Auvik Network Management (ANM) Reviews

I'm a technical team lead managing other engineers and specialists for several clients. I utilize Auvik for strategic discussions, escalations, and support tickets. I'm on the backend trying to coordinate responses to outages, feature requests, etc. 

We use multiple applications to manage our network. Auvik is our network mapping and discovery tool that creates alerts in our ticketing system. We use ConnectWise Automate and that suite of products for ticketing. It's not like Auvik is a ticketing help desk system with remote control, but it can do just about everything from a monitoring standpoint. We still use AppNeta for board mirroring or finding latency in network traffic.

Auvik is a total package for network discovery that completely meets our needs as a company. I don't see us leaving Auvik for some other network discovery tool. It's a one-stop shop where we can dive into each of our client's networks, and we have quite a few. I don't know precisely how many we have. It's fewer than a hundred, but it's too many to do LAN diagrams in Visio. 

The solution has reduced repetitive low-priority tasks because it collects the SNMP information for us and alerts us when servers go offline. We can see connectivity in the network from a bird's eye view without the need to dive into the firewalls and switches. Auvik saves us from having to create manual diagrams, and I can export all the data about a client's network, so I don't have to gather all of that myself.

Given our number of clients, we would probably need another full-time engineer if someone had to keep track of all of this on their own. It's roughly equivalent to a human working full-time for an entire year. That's one less person we need for all that, and Auvik reduces human error. 

The visibility Auvik provides is critical because it's part of our onboarding process, giving us a high-level overview so long as the client doesn't change the SNMP default values. We can immediately see what a new client is working with as soon as we get off again into their network.

Auvik has improved the team's availability by about 75 percent. Before Auvik, we used a different tool to scan, but it provided only a one-time snapshot of the network, whereas Auvik provides mapping in real-time. 

It's probably one of the first tools we introduce to new hires in our network operations center. Auvik is intuitive and offers hints. You can type a vendor name or an IP, and it's immediately accessible at a high level. Of course, there's depth to the product that takes time to develop. Junior engineers can quickly get a look at it, start learning how SNMP works, or configure it on devices and watch them appear in Auvik.

We use Auvik when we're doing strategic planning for clients. It helps us find servers, hosts switches, correct serial numbers, etc., so we can do warranty lookups and that sort of thing. It's important. We primarily use it for information gathering to see a visual network diagram mapping and get tickets.

It's hard to say that one feature is my favorite, but I like Auvik's ability to map networks using SNMP. It maps the network, so I can look at all the devices and set them to provide alerts or automatically create tickets when outages occur. If clients need it, I can export all of the data into an Excel spreadsheet.

The monitoring and management functions are easy to use. The network visualization is also intuitive. Ease of use is crucial because many of our help desk specialists and entry-level people need to navigate the solution, so it's vital to have simplicity in standard high-level searching. A single integrated platform is essential to stay in line with our best practices.

The search could be slightly more intelligent. If I type in "Dell" and put an extra "L," Auvik doesn't give a suggestion, "Did you mean 'Dell?'" I have to fix that. That's a minor thing.

Also, if I select a specific device and apply it as a search filter, it shows me the device, and I have to click on it to see it at the bottom of the page. Otherwise, it just stays on the discovery. When I close the device, it remains on the switch displaying the diagram. I have to click the home dashboard to get back to the way it was.

When I remove the filter, it should take me back to the home dashboard. After I add a filter, select a device, and apply it as a search filter, I think it should pop up if there's only one. When there's only one device in the filter, I find it somewhat annoying to need to click it to dive into that device. If I remove the filter, I would prefer it return to the home dashboard. It's a minor irritation at times.

I've used Auvik for more than five years, close to eight. 

Auvik is solid. I have never experienced an outage. Auvik has downtime, but they provide notice well in advance. The maintenance window tends to be at times that won't impact me. The most recent maintenance window was on Dec. 3 at 7:00 AM Eastern, which is 4:00 AM Pacific, so it didn't affect me at all.

I don't see a limitation to the scalability.

Before the company adopted Auvik, I used Visio to create my online diagrams by hand.

