Auvik Network Management (ANM) Reviews

We use Auvik mainly to monitor switches and firewalls but also use it to monitor VMware. We also utilize the extra monitoring that Auvik provides for desktops.

Auvik gives us better insight into devices and helps us troubleshoot better because we can compare configurations. Auvik also gives us better and faster alerts on devices. If a client has a switch that's down, we tend to be able to find out and react to it before the client has to reach out to us, which is always a great benefit.

When internet connections are down, we can find out quickly, especially after hours or over the weekend, and can make sure that everything is working before the staff come back in to work for the day. We can make sure that everything is back up and running. The number of alerts and the granularity of the alerts mean that we can pinpoint on a particular switch the specific port that is causing the issue.

The other great aspect that has come in handy a few times for us is traffic monitoring. We can see if someone's internet connection is running slowly and see exactly where the traffic is going. We can zero in on what the traffic is, which user is using the traffic, and what switch it's going through. The information that Auvik gives us helps us troubleshoot, which is a lot of what we do. Auvik has helped us make sure that the company continues to run efficiently.

The most valuable feature is that it will back up the configuration and it will keep multiple copies of it. If a change is made to the configuration by someone else in my company, for example, and something goes wrong, I can bring up the previous configuration and the current configuration, and it will show me exactly what's different. It greatly reduces the time it would take to troubleshoot because I can pinpoint exactly what was done. I can then either change whatever it may have been or roll back the change.

Auvik's monitoring and management functions are easy to use. For certain devices, switches, or routers, you have to make sure that SNMP monitoring is enabled on the device. Once it's enabled, Auvik is extremely simple to use. I've worked with other monitoring software in the past, and it has taken weeks to configure all of the alerts and get everything monitoring the way we want it to. With Auvik, once the device is capable of pushing the logs, it's simple. Auvik also has many out-of-the-box notifications that are pre-built and that automatically monitor. Setting up a switch or a router is simple and quick.

Auvik provides a single integrated platform and two different ways to install it. If you have VMware, you can put an appliance right into your VMware for monitoring. If you have a Windows server, you can install the agent, and it crawls the network and finds everything easily. Having a single integrated platform is important for our organization because we don't want to have 10 different programs or applications and have to go through each one to differentiate which one is using what and where. We want to be able to have one central location where we can find everything we need.

Before we switched to Auvik, we used three or four different applications to monitor different functions. Some were designed to monitor VMware, some were for desktops, and some were for switches and firewalls. Using multiple products was a pain, and none of them actually had as many features as Auvik does now. We have saved quite a bit of time by switching to Auvik. We have central alerts, and we have functions pre-built now that we truly understand what it takes to get a new client configured. We just added a client in the past few weeks, and all we had to do was throw the agent on a machine, let it figure everything out, and put in the passwords for the devices into Auvik. That was it, and Auvik took care of everything else. It definitely saves a lot of time, especially in terms of the configuration of the monitoring.

We can visualize the network mapping/topology of our organization with Auvik. It's really nice that it breaks it all out. When we have clients that have 40 or 50 switches across multiple buildings, the map will be very large. In these cases, it's very difficult to zero in on the map; however, we will still be able to pinpoint which devices are connected to which switch. If a particular switch is down or having issues, we'll know exactly which segment of the company is going to be affected by that. We'll know if there are network loops because certain things are interconnected.

The ability to not have to try to manually figure out where everything is and just be able to pull up a map and identify a switch that is connected to it is great. It makes creating a network map for new clients much simpler. If we go into a new client, we can run Auvik for 24 hours, and then it will bring up all the switches and all the devices connected to the switches. It will show where the firewall is as well. It has definitely taken away the time spent creating the network maps, which were never one of my favorite things to create in the first place.

Auvik helps keep device inventories up to date for us, especially with regard to switches, routers, and firewalls. Even if we're the ones who put one of these in, we don't necessarily have to go write down the serial number. We can get it configured, put it in, and then go back into Auvik to make sure that it's being picked up and monitored. We can also check whether we have all the information right there for us so that we can get everything right out of Auvik. If the switch gets replaced and it goes directly to the client, we don't necessarily need to see the switch because we know we can pull out everything we need right from Auvik to update our inventory of the devices for that particular client.

Having a stronger inventory and the flexibility to more easily find particular aspects allows us to delegate certain low-level tasks to junior staff. Because we can pinpoint exactly where particular devices are easily and quickly, we are able to delegate more high-value tasks such as important firmware updates so that patches are done as quickly as possible. It makes it much simpler because we know exactly which clients need the update. We can use Auvik from the portal to remote directly into that device to apply the firmware that we need.

Having Auvik keep our device inventories up-to-date takes away the need to have someone dedicated to recording that information or keeping the information up-to-date. We can just log into Auvik and get it. It's much faster, and we're not wasting time on doing something that, although is very important, takes away from us having the ability to do other much more important tasks.

The time-to-value is worth every penny. The speed at which Auvik alerts us when there are problems with switches or firewalls, or when switches or a segment of a network is down is worth it in and of itself. Then, you have the added benefits of VMware monitoring at no additional cost, configuration backup, and log storage. The cost of Auvik for the amount of time that can be saved and the ability to look good to a client because you're on top of everything is well worth it. The amount of time that Auvik has saved us is certainly worth its cost.

We have definitely seen a reduction in mean time to resolution. Auvik is very quick to alert us and give us the information we need based on the client and the switch. We can log into the Auvik website and get more information so that we can be more on top of things. There have been several times when we've had a switch go down on the client in the middle of the day, and we have been able to reach out to them to let them know that the switch is down and that we're working on it before they even realize that the switch is down. It allows us to get to a problem much faster and also helps us to look better to our clients. Prior to Auvik, if there was a problem we typically found out when the client reached out to us. The client typically would find out within 10 to 15 minutes that there was a problem and then reach out to us. So, it would probably be 15 to 20 minutes before we would know about the issue. Whereas now, we know about an issue within three to five minutes, so we're on top of it. Auvik has cut down our time by 10 to 15 minutes.

The biggest area for improvement is the speed of the website because it's not something we host. Each of our clients hosts an agent that gathers the logs and pushes it up. The website can be slow to click around in or click through.

One other area for improvement is a central location to figure out what devices are not having their configuration backed up or are not monitoring a certain item. Right now, you have to click into each switch, router, or firewall and then just make sure that all of the boxes are checked for backup and monitoring. This, technically, should already be happening as soon as a switch is installed. However, for auditing reasons and to verify that no one missed anything, having one place where you can click and see a list of all the switches, what's missing, and which switches are not doing what in the realm of backup or monitoring would be great.

I've been using it for three years.

The stability is good. Auvik is hosted on AWS, so if AWS is having issues, then Auvik will as well. However, the few times that I have remembered them having issues, they have been resolved quickly. We've seen no ill effects from any of the times they've had issues.

It appears to scale very easily. We have small clients and large clients, and Auvik handles them all very well. It doesn't seem to have any issues with any changes we throw at it.

Auvik's technical support is great. We don't have to reach out to them very often because we don't have that many issues. However, the handful of times that we have reached out for assistance with configuration they've always been easy to work with and helpful.

Technical support staff even reach out to us periodically and ask if there's anything that they can help us with. Auvik's support has been top-notch, and I'd give them a ten out of ten.

Positive

We used a ManageEngine monitoring solution for monitoring switches. It may have come a long way by now, but the downside at the time was the sheer time it took to get it to monitor what you wanted it to. It did not have a configuration backup or the ability to check configurations and what was different between two particular configurations.

We had a big client we had just taken over who had quite a few switches and devices on the network, and we figured that it would be the perfect time to give Auvik a test run. We really liked the fact that Auvik would monitor, back up configurations, and map everything out.

