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IT Analyst at La Corporation D'urgences-Santé
Real User
Helps me detect where the problem is quickly
Pros and Cons
  • "Centreon helps me detect where the problem is quickly. When we resolve a problem quickly, this lowers our overall costs."
  • "Opening a ticket on the website of Centreon can be difficult for my colleague, but not for me because my English is good. However, my colleague doesn't speak English well, as our company is in Quebec and our first language is French."

What is our primary use case?

We use it primarily for monitoring our devices. We also use it for discovery. For example, if a server is down, the first step to take is just go to Centreon and have a look.

I installed this solution on my company's local server. It is on the LAN network. There is a plugin for Centreon for connecting and providing visibility to the host.

How has it helped my organization?

It provides visibility into the network. Without visibility, it is difficult to know what the first step to take is when there is a problem. With Centreon, I can just go to their website if the server is down and it gives me visibility.

We have seen increased usage. That has expanded.

Centreon helps align IT operations with business objectives. It helps our guys in support monitor all our services. It gives you visibility for all services on the host via a link.

What is most valuable?

You have one single view, which is good. As the administrator, the permissions are the same for every account in the Active Directory. 

We use the solution’s Anomaly Detection feature. It helps our teams to predict potential issues. I like this option for its graph. The graph is very good for when you want to look at evaluating your system over time. It also automates the alerting process. 

It is very easy to manage because the visibility is good.

What needs improvement?

In the next year or two, I need to implement a load balancing system because I am using Veeam Backup, which I don't like. 

Buyer's Guide
Centreon
January 2025
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For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Centreon for the last couple of months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability is good because the operating system is Linux, and we are using the latest version.

We use it with vBackup, and the server backs up to vBackup every two to three days.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is monitoring 6,000 services.

35 percent of the technical support use the solution.

How are customer service and support?

The support is good when I contact them directly. Opening a ticket on the website of Centreon can be difficult for my colleague, but not for me because my English is good. However, my colleague doesn't speak English well, as our company is in Quebec and our first language is French. We do have someone there, who helps us with French when needed.

The support checks the command line of our Linux system, which is good. 

You can go to their website to investigate problems. This provides us flexibility.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

At my last company, I used Nagios XI.

We brought on Centreon because we didn't have a monitoring solution.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is very easy. On the website, if you want to create an account, you go to the website for the cloud. There, you have the possibility to run a test of the system, before you want to implement it.

The implementation process was the same as the last system that I used. This made it easier to use.

What about the implementation team?

My company implemented the system. Then, we implemented a hub with the services, and this took five to six months. It takes time to implement all the services of a company because of all the firewalls. 

Only six to 12 people can currently configure Centreon.

What was our ROI?

Centreon helps me detect where the problem is quickly. When we resolve a problem quickly, this lowers our overall costs.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I recommend looking at the trial version.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Centreon is better than Nagios XI in regards to cost and support response times, when you have a problem. If you have a problem, it costs money to contact the Nagios XI support.

What other advice do I have?

The solution is very good. I would rate it as a nine (out of 10). 

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
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reviewer1692321 - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Engineer at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
Vendor
Helps monitor services visually, but needs support for microservices and better clustering
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature is the ability to build an abstraction of service visualization. You can add services to an entity called Business Activities and you can see the state of these activities."
  • "Centreon is very bad with auto-scanning. It's very monolithic software. It doesn't have microservices and it only has basic clustering. You cannot, for example, have six or seven nodes for Centreon's cloud processes."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for monitoring our software for illegal components. We look to Centreon to provide a visual representation of the availability of a service.

How has it helped my organization?

We use the soluton's dashboard for L1, L2, and L3 IT support. We set alarms and then support can look at the interface to see which element is causing an alarm. It is useful for monitoring and seeing, in a graphical way, what the cause is.

The software shows the data structure with other elements that represent the state of the software. With Centreon, we have automated the way we check for the check file and it automatically creates alarms in our ITSM system.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the ability to build an abstraction of service visualization. You can add services to an entity called Business Activities and you can see the state of these activities.

It also provides a nice dashboard, or what's called the Centreon MAP, and you can extract information very well from that for building reports for customers. It gives you a representation of service and business activities. You can access all the information in one place.

