Auvik Network Management (ANM) Reviews

I have 21 different locations in different networks that I have to manage. It gives me the ability to see the devices on the network, to see any troubles, to diagnose and support end-users or get into the network devices that are having issues.

It provides a single integrated platform for everything that I need. I can go and monitor the device, and I can get into the configuration of the device. It's a very powerful tool to have. Having a single integrated platform is very important. I have many tools to use, and to me, the ability to integrate it all into one platform is essential.

Aside from having a unified dashboard, it provides the ability to pick a particular site or a group of sites and see how they are configured and what issue a particular device is having. We are able to drill into that device from this platform, and we don't have to go outside and use different tools to access and get into the device.

It's very intuitive. It's probably the best in terms of getting up and running in short order. I have a team of network professionals who work with me, and we brought them in, and within an hour or two, they had their own dashboard set the way they wanted. So overall, the whole product is intuitive and very easy. It's not difficult.

It has given us a greater amount of visibility that we didn't have before. This visibility is absolutely essential for us. Before that, we would have about four different ways to test. Having it all in one location and one platform is very essential.

The ability to have visibility on a network to see the traffic and the ability to see if devices are misconfigured and if something changes in that configuration, are most valuable.

It's very easy. It's very intuitive. They had me up and running in a matter of hours, so it wasn't a steep learning curve to learn the interface or to learn the controls.

I would like to be able to get a little bit more granularity in turning on and off alerts because I get flooded with alerts. It gives too much information at times.

I've been using it for almost a year.

I haven't had any issues in the year that we've been on it, so it's pretty good.

It's amazing. 

I have not contacted them. 

We used a SolarWinds product. We used some rather rudimentary, built-in network tools. Obviously, there is SNMP, and we would use that through other means, but having it all essentially integrated into Auvik makes a big difference for us in terms of time and ease of use. Switching to Auvik saved us probably 20 hours a week.

It was very straightforward. There was very little in there that did not make sense. I had a great trainer that came in, and we did maybe two or three sessions, and then we were off and running. 

The name of the contractor is Darrell Norton. He works for Sedona Technologies, so we're contracted with them. We met with Darrell and then we went around installing the agents. He assisted with that. We did a lot of that remotely, and then, once the agents were installed, we started building the networks. So, in terms of me getting into the backend and programming, I did none of that.

After the collector was implemented, the network mapping started to populate
almost instantaneously. Each site took maybe 20 minutes at the most, and then it started giving us the information. It was amazing. I was pretty impressed. In terms of the full deployment, we were up and running in one or two days. We had 23 different geographic locations. They were not on one campus, so that was pretty impressive. 

I can't compare the time and cost it took to set up and maintain Auvik versus our previous solutions. It was probably the easiest deployment I've seen. With the other solutions, I spent a lot of time. I had to spend an enormous amount of time doing the configurations and programming, whereas, with Auvik, it was almost a plug-and-play.

For the maintenance, including myself, there are three associates. We all spread those duties out. We don't have anybody designated as the network administrator, so it's me and two other people who spend the most time with it. It's a daily function. In the morning, I get in, and I look at it. If I don't see anything wrong, I move on. It has made our jobs a whole lot easier.

We have absolutely seen time-to-value with Auvik. Getting in there and being able to see what that network is up to at any given moment, what the issues are, and being able to address them right from that platform has been a huge time saver.

We have seen a good 15% reduction in our mean time to resolution (MTTR). 

They're very competitive on the pricing front. They may not be the least expensive, but they're certainly not the most expensive. They're right in a sweet spot. For our organization, at least, it was right within the budget.

We were using the SolarWinds product, and I went through demos of probably a dozen or more. We had CrowdStrike and others. I sat through probably a year's worth. I spent a year evaluating different products before we settled on Auvik.

To those evaluating this solution, I would advise making sure that they have full control of the network, they understand all the devices, and they have the administrative capability to get into managed devices. We discovered a few that we hadn't known about, which provided a challenge. They also should be aware that there may be privacy concerns for some people because the system does take over and look into things. They may need to put controls on before they deploy it. I know that it goes in and gathers the configuration data, but I'm not sure how much personal data that is. I don't watch that part of it, but that would just be my top-of-mind concern. It's so powerful and it can take so much control. What's it looking at?

I'm very impressed with the product. I don't have any complaints. I wish I had it several years earlier. It would've been a lot easier. We've been through a number of acquisitions. So, taking on new different networks was a chore before. If we had this at the onset, it would've been a piece of cake.

We haven't yet utilized the program to its full potential. The most automation I see is getting the alerts, but we haven't yet designated tasks in that automation. So, there's still some manual work. In other words, we get the alert, and then we have to go deal with it. We don't have an automated dispatch or anything to any particular person.

I am sure Auvik is helpful for keeping device inventories up-to-date, but we use something else. We're still getting our feet wet with the product. The more we use it, I'm sure it would be valuable for that. I can go in and see all the devices that are reporting on the network, so in a sense, it does help us to keep device inventory up to date, but I'm sure there's a better way we can use it.

In terms of comparing Auvik's cloud-based solution versus on-prem network monitoring solutions, as long as I have network connectivity and I have internet, it's great, but if I'm in a situation where I don't have connectivity, it doesn't help me.

I would rate it a 10 out of 10.

As an MSP, we monitor all of our clients with Auvik, specifically to monitor their network devices and connectivity, and to generate tickets. We also use it to back up configs for network devices, and it's where we get warranty information since we deal with life cycle management.

We can even push changes to devices through the terminal. Anytime there's a disaster, it's the first thing that we'll go to, to see what may be down or what may be inoperable. It's a really quick way of seeing what may be broken in a network. That's really handy. It's our network monitoring management go-to.

The configuration management has been a godsend. Every time something goes down, we don't have to worry about how it was configured. We're also getting alerts a lot faster. We have an RMM platform that's monitoring things, but it's a little slower to give us alerts and to give us data. Auvik is a lot faster and that's been really valuable. Both the configuration management and alerts are aspects of automation that result in less manual, repetitive effort.