We wanted the ability to retain logs for more than 15 days, and Auvik implemented the ability to push logs out to Azure or AWS for retention. You can get your own bucket of storage, connect it, and keep logs for as long as you like.

One of the reasons why I like Auvik's cloud-based solution is that it's easier to get alerts. If an on-premises network monitoring solution goes down, it's much harder to get alerts, whereas the cloud solution can tell you that it's down because it can't see it. You may get a false alert that it's down, but it's better to have a false alert and look into it than it is to figure out that it's a true alert. Alerting with a cloud solution can be a little bit better than that with an on-premises solution.

The other aspect that's nice is if hardware crashes on-premises because of a ransomware attack, for example, and I have my logs stored in a cloud solution such as Auvik, I can still get to those logs to figure out what happened or how the attacker got in and do some forensics work. Whereas if the logs were being stored on-premises, I would probably have lost them all.

The initial setup was very straightforward. You have to go into Auvik, create a customer, get the agent to install, pop the agent onto a machine, and give it credentials so that it can scan. You let it run for a little bit, then you add your SNMP credentials into Auvik so that it can log into the devices, and you're done.

You can do more configurations to make sure that the backup feature is turned on or enable traffic insights for each switch. These are just a couple of clicks on the mouse. The initial setup and onboarding of new clients have been simple and quick. We've never had any problems.

We implemented Auvik out of the box. The network mapping started to populate within 10 to 15 minutes after the collector was implemented. How long it may take to truly grab everything depends on the size of the network, but typically, within an hour you will have a pretty solid understanding of the network via the map. If you were on-site with a new client, you could install the agent with their approval and have a meeting about the different aspects of what you're going to do for them. By the time the meeting is finished, you would have a pretty strong understanding of the entire network and what devices are out there.

We deployed it with the help of someone from Auvik.

Given the types of alerts and the different aspects of Auvik, I think it's worth the cost that is associated with it. I don't think the cost is terribly high. The infrastructure is the core or the backbone of a business. If it goes down, then the business stops. You have to decide how much money you're going to lose if your network is down and you can't figure out why for hours or days versus what Auvik would cost you a month.

If you want to evaluate Auvik, give it a couple of days at the minimum. If you have any questions, reach out to their technical support. Ask them how to do things and how things work, or watch some videos on it. Auvik has a lot of functionality, but don't get overwhelmed. Look at each one separately, spend some time on each one, and just give it some time to sink in and see what it can do.

Overall, I would rate Auvik at ten on a scale from one to ten.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I probably started to use it in 2016 or 2017. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We implemented it ourselves.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our primary use cases are network management and configuration backups. The solution is deployed across 1,500 to 2,000 devices, and we have multiple clients as an MSP. The tool is multi-tenant within our environment and deployed across VPNs and numerous sites. Our clients range from small family-owned businesses to enterprises.

We previously used multiple applications to manage our networks, and switching to Auvik saved us a lot of time; we can troubleshoot two to three times faster than before. 

The most significant benefit of using Auvik is being able to pinpoint where an issue is. With the monitoring we had before, it wasn't proactive or reactive when something went down. It would inform us that something isn't working, but Auvik can tell us there's an issue on a specific subnet, and we can trace through and pinpoint a particular switch that went offline, for example.  

The solution helped reduce repetitive, low-priority tasks through automation, which is another area that's two or three times faster now, if not more.

The product positively affected our IT team's visibility into our remote and globally distributed networks, which is essential for us. We previously had separate tools for different locations, so it wasn't cohesive. With Auvik, we can tell at a glance that there are three devices offline at a site, including why they aren't working from a network perspective. It helps us figure out what's happening quicker, which helps us resolve faster and get back online. That insight is invaluable.

The solution's automation significantly affected our IT team's availability, as it frees up a lot of time for tasks we didn't have time for before. The rapidity and ease of resolution give us time to focus on other areas.  

We have seen a reduction in our mean time to resolve (MTTR) in the area of 50-60%.  

One of the solution's best features is how it helps us visualize our network mapping/topology. It builds the map out automatically as it discovers devices, networks within our network, or different subnets. We can see exactly where devices are in the environment and all their connections. Nobody likes to build out Visio diagrams, but with Auvik, we can take a snapshot of the network map and show it to a client. The network visualization is straightforward, intuitive, and makes sense.  

The automated network topology map is excellent; it shows connected networks, where they're going, and what they're visible on.

The configuration backup is a great feature, as it allows us to compare to previous iterations after changes and roll back if necessary.

Auvik allows us to get into devices through remote tunnels rather than going to the actual sites.

The alerting is another helpful feature, as Auvik gives more timely alerts than other tools. This makes it easier to pinpoint when and what network component goes down.

Auvik provides a single integrated platform for network management, which is essential for us; the fewer platforms we have to jump between, the better.   

Auvik helps keep device inventories up-to-date and find devices we didn't know were there in some cases. This functionality is excellent for helping our teams focus on high-value tasks, though not so much for delegation, as the solution is relatively challenging to learn and understand. 

The solution keeping device inventories up-to-date saves a lot of time because we can find devices we didn't know were there, figure out the network quicker, and identify potential issues.  

To someone comparing network monitoring solutions but concerned about price, you get what you pay for. We've used cheaper and free products, and we use Auvik now. It depends on how much time and energy you have to put into it versus a tool that's ready to use immediately. Our time is valuable, and we don't have enough to fiddle with a solution all day to get it to work or do what we want it to do.  

I want to see improvements to the interface, as it's data-heavy and challenging to navigate. This makes it harder to delegate and have junior staff look around and figure out the solution. A more straightforward interface would be a welcome improvement, whether by making it cleaner or more intuitive.

We've been using Auvik for about five years. 

The solution is highly stable; I can't think of a time when I tried to access it and it was unavailable. I've seen maintenance alerts and notifications, but we never had an issue.

The product is very flexible and scalable. 

We contacted technical support on a few occasions, and they're familiar enough with the product to answer our questions and solve our issues. 

Positive

We previously used a kind of piecemeal solution; we tried to do SNMP reporting through our RMM tool. We also used a free Linux distro called LibreNMS, Nagios, and SolarWinds.

Libre was too convoluted; it was challenging to set up and obnoxious to deal with. Nagios gave us a lot of false alerts and irrelevant data and required tedious maintenance. Lastly, the company didn't like SolarWinds, so Auvik was our best solution, even though it was more expensive. Auvik does a better job of alerting and presenting relevant data, and I don't know if the other solutions featured automatic backup configuration or remote tunnel access. Most of the competitors didn't have the network topology mapping, or they didn't do a good job of it, but Auvik does that very well, and it's dynamic. Auvik seems like the more complete, refined tool, despite being a bit more expensive or on par with the competition.

I was involved in the initial setup, and it's not as straightforward as some but not as complex as others, such as LibreNMS or SolarWinds. Auvik is somewhere in the middle in terms of setup difficulty. Two or three of us carried out the deployment, as we were the most familiar with the different environments, and the product is lightweight in terms of maintenance. 

The solution was quickly available out of the box; we created the tenant and deployed the collector, which were straightforward tasks. Following the collector deployment, the network mapping began to populate right away. 

To compare Auvik's cloud-based solution versus on-prem network monitoring solutions, we don't have to worry about the backend setup and config issues as much. Other than making sure the Auvik collector is up and running, we don't have to do anything else, which means less maintenance and an easier time for us. 

Comparing the time and cost it took to set up and maintain Auvik versus previous solutions, Auvik took less time to set up, deploy, and fulfill the job we wanted it to. In terms of difficulty, it's on par with other solutions though better than most, and it provides more data, better information, and better results. Auvik also makes troubleshooting straightforward and helpful; LibreNMS was too granular and complicated to operate for troubleshooting.

