Auvik is our main network monitoring platform.
We were struggling to monitor our network hardware for uptime, bandwidth usage, and errors, all while managing firmware updates and configuration changes. Thankfully, Auvik solved all these problems for us.
In our VMware environment, we use a virtual appliance for Auvik. This appliance acts as a data concentrator, collecting information from all our network hardware. The collected information is then uploaded to the cloud by the virtual appliance.
Auvik's network map provides a close to real-time picture of our network.
The network map is user-friendly, though initially, the text can be a bit difficult to read due to its spread-out nature. However, zooming in and navigating different sections allows for easy readability. Thankfully, all the objects are clickable, providing instant access to detailed information for each one as needed.
I took advantage of Auvik's 30-day trial, and within that timeframe, I became thoroughly convinced of its benefits.
Auvik has significantly improved our mean time to resolution. Before using Auvik, troubleshooting network issues could take hours of investigation to pinpoint the problem. Now, with Auvik's features, I can typically identify the cause within just a few minutes.
Auvik allows us to spend less time on maintenance and issue resolution.
The most valuable features for me are network monitoring and alerting. This means I automatically receive an email notification whenever an issue arises, eliminating the need to wait for users to report problems.
There's room for improvement in the interface. While we only have one location, logging in presents a world map designed for multiple sites. This unnecessary extra step to access the information I need could be eliminated by offering an option to disable the world map view.
I have been using Auvik Network Management for one year.
Auvik Network Management is stable. We have not had any problems.
While our current environment handles our needs well, Auvik's easy scalability allows us to seamlessly expand into a larger environment in the future. The multi-site dashboard lets us manage everything from a central location whenever we're ready to grow.
The technical support responds within 24 hours.
Neutral
At my previous company, I relied on a combination of SolarWinds, Lansweeper, and an open-source tool for IT asset management. While Auvik offers a more user-friendly experience compared to these free options, it doesn't provide the same level of detailed functionality as SolarWinds.
The initial deployment was straightforward. The deployment took a couple of days. One person was required for the deployment.
Auvik helped us deploy the system remotely. The on-site process itself was very straightforward: it involved downloading the software, installing it, and then entering information into the interface.
Auvik holds its own compared to other contenders. It's priced fairly, avoiding any underestimation of its value. What truly sets it apart is the per-network device licensing structure, with additional device monitoring included at no extra cost.
I would rate Auvik Network Management nine out of ten.
Minimal maintenance is required.
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 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.
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 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 implement Auvik for our clients as a network monitoring solution. About 20 engineers use it, including me. We also have a business analyst, a systems admin, a capacity planner, two vice presidents, and a couple of data scientists.
Auvik is deployed across several departments. Organization-wide, we have 20,000-plus endpoints, but Auvik is monitoring a tiny subset of that, so about 2,000 more or less.
Auvik has saved a lot of time. Network monitoring and analysis tasks that would sometimes take a few days to accomplish can be completed in only 15 to 30 minutes. It has reduced our mean time to resolution by about 25 percent.
Auvik has streamlined the way we put out tickets. The user interface makes it easier to communicate analytics and helps us filter out devices. It gives us robust visibility into our infrastructure in a single pane of glass. I have all the information and link data I need to troubleshoot any issue with the networks. The ticketing information Auvik provides offers some good opportunities for automation. It also allows us to automate data collection through the use of collectors.
Auvik has shifted IT teams to a shared model. so we can have all of the equipment and information mapped out accordingly. The other nice thing is that we can customize Auvik. For example, one department might focus on information extraction for query development, while another group is focused on layer topology and working with firewalls. Auvik lets you drill down based on the different types of appliances or shift toward programming if needed and root cause analysis. Auvik handles the four Ts—topology, telemetry, traces, and time—well.
Our IT team is working really around the clock. It's almost to the point where this automation has made it possible for normal users and businesses to accomplish their day-to-day tasks without any failover. Auvik is also more accessible to our low-level staff, who are looking for more functionality within the user interface as opposed to customizable development. They can get recommendations through the Auvik interface if there's a problem with the configuration or hardware. The junior analysts can review the historical data and live information to draw conclusions.