If we're not wasting time checking configs and pushing documentation or mapping devices in a topology, that's time that we get back to do other things. The whole time I've worked here, we've had Auvik, so I don't really know this world without Auvik. But at my last MSP, those things took up a considerable amount of time, five to seven hours a week for me, at least, and probably the same for others. So it would be a considerable amount of time savings.

It also builds topologies automatically, so we don't have to go through Visio and hand-sketch something for every client. That would take a tremendous amount of time. Auvik does that for us and keeps it up to date every day.

And for what it does, Auvik gives us a single, integrated platform. Auvik is our source of truth for all network devices. We don't have anything else that overlaps with it. The amount of time it saves us is incalculable. If we were having to do this on different tools, or if we were having to manage things manually, it would take up a significant amount of our time. Not that managing things with Auvik doesn't take up a lot of time already, but it would take a lot more.

It is unified, automated and it's pretty concise. You don't have to dig around a lot to get to what you need, and that's really important. I was listening to one of the TruMethods guys and he was just talking about how many clicks it takes to get from your question to your answer. Auvik has a pretty concise depth to it.

Also, because we can drill into any one of our clients or any one site and get a very quick overview of what's going on, our team has good visibility into our networks. When a disaster happens, that visibility is crucial because it gives us a fast response time and faster mediation, which our clients love. Day-to-day, it can be important or not, but certainly, when everything's on fire, Auvik can be a real lifesaver.

We have virtual CIOs on our team who work with our clients and the fact that Auvik keeps device inventories up to date is invaluable for them. They can pull up warranty information and start plotting life cycle changes and let the client know, "Hey, we've got to replace all these devices over the next number of years." Having that data in a nice easy report saves a tremendous amount of time. And all of that information gets put into IT Glue, so we can easily search it or run reports from there on it.

As a result, we can communicate better with our clients. You don't want to just go to your client and say, "Hey, we need $50,000 so we can upgrade your equipment." What you want to do is say, "Hey, look at this report. Look at how old your stuff is. This is our plan for the next four quarters and how we're going to spend $50,000." That is gold. And delegating tasks to junior technicians is usually around procurement and projects to replace that equipment. That also wouldn't happen without that reporting.

In addition, having the device inventories up to date definitely saves us time. We don't have to wonder if something is still onsite or in the environment. It has a green check beside it so we know Auvik is checking in and we know it's online.

Another benefit is that it has helped us in reducing our resolution time by something like 15 percent.

The configuration management is the most valuable feature. I worked at an MSP before where they didn't have something collecting network device configurations. It was basically up to the technician who did it last, and you never knew if they saved a copy or not. Auvik makes that a lot more automated so we don't have to worry, if a device dies, that we don't know how it was configured. That's my favorite feature.

Ease of use is paramount for our organization. We have 15 technicians and everybody has to be able to get in there and work consistently. If it's not easy and we have to come up with all these rules on how to use it, there is a lot of room for people to make mistakes.

Auvik's network visualization is pretty intuitive. There's a legend right there and you can hover over any of those lines and it will give you the breakdown of the information. You can even click on any part of it and it takes you right to the device.

We have some clients that are rather large and the topology display can be a little bit of a mess. For smaller organizations, Auvik is perfect. You have your firewall, it connects to your switch, it connects to your LAN, it connects to your clients, and you're done. But for some of our larger clients, the topology view is almost unusable. I don't really know how to solve that. I don't know if you can.

I would like to see a better IT Glue integration in Auvik. With most platforms, when they dump something into IT Glue, it just shows up as a configuration. That is somewhat helpful, but it's not as robust as it would be if it filled in a flex asset for network details, or if it took that topology view and somehow pushed that into IT Glue as an image, for example. We try to treat IT Glue as our source of truth for documentation, and the better integration we can get from Auvik into IT Glue, the more we don't have to go logging in to everything to check everything.

I have been using Auvik for about three years.

I get emails frequently about service interruptions, et cetera, but I don't experience them very often. I think a few weeks ago we had some collectors that started flaking out, but I'd seen the email, so I knew it wasn't a big deal. I do get those emails regularly, so it seems that they have problems frequently, but I don't experience them very often. Are they shooting themselves in the foot by letting me know? Probably. But at least they're being transparent.

The amount of effort it takes to set up one client, when you have one client, is the exact amount of work it's going to take to set up one client when you have 100 clients. In that sense, it doesn't scale with the number of clients, but it's certainly much more scalable than doing it all manually.

We deploy it to every one of our 50 clients and about 2,200 endpoints, and that includes computers. We have configured every switch and firewall and WAP that we possibly can in Auvik for management. 

All of our technicians have access to it. Support uses it to troubleshoot network problems and our technical alignment team uses it to review standardizations. Our centralized services team uses it to make sure that we're backing up configs and that the devices are working correctly. BCIO will use it for life cycle management and phasing devices in and out. We deploy it to all of our clients because the value makes it worth it.

I haven't had to use tech support very much. It's a pretty intuitive application. But the times I have had to contact them, I have usually done so with the chat so I can do other stuff. They always send me a knowledge base article and stick with me to make sure everything's working correctly. I have no complaints. It's been smooth.

Positive

The only "solution" I used previously was "sweat equity." You can rely on Auvik a lot more. It takes some of the human error out of the equation. I can be forgetful, so I assume most people are. You can't be 100 percent all of the time, but Auvik can get a lot closer. It's a lot more reliable.

If you have a lot of clients already, there can be a lot of work to get everything into Auvik and fully turning. That being said, you can drop a collector and start discovering network devices really fast. When we onboard a client, I'll drop a collector and let it start scanning and then I'll go do something else. I'll come back 10 minutes later and it has a fully populated network scan. So you can get up and running pretty quickly with just the bare bones.