We deployed via an in-house team, though Auvik Networks Inc. helped us with a few issues. As we tested the solution and played with it beforehand, we were familiar with it when we decided to go with Auvik and didn't feel like we needed outside help.

The price is a little high, and the product could be more cost-friendly. We work with many small and medium-sized businesses, so the cost can be hard to justify. We try to work around that, but it would be nice if Auvik were more cost-effective. Most enterprise-level businesses we work with have their own internal monitoring solutions, whether Nagios or SolarWinds.

I rate the product eight out of ten. If the interface was cleaned up and it was more cost-effective, I'd give it a ten.

It is moderately challenging to use Auvik's monitoring and management functions. It isn't the most accessible tool to learn; there's a bit of a learning curve, but it was fine once we got the hang of it. There are more intuitive solutions, which is why it takes a while to adapt, but it has excellent capabilities.

The solution didn't particularly help us delegate low-level tasks to junior staff because learning the platform isn't as intuitive as it could be. Therefore, it's harder for our junior techs to figure out what's going on, what's relevant and what isn't, so we haven't had our juniors in there much.

From a technical perspective, we have seen time to value with Auvik, though it can be challenging to demonstrate that to the higher-ups with tech solutions. The network topology is an excellent way of showing that value, and so is the remote management backup. It can be impactful when people don't have such bells and whistles to see.   

My advice to those considering the solution is that it may be more expensive than some, but it does a better job than just about anything else on the market. Auvik is more reliable, does an excellent job, and makes life easier once it's up and running. Be prepared to spend some time finding out what is and isn't relevant to your requirements and configure accordingly, which will make your life easier.

We're an MSP and we deploy Auvik for every single customer that DP Solutions has. We use it for network monitoring and infrastructure provisioning alerts. We also use it for troubleshooting, and for backups and configuration.

We used UniFi or Ubiquiti for our switching and access points, but that didn't get us into firewalls, so we had to have a separate pane of glass for the firewalls. Having one piece of software to manage it all is the reason we love Auvik. 

We previously used multiple applications for managing our networks, including the Ubiquiti portal and whatever firewall portal the customer had. That included Cisco, FortiGate, SonicWall, Palo Alto, Juniper, and Barracuda. We have used a lot of firewalls, but having one piece of software that has all that combined is really nice.

Auvik has saved us hours, per issue. We've caught multiple network loops due to user error, and that problem is usually incredibly hard to troubleshoot and pinpoint exactly what the issue is. Auvik pinpoints it and tells you exactly what happened: when, and which switch port—all the kind of stuff that no other piece of software can do, at least in a single pane of glass. Without that single pane of glass for us for troubleshooting and monitoring and alerting, it would take us hours to troubleshoot, not minutes. 

It can find the network loops and configuration errors without us even having to lift a finger. The minute we sign into Auvik, we see the alerts. At times, like in a network loop situation, the reduction in MTTR could be over 100 percent. At other times, it could be 50 percent. It depends on the issue.

In addition, the fact that it automatically backs up configurations is outstanding. That way, if there's any kind of change or something has to be reset, I can just copy that configuration, put it back in, and call it a day.

When it comes to visibility into distributed networks, we have clients all over the Lower 48, especially on the East Coast. The amount of time it saves us from having to actually go out to a site to do something is phenomenal. That visibility is critical. Without that, it would be really hard to really stay afloat and make money. Every time a tech has to go out, we're talking about money, labor, and time that we could be using for something else.

At this point, we have close to a couple of hundred clients, and we dedicate a technician one day a month to each client to do documentation and keep inventories up to date. It is probably saving us 200 hours of labor every month. That amounts to tens of thousands of dollars.

Also, Auvik definitely helps keep device inventories up to date. I'm able to tell how long ago the device was offline. Being an MSP, we don't always know everything that happens at a customer's company. They might switch phone providers and not tell us, but we'll get the information because we can see they switched on date XYZ because instead of going online, now it's not. Now, we have more information and it gives us much better insights into the customer and network.

The ability to change the severity of alerts is also helpful. If it's a level-one, then we can have some junior people look at it and determine that it's not important or that it should be escalated if they know it's a bigger issue. It keeps the critical alerts to the upper-level staff, which means they're not dealing with a service advisor or a service director and looking at every single ticket to delegate it. That is saving us plenty of time.

I love the alerting. With a single pane of glass, it's able to tell me that there's a firewall error, or that something is offline, there is a switch configuration error, or a configuration change has taken place on a certain device. I don't think I can pinpoint a single favorite feature of Auvik. I use almost everything.

Using the monitoring and management functions of Auvik is really easy, but I'm a little bit biased because I am Auvik Certified. (The certification process includes super in-depth training. Before the training, I was able to use Auvik, but I wasn't using it full-strength. Once I did the training, there was not a whole lot I didn't know about the software). The ease of use is incredibly important. If it wasn't something that is easily accessible or has the tools that we need, we wouldn't be using it.

It's also fantastic for helping to visualize the network mapping topology. It saves me countless hours of time every time a customer asks for a network topology map. Normally, I would have to wing it and roughly create one. But with Auvik, I'm able to just hit "filter by network elements only" and it prints it out. I can take a screenshot for the customer and send it back to them within minutes. 

And that network visualization functionality is right there when you sign in. It's front and center, which is great. It especially helps when we have junior network engineers work on it because, when they sign into that Auvik device, it gives them a good start into the network and its complexity. It gives them a brief description of what they're getting themselves into.

The automation side needs improvement. I'm a regular in the Auvik forum, and there have been a couple of automation requests to remedy some things that a normal single pane of glass would have. 

A really important one was about a SonicWall firewall that needs to be rebooted every single month. You can do that in the SonicWall GUI, but you can't do it in Auvik. Hundreds of people have endorsed the idea of having an automated command line interface command run on any device that supports it. When the device goes in it would run the command and the device would reboot (just as an example, because that's a really simple task). 

Having a scheduled task like that would save lots of people from having to go into a different pane of glass, such as the SonicWall GUI. Or, in a worst-case scenario, if I have to schedule a reboot at midnight, I have to be up at midnight to schedule that reboot instead of just letting Auvik run the command. That kind of automation would be really beneficial.

I've been using Auvik for 10 months, since January of this year.

The software is incredibly reliable. We really have never had any issues with Auvik. We have issues with Windows more than we do with Auvik. Perhaps that is pretty standard because Windows is not really that reliable.

The scalability is very good. The addition of the multi-site feature was a great touch. We can have one customer with multiple sites, which really reduces the load and the horsepower needed for an Auvik device. It reduces the bandwidth needed to monitor multiple sites when you can split it up between multiple devices.

We manage close to 200 customers. Some customers have one site and some have 30. Each Auvik instance might have multiple VLANs and multiple networks on top of that. And the number of actual users that are affected by Auvik within our clients' environments is between 20,000 and 30,000.

We had a previous network monitoring tool, which I believe was Arctic Wolf. It had some of the security features that Auvik has, but it had none of the technical troubleshooting capabilities. It was mostly a backup and security appliance.

The blessing of how simple Auvik is to deploy is that, once I'm done setting it up, all I have to do is put the device back in the box, ship it to the customer, and tell them, "Call me with this number, plug the device into this port, turn it on, and we're done." That allows me to deploy 20 in a week, as opposed to five. The setup is completely straightforward. It's one of the easiest.

The amount of time it takes after a collector is implemented until the network mapping starts to populate depends on the device. For smaller things like standalone PCs, it can take 30 minutes. But when we have devices with a little more horsepower behind them, it could be within 15 minutes.

I am the only one involved in the deployments. That's how easy it is. You can have one person assigned to it, and it's just plug-and-play. And the maintenance side is incredibly lightweight. The only thing we have to do is manage the Windows part of it, which we were already going to do.