We also use Centreon Plugin Packs. They help us support Linux servers' operating systems. When it comes to monitoring things, you can set an agent on the client's operating system or you can have agentless access. For the agent-based monitoring, you need to install it directly on each OS that you want to monitor. For agentless monitoring, you can simply click through the interface to provide a Plugin Pack, and you can run it directly.

It can also help you look at KPIs because calculations can be done directly in Centreon.

What needs improvement?

Centreon is very bad with auto-scanning. It's very monolithic software. It doesn't have microservices and it only has basic clustering. You cannot, for example, have six or seven nodes for Centreon's cloud processes.

Another area for improvement is auto-remediation.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Centreon for three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability depends... For example, on Amazon, we have some problems with processes that fall and we need to restart them. And the software that provides the dashboard is very bad. 

The core service is not fantastic but it's okay.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability of Centreon is very bad because of the nature of the software. It creates a bottleneck at some point and that drives everything else related to the software. 

I believe Centreon is working on a SaaS version of the service, but currently, you cannot have many hosts because of the cost of only one computer or virtual machines. Amazon permits 128 processors and, for VMware, I think it's 28. If you already have 28 CPUs and you add one more, the monitor is dead.

We don't have plans to increase our usage. We have bought Dynatrace and we will be removing Centreon in the next six months.

We have about 150 users of Centreon. Some are managers but they are generally technical people such as project managers and support. I'm the only one involved in deployment and maintenance of the solution.

How are customer service and support?

Centreon's L3 support is great but the L1 and L2 support are bad. The response times depend on the person who responds to the call, but it's not great.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used to use Nagios. The switch to Centreon was not my personal choice, but it was done because we needed access to abstractions, and that is something Nagios cannot do. Nagios doesn't have the same features. You cannot represent things on dashboards like in Centreon.

Personally, I don't have a preference for one over the other. Management made the final choice, but in my opinion, it was for the cosmetic aspects of the product.

How was the initial setup?

It's very simple to set up. A very basic installation takes, perhaps, 50 minutes. You download a package and install it, and then do some configuration. There's nothing special about it.

After, you need IT to structure your business activities with the service. There are some post-configuration operations that need to be done.

What about the implementation team?

We did it by ourselves.

What was our ROI?

We have seen ROI using Centreon. When you can monitor your whole system there is a gain.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The price is not too high. Licensing is driven by how many hosts you monitor, but because you can run the agentless version, you don't have to declare every host to Centreon, one at a time. That means you can drive your infrastructure supervision with a very low number of declared hosts.

It's very simple to use Centreon's licensing model. When you know the number of hosts, you know the cost of your license. The price includes everything, there are no additional costs.

By comparison, Dynatrace is priced by the number of user agents in the infrastructure being monitored. It's a strict usage calculation for SaaS software like Dynatrace.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Centreon is a nice product that improves on Nagios at times but it's not a very big step forward. Centreon is very much like Nagios.

What other advice do I have?

I would only recommend Centreon for a customer that is not an IT client. It's not great for tuning software and you cannot have more than, say, 5,000 hosts. You can only monitor a small or mid-sized environment. If you need to monitor AWS, you cannot use Centreon, and that's true in general if you need a very large number of instances of Centreon.

Centreon can help to improve the availability of service but that's all. It does enable, for example, fine-tuning of transactions between two applications. It provides a very binary vision. It helps, but it only helps IT support.

Centreon is a great product but it needs to mature. It's a very young company and they need to improve the solution, but the product itself is great.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Centreon
January 2025
Learn what your peers think about Centreon. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2025.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.
President at ITS Solucoes
Real User
Built-in plugins help automate monitoring and enable us to monitor things we might otherwise not monitor
Pros and Cons
  • "The dashboards are valuable because they ease troubleshooting and viewing. It becomes easier to locate the source of a problem... The dashboards make it easier to communicate with our clients. They don't want to see the alert console, they want to see a beautiful dashboard representing their network and their business and to watch it in case something is wrong in their environment."
  • "I would like to see more plugins. That is something it needs. There is also room for improvement through dynamic thresholds, or self-discover thresholds. I would also like to see a discovery feature that could map the whole network environment and automatically suggest things."