I wasn't involved in the initial setup, but deploying the collectors is easy. Another person handles the onboarding process, but the network maps are populated within a day or so. I've never heard anyone say, "Hey, it's taking a long time for Auvik to get going." They say Auvik is up, and I see the map is there. 

I rate Auvik 10 out of 10.

We use Auvik to map out networks and to view device health, meaning not just if it's up or down but also if there are any system-generated errors that can be listed via Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP).

It saves me from having to log into each device through whatever login they may have available to them. It's a single interface for the devices.

It has greatly increased our speed. We don't have to check individual device-specific interfaces for monitoring. It also handles real-time monitoring, as opposed to a daily or hourly check. In some cases, it also allows us to find a device that's in trouble and directly connect to it from the interface. It's a huge time saver, and it does save us a fair amount of leg work.

It has helped to reduce repetitive, low-priority tasks through automation, such as checking on a device and opening and closing tickets for the devices that are in.

We now have a lot more visibility into the networks than we did before. This visibility is very important for our IT teams. The IT team would have a fairly difficult job checking all these different devices manually. In some cases, the work just wouldn't get done if it wasn't being done automatically.

A simple site view with the associated devices populating as things to add to or remove from the network is valuable. It's also nice to have it integrated with our ticketing system to create tickets in certain cases for devices that go down or have some high-level alerts, such as high CPU or overtemperature.

It's pretty easy to use its monitoring and management functions. There's a wizard that's involved when you first start it up and then you can pick. The initial network sets itself up and then you can add networks if they are available to the devices being monitored. Its ease of use is fairly important. There are some other monitoring tools that we have available to us, but they're agent-based. We can't load an agent on a switch or a router or something like that. We need some sort of SNMP interface to detect those errors. Otherwise, they would go unnoticed.

It's pretty intuitive. As soon as you pull up the site, the map comes right up. You can expand or contract different device types. In many cases, it will attempt to interrogate the device and find out what device type it is, but sometimes, you may have to set it yourself.

For the most part, it's great for visualizing the network mapping/topology for our organization. However, when complex VLAN networks are involved, sometimes, the picture can get a little cloudy. It would definitely be nice if there was some way of choosing a VLAN to view or something like that. They should definitely improve the handling of multiple networks and VLANs. I do know that the information has been gathered, and I know it's possible to give different looks. There could be a layered approach to the VLANs where you can take the default VLAN or you can toggle a switch and show, for example, a security camera VLAN or a voice-over IP VLAN. It would be nice to be able to have it pull up the information relevant to a particular network. 

The GUI map view could potentially be adjusted so that we can manipulate it without necessarily having it resize every time we adjust the screen. There should be a single focused view. Currently, it resizes every time I move this bar that has the information underneath it. Sometimes, that's after me zooming in on a particular piece, which makes it difficult to find my place again.

I have been using Auvik for at least a year. I'm a senior engineer for an MSP, and I use the Auvik system on a daily basis. 

Auvik's stability is great. They do run regular maintenance, and they always have an announcement about the maintenance ahead of time.

Its scalability is great. You're not limited to a number of devices, etc. Your only limitation is whether or not it can see the networks that you're trying to track. Because this is a cloud-based solution, it wouldn't be good for somebody who has an isolated network or something that's not on the internet. Other than that, whether you've got 5 workstations on the small network with 1 switch and 1 router, or if you've got 6 switches, 30 telephones, 7 printers, and 18 access points, it shows them all irrespective of whether it's a big one or a small one. The pricing on it is based on the devices. A small network is going to have a smaller cost than a larger organization.

It's deployed across multiple clients that we have. Each one of our nine different sites is a different client. Of those clients, none of them has two sites. So, it's not necessary that we have multiple site issues. We have nine sites and nine clients.

Normally, we have been just speaking to the sales team. So, contacting the sales rep is something that we've done, but there is a knowledge base that is fairly fantastic. They have it set up for a bunch of different device types from different manufacturers. You can see how to configure them so that they're sending the right information to Auvik. Each one of them gives step-by-step guides on how to integrate that device with Auvik.