I love the pricing. It makes a lot of sense. It allows you to use your own metal, which is great because it enables us to go higher-end for some clients and lower-end for others. Sometimes we have it just run as a service on a Windows Server. You really can't beat that kind of flexibility. Even having the flexibility to switch clients between the Performance (expert) and the Essentials (simple) version of Auvik, on the fly, is really unheard of.

If someone is comparing network monitoring solutions' pricing, Auvik makes itself worth it very quickly, as soon as you get anything happening that involves labor hours. It completely pulls Auvik out of any kind of argument.

We pretty much had our eyes on Auvik.

One of the best parts about it is that it's a cloud-based solution. A device runs on-prem and only sends out the information it needs to the cloud. That saves so much bandwidth by having it local. Clients that might not have the fastest ISP circuit can still enjoy the benefits of having something that I can remotely manage.

My advice is that you absolutely have to get Auvik Certified. That unlocks so many things that aren't necessarily intuitive, things that are a little bit more hidden behind the curtain. When you get that certification, it's like you have all the keys. You can go behind all the doors and you know how to navigate the system really well. I wish that Auvik would push their certification more. It's incredibly hard to find that training. When you set up the account for the first time, or even when you're a new user, they don't really even talk about the training and they never talk about getting certified. The fact that they have a certification training course is news to everybody.

We utilize Auvik for monitoring our clients' environments. 

It plays a highly critical part in our operations. A part of the product that we sell to our clients involves a service level agreement that we will respond to within X amount of time, and we'll monitor their environment for them. Because of that, this plays an absolutely critical function.

The collectors that they use are constantly connecting to Auvik to make sure that you're aware that it's active, it's running. You would think all of the other monitoring solutions out there do the same thing, and many do claim that, but most can't deliver that, whereas Auvik can. There have been many times when some of our other tools that are also monitoring things should be reporting that there's an outage at a location or a server is down or something like that, but that's just not the case. With those other tools, it doesn't even blip on their radar that the system is completely hard down and it's a big issue, whereas, with Auvik, the moment a collector disconnects, and it has been disconnected for the amount of time that we defined, it immediately alerts us and says, "We can't communicate with this machine." It's really handy. You can sell the feature all day long, but if that feature doesn't work, it's not a real feature. Auvik works. It's very reliable, at least from our experiences so far.

I enjoy it when it comes to visualizing the network mapping/topology for the organization. It doesn't just provide a network map. It gives us a global view, an actual Earth view, and it allows us to see where the devices are physically located, which is very handy. Especially if we need to dispatch something or if we need to compare a power outage to maybe a storm that's passing by, it gives us the map and visual of where a device is located. When you drill down into it, you can click on the actual nodes that are on the map and go down as granular as you want. You can see the actual network topology of the environment. It does a pretty good job of figuring out how it's all laid out. You've got a collector from Auvik that's sitting there, and it explores and discovers the devices. So far, I haven't seen an instance where it couldn't figure out the exact network topology. There's always this rare case where something gets kind of wonky in regard to how your server is set up. You might have multiple connections coming in or whatever, but so far, it has been able to define all that. That's something that a lot of people don't realize is normally a manual task. You have to break out Visio and start dragging and dropping a lot of icons, name it yourself, define the IPs, etc. Auvik does it automatically, which is just cool.

Our client environments are not a single vendor product. There are multiple vendors coming in from different directions. We deal in data systems, which is the industrial automation type of stuff that deals with wastewater treatment plants, water treatment plants, etc. Due to the nature of our business, being able to have an accurate inventory of what's at what site, what's the IP address, or what are the specs on a server is super important.

It provides an integrated platform for a few brands. It doesn't provide a fully integrated platform for all the brands and manufacturers out there. It's probably a little bit more skewed toward Cisco products, which we don't use a lot. It would be nice if they had full integration into Dell's tools, as well as VMware for Hypervisor and things like that. Having a single integrated platform would save us a lot of time across the board. Currently, we have to use Auvik for monitoring. It's probably the most reliable one that we have so far. We've used quite a few in the past, including Ninja, some Microsoft options, and several others. Everyone promises it, but far and few can truly deliver a single pane of glass experience. The Auvik tool gives us a single pane of glass for all of the monitoring needs, and then, if we need to drill into on a system-by-system basis and remotely manage the system and remote into a machine, we have to use other tools for that.

My favorite feature so far is the alerts section. We've got our main company at the top, and then all of our customers are underneath that. We can either filter by a single customer or one of their sites specifically, or look at it from the top down and see the whole picture. It's an easy way for me to be able to have a high-level overview. I can see the status of all of our sites simultaneously without having to really dig in and get super granular unless I want to. It gives that ability too, which is cool.

The functionality on a PC is definitely better than in a mobile environment. If you are logging in to Auvik on your phone or on a tablet, it's a little janky at times, but on a PC, it's fantastic.

If I could make a wish list of things that I would like to see from Auvik, I would definitely love to see more vendor integration with specific manufacturers. They've got that integration with Cisco, but it would be awesome to also have that with other major brands, such as HP, Dell, and Lenovo. It should have integration with more vendors, and in general, being able to quickly and easily access vendor-specific tools from the portal would be amazing. A real-life case scenario would be that we know that Dell servers have iDRAC cards on them, which allows for remote control and a remote KVM keyboard, video, and mouse functionality. It would be nice to be able to have the direct link baked in and be able to quickly just say, "I need to remotely manage this machine," and then you can just click, and you're in. In regards to VMware, VMware is one of the top three hypervisors for virtualization. It would be awesome to be able to quickly and easily identify that this is the VMware cluster, this is the ESXi server, and this is a vCenter. We should be able to quickly and easily log into consoles and remotely manage things as needed from there. This kind of functionality for the Cisco products is baked into Auvik right now, but it doesn't exist for other manufacturers. It's one of those things that will happen as time goes by. They need to make sure that it's embedded and done properly and that they're working with the manufacturers directly, instead of trying to duct tape a solution.

The other improvement would be more on the software side of things in terms of understanding that patch management happens and vulnerabilities are security patched all the time. There should be more direct integration with Microsoft updates. Pretty much everyone uses Windows, and being able to easily identify that there's a patch pending, and maybe even be able to push it, would be awesome.

My direct experience with Auvik has been since August.

In terms of full stability, which also includes their response to security issues, I would rate it a 9 out of 10.

The sky's the limit. There don't seem to be any actual limits on the number of collectors that you're able to deploy. We started out at 40, and we're at 63 right now. It scales easily and effortlessly. So, I would rate it a 10 out of 10 in terms of stability.

It's decent. It's a little difficult to get a hold of them sometimes, but, overall, it's not bad. Comparing it to the big three computer manufacturers, Dell, HP, and Lenovo, they fall in Dell's mid-tier level support. It's pretty decent.

Positive

We use multiple tools. We went for Auvik because of its dependability. We have to have a reliable report as to what's up and what's down. Ninja is great on a surface level, but it doesn't update live. It has a periodic updating process. You don't really know when it's going to update next. You would expect it to be live, but it's not. Having accurate, live information was the reason why we started with Auvik.

This isn't just a one-application show for us. We've got Auvik. We've got Ninja, and we've got several other tools that we use for monitoring to cover redundancy and any spillover situation. By far, Auvik is the cleanest. It's the most up-to-date. It's the most accurate. Ninja, for example, is a decent competitor against Auvik's platform. Ninja reports things, but the information is very clustered up and very hard to read and discern. Once you get used to it, you're okay, but on your first experience with Ninja, it's horrible. Auvik is very clean. It has that modern look and feel to it. Anybody who uses modern apps and web apps is going to be able to quickly and easily figure out his or her way through it.