Auvik is crucial for keeping our device inventories updated. I can try to gather the system uptime for different types of devices and get something like NetFlow data. It works like a packet sniffer with real-time data factored into it. The higher-level staff members use Auvik in conjunction with another tool in the tech stack. They may also want to shift this in terms of data transfer assessment. To compare it with another tool, Splunk has a cloud migration app that helps look at how organizations use cloud-to-cloud, cloud-to-ground, and ground-to-ground. With that assessment model, there's a focus on the total cost of ownership. Similarly, within Auvik, that's like an area of opportunity in terms of assessing the architecture being created for how it can be deployed.
I've found the topology mesh graph helpful, and I like the other features that factor into my work with Kubernetes. The solution is intuitive. When someone gets started with it, there are out-of-the-box solutions to accomplish tasks, so a new person doesn't always need to check the documentation. When they log into the tool, they can quickly fix a few areas and get everything running.
The monitoring and management functions are effortless to use. The process is pretty straightforward If I need to connect to an external appliance. Sorting out role-based access control is easy, as well.
Auvik has a single integrated platform with collectors and API functionality, which are crucial. It has application and network performance monitoring tools, with something to bridge the gap between the two. Auvik integrates network, application, and infrastructure monitoring.
I would like to see Auvik have some more documentation with a typical CM solution like Splunk. I want to see more examples of things like configuring port forwarding for firewalls. In addition to collecting data from different types of appliances, I would like to customize more of the metrics for each appliance.
More encryption and data security features would also be helpful in case I have some confidential data coming through. Password management and encryption for specific datasets would be interesting. Auvik has this ticket functionality that could be used to construct pre-built workflows.
I would like to see Auvik add more features to help clients who work with cloud providers like Microsoft Azure. In Azure, they have templates within Azure Resource Manager. There are templates for 1,000 use cases that people can deploy, and they do some stuff around infrastructure as a code.
Auvik should go in that direction by integrating ARM templates where somebody can look to see SVKs, command interface, virtual machines, data stores, service management, etc., and try to take that on in terms of continuing with a declarative syntax. I find that some areas of infrastructure code could work nicely. They could construct playbooks like GAML files that could work alongside more with an Auvik.
I've been using Auvik for about two years.
Auvik is stable. There are occasional service disruptions, but they are quickly resolved.
Auvik is relatively scalable. Auvik provides a lot of rich analytics that can be translated into insights for SecOps, systems engineering, and capacity planners.
I rate Auvik support a ten out of ten. Their support staff is proactive and always ready to assist.
Positive
I've worked with Stack State, Splunk, Dynatrace, and LogicMonitor. Our department was tasked with looking for innovative ideas. We're a large enterprise, so some departments work with different tech stacks. Other departments might have a tool and try refining it for their analyses. We have Splunk and Dynatrace, but the use cases vary slightly based on their responsibilities. If I move from one department to another, I might be working with different tools.
Setting up Auvik is straightforward, and it took about two months. We started working alongside a larger team and began ramping things up. Our deployment strategy involved ensuring the data was populated throughout and figuring out which dependencies I needed to install at the same time.
I would say setting up Auvik is slightly easier than most other solutions. Splunk took quite a bit of work, but it ultimately paid off. Auvik is also a powerful solution, but it does not require much effort to get it running. After deployment, there isn't maintenance on our side. We get service notifications from Auivk based on a particular type of cluster.
Folks in the market for a network monitoring solution often think Splunk is relatively expensive, so many are looking for a cheaper alternative. Some network monitoring tools are free but have tiers if you need a customized solution.
Auvik's pricing model is bundled and flexible. If I need to monitor more endpoints, I have to pay a higher premium. I can estimate how much a typical network has in terms of endpoints and billed devices and break down what else is needed, like a hypervisor or more workstations. Auvik bills based on the aggregate count of billable devices. I can export the billing usage and compare that to the total cost of ownership.
We also looked at Devo. We felt that Devo didn't offer much of an advantage over what we had already built or what we could do together with Splunk. We thought it didn't make sense to retrain our whole team for a solution that would not add much to our existing setup. We've also looked at a ticketing solution called SysAid.
I rate Auvik a nine out of ten. If you plan to implement Auvik, I recommend getting started on deploying the tools soon, so you can get the full value. You might also want to look into the certification program.