But to really get a lot of the benefit out of it could take some work to get all your clients in there and get everything integrated. You do have to touch every device and configure it to point to the collector or put in the right community string. There can be a little ramp-up time, but it's worth it.

We have a lot of problems with licensing in many other solutions, but I've never run into a problem with Auvik licensing. That's a pretty good vote of confidence.

When comparing network monitoring solutions, if the concern is pricing, you need to factor in how much time the different solutions could potentially provide. If you can save 10 percent with this one and 40 percent with that one, but the last one costs a lot more, your time is valuable. You have to assess just how much easier it will be knowing you don't have to worry about something and how much more you can focus on other things. It becomes a cost-benefit analysis. 

Some of our clients are co-managed. They have technicians onsite who work for them and they work with us. One thing we do is give them access to Auvik and they just go crazy. They say, "Man, look at all these cool tools. You mean we get to have access to this?" Just being able to tunnel straight into a device within the Auvik portal saves a lot of time. I don't know if every network monitoring tool in that class can do that. There are a lot of features within Auvik that may not be present in others.

It is about as easy as any other SNMP monitor when it comes to monitoring and management functions. Sometimes, it can get a little tricky to get stuff logged in and connected to the collector, but that's not on Auvik. That's just authentication and networks.

We've used Auvik to generate tickets to alert technicians to go and set up SNMP or to look at a particular alert. That's not really what we use it for, but we've gotten some benefit from that in the past. It's not crucial, but we've saved some time with it.

Every solution requires maintenance, even if it's just checking in and making sure things are working. But I don't think there are a lot of things that break that we have to fix, unless it's something that we've broken, like changing a password or changing a community string. The agents that we deploy are usually pretty solid. I don't recall having to reinstall an agent recently. So it doesn't require a lot of maintenance. It's mostly just the setup time to get everything integrated and get everything working.

We mostly use it for network monitoring. We also use it for configuration backup.

With Auvik's network monitoring, the easiest thing is to see where issues are in the network, such as where the traffic is having problems flowing from one place to another. That is the biggest benefit for me. I can go into each company and see if there's a problem with the network. Auvik will pinpoint it and we can work through fixing it.

And something that is critical is the ability to visualize the network mapping. Most people just put something in and think it works, but without having much knowledge of what goes into actually planning the network and making sure they can't get to things they're not supposed to get to. With Auvik, the overall intuitiveness of the network visualization is easily the best I've seen. It's very intuitive. There are pre-built filters and other pieces that allow you to visualize certain, tiny pieces of the network, instead of the entire thing. That means you don't have to move the map around.

The solution has also helped reduce the repetitive, very boring work involved in visualizing the network, where you literally map out everything. Auvik will do it for you. That manual process, for a typical company with a single site, may take 30 minutes. But if it's multi-site with multiple networks, it takes that process from roughly an entire day down to about 30 minutes.

And when it comes to IT team availability, we don't have to have someone dedicated to monitoring the network or documenting networks. We actually have him doing work that we need done, like helping our customers, instead of just documenting.

The ability to put in individualized SNMP checks that might not be in the automated playbook is a valuable feature.

It is also super easy to use the monitoring and management functions of Auvik. I've not seen something as easy as it is, although that use of ease is not so important to our company. Other companies provide knowledge base articles that make everything easy, but the management and monitoring functions in those products aren't as easy to use. That means you have to lean on the knowledge base. Auvik has a knowledge base, but you don't really need it. It's a lot easier in that way. It has a lot of documentation, a lot of information available, but you just don't need it because it's that easy.

Auvik is also a single, integrated platform, and because we are an MSP, that's a godsend. Other vendors have a single pane for each company, whereas Auvik has it set up so there is a single pane for multiple companies.

We use ConnectWise and it integrates with that perfectly. I don't know what else they could add there to have better integration, because it does everything we need.

Auvik doesn't help keep device inventories up to date in the way that I would like. It just helps keep us in the loop for anything that should or shouldn't be on the network.

The one thing that I need more help with is the networking of virtualization hosts. I need more information on those hosts and which virtual networks are attached to what, the virtual switches that are in there, and how they function. None of that exists currently. That's more of a need than anything else that Auvik is doing. If they wanted to monitor more of the network, specifically Hyper-V and VMware hosting, that would make it better and more robust, but that's not their goal.

I've been using Auvik for a couple of years.

The only time it's down is when AWS goes down, so as a cloud-based solution, as opposed to an on-prem network monitoring solution, Auvik means less worry for me. It's always there.

It scales very well, from a single site all the way up to multi-site. If you need more, you just add another probe and it automatically knows which probe does what, so you don't have to worry about that.

I have far less contact with Auvik's technical support now than in the beginning. I haven't opened a case with them in a year because everything just works.

In my experience, if their support can't fix the problem it's because there's a bug and they need to escalate it. I've never had complaints about their service. If there are any questions, support is there to help, and they will.

Positive

I am usually involved in the initial setup and deployment of Auvik and it is far simpler than anything else out there. Since we're an MSP, Auvik configured the initial, main site for us, and then I set up all of the subsites.

It takes 10 to 15 minutes after the collector is implemented for it to start populating the topology map, but it's not a solid "Here's the entire network" for a couple of hours.

We have two other team members, in addition to me, who do setups, but we just brought them on in the last six months.

A good tool like Auvik should literally pay for itself and it does for us, in time saved.

It showed value within the first week. That's how long it took for us to see it was going to save us money in the long run. As far as making money back on it goes, it took about two or three months. That's how long it took for it to have found everything and for us to configure everything.

They are way too lenient in their pricing. To put that simply, I can have an entire network being monitored and it will cost nothing, as long as I'm not monitoring the firewall or the switches.

There are three or four other solutions that I have used that do network monitoring, and none of them work the same. One was N-Central, which is the MSP version of SolarWinds. I also used SolarWinds, the full suite, for one company.

LogicMonitor is another one that we trialed but it didn't work nearly as well, and was way more expensive. 

