense, for which they weren't billing us before, is fairly limited. With most of the firewalls, if you have site-to-site VPNs, they show up on the network map as a site-to-site VPN or remote access VPN. Auvik will monitor the usage on those to say, "You have 10 remote access connections, and everything is okay, or you're up to 50 people connecting remotely, and you're starting to get degraded service." All of these additional firewall monitoring features weren't available on pfSense, which was fine because they weren't billing us for it. Now that they wanted to start billing us for these devices, I had asked them if we were going to get support for all of these additional features. They said no because they are not looking to expand their pfSense development. That was frustrating. So, it basically came down to whether we double our costs and pass that onto all of our clients, or whether we look for an alternative, such as Domotz, that doesn't have as many features and is not as pretty in a sense, but it halves our cost. So, we ended up halving our costs instead of doubling them.

As part of onboarding, we got talking with some of the Domotz dev team, and all of the features that were missing have been added as feature requests. We're working with their engineering team to implement some of the features that are not quite there yet.

It was significantly easier than onboarding Domotz. Virtually, every alert or trigger that we could have wanted was built in by default. We didn't have to set up custom alerts, custom triggers, or their base alerting standards. In fact, if anything, it was too much. We had to turn off some of the alerts that were misfiring or not a hundred percent accurate, but there was nothing that we wanted that we couldn't get out of the box.

Its setup was easier. Everything was a lot easier. Even onboarding of new devices was easier. Auvik would identify them a lot easier. Our current solution is a lot more finicky and has more manual elements to it. It's definitely something that Auvik was better at.

Its time-to-value is instant. Before we even onboarded the product, we could see the value in it just from the demo.

Auvik is definitely one of the more expensive platforms. It is not cheap at all. If cost is an issue, Auvik isn't on the table at all, but they do have a fantastic solution for the cost. If budget isn't a concern, they are probably the market leader.

We migrated away from it to a competitor called Domotz because of pricing. Auvik bills per what they call a billable device, which is a firewall, a switch, and a controller. All of those count as billable devices. Domotz, as an alternative, bills per site. It's a flat fee for the whole site. So, whether you've got 3 switches or 10 switches, it's the same cost.

Auvik's premium product has a couple of other features with regard to NetFlow and some of the traffic analysis on that side. They've also got Syslog now in their premium product. However, we found their premium product to be fairly expensive. The whole product is very expensive, even for their standard offering. So, to bump up to premium, it's a lot more expensive. We trialed it for a bit. It was very useful but not worth the extra cost.

In terms of comparing Auvik’s cloud-based solution versus on-prem network monitoring solutions, it is a tricky balance because while the Auvik database and the backend are all cloud-based, you still have an on-premise collector doing some of the management for you. The management of it is cloud-based, but there is an on-premise component to it. There are some alternatives, such as PRTG or Zabbix. They're all on-premise alternatives, but they are very much a pain to manage, particularly when you have multiple sites and multiple clients. Having the backend cloud-based is very useful. However, that's a feature that they share with Domotz. Domotz is cloud-based in the same way.

Overall, I'd give Auvik a seven out of ten. Tech-wise, it's a ten, but its pricing is a very big barrier to adoption.

I am a network specialist. I use Auvik for troubleshooting where something may have gone offline. 

We utilize it for learning. We utilize it to do various levels of monitoring in terms of whether things are up, if a port is flapping, or if there is a configuration error. We also utilize it to gather data about things on various networks that we administer. As we have thousands of endpoints, it helps greatly with quick insights and with things that otherwise would take a lot of manual digging.

We are an MSP, and my focus is networking. By implementing Auvik Network Management, we wanted to gain a good stance on insight into the network. We also use it for troubleshooting, but it was not a problem to be solved to begin with.

I have a networking background, so I found Auvik Network Management to be a great product right from the start.

Auvik Network Management has been extremely helpful for entry-level technicians, especially those with no networking background.