We use it for network management. We use SNMP to get notifications about various issues on our network.
We implemented it because we tried out a free trial. The goal was to get more visibility into our network. I get notifications on everything from printers being low on paper to network cards that are dropping packets. It does a lot of things that otherwise I would not have known about.
It is very easy to use. After you do the initial setup, it is kind of set-it-and-forget-it.
The network map is pretty straightforward. It is like a lot of other discovery applications that I have seen. The network map gives a good visualization of our network as an overview. We can make it larger, and it is easier to see. Our network is pretty well segmented. It shows different switches and things coming out of it. We have got everything segmented very well, so we have not had any issues with it not being able to fit everything in.
I had to have a couple of support sessions to get everything configured correctly. The simple SNMP monitoring was pretty easy for devices using a public tag, but I did have to get some support with the firewalls to get them correctly into the system. I had to make a few configuration changes on the Fortinet firewall to get it to work, but after I got that worked out, the benefits were immediate. Within two days of implementing it, I realized that I had a lot of packet loss on one of our Hyper-V servers, and I was at a loss for what the performance problems were. I immediately found a lot of packet loss on one of the network adapters. I was able to swap that out. That immediately fixed the performance issues we were having with our Hyper-V server.
Auvik has not empowered our entry-level technicians to solve more tickets on their own because this is a one-man shop here. It is just me. I do not use it as much for resolving tickets, but it prevents some tickets from being created because of the notifications I get for various issues. I simply would not know about them otherwise.
As long as everything is cooking along fine, I do not get any alerts. I do not have a lot of false alerts that cause me to waste time. When I do get an alert, it is usually something that is pretty important, and then I can look into it. Oftentimes, it gets resolved before tickets are created by end users.
Auvik allows us to spend less time on the setup and maintenance of the solution and less time on issue resolution. The initial setup took a little bit of time, but it was not anything outrageous. It was not super complicated. For the most part, all the devices were plug-and-play after they were discovered. Firewalls were the only ones that took a little work to get working, but after that, the notifications that I get do save me a lot of time from responding to tickets because oftentimes, I can get things resolved before end users even notice it.
The notifications for events are valuable. If a copier is low on toner, I can get the toner ordered instead of being surprised when it runs out. It saves me from running around and having to check a lot of things. I get notifications based on the alerts that we have configured for it.
There was an issue where I did not have the ability to turn off certain notifications or noise that I did not care about. I worked with the support guys. They showed me how to do it, and I was able to silence notifications on a specific device, which is something that I was having trouble with. I had one device that was getting non-stop notifications about one issue that could not be fixed. It just had to be that way. It was a legacy machine. After working with support, I was able to turn those notifications off specifically for that one device and that specific problem, which I could not find on my own. After they showed me how to do it, I have not had anything to complain about this product.
If anything, the spacing on the network map can be better. In the network map, we have one switch crammed in there. Some improvements in the spacing on the network map would be good.
Their documentation and knowledge base can also be improved.
We have been using Auvik for about a year and a half.
I have seen a couple of emails come through about them doing scheduled maintenance, but other than that, I have not had any issues with any downtime. If they did have any downtime with their cloud application, I did not notice it. I might not have seen any alerts for that short period of time. If they were down, nothing has been to the level that I noticed it.
We only have 150 devices here. We have not had any issues with scalability because we are not that big of a shop.
I have called them two or three times, and each time, they have been able to resolve my issue very quickly. I always try to do things myself using their documentation, but I had a little trouble finding the documentation for my Fortinet FortiGate issues. Another thing that could be improved is their documentation and knowledge base, but in terms of their support personnel and time for them to get a resolution for me and get me up and running, they did a great job.
Positive
I did not use any other product previously. This is the first time I have used this type of product. I do not have anything to compare it to, but I have nothing but good things to say about Auvik.
It is deployed in the cloud. It was super easy to deploy. The Fortinet firewall required some configuration changes on the firewall itself. I did that with the support folks on the line. I was able to do the rest of it on my own without any problems at all. I just had a few issues with the Fortinet firewall.
It was all deployed within one day.
I did it all myself except for the two firewalls. I had to have a support call to get that done.