We used something from Ninja, their network monitoring service, and it could handle a lot more than Auvik could, but you had to say specifically, "I want to monitor this device or that device," instead of just everything. 

I used all of those solutions before getting to Auvik and finding that it's better.

Auvik does everything through a single probe, whereas all the others require multiple probes and multiple connections to multiple VLANs. Either that or you had to know exactly what was on the network and then you could monitor the single pieces you wanted, instead of everything.

Most of what Auvik does is the high-level monitoring of what's going on, and then it does require the higher-level staff to see, when we have a problem, how we fix it. The lower-level staff couldn't figure that out. So it doesn't really help with delegating things to junior people.

If Auvik wanted to map out VLANs specifically, that could be added, but it wouldn't change my opinion of whether the mapping is good or bad. The mapping is good and the VLAN handling is good. Everything else really just comes down to having someone who understands network engineering to really suss out all of the issues that Auvik sees.

We did not see a reduction in mean time to resolution with Auvik. It is just one extra tool. We didn't have nearly the number of customers that we do now, back when we first started using Auvik, so we can't really point to a reduction. We've been using it for so long that we've brought on customers and put them in Auvik right away. 

However, when clients have networking issues, I'm sure it has reduced the amount of time it takes for us to figure out what the problem is. But for us, it's more the mean time to reconfiguration that has dropped drastically. For example, if we need to add another floor, expand a network, shrink a network, or add another site to it, instead of having to do a walkthrough of the network to see what's there, we hop into Auvik, spend five minutes looking at the map, and we're able to present a valid diagram to the customer of what needs to go where.

The solution is not perfect, but I can't think of anything that would make it better for me or my company. Between its cost and what it covers, I would give it a 10 out of 10.

I work for an MSP, and what we do is work with different companies. We monitor all the networks. We have an integration with ConnectWise. We get to receive alerts directly to our ticketing system, and that is awesome. It saves us a lot of work. We don't have to have someone monitoring the networks 24/7. We receive the alerts in our queue and that expedites a lot of work.

The integration is the most important aspect of the solution. If it wasn't for the integration, we would have to have someone monitoring all those maps, all those locations, 24/7. However, with the integration, we see notifications directly to our ticket system, and that helps us a lot to streamline the workflow process. 

The fact that we get to see the whole network on a single pane of glass is great.  We have a map on our main screen, and we can see all the network devices and the end devices as well. It's very useful. 

It's easy to use. You can collapse things via buttons if you have too many devices visible on-screen. When you do that, it helps you see the bigger picture.

The interface is intuitive. I don't find it that difficult. 

We gain a real-time image of the network. 

Our team was able to realize the benefits of the solution pretty much right away. As soon as I was provided access, I was able to see if there were any failure points, and I could deal with them immediately. It's been a game-changer. 

The product has helped decrease our mean time to resolution. I have the option to access any network device if we have the credentials. It saves us a lot of time. I also do not have to have someone on-site. It helps expedite things.

We're able to spend less time on maintenance, setup, and issue resolution. 

It's not 100% user-friendly. However, it does offer a good balance. Still, if I wanted to add or change something, I'd have to think about how to do that.

It should be easier to see Mac addresses. I'd like to be able to see every Mac address of every device by just one-clicking on it.

I've been using the solution for seven months. 

The solution is generally stable. I've never experienced any crashes. 

The scalability is good. If you need to monitor more locations, it's pretty simple. 

I've never reached out to technical support in the past. 

I haven't previously used any other solution. 

The initial deployment is very easy. There's a step-by-step process that pretty much guides you through. We did have to do a few integrations before going fully operational. It took around 30 minutes to create a site integrated with ConnectWise and have the other connector up and running. 

We don't need maintenancevv on our end. The only maintenance happens when a device becomes disconnected. Then we would need to go and see what's going on. 

For this deployment, or whenever we are building up a new location, either myself or one of my co-workers, and someone on-site can handle the implementation. 

We had documentation in regards to integration with ConnectWise. I don't know if we had any other outside help. 

I don't have any visibility on the pricing. 

We're an MSP.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

There is a lot of documentation on the website, from my understanding, and it is very useful to navigate all that documentation before getting started. I'd advise new users to just try to get as informed as possible before starting to use the product.

As the IT manager for our two-building campus, I collaborate closely with our Managed Service Provider to leverage Auvik Network Management for comprehensive monitoring of our network infrastructure, including switches, firewalls, access points, and other typical small business network devices.

We chose Auvik Network Management to gain better visibility into our network, with real-time alerts for any device going offline, while also providing a centralized location for backing up all our device configurations.

While the dynamic map's initial behavior took some getting used to, the UI itself is fairly straightforward. Once I figured out the filters and other controls, I've found it to be quite user-friendly.

The clear network map with hover-over information for nodes and connections has been a big help. It not only visualizes the network layout but also provides details on how the connections function. Auvik's insights helped in pinpointing my VLAN misconfiguration earlier on, making troubleshooting a breeze.

Auvik offers a near real-time view of our network allowing me to diagnose traffic issues based on patterns or user reports. However, it seems Auvik double-counts traffic on our core switch's stacked lag links, making it unclear if we're seeing total traffic or just lag traffic. This is because Auvik reports on the virtual lag ports, their member interfaces, and the switch's stacking ports, which can sometimes be misleading when mixed with regular traffic data. Overall, Auvik is still helpful for monitoring historical traffic trends.

The network map and dashboard offer full visibility of our entire network's health, including any current issues thanks to the integrated central alarm station that displays known outages and potential problems.

While I wasn't involved in the initial deployment, Auvik is a significant improvement over my prior experience with open-source management platforms. It offers a much more centralized view, making it easier to see all devices and their connections.

Auvik allows us to spend less time on the setup, maintenance, and issue resolution. Pulling switch configurations simplifies tasks like replacing equipment or troubleshooting. Having the configuration readily available allows us to see things like traffic patterns, which can help pinpoint issues like port misconfigurations, without needing to delve into switch menus and trace information through tables.