What is our primary use case?

We use it for monitoring infrastructure and custom applications. We customize the monitoring and dashboards. We have a NOC here, where we monitor our clients' environments 24/7. It is integrated with our ticketing system and SMS and email for communication. We also have a Knowledge Base system integrated with Centreon.

We use it on-premises for ourselves and we provide SaaS with it for our customers. We have more than 20 installations of Centreon.

How has it helped my organization?

Centreon makes it easier and quicker to get the information needed to analyze. It uses different colors when there is a problem that passes a threshold. It gives you information and you just have to analyze the machines on the report. It's easier to find the ones we need to comment on to our clients, so they can look more deeply into them.

The solution also increases the accuracy of our monitoring because the plugins enable us to monitor things that we wouldn't normally monitor. There are built-in plugins that pick points that we wouldn't usually monitor if we had to create that monitoring by ourselves. When monitoring something, we might not consider one of those points, because it's not a main point. But it is being monitored. And when we troubleshoot, sometimes we use one of those monitoring options that gives us more information. That makes us more accurate. Our accuracy could always increase, of course, but there is no limit on that.

With the automated configuration for monitoring items using plugins, we optimize our time. And with integration, if we have something happening, we can automatically open a ticket and send communication through SMS or email. Both are very good options. During the day it probably saves us 50 percent of our time, and during the night it's even more. 

We usually do a mapping of our client's business and present that on a dashboard. We don't generally use the reports for that because the dashboards are more real-time. That way, the client knows in real-time what's happening. That helps align IT operations with business objectives a lot. Monitoring and presenting in that way is the whole point.

In terms of mean time to resolution, when we introduced Centreon into operations that didn't have it, it reduced the time to resolution because we located the source of problems quicker. The amount of time really depends on the stuff involved. There are a lot of links that take many hours. The time that is really reduced is the time for detection of the problem. The total resolution time, which contains the detection time, is reduced because of the detection phase. But the resolution phase is basically the same. The overall time varies a lot. It's hard to say how much it reduces the MTTR. But it can be very significant in cases where detection is difficult.

What is most valuable?

We use almost everything in the product. What is most important are the monitoring, alerting, and the dashboards. If we don't have basic monitoring, we don't have a NOC. It's the basis of the functionality of the system. 

The dashboards are valuable because they ease troubleshooting and viewing. It becomes easier to locate the source of a problem. We can use BAM for that as well, but we only have it in one of the installations, one that has the Centreon Business edition; the others are using the free version. The dashboards make it easier to communicate with our clients. They don't want to see the alert console, they want to see a beautiful dashboard representing their network and their business and to watch it in case something is wrong in their environment.

We use the reports, but not that much, although the reporting is very good. We use it for creating books, monthly reports for our clients. We use the reports for analysis and to say, "These ones require growing," or "This is too big. You can lower the memory and save some money on your cloud." That is a monthly service we provide to our clients. 

Centreon is also very versatile. There are a lot of built-in plugins that ease the work. But if we need to connect to some device that doesn't have a plugin ready, we can customize a plugin and create monitoring for the device ourselves. It's quite easy. When there is a plugin, it speeds the implementation of new devices. If there isn't one, it takes a little longer, but we are not unable to monitor the device. We are always able to monitor.

What needs improvement?

I would like to see more plugins. That is something it needs. 

There is also room for improvement through dynamic thresholds, or self-discover thresholds. 

I would also like to see a discovery feature that could map the whole network environment and automatically suggest things. 

Finally, NetFlow would be helpful. We have a lot of clients that ask for NetFlow.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using Centreon for more than 10 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It's very stable. We have had Centreon here for more than 10 years, and we have had about three problems in that time.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's very scalable. We have installations with more than 10,000 pieces of equipment. We use the free version and it works well. You just add more pollers and segregate the database.

How are customer service and technical support?

Their technical support is very good. They answer quickly without any problems. It's a good service.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used to use Nagios. I also used the IBM Tivoli solution, OpenView from HPE, and WhatsUp Gold. I have used many solutions.

We switched to Centreon for a number of reasons. The IBM and HPE solutions were too expensive. We then went to a free solution, Nagios. But the Nagios interface is not as complete or as good as Centreon's interface. So we switched to Centreon's free version first and moved to using the EMS solution about a year ago, to get the benefits of plugins and dashboards.