There is obviously technical support, but I have not had to use it, which is great. The support is available right from the interface. You just go to the website, and they give you the phone number, and there you go. It would be fairly easy. You can do it through a message or through their phone number.

Their sales support is fairly techy. They are not just managers. They know their devices and their software. I would rate the support provided by their sales engineers at least an eight out of ten. They were easily able to answer any of my questions. However, not a whole lot of questions came up because the product pretty much runs itself. There are how-to guides on adding the capabilities of new devices. If there's a router, a firewall, or something else, there are instructions on how to configure it to connect to Auvik.

Positive

I have, but they belonged to certain ticketing systems, such as HP OpenView, etc. HP OpenView comes into play if you only have one network to manage. Currently, I've got nine different networks under Auvik, and for me, it's a switch between them. It's as simple as just dropping down a box and looking at the next one. However, because it's integrated with my ticketing API, I don't necessarily have to drill down into it. I'll receive tickets for certain devices that are having issues.

It was very straightforward. There was some hand-holding that they needed to do for us in order to integrate it with our ticketing system, but so far, setting up Auvik, starting a new site, and having that site inventoried and discovered has been mostly wizard-based. So, it's not difficult. You probably don't even need to be familiar with the technology to set it up.

We implemented it out of the box, but there are checkpoints where you authorize networks to be scanned. There is a stop there, but it's not too big a deal.

It probably took about two hours to set everything up for the first client, and then after that, each additional client would be about half an hour.

Auvik had a sales team that assisted us in the initial setup. In terms of the staff involved, I and the owner of my franchise company were there. He didn't need to be there. He just wanted to be there.

It doesn't require any maintenance from our side.

It saves me time on a daily basis. So, there's a great time-to-value. A fair amount of my time has been spared using this tool.

Its licensing is very fair. The devices that stand to gain the most benefit from this product are the ones that are billed. In the case of routers, switches, and firewalls, I won't necessarily have the ability to put a management agent on them to gather errors and activity logs. This type of solution is a requirement for me to properly monitor and manage these devices. The devices that aren't being billed are workstation servers, etc. For those devices, I can put agents on them to monitor their health. It has a fair billing structure. Additionally, the billing seems to only happen for devices that I have linked to my ticketing API, in such a way that I could stand a benefit from it.

To someone comparing network monitoring solutions but concerned about pricing, I would say that when comparing with other applications, they need to check if the other solutions are able to integrate with their ticketing system APIs. They also need to check how many device types they expect to log into during any one of their days, in order to get a true look at the device health of the networks that they have under them.

I did know of one other option available, but we did not evaluate or entertain any others before we went with Auvik. It was presented to us as a trial, and we were simply impressed.

The best advice is to make sure that all the devices that you want to come up in the map view have been properly configured to send their SNMP data to the collector.

Auvik helps to keep device inventory up to date, but typically, we do device inventory in a different way. It's nice to be able to validate the inventory, but in most cases, inventories are handled by different tasks. Auvik is invaluable for taking the initial inventory for a new client, but normally, we would go with a different inventory process, and we would use this to validate that going forward. It helps with the building of the inventory, and it helps to validate the inventory as it progresses.

I would rate Auvik at least an eight out of ten.

I used to work with an organization supporting multiple clients. We implemented Auvik Network Management for some of them, not all of them. 

It was interesting how fast Auvik Network Management could discover the network, how it kept monitoring it and updating us with alerts of any spikes in the traffic, and everything else. It was amazing.

Auvik Network Management reduced the downtime and sped up the recovery.

Auvik Network Management helped our entry-level technicians to solve more tickets on their own because it simplifies the process. It lets you find where the problems are faster. It gives you a clearer view of the situation, where you can see the complete network in front of you graphically. You can see all the devices and where the problem is. When you highlight one of them, you can see all the details.

Auvik Network Management decreased issues because it allowed us to monitor the entire network, all the devices, and check the alerts in a timely manner. We could deal with issues quickly.

The best feature of Auvik Network Management is simplicity. It is friendly to use. 

The dashboard is good. It gives a clear vision for all the aspects of the services that Auvik Network Management provides. We can go to different places and monitor, check, configure, and analyze traffic.