I love that Auvik manages all of the credentials for me. It's incredibly convenient to have both SNMP monitoring and remote terminal access available through the web interface, no matter where I am. This gives me great visibility into my network devices.

It would be useful if network monitoring tools could differentiate between traffic on individual physical ports and traffic on logical interfaces like LAGs or bonded interfaces. Ideally, the tool would also recognize and remove duplicate traffic counts within the overall flow metrics. While solutions like Auvik might not currently offer this functionality, tools like NetBox can be helpful for documenting physical layer connections. It would be interesting to see if Auvik would consider incorporating features to document these physical layer details alongside the logical network configuration, especially for long-term network management within an organization. This could provide valuable insights into how physical infrastructure translates to network behavior.

I have been using Auvik Network Management for two and a half years.

Auvik Network Management is a reliable system with occasional minor login issues that occur infrequently.

Auvik has responded fairly well as we've made changes to our network, but we haven't grown rapidly enough to see it try to scale.

While I wasn't part of the initial network setup, I'm familiar with adding and modifying devices. Luckily, Auvik seems to catch these changes automatically.

Our Managed Service Provider used a consultant to implement Auvik for us.

I would rate Auvik Network Management eight out of ten.

Auvik is generally low-maintenance. While I occasionally verify switch imports and credentials when adding new devices, I haven't encountered any need for regular, active maintenance of the product itself.

Auvik Network Management offers filtering views and adjustable time scales, which are valuable features once you discover them. Additionally, you can manually add devices that the discovery tool misses, such as unmanaged switches, for full network visibility. This covers most of your visibility needs.

I work for an IT-managed service provider specializing in the medical field. We offer IT support to various healthcare organizations, including hospitals, urgent care centers, doctor's offices, and specialty clinics, with client sizes ranging from 50 to 500 computers. Auvik Network Management is a critical tool for us. It helps us discover network devices, stay on top of alerts, ensure proper backups, and locate specific devices when needed, allowing us to proactively manage our clients' IT infrastructure.

While the network map provides a valuable real-time view of our complex network with diverse clients, it's not easily interpretable for laypeople. However, for network specialists like myself, the map offers a clear picture of the network layout, device activity, and overall network health.

Auvik provides complete network visibility, which can be overwhelming for new users due to the detailed information presented. To address this, we typically install an office collector at potential client sites to gain a comprehensive understanding of their network before onboarding them. This approach has proven effective in giving us a clear picture of their IT infrastructure.

In the past, I lacked proper network management tools, and manually discovering devices was a time-consuming process that could lead to missed issues. Auvik's automatic discovery and management suite have significantly improved my productivity and effectiveness as a network administrator, even if it hasn't changed the entire company.

While we didn't realize the full potential of Auvik initially due to a rushed onboarding process, taking the time to set it up properly has revealed its true value. Now that we're utilizing its alerting, backup, and monitoring features, we're experiencing significant benefits, and I expect this value to keep increasing as we delve deeper into its capabilities.

Auvik significantly reduces our average time to resolve network incidents by allowing remote connection to devices without needing a VPN or on-site personnel. This can mean the difference between a ten-minute fix and a two-hour wait for someone to travel to the client's location. In applicable situations, Auvik has sped up our mean time to resolution.

The most valuable aspect of Auvik Network Management is its remote management capabilities. It allows us to access devices like firewalls and switches for our geographically dispersed clients without needing to be on-site or set up VPN connections, saving us significant time. Additionally, the automatic backups provide peace of mind by centralizing all our network device backups in one location, eliminating the need for manual backups.

Auvik's UI, while informative, can be a hurdle for new users due to its complexity. It offers a steep learning curve that necessitates extensive training for beginners. As someone who's been using it for nine months, I find it valuable, but it overwhelms my less experienced colleagues. While not a major issue, improving the UI's user-friendliness for beginners would be a welcome change.

The network map's user-friendliness is a seven out of ten. While it offers comprehensive information, it can be overwhelming at first glance due to the sheer amount of detail. However, the filtering system is excellent, allowing us to focus on the specific aspects we need once we get accustomed to it. Overall, the map excels at displaying network information, but initial filtering is necessary for a smooth experience.

While I find Auvik to be a valuable tool, it's not beginner-friendly enough for my tier-one technicians to use independently. Ideally, I would have liked a solution that could bridge the gap and lighten my load, but Auvik currently requires training and isn't easy to pick up for new users. Due to our busy schedules, we haven't been able to invest the time in training them yet, but I believe Auvik has the potential to be more user-friendly in the future.

While the support team was excellent, the onboarding process for Auvik felt overwhelming from the start. The sessions weren't very productive, leaving us to do much of the setup ourselves, which has delayed realizing the full value of the product.

I have been using Auvik Network Management for nine months.

Auvik's network management software has been stable for us, scoring a nine out of ten. The only occasional hiccups we've encountered stemmed from specific hardware integrations, not Auvik itself. We haven't needed to contact support until recently for these hardware-related issues. Overall, Auvik's stability has been good.

While the initial setup requires scheduling and on-site installation, Auvik scales very well as a platform. We are confident that as our company grows, Auvik will be able to keep pace with our increasing needs.

Auvik's technical support has been great. Despite rarely needing them, their responsiveness has been exceptional. Unlike many IT support experiences where tickets lead to long waits, Auvik consistently replies within an hour. Even when solutions weren't immediately found, their support team either asked insightful questions or promptly provided relevant documentation. My only minor complaint is the lack of phone support, which could be an issue in emergencies.

Positive

While installing Auvik itself wasn't complex, deploying it across 15 customers, some with multiple sites bringing the total to 30 to 40 physical locations, became a logistical challenge due to the time required for on-site installations. This highlights the advantage of cloud-based solutions in such scenarios. In short, the difficulty stemmed from the number of locations, not the installation process itself.