Auvik Network Management has definitely reduced the mean time to resolution. Things that we would have had to dig manually are presented in an easy-to-digest and accessible format. We can access the information from the cloud from anywhere we are.

The visibility that it provides depends on how you manage it. If you implement it perfectly, you will have 100% visibility. If you understand the benefits and limitations of the various probes and SNMP that they use, it works well. It is exactly as good as your implementation.

Auvik Network Management does not allow us to spend less time on the setup, but it allows us to spend less time on the maintenance of the solution and issue resolution.

It is pretty responsive to whether things are up or down.

The conventions that they use for the various menus are not super intuitive. They make sense after you realize how things are laid out, but I have to do a lot of digging to find the things that I am looking for.

The map itself is a little clunky in terms of zooming in, zooming out, and moving around because you have to use the manual on-screen buttons as opposed to being able to click and drag. I know that it is just a front-end graphic implementation, but it is slightly clunky to move around the map. However, all the information is there and presented in a very succinct fashion. It would be nice to be able to move around the map a little better. There should be more convenience from the drag, scroll, and zoom standpoints. 

I have been using Auvik Network Management for half a year.

It is very stable, but the interface is somewhat slow.

We have a number of small to large deployments, so its scalability is excellent.

The support guys are absolutely phenomenal, but they are highly technical, and they also expect other people to be so. We are an MSP, so we move fast. If I call support, it is because I am looking for a quick answer. It is a good thing that they teach you how to fix it yourself or where the resources are, but sometimes, we are looking for quick answers rather than being educated.

They are extremely quick at responding. They are very good at that.

Positive

There is a tool called NetsTools Pro. It is a device, and it performs some similar functions. I have used SolarWinds products. I have used too many tools for network monitoring.

Auvik puts a lot of the features that were present in these other tools into one great package.

It is deployed on the cloud, and there are appliances present in all of our customer sites.

Its deployment was easy for me because I have a networking background. For non-technical people, it is easier than many solutions.

In terms of maintenance, it requires monitoring in terms of making sure that the credentials stay updated for the network probes. If nothing changes, it does not require much maintenance.

We did it all in-house. Per-client, one person can handle the deployment.

I believe we have a special arrangement with them because we, as an MSP, take care of some of their technical services.

To implement Auvik effectively, I would advise comprehending some of the fundamentals of network monitoring that is vendor agnostic. Have a basic knowledge of SNMP and how ICMP works. You should be able to pass traffic through various network firewalls and junctions, and you should understand the limitations and advantages of any network in order to implement Auvik effectively.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I've had zero experience with stability issues. 

The solution seems to be very scalable. 

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

Positive

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

I was not involved in the initial setup.

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

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

We're customers and end-users.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

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.

We're a managed services provider using Auvik to monitor our clients' infrastructure. It is part of a set of tools that keeps us informed when something goes wrong, and we use it to build network maps. You can get an idea of what's happening on-site even if you're unfamiliar with the client's setup.

Sometimes it's the only thing on the network. It's competing with Ubiquiti if we have a Ubiquiti network. Not all the time, but sometimes. 

Auvik allows us to react faster to issues, so we're able to keep our SLAs. 
Depending on the issue, we're reducing our troubleshooting time to within 20 to 30 minutes. Some of our clients have one-hour SLAs, so that's an important turnaround.

We have much better visibility into our clients' networks, which is helpful when we're troubleshooting. When issues go wrong, we're more present. It helps us automate some low-level tasks. For example, it closes tickets on its own. 

The fact that Auvik is a cloud-based solution is crucial because we're primarily a cloud-based company monitoring multiple clients across several sites. The cloud functionality is handy because we get visibility across distinct companies all from one location. 

Monitoring is probably the most active asset Auvik does for us. If a particular device on the network goes down, we have that granularity to see which network element is causing the problem. 