I did not have the chance to go through all the aspects or services that Auvik Network Management provides, but what I dealt with was good, and there was not much to complain about. However, its pricing was a little bit higher. 

I used Auvik Network Management for a couple of months. It was implemented in 2024.

It was stable.

We dealt with different clients, from small to large ones. We used Auvik Network Management on all of them. It was capable of handling all those clients perfectly.

We used their customer service directly. We did not rely much on the documentation. Whenever we had any issues, we used to call their support centers and book a meeting with them.

We had a couple of meetings with them. They introduced the product to us and explained how to deal with it. They had their own support, and we relied on them.

Positive

We used N-able previously. Auvik Network Management was implemented to replace N-able in a certain phase. N-able is similar to Auvik Network Management without the graphics, but it has alerting, monitoring, controlling, updating, and patching capabilities.

N-able is an old product. It is not as modern as Auvik Network Management. Auvik Network Management is easier to deal with and faster to get results from.

It was easy. Auvik Network Management was very easy to set up. It does everything by itself.

It was a matter of minutes to set it up. It did not take a long time to start gathering information. After we installed it on one of our machines, it started gathering information and drawing the network. It is very reliable.

The pricing was a little bit higher. They can work on that as everybody wants to save money.

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

I work for an MSP and manage networks for a couple of clients. We use Auvik to monitor their network devices and make configuration changes as needed. When a network device goes offline, we get an alert and we can respond to it accordingly.

Auvik improves our visibility and enables us to monitor more proactively. We can identify if devices or links are approaching their configured capacity. For example, we can set alerts if bandwidth utilization is over 90 percent or if CPU is extremely high, allowing us to take action before the users notice a drop in performance.

We started seeing benefits the moment Auvik was deployed on a customer's network. You immediately start seeing devices, including some devices you didn't know were there. Auvik helps our NOC see issues and resolve them. They know what's connected to what. It helps them and reduces the number of cases escalated to senior network resources. Due to this, we can focus on bigger projects because the NOC technicians can see the issues in many cases.

Auvik has reduced our resolution time because it has the maps and the configuration backups. Some issues that would typically take hours to resolve could be resolved in 15 minutes or less. We can revert to the old configuration, and everything starts working again. It saves a lot of time. 

I like Auvik's configuration backups. When a configuration change occurs, it automatically updates the configuration in Auvik. If something stops working, we can roll back to the previous configuration. That's very helpful.

Auvik's interface is pretty easy to use. You should be good to go after playing around with it for a few hours. You can find what you need easily. It isn't rocket science. Auvik's ease of use makes troubleshooting faster because we can easily see what we need to see. All the alerts are in one place. I don't find it difficult to achieve real-time visibility with Auvik because I am familiar with the solution. Also, I took an Auvik course about five or six months ago, so I know how it works.

The network map offers a real-time picture of your network if you include the correct credentials. It's pretty smart and can draw a decent map of the network. However, it doesn't work as well for more complex clients. The network map is a little messy. 

Having this visibility is critical for a network specialist. When we're troubleshooting, the first thing we need to know is how it's all connected. If you don't know how it's connected, you won't be able to solve the problem. 

We have a firewall with devices behind it. When that firewall goes offline, we get alerts for it and the 10 devices behind it. There should be a way to set up a dependency so that when the firewall goes down, Auvik bundles it up and sends it at the same time. That would reduce the noise in our email. We don't want to get 11 alerts because one firewall went down. We just want one alert saying that all the devices under the firewall are also offline.

I'd like to see device response times and packet losses. Auvik monitors these metrics for internet links, but I would also like to see this for devices within the network. 

We have used Auvik for 14 to 16 months.

We have some devices that Auvik has gotten configurations from previously, but it stops working for some reason. Auvik stops receiving SysLog messages from devices. We still haven't fixed this issue because we haven't had time to drill down and figure out why it's happening.

Auvik should have about 1,500 devices, and you will see performance impacts after around 15,000. The performance will be very slow, and it takes time to load.

I rate Auvik support nine out of 10. Their support team is pretty responsive and quick to help. You can click on a chat button inside Auvik to open a ticket. That's pretty convenient.