How was the initial setup?

The setup is very easy. Centreon itself is an ISO that you boot. You answer some questions and it's up and running. In terms of configuration, you can put in the IP address of the host and attach the plugins and they are ready for monitoring. It's very easy. If it had a more complete discovery feature, it would be even better, but it's already very easy.

The time it takes for the initial deployment depends on how many hosts, and how deeply, you want to monitor. But in less than a week, you can have good monitoring set up for a small to medium sized company. The longer part for us is the interview with the business, the analysts and the system analysts, to understand their particular applications and services and the impact of those on their business, to create business dashboards and business monitoring.

What was our ROI?

We have had a quick return on investment because we have a lot of hosts to monitor. For new implementations it speeds up the process of deploying. That is labor-intensive work, and it reduces the amount of that work. That helps create a return on the investment quickly, by not spending on as many man-hours as we would have.

In terms of replacing other tools, it hasn't really reduced our cost, but we have reduced costs with Centreon in another way. We need fewer people to monitor more stuff. Prior to Centreon we used free tools so the cost of the tool was not the issue; it was the performance of the people working with the tools.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

If you need basic monitoring without dashboards, just monitoring, the plugins are very useful and really cheap. If you want a more complete solution with dashboards and reporting, the EMS solution is great and it is not that much more expensive. It's a good value. Really good.

What other advice do I have?

We use multiple views on Centreon. We don't use a single view because it's too big. We could have a single view. But in terms of alerts, when we create dashboards that provide the best point of view for the whole infrastructure, we usually segment them to see things in more detail. If we put the whole infrastructure in a single dashboard, it would be too macro, it would not be detailed enough. 

We have a lot of screens for monitoring so we create a lot of dashboards and put them on the screens. Those dashboards are not super-detailed, but they are also not a single, macro view, so that we can know where a problem is. We usually create enough dashboards to avoid having to drill down. We have drill-downs, of course, but as a NOC, we prefer to have the most information we can have on-screen. For that we have a lot of dashboards open simultaneously. All together, the way we have set things up, it provides a single view, but with a lot of dashboards, not a single one. That's how we prefer it.

In our company, for monitoring, we have 12 people using Centreon. For support, there are about 20. As for the number of users who only use our Centreon dashboards, I really don't know because our clients have a lot of people. We have three guys who implement Centreon, customize the monitoring, create the dashboards; all of them do all these functions. They maintain the solution to make sure it's working well.

I would rate Centreon a nine out of 10. It needs those features I mentioned earlier. But, for the price, it's really a 10.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner.
PeerSpot user
Simon KONAN - PeerSpot reviewer
Network engineer at DIRECTION GÉNÉRALE DES IMPÔTS - DGI
Real User
Top 5
Plug-ins are free but it has limitations in sending out information to users
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature of the solution is that most of its plug-ins are free."
  • "The product collects the information, but it fails to send them via SMS, WhatsApp or Telegram."

What is our primary use case?

I use the solution in my company for our supervision purposes. In my company, we supervise all of the infrastructure with the tool. It is a monitoring tool.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of the solution is that most of its plug-ins are free.

What needs improvement?

The issue my company has with the tool stems from the fact that it didn't give an on-time response to us. The product collects the information, but it fails to send them via SMS, WhatsApp or Telegram. The solution can be used if you want to get email notifications, which is not good for our company because if someone is not in front of their desktop, you can't receive information about an equipment or LAN that is down.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Centreon for twelve or thirteen years. I am just a user of the tool.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The tool is not stable, and it may be because we are not using its latest version. Sometimes, there are breakdowns in the tool.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Around seven or eight people use the tool.

How are customer service and support?

I have provided technical support for the solution to deal with the product issues. Sometimes, the solution's technical support says that they will post some updates and make corrections in the stability area of the program. Sometimes, the corrections in the stability area made by the tool's support team do work, and at times, it doesn't work. I rate the technical support a five out of ten.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

How was the initial setup?

The product's initial setup phase is really easy, even for a beginner.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The tool is cheaply priced.

What other advice do I have?