Nine months into the Auvik deployment, we're still working on logistics to ensure it reaches all our customers. While major customers are covered. Around 80 percent total, we haven't achieved full implementation across the board, meaning not all customers are utilizing all the management licenses and features.

Our 15-person IT team has collaboratively deployed the system. We've assigned engineers based on their area of expertise to ensure comprehensive coverage, though technically any one of us could handle the entire deployment, albeit over a much longer timeframe.

While Auvik offered onboarding and deployment sessions initially, they weren't helpful for our specific needs. We already had the information provided, and deployment wasn't adequately addressed. Now we're refocusing our collaboration with the onboarding team on best practices, particularly alert configurations. The default settings trigger excessive alerts for minor issues, overwhelming us. We're working with them to find the right balance and hold monthly meetings to refine our alerting system. This second round of collaboration with Auvik is proving more productive than the first.

I would rate Auvik Network Management eight out of ten.

The only maintenance required is to ensure the on-premise component has internet connection. Other than that, Auvik does not require any maintenance.

My most important advice is to prioritize a significant upfront investment in time for setup and onboarding. In hindsight, we would have benefitted from fully implementing and onboarding everything at the beginning, rather than a piecemeal approach. So, even though it will be time-consuming, take the plunge and fully implement the system across all your sites from the outset. This will allow you to reap the full benefits and boost your productivity from day one.

Our corporation, headquartered in Ohio, operates across 36 locations in the United States and Canada under various brand names. These locations fall under different business segments: Roto Molding (Washington, Colorado, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio), Injection Molding and Plastics (Ohio, Missouri), Blow Molding (Oklahoma, Toronto), and Distribution (California, Utah, Texas, Central America, Massachusetts).

To manage this geographically dispersed network, we leverage Auvik. With a central data center in Atlanta and a backup in Houston, all locations are connected via SD-WAN. Auvik scans and tracks assets across all sites, notifying us of critical device outages, new device detections, configuration changes on network equipment (switches, routers, firewalls), and bandwidth or internet disruptions. Our main location acts as the master site, with individual locations as sub-sites. User access varies, with some having read-only privileges for specific segments and others having broader visibility. Importantly, during acquisitions, we deploy a new collector at the acquired site to scan their network before integration, allowing us to map their infrastructure before moving forward. With an active acquisition strategy of at least one per year, this process is crucial for seamless integration.

A standout feature of Auvik is its real-time network mapping. It provides a comprehensive overview but also allows for granular filtering. We can easily focus on specific elements, like only switches, their wireless access points, or even all wireless devices, making it an invaluable tool for network management.

The network map can get cluttered with information, but fortunately, it offers pre-filtered views and allows custom filtering as well. Many users might not be aware of this and might be struggling with the initial complexity. However, the ability to filter the view down to the most relevant details makes the overall functionality quite useful. I appreciate that the map provides a comprehensive view initially, while also empowering users to customize it for their needs.

The benefits of Auvik were clear from the start. Adding sites was a breeze, and the excellent training courses quickly got me up to speed. Since then, I've been using Auvik regularly, particularly to locate printers and conveniently connect to their web interfaces directly within the platform. It's a valuable tool for these tasks and more.

Auvik has significantly improved our mean time to resolution. Alerts ensure we're notified immediately of any downtime, and Auvik's centralized view of the network allows us to quickly diagnose issues. Furthermore, Auvik streamlines troubleshooting by enabling remote configuration of devices, saving valuable time in resolving problems.

Auvik allows us to spend less time on setup, maintenance, and issue resolution.

Auvik stands out for its user-friendly interface and its comprehensive configuration management features. I particularly appreciate the automated backup of configurations, centralized Syslog collection, and configuration comparison tool. This last feature allows us to easily see highlighted changes between previous and current configurations on switches, firewalls, and routers, which is invaluable for change management and understanding who made what modifications.

While Auvik excels in network management with a user-friendly interface, its customization and reporting features could benefit from improvement. Specifically, allowing more control over SNMP scans, like setting custom drive space alert thresholds instead of pre-defined values, would enhance flexibility. Similarly, the ability to tailor reports would be valuable. In contrast, PRTG shines in endpoint monitoring and alerting for servers due to its high level of customization. Lansweeper offers a wider range of reports, including custom and pre-configured options, making it a strong choice for detailed reporting needs. Overall, if Auvik could address these areas, it would solidify its position as a comprehensive network management solution.

I have been using Auvik Network Management for one year.

Auvik Network Management has been mostly reliable for us. While there have been a few outages, they haven't caused any major disruptions. My biggest concern was with occasional false positives, where devices were incorrectly identified as offline, then deleted and rediscovered. This caused some issues, but I recall receiving Auvik notifications about the problem, and it seems to be resolved now. Overall, things have been much smoother since then.

One of the key benefits of Auvik Network Management is its scalability. When we acquire a new site, setting up a collector and integrating it into the system is a breeze. Scanning and adding new sites is a smooth process. Currently, with two main collectors handling most of our locations, adding a third one seems unnecessary. However, as we continue to grow, strategically placing a third collector, potentially within the data center, might become beneficial.

The technical support team was both responsive and knowledgeable. While their answers on some of our tickets regarding server alert customization weren't always what we'd hoped for, it's understandable since this product isn't designed for server monitoring. After all, our billing isn't for network equipment. Overall, I was impressed with their support aside from these customization limitations.

Positive

Our IT toolset currently includes PRTG, Lansweeper, Wazuh, and Auvik. While consolidating everything into a single, unified solution might be ideal, we've discovered valuable functionalities within each of these existing tools. Therefore, we haven't replaced any and now manage four tools in total. Perhaps a single, all-encompassing tool will emerge in the future, but for now, this multi-tool approach is working effectively.

We realized the advantages of Auvik much quicker than with PRTG, Lansweeper, and Wazuh. This is due to Auvik's user-friendly interface, which is significantly easier to navigate than those of its competitors. While competing products offer greater customization, they are often more complex to set up and use. Auvik excels at guiding users, but this can come at the cost of some customization options. Once familiar with the software, customization in Auvik becomes slightly more challenging compared to some competitors, however, it remains the most user-friendly option.