Positive

I've used a couple of solutions, including SolarWinds and PRTG. SolarWinds has some nice features. You can push configurations to all devices in your network simultaneously. I don't think I've seen that in Auvik.

The setup went smoothly. Once you install the collector, it discovers everything in the network. Deploying Auvik can take up to a month. We installed Auvik on a data server accessible everywhere on the network. You need a server that can reach all the subnets. We gave it some time to discover the network and manually added any devices that it didn't find.  After deployment, we need to do some maintenance on the server where Auvik is installed, but there's nothing specific to Auvik. 

Some of our clients who weren't interested in Auvik changed their minds after talking to other clients and seeing the benefits they've received. It saves a lot of time, giving us more time to focus on critical issues and not worry about the product. It's very solid once it's set up.

I rate Auvik seven out of 10. I recommend simplifying your network as much as possible. The map can be messy when a network is unnecessarily complex. Auvik struggles to bring the connections up correctly. 

We use it to onboard new clients to get a baseline idea of what their network looks like and a picture of what we potentially need to upgrade or replace or get rid of entirely. And for existing clients, we use it for network troubleshooting to figure out if there are any loops in the network or, if we're seeing high packet spikes on specific interfaces, to track down the lags in the network.

We use it for small business networks, mainly SonicWall firewalls and HPE networking gear.

Auvik has helped us diagnose a lot of really painful network issues. We left it because it was a little too pricey for us at the time, but over time we realized the amount of labor involved in diagnosing even the smallest of network loops or broadcast storms is impossible without a tool like Auvik. It has taken some of our network problem-solving tickets from 10 to 15 hours down to two or three hours. We eat the cost of Auvik and, frankly, it's worth every penny in that regard.

We are also now delegating tickets for the network, moving more tickets to our tier-two engineers from our tier-three engineers.

Something Auvik does really well is provide a single integrated platform. That's very important for us as a managed service provider. We really need single-pane-of-glass for all of our programs. Auvik makes it super simple to have sub-tenants and you can then view high-level details from the "parent" tenant, which is our MSP interface, while also diving deep into the client-side and having full access there for assigning client-level permissions. For our co-managed clients, we can get their engineers in alongside our engineers to both view and manage the data.

Another great part of the platform is that it helps keep device inventories up to date. That's where we get an initial map of the network during client onboarding. We can then use that over time and say, "Okay, this switch is hitting the warranty." Auvik can detect the serial number and check the warranty status. We can prompt ourselves to call the client and say, "Hey, we should replace this before you run out of service." To an extent, this feature has created more work for us, but it's work that we need to do. It's notifying us that these things are expiring when, previously, we just didn't know. It's saving us the time of manually checking, but we weren't necessarily doing that consistently before Auvik.

The visualization of network mapping and topology is good, but it's not as customizable as I would like. I'd like to be able to adjust the images that are used for different vendors, for example. There are some improvements that could definitely be made, but it's definitely better than a lot of other programs in the market.

Also, the general feature set could use some work. For network mapping and network alerting, it's great for what it does. But it could provide more monitoring, such as jitter monitoring, which it doesn't have, and round-trip time for packets. I would like to see more network detail on the actual traffic that's flowing through the network. Maybe they could also provide some additional flow support.

It has some room for improvement, but especially since we first used it in 2015, it's come a long way. I'm really excited to see where they go next with it.

We started using Auvik in 2015 for about a year. We then left it and just started using it again about six months ago.

There haven't been any outages that have affected us. I've seen some status alerts from them saying, "Hey, we're conducting maintenance," or, "Hey, we had an emergency outage," but they have never been at a time when they affected us.

The scalability is fine. It's just a matter of adding new clients. It takes some time for each client, but that's true with every solution. It scales well because, especially once you get the setup down for one client, it's pretty easy for future clients.

Their support is quick to respond. I haven't had to reach out to them for a while now, but when I was reaching out to them during and shortly after onboarding, they were prompt, with same-day or next-business-day response times.