The most important thing when comparing Auvik versus other competitors is that we have found Auvik to be the most reliable. It will report when things are out. It will report everything based on how we have it set up and defined. This reliability is very important. Ninja is great, and as a team, when we were using only Ninja, and we weren't utilizing Auvik at all, Ninja would report things, but it wouldn't always report that live, up-to-date view of what's going on. You might have alerts saying, "Oh, it's out." You're like, "No. No, we cleared that alert. Why is it still showing that?" There's no real easy way to discern how to clear the alerts if it just doesn't detect it automatically, whereas Auvik is always up to date. It's always communicating, and if it ever drops that communication, it immediately notifies you, which is awesome.

The alerts that are provided to us correspond and correlate directly to the SLAs that we are selling and promising to our clients. So, in the event of a full outage or whatever, it gives us the ability to quickly and easily identify that there is an outage at this site, and it's this device that is currently causing the problem, or we haven't had any communication for X amount of time to this IP address. We are then able to say, "Okay, this is a high priority because it's affecting outage, and it's affecting the service for our client," whereas, something like when disk-based utilization is 80% has a high priority, but it's not a major issue. Auvik allows us to quickly and easily prioritize types of incidents, for example, outage versus 80% storage. It allows us to clarify whether something is an incident or not.

I was not involved with the setup, but I was involved in the sourcing and options. That was me working with the company, before I actually worked with the company directly, and looking at all the different options that were out there. Auvik seems to be the one that made the most sense. In regards to the setup process, I can see that the general setup itself as an administrator is not difficult. It takes 15 to 30 minutes on average. You can add in some videos to watch if you want to figure out how to do something or whatever, and you're probably going to be up and running within about two hours.

It doesn't require any maintenance. It does that itself. It updates its own collectors. You have to just install the collector. Once that's installed, it'll update itself. Outside of that, it's a web or cloud tool. It's software as a service. So, they handle all the maintenance and things like that on the backend from there.

Being a cloud solution, the always-on communication between Auvik and its collectors gives you that real-time status, and it's amazing. With an on-prem solution, if something goes wrong with your equipment, that's going to cause issues. If you're doing it even in your own private spot or even public cloud or whatever, you're having to control that kind of infrastructure, environment, and things like that. It's one of those things that annoys people when they see that there's going to be an outage for a tool because of updates, maintenance, and things like that, but Auvik has been always on the spot making sure that we're aware, "Hey, heads up on this date at this time, maintenance on these machines is going to be happening. These are the things that will either function or non-function. These are things that are going to be changing and so on, so forth." I've also seen several instances where they responded to a security threat, and they did that really quickly. Our outage time on that from Auvik was measured in minutes. If we were doing that and hosting it ourselves, even though we have a decently-sized team, we don't have the time to do all that kind of work. Monitoring and maintaining all that is amazing with the whole cloud option.

It's hard to measure what it's providing. However, considering the cost that we are paying in regards to what we're getting out of it, it has easily paid for itself within the first few months just based on our current deployment environment. We have to have accurate information. We have to know when something is up and down, and if it's not, we break SLA, our service level agreement, with our clients. If we do that, we have to pay money to our clients because we broke contracts. One broken contract is going to cost us five grand, and this prevents us from losing that, so it's awesome.

There is a reduction in our mean time to resolution. When we were using just Ninja, we wouldn't even be aware that there was an issue until Ninja just had an update. Now, we're aware within the timeframe that we assigned, which is 15 minutes, that communication has been lost. We give it a couple of minutes to make sure that it's not just an internet blip or whatever, and then we're able to quickly attack it. With Ninja, we wouldn't even be aware until a customer calls us to say something is broken. It's time lost in regards to the fact that we should have been aware of it before the customer even had a chance to pick up the phone and do that.

To someone comparing network monitoring solutions but concerned about price, I would say that it's the cost of doing business. It's just the fact that it's going to cost something. The amount of money that you're spending on these tools is a fraction of what you would be paying for an individual to be doing the same thing live as a person. I believe that our bill is somewhere around the $600 range per month. We're monitoring about 63 machines. Most of them are servers. So, $10 to monitor it for an entire month is amazing. You couldn't get somebody in India for that cheap.

We definitely evaluated other options. We use Ninja in-house, so it was one of the first things that we originally evaluated. We also evaluated ConnectWise and a few others. It was not very difficult to pull up a list of the competitors and look at them all. We originally had decided on Ninja because it was something that most people knew about, but then we're like, "Yeah, it's great when it works, but it doesn't always work." That's when we started looking at the other options, and we landed on Auvik.

It's a newer company on the horizon. They're still developing features. You can tell that. So, if a feature that you are wanting isn't available, give it time. It'll probably come.

It takes a little bit of time to get used to. When I first started, back in August of this year, I was getting my feet wet with Auvik as a tool. I had heard of it, but I never really personally used it and experienced it. I've been in my IT field for well over 16 years, so it's not like I'm not capable of understanding how to use something. One of the things that come into play is understanding that the default view that you see is like a zoomed-out version. Being able to traverse that, being able to go back and forward, and understanding where you're at in the tree takes a little bit of time to get used to and follow.

On top of that, there's the reporting functionality below it, where it's reporting alerts and things like that. At first glance, you're like, "Oh, everything's fine. There are no alerts," but then you realize that you are only looking at the last 15 minutes or the last three hours or whatever. You need to understand that there's that little date field midway on the right side and of purple color that you choose to select the date range that you're looking at. It will automatically redraw and redo things based on the selected range, and you can drill down into whatever system you're connected to, which is really cool.

We haven't experienced much automation so far. Right now, we're using it just as a reporting tool, but it's something that we're looking at doing. Outside of that, it's just reporting and doing the network discovery and watching for outages and any types of alerts. The process of doing that is kind of pseudo automation just in the fact that that's what Auvik sells as their core option or whatever. As a reporting tool, it's great, but so far, we haven't really dug into many of the integrations or functionalities past that.

It hasn't helped our team focus on high-value tasks while delegating low-level tasks to junior staff because, in our environment, we're all equal peers. We all have our own specialties, per se, such as networking versus storage or VMware versus Hyper-V, but, in general, we're all of the equal stances.

As a solution for monitoring and things like that, it's awesome, and I would rate it a 10 out of 10.

We use Auvik to monitor net flow within our primary core switch and firewall. We look at the health and traffic flow alerts from our wireless access points or switches.

We don't use any of the automation features. Our company uses Auvik strictly for managing alerts. Auvik acts as a dashboard to give us oversight and a sense of the overall network health. We don't do a lot of troubleshooting within Auvik. It's more of a documentation and dashboard tool that lets me see all the problems and drill down.

We only have one location where we're using Auvik, but we're expanding to a second location under construction and being rebuilt. We'll eventually have two more locations. We want to monitor multiple sites and how they interact because we use SD-WAN between the sites.

We previously had multiple solutions, and implementing Auvik has saved me a lot of time because I'm solely responsible for the infrastructure. I probably save an hour or two daily on my morning run-throughs, so it has saved the company the equivalent of a part-time employee each month. 

In addition to saving time, we get better traffic insights. We can look at the entire inventory from a networking standpoint. It lets us see all our pieces and what's online, like a network topography. If somebody submits a ticket about internet issues in one of the areas, I can check that area to see how many other things are affected. It makes troubleshooting smoother. You can more effectively triage a problem because you have more information in front of you.

Auvik keeps our device inventories updated. We pair it with our asset management platform to double-check if things are discovered that haven't been asset-tagged. We want to see if the things that are live on the network match what we have in our asset management platform.