Before people try to use Centreon, I suggest using Zabbix or SolarWinds. One should try to use Zabbix first and SolarWinds in the second position. If you use Zabbix or SolarWinds and you find that they are not okay with you, then you can use Centreon.

The tool does not meet our company's needs. Even though the tool can collect the information, its metrics are not really easy to be explored or used.

I rate the tool a six out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Network Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
We can manually configure everything that we need
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature is that we can manually configure everything we need. After it comes inside the interface of Centreon, you can display it. Because the interface is quite user-friendly, you can manually configure the configuration very deeply, which is very pleasant and useful because you can monitor and see everything on your service list, dashboard, or MAP. The most useful feature for me is that you can create your own plugin and monitoring query."
  • "I would like them to improve their documentation. When I faced some issues, I was looking for more documentation on the Internet. There is official documentation on Centreon's website, which sometimes is useful. Sometimes it is not very useful, as you cannot find the information or enough examples of configuration. The answer for me was to contact the support, who helped me, but I was not able to find all the information by myself on Centreon's website. A Centreon community or blog would be helpful."

What is our primary use case?

We have multiple instances with Centreon: a central, remote, MBI, report server, and two pollers. We also have Centreon MAP. All the pollers are pulling all the endpoints, sending information to the central and remote instances. If we need to produce some reports to connect, then we connect directly to the report server. If we need to produce MAPs, then we connect to the MAP server.

We monitor bandwidths of all the links inside the data center as well as outside Internet links and MPLS links to have the connectivity, status, and bandwidth consumption. We have defined the threshold on these links to understand if they are being overused or not. This is the main feature.

We use the same for network devices to see basic information, like a device's uptime to know if it is up or down. It is also the same for all the ports and environment probes on the hardware.

For the server, we configure specific probes to check some specific services. For example, the server provides a service through a Docker container, then we can configure a specific query to check the Docker container stages. Or, if we need to have the temperature of the air conditioning system, then we configure a specific query to ask for it. So, there is basic information coming from the network devices related to hardware. There is also some specific monitoring about services that we are using in terms of the business or infrastructure on specific devices.

We have 500 hosts and 4,000 services.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is that we can manually configure everything we need. After it comes inside the interface of Centreon, you can display it. Because the interface is quite user-friendly, you can manually configure the configuration very deeply, which is very pleasant and useful because you can monitor and see everything on your service list, dashboard, or MAP. The most useful feature for me is that you can create your own plugin and monitoring query.

What needs improvement?

The solution’s customizable reports and dashboards for allowing management to see performance metrics is very well done. However, it is very time-consuming. I am pretty sure we can create a very beautiful report, but I don't really have time to focus on it now. I wasn't using this feature at the start. Now that we got it, I haven't had time to work on it since it is a paid solution that is quite expensive. We also need to dedicate human resources to work on it, because it is not so simple or quick to configure.

I would like them to improve their documentation. When I faced some issues, I was looking for more documentation on the Internet. There is official documentation on Centreon's website, which sometimes is useful. Sometimes it is not very useful, as you cannot find the information or enough examples of configuration. The answer for me was to contact the support, who helped me, but I was not able to find all the information by myself on Centreon's website. A Centreon community or blog would be helpful.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for eight years: four years at my first company, three years at my second company, and a year at this company.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is very stable. In fact, I thought it has improved a lot over eight years. When I started working on the network, we had to restart Centreon Engine quite often. There were some bugs, mistakes, or errors in the configuration. Therefore, we needed to restart Centreon Engine and some other services inside the server. Since I have been at my current company, we have not done that. We have 4,000 services that we monitor, and it is very stable now.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is quite a good tool. It is scalable in the sense that we can use it for more hosts and services that we want to monitor. If we monitor different kinds of devices, we can still find plugins and plugin packs directly from Centreon's support and website. They are still developing new plugins and updating them. So, it adapts to your infrastructure. They have also developed some patches. So, it has good scalability.

How are customer service and support?

The support was great. They answered me very quickly for our two first concerns. For the last one, it was quite long. However, after one escalation, we did solve the problem after a day. I am pretty satisfied with them.