Positive

Between Auvik in 2015 and now, we were just using the built-in network device mapping of ConnectWise Automate and we just found that wasn't enough. It wasn't efficient and it just missed too much.

The initial setup was straightforward. We just followed the documentation. I had also done it in 2015. Although I didn't remember doing it back then, doing it again was really quick. I got one of our other network engineers involved to help at one point and he picked it up really fast. It's super easy to set up for high-level engineers, but I wouldn't necessarily trust a level-one tech with setting it up to the standard necessary to get it set for future use.

There is definitely some technical knowledge necessary. I couldn't task our tier-one techs, necessarily, with setting it up super quickly, but the documentation is good enough that, as long as you can follow documents, you can get through it. Speed is an issue there. A higher-level network engineer can speed through it really quickly.

The overall intuitiveness of Auvik's network visualization is fairly good, but that's where the configuration side comes in. If you don't configure it well from the beginning, it can be a mess to understand. So you need to have that higher level of knowledge to take care of that. But as long as you set it up right from the beginning, a tier-one tech can go in and look at that network map and see how things in the network are all connected together.

Once the Auvik collector was implemented, it said it would take about 10 minutes to populate the network mapping. I waited about 12 minutes and it wasn't done. I came back about 20 minutes later and it was done, so it took about 30 minutes, at most.

There is much less work in setting up Auvik versus previous solutions we have used. Maintenance consists of periodic checking to make sure all the credentials are still right. It uses usernames and passwords, so if you change your password and you don't update it in Auvik, things will stop working. So we check on that. Also, when you install new devices, they need additional setup in Auvik. It's not a tremendous amount of work, but there is some.

Auvik pays for itself. Network monitoring tools are all expensive. They take in a lot of data and they do a lot of processing. If you're hosting it yourself, it's going to be an expensive license. If they're hosting it for you, it's going to be expensive hosting. At the end of the day, unless you're paying employees minimum wage, which you shouldn't be doing, the network monitoring tool is going to save more hours of employee labor than the cost of the software.

We saw value from Auvik within five business days. We were really pushed when we set it up, and we pushed Auvik saying, "Hey, we need this now. We've got a client issue that we need to solve." They got our instance to us quickly, we got in there and got it set up in two or three days and we got that issue solved within five business days of contacting Auvik to get the solution. It was insanely quick.

The pricing is kind of steep, but it's worth the price. There's no beating around the bush. It's an expensive solution, but it's really the best solution there is for us.

We did some superficial looking at SolarWinds products and PRTG, and Kaseya has some products, but Auvik, at least in the MSP industry, is our standard. We did the demo and we were sold instantly.

It's fairly easy to use the monitoring and management functions of Auvik. I wouldn't say ease of use is one of our highest priorities. As an MSP, we need to cater to the lowest common denominator in our staff. We need to be able to tell our tier-one techs to at least get into this software to review the data—maybe not configure it—but at least review and understand it. Other tools, like PRTG or Nmap, just give you that data, but you need to be a network engineer to even read through it properly and understand it. Auvik really brings that down so that a junior can review things. Configuration, not as much, but that's not a limitation of Auvik, that's a limitation of network devices in general.

As a cloud-based solution, Auvik works well. The probe sends us a lot of data, but it's all tech-space data. There is constant traffic from your network to the Auvik servers, but it's not gigabytes of traffic data. We haven't had any issues with it. I definitely think that there's value in having an on-prem network solution, both for the sake of security and for being able to have a bit more access to the network than just a probe and then the cloud server architecture, but it works well for what we do.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Positive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I use Auvik in a couple of ways. It is very good at keeping configuration files organized for us. We can review the changes to configuration files in our networking infrastructure equipment. It is also very good at creating maps and helping me visualize the troubleshooting of any infrastructure problems we have. 

By implementing Auvik Network Management, we were trying to get better visuals on our network and more transparency in our equipment because Auvik could talk to all of it. It was sort of agnostic. It did not require using a certain brand or anything. As long as you can SSH to it or terminal to it somehow, Auvik can read it.