Auvik also helps me delegate. I can see alerts on the endpoints that are not necessarily licensed, but it gives us traffic insights. I can message the person at the help desk, "Hey, I noticed we're having Wi-Fi issues in this area. Can you check the staff computers on Ninja and see if anybody is having any issues?" They can go in remotely and communicate with the staff to see if they have noticeable issues. Is it an advisory thing we're seeing or something deeper that must be solved on the network side? Maybe it's on the endpoint side?

Keeping our devices updated helps me take the pulse of each device. We use a remote management platform like an MDM, but then we also use ScalePad as a cost and inventory platform. Auvik tells us if all these things are up and running. There are three of us on the team, and each tracks inventory differently. Whenever we do annual inventory, we pull MAC addresses and devices to see what's in use and the usage rate. It helps a lot at the end of the year. Inventory takes an hour instead of a week.

Auvik helps us get ahead of the curve, so we can see many potential issues before they become problems. We'll get alerts for particular items before getting a ticket. In those cases, we can say, "I noticed you've been having some issues with Wi-Fi and sporadic connectivity. Is your computer okay? Are you having issues?" 

It depends on the person, but most people don't like to complain and don't want to go into the trouble of sending in a ticket or anything like that. When you can get ahead of that and reach out to them, it's a great value.

I like Auvik's mapping. Your home dashboard has a map view where you can see potential issues on the endpoints. If an AP or switch has a problem, you can drill down into those to see how it's affecting the endpoints.

The monitoring and management features are straightforward. Getting everything configured is a little tricky, but it's easy once everything is set up. The management is highly intuitive. It has tons of little tools you can use for your hardware. You can monitor network traffic, device health, and lifecycle management within an easy-to-use dashboard.

Auvik provides a single integrated platform that covers everything. We are considering adding our primary servers to get utilization stats and different telemetry from our primary hosts for our on-site VMs. Having all the features on a single platform is crucial. We use many services and platforms, and it's convenient to log into one dashboard and see everything from a bird's eye view.

It's super easy to use. Everything is easily mapped out. If you've navigated any website, it should all be intuitive. It's easy to lift a pane and see all the general areas. As you click into each site, you can drill down into each area you want to see.

People who don't dive as deep into the infrastructure as I do can go onto the site to see the dashboard and get a sense of the network's overall health. I don't need to push out reports and share alerts constantly. I'm the only one getting those, and the other team members can see from a bird's eye view whenever they're looking into things or trying to troubleshoot.

I would like a Power BI-style dashboard that you could show to a non-technical person with metrics like the number of devices accessing wireless, the amount of internet, total issues resolved each month, etc. 

Those kinds of features would be nice, but that's more of a feature for executives. Many platforms are adding these features because they understand in-house IT staff need to deliver those reports to management.

We used Auvik with our MSP for a time. It was an account through somebody else. This month, we started using it as the primary account. In total, we've been using it for a year and a half.

We haven't had any issues. I've been able to load the website from any location without any lag or delays.

One reason we chose Auvik was its ability to scale for multiple locations. It's effortless to scale by adding different locations. We have it at our headquarters and plan to add our Central Austin location, then go from there. Within the organization, it's easy to build out and add.

We used Meraki's built-in monitoring platform because we have a full Meraki stack. We used the topography and alert systems there, but it lacked many features because you're only seeing the network side. You don't see any of the devices. You could see some insights, but Auvik provides much more clarity.

I like Auvik's secure cloud-based solution and the ability to check the dashboard no matter where I am. If I'm remote and looking at multiple sites, I don't have to worry about VPN connections. I don't need to worry about opening the ports. It's huge for us to see everything from multiple sites.

Setting up Auvik was straightforward, but sometimes you forget the passwords when setting up SNMP or Syslog. We had to go back and look for passwords, but that wasn't Auvik's problem. 

It was simple to deploy Auvik right out of the box. All we needed to do was get our SNMP credentials and input the subnets I wanted to scan. I deployed it by myself, and it took less than one day. I probably spent about four hours on it.

After deployment, Auvik hasn't required any maintenance. The only thing that I've had to do is change the password for an SNMP credential if I got it wrong, but that's about it.

We saw immediate value from Auvik. I think it's brand and device agnostic, which is incredible. The time to value was almost instant because we could see everything. We didn't have to go onto a Netgear portal, a Meraki portal, Azure AD, Intune, RMM, etc. We can see everything on one dashboard. The time to value was the time it took to implement: less than a day.

Auvik is much simpler to set up and maintain than my previous solution. It's night and day. Dealing with multiple platforms and solutions was unwieldy. Time is money. Having everything combined is a value-add and saves a lot of money. We no longer need to outsource this and have somebody monitor it. Bringing all the monitoring in-house saves us $2,000 a month, easily on top of all the other support hours we've saved.

Auvik's pricing is spot-on. It's one of the better values I've seen. 

I tried Netskope and SolarWinds, but they were both somewhat clunky. At times, things can get over-engineered. It's like a lousy buffet where all the food is mixed in. That's what I feel with some platforms.

I rate Auvik nine out of 10. If you're thinking about implementing Auvik, I recommend watching videos online before deployment. Watch the videos for ideas and attend demos so you can ask questions ahead of time. 

We deployed so easily because all the questions were answered before we started. We did our research and watched videos when we were checking out Auvik. Auvik was at the top of our list, but we looked at other solutions and didn't find anything that came close. 

We have several different physical sites and we run our own network. Auvik has some exciting capabilities for aggregating Syslog from switches and having remote console administration across geographic locations. The solution puts a common off-wall in front of switch management but also makes it easy for us to go in and make changes.

We use the solution across multiple locations and departments.

We use Auvik where we have the most pain points because it's a charge per device brought online model. We use Auvik in a smaller proportion of our infrastructure, around 30% of our architecture.

Auvik provides a simple way to view the current configuration and to view the network monitoring status checks. Auvik allows me to work in a bigger team with a large number of different circumstances happening at once, and share a common source of truth and management platform. It is more of a teamwork tool and a work-from-different-location tool than anything else.

We get more benefits out of Auvik than other solutions depending on specific job roles in the team. The main value of Auvik is the reduction in communication gaps that makes it faster to respond to issues. Our incident response no longer relies on someone logging into a SolarWinds platform or getting a Syslog agent on our system to collect our logs. We no longer rely on someone having to configure a pipeline alert or the SMTP email relay working in order to get an email that wasn't checked. Auvik doesn't do anything that I can't get from a variety of other tools or modified solutions but it does it all in one website that works well.

In terms of instant response, we get alerted about issues faster and with fewer spam alerts. Previously, we didn't configure our alerts as well as we could have. When there is an issue, Auvik identifies it for us and that saves us time. We have proof of network performance, in any case. The ability to quickly run tests and show logging allows us to see if an issue is because of something on our network or from external causes beyond our control.

We purchase other companies or partner with them at different times and work with them in various ways which require us to onboard or allow people to access certain areas on our network and Auvik makes it easier to manage. The solution allows us to have a visual network representation and streamlined demo space of some network features, and we can let people play in a sandbox.

The solution reduces the amount of time we spend on onsite visits, eliminating the travel time and setup time for inspecting the network. Auvik allows us to manage the network remotely in a matter of seconds without the need to leave the building which correlates to more time for other tasks.

Auvik's UI design helps visualize the network mapping and topology of our organization because it provides a nice modern experience, in terms of usability and can be used with any modern browser. Unlike some other solutions with outdated interfaces, Auvik utilizes an appealing dashboard to show us our network and lets us drill down deep.

Our IT team's visibility into our remote and distributed networks globally has been good to date using the solution, but we are not a large company and we have a limited number of sites.

The solution's ability to access our networks remotely has correlated with time for our IT teams to focus on other tasks. Our engineers can save over three hours of their day compared to having to deal with an issue on-site.

The remote console administration stands out as a valued feature. I haven't found another relatively easy and versatile product that is all-encompassing. 