They could talk in English with my colleague as well as French for me, as I am French. The people, with whom I talked, were very skillful. So, I was impressed. They could easily help me.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I was using Splunk at my previous company. Splunk is much more expensive, but it has some capabilities in terms of getting logs. On Centreon, you only get SNMP metrics. However, if you want to get syslogs with a monitoring solution, you can use Splunk, a regexp query, and a specific SQL query to construct a proper output. For this, Centreon is not helpful, but Splunk is.

How was the initial setup?

I was not involved with the initial setup at my current company.

What was our ROI?

Centreon has helped reduce our mean time to resolution. Because we have well-configured monitoring, we can decrease the time to answer any problem. We are informed quite quickly about an issue, so we can say, "Yes." Compared to no monitoring and waiting for a user complaint, it can save us 30 minutes a month between the first user's complaint and the monitoring alert.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We buy the Centreon solution and licenses for many projects and monitoring hosts. 

It is perfect and very cheap if you are a little company or startup. After that, it is quite expensive for a big company. 

It is a business choice from Centreon to fix the price, so a big company can afford this license or policy. What I am facing right now is that we are short licenses, and they only sell packages of 500 hosts, which is quite a lot. We have a 500 limit for now, and we want to have a quotation for 100 or 200 more. They told us, "No, the next step is only 1,000." So, they could maybe try to sell a smaller package of licenses.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I tried a few other solutions in terms of monitoring, e.g., PRTG, LibreNMS, Nagios and Cacti. All these solutions, except LibreNMS, are very poor in terms of design. The user experience in Centreon is much better. However, in the end, you just configure some SNMP work on the solution to get your answer. The difference with Centreon is that you can easily define, in the configuration, to have the templates for each host, services, notification, etc. So, Centreon is much better than all these other solutions.

All the SNMP data is available on the devices. If you know what you want to monitor, you can do it with or without Centreon. So, it does not increase the accuracy. It provides a very user-friendly way to display it, but it's not more accurate. To be more accurate, we did use another tool, Splunk, which provides some artificial intelligence or behavioral monitoring.

In terms of pure SNMP metrics monitoring, Centreon is very good. However, if you want to diversify your monitoring with other inputs than SNMP, e.g., syslogs. Other tools can be very useful, like Splunk or ELK, for diversification.

What other advice do I have?

Take time to configure it well, as it is very useful. Don't leave it until later. It should be implemented at the start, not after all the infrastructure is in place and in production. It should be done from the beginning, before the application server.

Get the vendor training to understand as much as possible about the solution. While it is quite user-friendly, it is not so easy to understand how the plugins and plugin packs work.

Invest time at the beginning, as it will save you time later. This will help you a lot. So, my advice is to start as soon as possible to work with a monitoring solution when you have an infrastructure, especially on Centreon.

I would rate Centreon as eight out of 10 because I really like it.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
CEO at Artesys Orion
Reseller
Consolidates other solutions all in one place where you can maintain and monitor them
Pros and Cons
  • "You can concentrate and orchestrate several other solutions from other vendors. You can consolidate those solutions all in one place, then maintain and monitor from that single point. This creates ease of use. It is a very powerful solution from this point of view."
  • "Centreon is actually missing an easy way to create a trendline for the metrics. Actually it is possible to create it, but you need a good knowledge of math, Centreon, and RRD."

What is our primary use case?

We are an IT company. We are using Centreon to deliver services to some of our customers. The main use is for IT monitoring of their infrastructures, especially right now in the media and telecom sectors. In the last month, we have also been approaching the public media sector in Italy.

How has it helped my organization?

We are using Centreon for our customers. During the COVID-19 emergency, we were able to do all the tasks required from our customers because you have unlimited access to information remotely. It is very powerful from this point of view because you can see real-time information about how the customers' businesses are going. If you need to make some emergency actions, you can put in place all of them effectively and in the right position on time.

You can combine step-by-step the URL services or review services that you are invested in. You can operate at a higher/different level of critical alarms or at a different level. You can review whether a service has been met.

What is most valuable?

You can concentrate and orchestrate several other solutions from other vendors. You can consolidate those solutions all in one place, then maintain and monitor from that single point. This creates ease of use. It is a very powerful solution from this point of view.