The integrations don't give us too much trouble. It all works with Auto Task reasonably nicely. Once it's set up, it'll close out in Auto Task too, which is great. The network visualization is excellent if you build it out and tweak it, so it reflects the truth. You'll get most of the picture if you let it automatically populate. Once it's built out, the network map is decent.

The network visualization is pretty intuitive. There's not too much going on with the network map there, and you understand what a network looks like. I think it's pretty straightforward.

Auvik doesn't communicate very well with Ubiquiti devices and will incorrectly flag facets as down. Compatibility with Ubiquiti is my biggest pain point with Auvik.

I have been using Auvik since I joined this company in July 2022.

I haven't had any issues with Auvik's stability.

Auvik seems fairly scalable. It works for all of our clients, ranging from 10 devices to a few hundred. It works well for small to medium-sized businesses. 

I give Auvik a solid seven out of 10. I might rate it eight if the Ubiquiti issue wasn't always bugging me. It tells me Ubiquiti devices are down when they're not. I recommend giving it a try. If you are trying to track multiple sites and multiple clients, it's worth a look.

We use Auvik to manage our network, infrastructure, and servers across various locations. We don't use the automation portion of Auvik except for automated integration with our ticketing system. Auvik sends alerts, but we haven't set it up to resolve issues automatically.

In the past, we had to use the web UI or an SSH prompt to access a network switch and make modifications, but now we find that we can do that through Auvik. It saved us a significant amount of time by bringing everything under one roof. It's a big time saver to go to the Auvik website and make those changes. It's hard to quantify, but I would say it reduces the time needed by around 80 percent. We can respond to alerts and resolve them more quickly. I estimate that decreases our resolution time by about an hour per alert.

Auvik has also helped us manage our IT team. We have multiple people in the department, so it's also nice that Auvik creates a record of who checks the network equipment. I can find out precisely who checked and cleared an alert or who might have tunneled into a piece of equipment to make changes. The audit trail benefits us greatly.

We get alerts about any issue that's happening in the infrastructure. We're able to take those alerts. If it's a low-severity issue that can be fixed over time, we can assign it to a lower-level engineer. The critical alerts go to higher-tier engineers who can respond accordingly. The Auvik platform makes it very easy. Some alerts come in by default. Many of them are already pretty well-tuned to detect what's critical and what is just informational. We've built on their current alert system with a few modifications, but those alert systems allow us to prioritize who resolves the alerts. I don't think the device inventories save us time, but it's nice to see our count. 

The ability to map out the network topology is one of the top features I like about Auvik. It's one of the best on the market. They have a feature called Loopback Detection, which has helped us, in many scenarios easily detect that without having to physically go to the location to see if there is a loopback somewhere. 

The monitoring and management features are easy to use, and the documentation Auvik provides is clear and easy to understand. We set up a collector, and it's on its way. We have never had any trouble. It's great because even my junior engineers can set it up without a problem. Auvik offers a single integrated platform for managing our devices and infrastructure in one place. It isn't essential, but it's nice to have.

Although the network topology is excellent, it has a hard time picking up some devices on the network. A device might not be fully supported, or Auvik is unable to pull all the information from it. 

The only other problem is the SNMP logging credentials. Sometimes, when I input these credentials, logging into the devices takes a decent amount of time to see if the credentials work. It would be fantastic if they could improve that.

I have been using Auvik for about three years.

Auvik is highly stable, and they communicate well about the maintenance windows. I don't think I've ever had Auvik go down in the middle of the day. It's very reliable.

Auvik is extremely scalable. They have options for scaling to multiple sites. I don't know if there's even a theoretical limit to its scalability.

I rate Auvik's support a ten out of ten. They're super knowledgeable. They typically have an answer for any question I throw at them.

Positive

Setting up Auvik is very straightforward. We started with a trial, and from there, we could follow the guides to get everything set up. Our initial trial deployment was out-of-the-box, but once we purchased it, we reached out to Auvik to get it perfected. 