The pricing is good for what it does. It has been a few months, so I do not remember exactly how much it was. I believe for our network here, it was about 2,000 a year, so the pricing was good.
A lot of printers and things of that nature are not one of the charged devices.
We went directly to Auvik. I got an email about a trial. I installed it and thought how useful it would be to be more proactive than reactive with the types of issues that it spots.
The only advice I have for new users is that if they have Fortinet firewalls, they will have to do some command line configurations to their Fortinet to prepare it to be able to send the alerts to all of it.
I have heard of Auvik's SaaS Management product. They sent me an email about it recently, but I just read the headline of the email and moved on. I do not have a solid understanding of what it does other than maybe keeping track of your software as a service license. I am not familiar with it that much.
I would rate Auvik Network Management a nine out of ten for what we use it for.
As a network engineer, I rely on Auvik Network Management primarily for troubleshooting network issues. Auvik's visual representation of the network is particularly helpful, allowing me to gain a clear understanding of how everything is connected. Additionally, Auvik facilitates remote access to switches and firewalls, streamlining my troubleshooting workflow.
Our organization previously lacked any network monitoring capabilities. This made it difficult to identify and troubleshoot issues. We've implemented Auvik, which has addressed this challenge. Auvik provides us with valuable insights into our network health and allows for easy remote access to devices. This overall improves our network management efficiency.
Auvik has a well-designed and user-friendly interface. It's easy to navigate and understand.
The network map dashboard is a valuable tool because it offers a near real-time view of the network. Additionally, it allows for filtering elements. As a network engineer, my first instinct is to focus solely on network devices. I want to see switches, access points, and firewalls – a clear view of just those critical components. This filtered view usually provides me with a good understanding of the network's health. However, there have been instances where a device appeared on the map but wasn't actually being scanned. This highlights the importance of ongoing learning about the tool's capabilities. I'm confident there are features I haven't yet explored that can further enhance my network monitoring experience.
The network map dashboard provides full network visibility. I am able to see all the devices.
Auvik has been instrumental in reducing our mean time to remediation, which is a major reason I want to migrate all our customers to the platform. Without Auvik, I lack a clear view of their network, making it frustrating and difficult to troubleshoot issues effectively. Having all our customers on Auvik would provide a central vantage point to monitor and manage their networks, ultimately leading to faster resolution times.
Auvik allows us to spend less time on setup, maintenance, and issue resolution.
The most valuable feature of Auvik is the remote access functionality. It eliminates the hassle of manually remote accessing a PC and figuring out its IP address and password. With Auvik, everything is stored securely within the platform. It's as simple as a few clicks. I can easily launch a remote browser session or access the terminal directly through Auvik, saving me significant time and effort. Additionally, Auvik allows me to quickly configure SysLog settings and even view device configurations, like switch configurations, without needing to establish a remote connection. This is incredibly helpful for situations where I just need a quick glimpse of the settings. These are the functionalities I use most frequently at the moment, but I'm constantly exploring and learning more about what Auvik can offer.
The responsiveness of the UI can be sluggish at times. While I understand occasional lag when remotely accessing devices, the overall performance of the application itself could be smoother. In other words, it would benefit from improved responsiveness for a more seamless user experience.
I was working on a device in the AP that had disconnected from the network. I needed to troubleshoot the issue and wanted to find the switch it was connected to using LLDP information. Ideally, I wanted to know the specific switch port it was plugged into. Unfortunately, when the device went offline, Auvik didn't retain this information and it was lost. Having Auvik automatically save this data, even for offline devices, would be a valuable troubleshooting feature. This would allow me to quickly locate the device, even if it's currently disconnected, by looking up its historical connection details. Currently, according to the support team, this functionality is not available.
I have been using Auvik Network Management for one month.
Auvik Network Management appears to scale and handle large networks easily.
I've contacted technical support several times now. While the chat representatives are helpful, the escalation process has been slow. I opened a ticket a week and a half to two weeks ago and only just heard back. I understand they might be busy, but perhaps some additional resources could be allocated to expedite escalations.
Neutral
I would rate Auvik Network Management eight out of ten.
Auvik has been a lifesaver for me and I would recommend it to others.