Centreon has some additional modules. Through these modules you can have all kinds of reporting and dashboarding, which are fully customizable, not only from the content point of view, but also from the graphical point of view. You can design, implement, and deploy real maps representing your services from a geographical and service point of view. So, executives can view their services, e.g., if there is an impact and which are the services impacted. In this way, you can strictly separate the dashboard for the technical stuff and create a separate dashboard for executives to see business information. These are the specific capabilities of Centreon. 

You can do some predictive metrics using the tools of Centreon. Therefore, you can have an alarm of sorts before some events can occur.

Connecting to any system, such as traditional on-prem, cloud, virtualized, or edge devices, is very simple. There are hundreds of plugins ready to be deployed with several key monitoring indicators that take place. This is very powerful because you can simply pick up the connectors made available by the plugin's package. 

You can use the API to develop any type of integration. The plugins for users are capable of covering the major vendors and other kinds of software, e.g., the major types of ticketing software that are widely available. 

What needs improvement?

Centreon is missing an easy way to create a trendline for the metrics. Actually it is possible to create it, but you need a good knowledge of math, Centreon, and RRD.

For how long have I used the solution?

More than 12 years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is very stable. It is rare to receive complaints from customers, though sometimes it happens.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is scalable. We have tens of thousands of homegrown devices.

We have five users, including our CTO and systems engineers. They can design, implement, and train people on the solution.

How are customer service and technical support?

Our people get a quick response in the proper time.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We primarily switched to Centreon because of compatibility, cost, difficulty in finding expertise, and support with our previous solution. 

Centreon has been more flexible with customers' requests. We also saw at the same that Centreon would be able to grow with customer needs, not investor needs. They have developed their technology to solve customers' problems in the last two years, doing an excellent job with reporting and predictive analysis.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is not complex for skilled Centreon users, even in cases of customers with very heterogeneous infrastructure. In fact Centreon has the ability to grow horizontally when needed, using the ready to use plugins. Usually, for customers from 500 up to 1000 hosts to be monitored, the implementation process may require from two up to four weeks for a basic-standard deployment.

What about the implementation team?

We can do the implementation by ourselves.

We take a step-by-step implementation process for customers. We adjust the solution based on each customer's needs.

What was our ROI?

We have seen ROI with Centreon.

The solution has reduced our mean time to resolution.

One of the main characteristics that help customers to reduce costs is the solution's capacity to consolidate. This causes the solution to be more efficient. It immediately gives you the big picture about what is happening. Staff can immediately identify a problem and how to solve it. Centreon provides one single point for information so you don't have to use other solutions.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The solution is affordable. The price isn't so high compared to other solutions. The price is negotiable, e.g., you can get a very good price at 20,000 devices if you can commit for several years.

Centreon is always available to develop new plugins when needed. The most important thing is that their maintenance account yearly subscription fee includes the fact that they will maintain the new plugins that you requested them to deliver.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We do a competitor evaluation every year of the market to determine if there is a better competitor. While there are other solutions, I don't think there is a better solution than Centreon.

The solution increases the accuracy of our monitoring. The reaction that I have had from some customers, or even prospects, when we do a live demonstration involving how Centreon is working is that their experience with other solutions is bad. Centreon is a really capable tool that increases efficiency and gives you more information.

We have been a partner of other brands in the past, and comparatively, Centreon is much more stable.

If you are large customer who spends more on the solution, you receive more services versus other market competitors. Centreon offers value for its cost.

What other advice do I have?

It is a complete solution. Our customers are happy. If you want to improve your active monitoring activity, you should use Centreon. I would rate the solution as a 10 out of 10.

Centreon is readily available to integrate tools from other vendors.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor. The reviewer's company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner.
PeerSpot user
Leandro Pereira Rodrigues - PeerSpot reviewer
Analista de TI at RNP - Rede Nacional de Ensino e Pesquisa NREN/Brazil
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
The dashboards help to improve our visibility and ability to proactively ensure the right data is available at the right time
Pros and Cons
  • "Centreon's most valuable feature is Opsgenie."
  • "The reporting has room for improvement."

What is our primary use case?

We're a telecom group and we use Centreon to monitor all our services.

How has it helped my organization?

Centreon's dashboard is good. Centreon's dashboard provides a single view of all our customers. When there is a problem, Centreon notifies us and works with us to resolve it quickly.