Our deployment team consisted of me and one other person, so there were two people to deploy to every site. It was quick once everything was set up the way we wanted. It was a staged deployment, so it took longer than usual. If I were to do it right now, it probably wouldn't take longer than an eight-hour day.

We deployed it ourselves with vendor support. We got everything set up and configured the way we wanted in an hour or so.

I don't know if time-to-value is necessarily a metric I would consider because it's mostly internal, but from a productivity standpoint, we can respond to IT issues faster. I don't see it in my organization, but I can totally see how companies that support multiple clients could see a time to value.

I believe that Auvik is one of the most expensive tools, but it is also the best.

We tested various solutions, but Auvik was our first choice. However, I wouldn't say we tried other solutions in the same depth as we used Auvik. It was three years ago, so I'm having difficulty remembering names. There was another solution that was part of the ticketing system we use. We tried that because it was built in, but it was subpar compared to Auvik.

I rate Auvik a ten out of ten. If you plan to implement Auvik, you should deploy it in a testing environment to ensure it's running perfectly and customize the alerts that you want to get. With the out-of-the-box configuration, you will be getting alerts that you might not necessarily care about. If you take the time to go through those alerts and set everything up, it will probably make your life much easier.

The primary use is for notifications and alerts, but also to get a feel for the network because I can see it all on a map, and it looks nice. We don't only use Auvik. 

To paint a picture of our environment, we deploy Auvik for some of our clients, and some of them own multiple facilities, so we have sites for them. Within our company, different individuals have different access levels, some with read-only. We also give some of our clients read-only access so they can see their network if they are curious.

We are an IT company, so notifications and alerts are essential for us. We can preempt problems because the solution alerts us before the customer even contacts us, so by the time they call, we already have information and an ETA on the fix for them.

Auvik affected our IT team's visibility into remote and distributed networks globally. Everything we do is remote, including initial onsite setups, and we can see how a network looks from the perspective of a nice-looking map. This visibility is important because it helps us see the network more clearly and provides a more physical feel instead of just seeing numbers and settings. Having an actual map of the network components and connections helps significantly.  

We have seen time-to-value with Auvik; it's a beneficial product, and we use it daily. 

We have seen a reduction in our mean time to resolution (MTTR) because the solution allows us to begin troubleshooting very quickly.  

The extensive personalization and customization options are great because it lets me do a lot. I can set up different permission structures, assign various staff members read-only access and others full access, and customize my notifications.

Auvik's UI is beautiful. 

The solution's monitoring and management functions are relatively straightforward; with ten being the most difficult, I'd rate Auvik three point five or four. This simplicity is important to my organization.    

Regarding Auvik helping to visualize the network mapping, that's one of the features I love most about it. It shows the network on such a simple level, with the firewall on top, the switches, types of connections, devices, and so on.  

Auvik has excellent integrations with other solutions we use. 

A feature I'd like to see is a stat breakdown of our networks at the end of every month, showing package drop rates for each network and so on. For example, this data delivered in an email would be a good feature.

I've been using the solution for four to five months. 

Ten out of ten, we've never had an issue with the solution's stability. 

Auvik is highly scalable. 

I've never needed to contact technical support.

The initial setup was straightforward, largely thanks to Auvik's knowledge base. They provided an excellent knowledge base, exact instructions, and courses, which made the process very simple.

Deployment of the solution to a site requires one staff member, and the process includes the following:

• Installing the connector on a local device.
• Getting it signed in with the SMPP protocol.
• Creating the sites and the multi-site.

Following the deployment, we monitor notifications; no other maintenance is necessary.

Auvik assisted us with the initial deployment. 

I rate the solution ten out of ten. We don't use it to control every aspect of the network, but I'm satisfied with what we use it for.

Auvik is the solution for those looking to monitor their networks. It's incredible; my advice is to go for it.