At first, it was definitely just a new toy to play with, but I saw its benefits the first time we were trying to sort through an infrastructure problem with a Wi-Fi network that was older and having issues. We saw several warnings on several of our older switches. We would not have seen this stuff unless we had gone into these switches and read through these logs on our own, but Auvik was holding this data and giving us these warnings so that we could go in and sort out what was wrong.

It gives me all of my infrastructure points very well because I have programmed it to do so. In terms of individual endpoints or workstations for users, the visibility is not as excellent, but it is still good enough. We do not use the tool for that. For our purposes, it is a very clean interface.

Auvik has 100% helped to decrease our mean time to resolution. If I was not using Auvik to troubleshoot infrastructure problems, I would easily be adding another hour of work per problem or using another tool that was doing this. Everything is in one place, so I do not have to jump to different places to see the information. I can very easily filter through warnings and information.

Auvik allows us to spend less time on issue resolution but not on the setup and maintenance of the solution. Any time that we save allows us to do more research into something else that we are doing. There is always a value-add in shrinking troubleshooting time.

The interface is very good. I generally do not have any complaints about it. It takes me where I want to go and is easy to learn.

The dashboard is very easy to use if you set it up correctly at the beginning. We have it all labeled the way we want it to be labeled, and everything is quickly navigable. We can see all of our different locations. We can see any locations that have errors on our map so that we know exactly what to poke at and what to take a look at today. I have no complaints. With big networks, it does become cramped, but there are filters built into the map. I filter out the points I do not want displayed on the map, and then it is very readable.

There are a couple of items here and there that float around disconnected from the network map. That is annoying because they are defined as something that they are not. For example, I have a couple of workstations that it thinks are Wi-Fi access points, and it is a hard and tricky item to clean up. The cleanup or more granular functionality of the network map would be an interesting feature.

If there was a way to do some sort of remote desktop control for endpoints from Auvik, that would be an interesting feature because we have another product that we use for endpoint control to remote into somebody's computer. If Auvik had that, we might move from the other tool into the product that Auvik would offer. We already have that from Auvik to infrastructure devices, which is awesome, but if I could go one step further or one step down right to the workstation that has an issue, that would be a very interesting thing.

I have used it for at least three or four years.

It is better than it ever was. I feel like it was laggier when we first jumped on with Auvik, but over the last year, I have not even thought about any lag or stuttering.

It can be as big as it needs to be for us, but I am only familiar with how it is for us. It met our scale, and ours is medium.

The quality of support is very good. Everybody I have ever talked to in tech support over there or in training is very familiar with Auvik and very comfortable navigating people around it. They have a lot of confidence and capability. I am never disappointed in support.

Positive

For me, Auvik is pretty unique. I have not used many tools that:

• Create a map the way that Auvik does
• Have the configuration review that Auvik has
• Have SSH or terminal access to the tools that Auvik has

Auvik is all in one. I have used SNMP collectors and things but never had another tool like this.

It is deployed in the cloud. Its deployment was easy.

It was not very long to get it fully deployed. The training was longer than the deployment.

We had no consultant. It was Auvik and us.

You can set up Auvik with one person. As long as there is somebody from Auvik with you to do the training, you can set up the collectors yourself, for sure. 

In terms of maintenance, Auvik requires some review for the number of devices it is counting. We had an issue last year where we saw that Auvik was double-counting some of our devices, so we do have to audit the count to make sure that we are not being overcharged.

Auvik is expensive, but given how much we use it and how many hours it is saving over the year, it is justified.

There are no critical devices in our network that are monitored by Auvik at no charge. They are charging for everything. The first page you get to mentions how many devices you are paying for.

Auvik was our first choice because it fitted the use case that we wanted, which was the network control, and not a lot of things. When we started with Auvik, there were not a lot of solutions that offered that, or they were very expensive. Now we are staying with them because it is still good.

Pay attention during the training and definitely play with it after or during the training. Play with your release so that you can ask the questions that are relevant to your network.

We did a demo of SaaS Management with Auvik, and it was very interesting, but the price point was too high for us to justify the capabilities.

I would rate Auvik Network Management a nine out of ten because of the billing thing from last year where we were being double charged. That was disappointing to find out, but we have cleared it up now.

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.