Centreo's dashboards help to improve our visibility and ability to proactively ensure the right data is available at the right time which is important.

We use Centreon's plugin packs to communicate with our telecom locations in Brazil when the host does not have Centreon integrated.

Centreon's ready-to-use connectors and integrations are essential because they provide a comprehensive overview of our organization, which allows us to quickly resolve client issues.

Centreon helps me organize our hosts by stage and monitor our clients.

Centreon is the best for helping monitor our IT infrastructure from cloud to edge and providing holistic visibility.

Centreon helps us align our IT operations with business objectives by identifying problems and resolving them quickly and permanently.

Centreon helps us measure service performance by modeling IT service maps for business-critical IT workflows and metrics. This allows us to see the hierarchy and discover problems. Centreon is a valuable and important tool for addressing these issues.

Centreon helps to consolidate all alerts, KPIs, and business maps as well as manage metrics across domains. We can seamlessly integrate with the client's network.

What is most valuable?

Centreon's most valuable feature is Opsgenie.

What needs improvement?

The reporting has room for improvement. The reports could be improved by providing more data and more detailed charts.

I would like Centreon to offer support in Portuguese.

Centreon should have better integration with WhatsApp.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Centreon for four years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

We use Centreon for every stage in Brazil and the solution is stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is acceptable, but there is room for improvement.

How are customer service and support?

We do not have local support in Brazil, which is challenging due to the language barrier.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Neutral

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Our organization previously used Zabbix before switching to Centreon.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is complicated because consolidating and configuring the database is a complex process.

What was our ROI?

We have seen a return on investment and that is why our organization has been using Centreon for over four years.

What other advice do I have?

I give Centreon an eight out of ten.

I recommend Centreon because it is a good solution that configures well.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: partner
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Global Operations Center Lead at a logistics company with 10,001+ employees
Real User
We can add devices and set up additional polling servers without downtime in monitoring
Pros and Cons
  • "I find the product's scalability to be one of the most valuable features since it allows us to add unlimited devices for monitoring and to set up additional polling servers without additional license cost or downtime in our monitoring."
  • "The product is available in ISO image format, ready for deployment. Centreon also has a comprehensive guide and documentation that are simple and easy to follow."
  • "The Home view could be improved by adding customization functions that allow users to change the size of the widgets for a more uniform layout."
  • "Centreon technical support is only available during Central European business hours. When it comes to critical business solutions, there should be a 24/7 hotline that customers can rely on."

What is our primary use case?

We use Centreon to centrally monitor our entire global IT infrastructure and to alert us about impending issues.

How has it helped my organization?

Centreon enables us to proactively take action on issues before they even become incidents, which significantly reduces business disruptions resulting from controllable factors.

What is most valuable?

I find the product's scalability to be one of the most valuable features since it allows us to add unlimited devices for monitoring and to set up additional polling servers without additional license cost or downtime in our monitoring.

What needs improvement?

The Home view could be improved by adding customization functions that allow users to change the size of the widgets for a more uniform layout.

For how long have I used the solution?

One to three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

No issues with stability.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No issues with scalability.

How are customer service and technical support?

Centreon technical support is only available during Central European business hours. When it comes to critical business solutions, there should be a 24/7 hotline that customers can rely on.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We switched to Centreon from our previous solution because of the flexibility it offered as an open source solution and because it allowed us to have more control over the design of our monitoring environment.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward, as the product is available in ISO image format, ready for deployment. Centreon also has a comprehensive guide and documentation that are simple and easy to follow.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Open source solutions can be very cost effective for an organization looking for a product that can be quickly implemented, as there is no initial cost and there are no license renewal fees. However, it is important to take into consideration some of the related costs that may come along as needed, such as training, support, and product enhancements.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We have used SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor and SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor.

What other advice do I have?

Centreon is like a sandbox for monitoring your systems. It allows you to customize and automate different tasks, such as the configuration of hosts for monitoring, and actions taken during an alert.

I recommend some training and deploying a lab environment instance, where administrators can fully understand how each feature integrates with the rest of the system to help avoid early configuration mistakes and achieve an efficient production environment design.

Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Centreon Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: January 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Centreon Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.