The initial setup was straightforward and took a couple of months to complete. Five people from our end were involved with the deployment.

We worked with Auvik directly in the engagement team. And then our infrastructure team was primarily involved with getting it deployed.

Auvik's pricing structure is a perk. You only pay for the network devices you manage, like firewalls, routers, and switches. Computers, access points, and other devices Auvik scans are not billed. While their pricing aligns with competitors, the benefit of having these additional devices monitored for free makes Auvik a compelling option.

I would rate Auvik Network Management eight out of ten.

In addition to our participation in the beta program for endpoint monitoring which hasn't been a major focus yet, we're constantly on the lookout for a unified solution. Ideally, this unicorn product would offer everything we need – reporting, scanning detection, and alerting. Currently, we rely on a patchwork of tools like Auvik, PRTG, Lansweeper, and Wazuh. While consolidating everything into one solution might be wishful thinking, Auvik's feature set is particularly impressive, and we hope it might eventually encompass all our needs.

While our infrastructure division within IT restricts access to Auvik for entry-level technicians, we do provision read-only access to some other tools. For example, the information security department can view network maps and devices within these tools, which likely aids their visualization of our network connectivity. Overall, Auvik access is limited for most first-level technicians.

We use it to monitor the network infrastructure and assets of our clients. We are a managed service provider and it fits neatly into our role. We also use it to keep configuration change records, which is something we didn't have before. It's nice to have that in one platform.

When we are onboarding a new client with network infrastructure for monitoring, Auvik makes it very straightforward and simplified. It can map out and easily visualize the customer's network so that we don't have to manually do it. It definitely has increased automation.

We used PRTG but it lacked the mapping function to visualize the network with an interactive map. It also lacked the configuration backup tool, the hardware life cycle, and good NetFlow insights. Moving to Auvik has saved a good 30 to 50 percent of our time.

Another thing that I love that Auvik does and that PRTG doesn't do is the integration with a lot of our MSP tools like ConnectWise and Teams. PRTG would open tickets via an alert, but it would never close them if the alert cleared. All those tickets from PRTG would go to me and I would have to manually close them. I would get inundated with tickets. Auvik will also open a ticket but, once the alert clears, it will automatically close the ticket, saving me from having to close a lot of tickets. That too has reduced repetitive work for me by 30 to 50 percent.

Our MTTR has almost been automated because of the tickets. About 90 percent of our tickets have been automated. I still have to manually look at the rest and maybe do a little work against them, but it's not crazy. It has unquestionably helped out with resolving issues.

It has also helped tremendously with quarterly business reviews because, with just a click of a button, we can get the hardware life cycle and export all the data to an Excel spreadsheet. That helps our management.

And because most of our clients are remote from us, that visibility that Auvik gives into their environments is in a better overall layout than our previous platform. The UI of PRTG was very '90s-esque, like a poorly designed website. It had the functionality but the UI was lacking tremendously when it comes to ease of use and organization.

The visibility Auvik provides almost makes it so that we don't have to be actively monitoring things. We don't need a NOC or a SOC to get alerts. We're more confident now in the network management solution that we have. Before, we were getting alert upon alert and my phone would be blowing up and then I would get all the tickets. Auvik has put that kind of stress on the back burner.

Overall, it has freed up about 25 to 30 percent of the time I used to have to put into things.

Another advantage is that I didn't want to show a junior tech our previous platform because they wouldn't know what to do with it. Auvik, on the other hand, is more geared toward all levels, rather than just the high-level engineers. It will tell you what might be the cause of a problem rather than just alerting on something that it sees. While we don't have it geared toward our lower-level team yet, it's very easy to use and they should be able to pick it up.

Among the most valuable features are the hardware life cycle and configuration backups, when applicable, since that's not applicable for all vendors, platforms, and networking types. When it does show you the hardware life cycle for, say, a Cisco device and the configuration backup, that's the most useful aspect for me as a network engineer.

Once it's set up properly with the SNMP strings or credentials, it's very straightforward to use. It has a small learning curve, which is nice for a network monitoring tool. Ease of use is very high on our list of requirements, not just for me as a network engineer, but when I want the help desk or the level-ones to be able to look at something. It needs to be easy to use.

It's also very much a single pane of glass, which is especially helpful for our business model as an MSP.

In addition, I greatly appreciate Auvik's ability to visualize network mapping. It's very good for visualizing how the network is formed and the interconnections. Since it's interactive, it's more helpful than a static map or static video diagram. It's a very helpful feature.

I like how you can request features, and one feature that I think they're working on is the ability to export the topology map as a video.

Something else I would like to see would be additional vendors for the hardware life cycle. Right now, they mainly focus on Cisco stuff, which is fine, but not every customer we have uses Cisco. I'm not looking for them to add every networking vendor, and these just might be legacy devices, but Fortinet is a big one that we've used and I don't think Auvik has the hardware life cycle for that. I don't know how it does on Aruba, but we have some legacy HPE as well. I do like the Meraki integration, although it would be nice to see a Juniper Mist and Aruba Central integration.

Another improvement that would be nice, one that should be at the top of their list, is the ability to properly identify vulnerabilities, based on a vendor's security alerts. If it could recognize, "You're on this version of firmware and you're hitting these types of vulnerabilities," that would definitely check off a big security feature for this tool.

We demoed Auvik early in the year and we fully signed up sometime in the summer, so we have been using it for several months.

Overall, it is very stable. 

Every platform or NMS has its own quirks or kinks that have to be worked out, but it's nice that Auvik will update on the backend. I don't have to worry about updating a server platform.

Its scalability is very high. It gets a 10 out of 10.

We have Auvik across multiple organizations. We monitor, administer, and maintain, network monitoring for dozens of clients. It's deployed across all their different environments and in organizations with multiple branch offices. Our clients include the smallest, one-branch organizations up to medium-to-large enterprises. It definitely fits all those use cases.