Using Auvik's monitoring and management functions is easy because it is a web-based app. The charge models are based on the number of core network devices we have. We have virtual machines and various items that our charges are based on such as adding a switch or a firewall. We are not charged simply because we have a virtual machine running. We get more visibility into what we're running compared to other solutions. 

The solution's ease of use is the reason we bought it.

The solution can provide a single integrated platform depending on what we want the platform to do. Auvik provides more of an integrated teamwork network management platform than anything I've previously seen. The solution does nearly everything and it does it in a convenient, easy, and accessible way compared to my past experiences with other solutions. Auvik's user experience is very nice.

The solution's intuitiveness of the network visualization is strong and we don't need to spend much time to find it useful.

Auvik's ability to keep our device inventory up to date is a convenient feature.

Auvik can improve by increasing the tech file management capability.

In the past we had a Git server where we made changes to configurations, allowing us to push the changes, and depending on the system, we had the ability to convert the information down to a text file but if there was a problem, we could quickly revert it back. I would like the ability to version control Auvik configurations and potentially automate them by having a type of Gitflow system.

I have been using the solution for a year and a half.

The solution is fairly stable but at times can drop off, or we have collector issues, or there's various service-related downtime. Auvik has a status page where we can check for uptime issues.

I don't worry about the scalability of the solution because it is quite a broad, scalable, and modern platform. 

I previously used open-source solutions that were built at home. I don't know of another solution that is a strong competitive, multivendor, that plays in this space, which is why we ended up using Auvik.

Until July 2021, our organization had a SolarWinds contract, but when the global hack happened, we had to reevaluate what we were using for monitoring and management.

The initial setup was not complex. All we needed to install were collectors and we were able to start network mapping the same day. The deployment was handled by a small team. We have different offices and sites but it does not require a significant amount of time to implement Auvik and get it running on the equipment we need. We need someone that has the ability to use computers for the deployment.

The implementation was completed in-house.

We have found Auvik improves our ability to complete tasks more quickly and improve responses internally. We're not planning on canceling the solution. We find that Auvik is improving our ability to manage remote sites, and we like using the tool.

Auvik charges based on the number of network devices being used. The pricing is fair as long as we are getting use out of the solution.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

We still use multiple applications, but Auvik has taken over a lot more of them and has also taken over areas that we just did not have applications to manage before. There is a nice network flow and analytics information. What we found the most interesting is, if we onboard or offboard a team member, our ability to manage switch configs, check in on issues quickly, and do some Syslog searches, can all be done in one place, behind one login, one permission set making it a lot easier to manage tasks on a daily basis.

I'm not sure how much of Auvik's automation capability we've really leveraged or how much the solution specifically has. We have some existing systems in place and we use Auvik more as a network monitoring and remote management tool. I don't believe the solution has fully supplanted some of our existing practices. We use Auvik as an additive layer that's super helpful in terms of incident response, client engagement, and making our lives easier.

Auvik provides discovery capabilities based on Mac addresses that can help keep device inventories up to date. We don't use the solution for device discovery and I am not sure how accurate it is. I find the solution very helpful in terms of getting visibility into what the network is doing and what's on it.

We selected Auvik based on a number of factors that made sense at the time including, their charge model which is based on network devices and COVID affecting our locations. We didn't go through a full vendor review process the same way that we usually would and looked for a number of competitors. We saw that Auvik was affordable and fulfilled a business need.

To anyone that is comparing network monitor solutions, but is concerned about pricing, I would advise the amount of time we saved with the solution was worth the money spent. 

I am a big open-source proponent. I've contributed to open-source solutions and used a lot of them. Most of the time open-source solutions are some of the best solutions that we can have. In some cases, there is a clear deficiency versus a commercial solution. Sometimes it's worth paying for a service, a product X because it saves the company money or it meets a compliance or insurance requirement. 

Business reasons can overrule other reasons. One business reason could be that we need a network monitoring, management, and remote administration capability platform so our engineers spend less time traveling between data centers to complete tasks and debug logging systems. Engineers are fairly expensive employees at the end of the day, between health insurance, salary, and vacation time. The business would be more profitable if those engineers were more efficient at their job. 

Auvik can benefit the organization through the reduction of staff required by minimizing the time it takes to complete each task or allowing those engineers to spend time on more useful tasks. Auvik is a helpful product that assists a company that is trying to remotely manage sites across different areas with a team. The solution adds an orchestration layer to that. Auvik adds an application on a modern platform for the management of the devices that we're controlling and makes it less taxing and easier for us to benefit from that.

Auvik's cloud-based solution is convenient compared to on-prem network monitoring solutions.

We sometimes perform trivial maintenance on Auvik for user management in the portal.

I recommend the solution to others. Auvik is a useful platform. 

Our network infrastructure is monitored by Auvik Network Management. This includes firewalls and network traffic. By using Auvik, we gain data and analytics that fuel our diagnostics, alarm systems, and overall network environment insights.

We decided to implement Auvik after struggling to find a network monitoring solution that ticked all the boxes. We needed a cost-effective option with a user-friendly interface, backed by a responsive company committed to ongoing product updates. Unfortunately, the market seemed to offer outdated, once-great products or solutions prohibitively expensive for small businesses and MSPs like us. Thankfully, our experience with Auvik has been good. Both our dedicated sales representative and the onboarding technical support team have been phenomenal.

Despite the usual setup time – an hour or two for getting things connected and entering credentials – the platform started pulling data from our devices almost immediately. It was practically instantaneous, aside from the standard management deployment time. Interestingly, the network map took a bit longer to figure itself out compared to the platform itself. The platform started showing me interface details, traffic information, and even automatically identified our WAN connections. We did have to set credentials later, and thankfully, we had backups of our devices ready beforehand, since it seemed like the platform wanted that information before the network map fully visualized everything. Overall, the deployment process was remarkably quick and easy.

Last Sunday, I encountered an issue that the dashboard interface helped resolve quickly. I could easily locate the specific device on the map and clicking on it brought up all relevant information. This allowed us to directly investigate the problematic port, view its traffic status up or down, without the need for a more cumbersome process. Traditionally, we would have had to VPN into the network, log in to the switch using its credentials, and then identify the specific port involved. The dashboard streamlines this process, saving time frequently. While it may not be a massive improvement, it offers a noticeable efficiency gain in our mean time to resolution.

Our company is still in the early stages of adopting Auvik, a monitoring platform that can be used for all of our customers. This means that we will eventually have one platform for all our alerts and for our technicians to access. This will simplify things internally for our company by reducing the number of platforms our technicians need to be familiar with to support our clients. It will also reduce the amount of documentation we need to maintain. With Auvik, our technicians will spend less time on maintenance and troubleshooting because they will only need to learn and use one platform. Currently, our technicians haven't started using Auvik yet, but the plan is to move away from all the various monitoring solutions we've been using for different customers and consolidate everything onto this one platform. Once our technicians are using Auvik, it will make our jobs significantly easier and faster.

Auvik stands out for its ability to combine network and per-port traffic inspection with log aggregation and data flow analysis in a single platform. This comprehensive approach is rare in network monitoring solutions. Even more impressive is that Auvik offers these high-end enterprise features at a cost-effective price. Traditionally, such capabilities are only found in expensive products. The combination of powerful features and affordability made Auvik a very attractive choice for us.

The Auvik interface has a modern look and feel in terms of its color scheme and layout. However, some elements are arranged in a way that I find counterintuitive. As a company with a web and application development team, we have a strong focus on user interface and user experience. For some features in Auvik, the placement of buttons and functionalities doesn't feel optimal. We've had to consult our representative several times on how to find specific options. For example, editing a device requires navigating through the sidebar to a specific category and tab, then selecting the device, line item, and checking a box before finally reaching the edit button. Additionally, the placement of buttons seems inconsistent across different sections, making the overall workflow less intuitive and requiring more training to become proficient.