The technical support that Auvik provides is very good. They're very quick to respond. They have a live chat feature, which is very nice. They're pretty knowledgeable since it's their product. There's no comparison between the support from Auvik and the support we received from our previous vendor.

Positive

We used PRTG before and we're still using it now. We're trying to slowly migrate from it. We put all our eggs in that basket, even though it was a very flimsy basket. We used it for networking servers, mainly.

We didn't use it for endpoint and computer assets. That was handled by ConnectWise Automate. We wouldn't want Auvik to do that.

The deployment was very straightforward because of the user interface. This is where it's more straightforward than Domotz. Sometimes, when you have too many choices, it can be a burden. With Auvik you decide: Do you want the OVA? Do you want to install a .exe? It's very simple. I could probably have someone on our level-one team actually set it up.

It took less than 10 to 15 minutes after the collector was implemented before the network mapping started to populate with basic devices. Then it was a matter of fine-tuning. It was up to me to categorize devices as I saw fit and tune the SNMP so that it got the data that I wanted.

Overall, our implementation of Auvik took a few weeks because of the number of sites and devices and the fine-tuning. Also, an NMS is always being worked on. You're rarely perfectly happy with how it looks. It's constantly being fine-tuned so that alerts generate correctly without over-alerting.

That's one thing I have liked compared to PRTG. Auvik's out-of-the-box alerting is very straightforward and handles the alerts you are likely to see. But that's also where it could do a little bit better, in the customization of alerts. With PRTG, we could alert on almost anything, whereas with Auvik, you're somewhat zoned in.

We have definitely saved a good amount of time on the setup of Auvik, compared to PRTG. PRTG was significantly cheaper, but there was no onboarding help. It was a matter of, "Here you go, do it yourself." Auvik had a customer success team to walk us through and help iron out any kinks, which was greatly appreciated. That was part of what we're paying for. The pricing helps with support. PRTG's support, while it was okay, wasn't as straightforward and easy to get a hold of someone compared to Auvik.

The maintenance involved with Auvik is around fine-tuning for data collection, but it does not involve updating the agent or the backend. It's nice that I don't have to worry about updating the platform itself. I just have to worry about the data getting collected and making sure SNMP strings are updated.

I was the only one involved in the initial deployment, from our side.

I didn't set up PRTG but compared to my brief time with PRTG, Auvik has been night and day and the value has been very quick. For some of our customers, we never had a solution in place to back up configurations. Auvik now provides that. There's definitely peace of mind knowing a config backed up. It is definitely proving its value.

I don't think Auvik's pricing should be based on device, which it is right now. I don't know what their market share is or how they compete with Domotz, but if they want to stay competitive, Auvik should have simpler pricing. Domotz is $21 per month per site, whereas Auvik is per device, so it definitely adds up very quickly.

In addition to the other issues I mentioned, Auvik and our previous platform are night and day in the following way as well. We would almost be scared to put in a subnet for PRTG to scan because we wouldn't know what we got. Now, it's easy to see what we're getting in terms of the devices and prune it from there. 

It's also helpful that it's not onsite because we're trying to move servers and services off-prem. Auvik is definitely a step in the right direction. It's one less piece of infrastructure to worry about. You don't have to open up your environment to collect monitoring information. It just needs outbound traffic, which makes things easier. That's where it shines compared to an on-prem solution. Also, you don't have to maintain or update software or the agent. It does that automatically. I don't have to worry about updating firmware.

With an on-prem solution, everything is hub and spoke and everything has to go back to our data center. Auvik, as a cloud solution, eases up on that usage of our circuits and internet.

While Auvik is geared toward network infrastructure for an MSP, it could probably do a little bit better on the server side. PRTG definitely had that as an advantage over Auvik. It could monitor servers and that type of infrastructure better than Auvik can. 

Auvik also doesn't have some customizable automations for a specific use case that might need an if-then-that statement to run a script or commands. That might be very niche, but one of our clients is using PRTG like that. 

It is nice to see that Auvik has an expanding roadmap. I don't know what PRTG has on its roadmap for new features, but it's nice to see that Auvik is not getting stale.

I did evaluate Domotz and the pricing worked out in favor of Domotz, but we ended up going with Auvik. We're only in Auvik for a year and we'll see how it goes, but unless the pricing becomes too high, I don't see us moving away from it. Domotz was the only other one that was within reach and more geared toward MSPs.

An MSP business can almost flip a coin between Domotz and Auvik. Auvik is priced per device, whereas Domotz is priced per location or site. It works out in Domotz's favor, although I can't speak for its feature sets. Domotz does have a leg up in terms of deployability. It has a hardware appliance, almost like a Raspberry Pi, so it's easy to deploy on anyone's network, whereas you have to run Auvik as a virtual appliance. It can't run on ARM, which is not a deal-breaker, but it is nice to have options when deploying. You're somewhat locked in with Auvik for deployment because you need to run it on a server or in someone's vCenter. It's not that customizable, whereas Domotz can run on ARM as well, I believe.

Auvik has two versions, Essentials and Performance, which is similar to Domotz's model. With Performance you get NetFlow visibility and another feature and that increases the price per device. But the device types they charge for are only those that are part of network infrastructure. Overall, it's probably cheaper via Domotz, but if you have a lot of sites with just one device, it might be cheaper to go with Auvik. Auvik doesn't charge for access points, but they do charge for switches, routers, and firewalls.

Auvik definitely helps keep device inventories up to date. If I have the scan running, it does a really good job of finding devices on the network when the subnets are put in. However, the network infrastructure shouldn't change that much, so I don't typically have it running scans all the time. We're mainly using it for network infrastructure and not as much for endpoint devices. It primarily shines when it comes to network infrastructure, but it did do a pretty good job of doing the initial inventory of the networks.

My advice would be to do a proof of concept if you are in an MSP role or organization, because the costs can quickly add up.