My ideal real-time network monitoring would involve seeing all my data at once, including connection speeds and throughput. While Auvik's automated network map is visually appealing and generally accurate compared to competitors, it lacks some key features. For example, unlike a competitor's recent feature that shows traffic between trunk connections, Auvik only displays a single color for connection links, indicating wired or wireless status. This doesn't provide vital information like link speed or potential problems. Additionally, connections with momentary issues simply disappear from the map, which is frustrating. Auvik could integrate valuable alerts and insights from other parts of the platform directly onto the map. This would highlight potential issues with specific devices and their connections. While I acknowledge ongoing development efforts, there's still a significant gap in desired features. Another limitation is the lack of manual map editing. For instance, our server has multiple Ethernet connections entering a single switch, but the map erroneously shows them spread throughout the building. With no way to manually adjust this, the map's accuracy suffers. While Auvik's map is aesthetically pleasing, I wouldn't rely on it for complete accuracy.

I've had some trouble using Auvik's device proxy, which allows technicians to connect to network devices through Auvik's platform. The Mac software I need isn't fully functional yet, so I might be doing something wrong, but other products like Domotz work flawlessly. One of the main reasons we chose Auvik was to eliminate the need for VPNs, on-site PCs, or network tunnels for technicians to access devices. This would reduce our equipment costs. While the pricing is fair overall, the jump between plans is significant. For instance, their higher plan offers features like NetFlow statistics and analytics for firewalls, which require more data and rightfully cost more. However, the entire client site is included in that plan, and there's no option to pay extra for specific devices. I'd be happy to pay more for those features on select devices, but the current pricing structure prevents me from getting them. This seems like a missed opportunity for both Auvik and us. Not all my devices need the extensive logging and data collection offered in the higher plan. Network switches and access points, for example, have their own controllers that handle SysLogging, so I wouldn't need Auvik for that. However, I would like to pay extra for those features on our firewalls and routers. In the current situation, neither side benefits. If we pay for the higher plan, our costs increases, which will eventually impact our customers' prices. However, convincing customers to pay for this one additional feature within the entire monitoring platform is difficult.

I have been using Auvik Network Management for one year.

Throughout this process, I've primarily relied on my representative for assistance. While I haven't directly contacted their technical support line, my representative has involved them on my behalf. This may be a slight deviation from the usual procedure, but it has still allowed me to reach the appropriate people.

The technical support team has been very responsive in identifying and resolving any technical issues I've encountered. They were able to quickly understand the situation with minimal questions. Additionally, I appreciate the granular control I have over their access to client data. I can grant them temporary or read-only access, which allows for collaborative troubleshooting without compromising security or hindering our learning experience.

Overall, I've been very impressed with the technical support team's knowledge. We understand they aren't responsible for diagnosing internal network issues; their focus is on supporting their platform and ensuring our connection to network devices. So far, their responsiveness has been excellent.

Prior to implementing Auvik, we experimented with a number of network management solutions. These included PRTG, Domotz, LibreNMS, and the built-in NinjaOne option. We also evaluated SolarWinds. We've explored a wide range of options. Our goal is to find a standardized solution, and we believe Auvik fits the bill. PRTG was expensive so we could only use the free version that only allowed for 1,000 sensors, proving too restrictive for our needs. LibreNMS required a high level of technical expertise for deployment and maintenance, which wasn't feasible for all our technicians. SolarWinds simply didn't meet all our requirements. While NinjaOne is still in active development. We may revisit it in the future. Overall, Auvik strikes the perfect balance between functionality, ease of use, and scalability.

The deployment of Auvik requires installing an agent and some information. The deployment took around one hour. 

Although Auvik is a cloud-based solution, it requires software installation on a computer or server within our network. This initial process can be cumbersome. In our experience, the provided API key wasn't functional, and creating separate API keys isn't an option. Instead, we need to create full user accounts, which feels unnecessarily complex.

Once the connector is installed, the user interface presents challenges. Management credentials and network scanning configurations are located in separate areas. While the deployment section attempts to consolidate these settings, it becomes irrelevant after the initial setup. Ideally, the interface should streamline the initial configuration process, instead of requiring users to navigate through various menus.

Another concern is the requirement for generic credentials. Instead of specifying credentials for each device, we must provide generic ones that are simply tested for functionality. This raises security concerns. These generic credentials are tested against various devices in our environment, even those for which they are not intended. While we trust our security measures, a compromised device could potentially allow the Auvik connector to expose these credentials to unauthorized devices. Ideally, the system should allow for specifying credentials on a per-device basis, eliminating the need for generic credentials and the associated security risks.

The implementation was completed in-house.

I came to a surprising realization about Auvik's pricing. It turns out they only charge for routers and switches! This means all our access points, security cameras, camera servers, and other infrastructure are monitored for free. While the client understandably wanted the server on-site, most other devices are a bonus. This is a huge advantage – with a typical network, we might have one firewall, three switches, and 60-70 access points. With Auvik, we only pay for the four core devices, bringing the cost down significantly. In my opinion, Auvik could advertise this benefit more clearly. Many other platforms charge for every device, so Auvik's free monitoring for a large portion of the network is a game-changer. It not only helped us make the decision but also benefits non-profits we support. The fact that they're confident enough in their platform to offer this makes Auvik a truly valuable and supportive solution.

In the end, we were deciding between Domotz and Auvik. Auvik's initial pricing structure was a concern. Their tiered system required a minimum number of devices per tier to get a reasonable price. While their desire to be profitable is understandable, this presented a hurdle for us. However, Auvik impressed us with their willingness to work with us. They emphasized that they wouldn't lose a customer solely on price, as long as open communication existed. This flexibility in finding a solution was a major factor in our decision. Another reason we chose Auvik was the user interface and user experience. We found Auvik's interface to be superior to Domotz's. Additionally, Auvik's pricing based on individual devices, rather than NetFlow, was a significant advantage. This meant we wouldn't be penalized for devices with minimal traffic or high port counts. From a business standpoint, this eliminated the need to constantly monitor billing for small variations in device usage. With Auvik, we pay a fixed cost per device and receive all the necessary features, regardless of its size or complexity. Consistent and predictable billing was another key consideration in our choice.

Auvik Network Management gets a solid eight out of ten from me. While the network maps and user interface could be improved, the software delivers exactly what we need out of the box. It connected to our devices seamlessly and provided valuable analytics data and information logging. The setup process was straightforward, and the learning curve wasn't steep.

We're currently in the early stages of implementing Auvik, which means our existing software is still operational. To ensure a smooth transition, we typically allow a three-to-four-month overlap period for new software before fully integrating it into production. While I've been the primary user so far and can provide initial insights, our help desk technicians haven't yet been granted access to Auvik.

There is a minimal amount of maintenance required, primarily for alerts. The default settings include alerts for all devices, but not all of them are relevant to our needs. We simply need to adjust these defaults. Aside from that, the system is truly "set it and forget it." It will notify us of any problems, and as an IT company, we have internal procedures to log in and investigate any alerts. However, there is no ongoing maintenance required after the initial installation.

Setting up Auvik is smoothest when your network devices are already configured for SNMP. If you're unsure about your equipment's SNMP settings or lack a configuration altogether, take some time to familiarize yourself with your devices before proceeding. Having your device credentials readily available will also expedite the process. As long as both SNMP logging and credentials are prepared, Auvik deployment becomes a breeze. However, investing a few minutes to learn the Auvik interface beforehand will pay off in the long run. A grasp of the interface will make Auvik exceptionally user-friendly and position it as a powerful and functional solution for your needs.