Change Auditor for Windows File Servers vs Graylog comparison

Change Auditor for Windows ...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Change Auditor for Windows File Servers and Graylog compete in the monitoring software category. Change Auditor holds an advantage in ease of deployment and customer service, while Graylog excels in features and flexibility.

Features: Change Auditor offers real-time monitoring and detailed audit logs, along with a customizable alert system. Graylog provides an open-source platform with powerful search capabilities and a flexible, feature-rich design. While Change Auditor focuses on tracking and reporting efficiencies, Graylog appeals to users who need advanced search options and adaptability.

Room for Improvement: Change Auditor could benefit from a modern integration framework, faster report generation, and broader platform compatibility. Graylog users seek improved scalability, enhanced dashboard customization, and more intuitive configuration processes.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Change Auditor is noted for straightforward deployment and responsive customer service, making it accessible for users seeking direct support. Graylog, while presenting a steeper learning curve, offers robust online community support.

Pricing and ROI: Change Auditor involves a higher initial setup cost but provides steady ROI through reliable tracking and reporting features. Graylog, with a lower upfront cost, achieves ROI through its flexible architecture and scalability, despite configuration challenges.

To learn more, read our detailed Change Auditor for Windows File Servers vs. Graylog Report (Updated: April 2025).

Change Auditor for Windows File Servers vs. Graylog

April 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Change Auditor for Windows ...

Ranking in Log Management

37th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Graylog

Ranking in Log Management

16th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Log Management category, the mindshare of Change Auditor for Windows File Servers is 0.1%, down from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Graylog is 6.6%, up from 5.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Log Management

Featured Reviews

Krisarlex Foronda

Senior Operations Manager at Procter & Gamble

Provides granular queries of security logs and real-time alerting helps me mitigate risks

The real-time alerting helps me mitigate risks. For example, someone adds a member to the domain admin group. We have an alert set up, so if someone does this unexpectedly, we get notified. Then, we can check and verify if the action is legitimate or a potential threat to the environment.

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Andrey Mostovykh

Senior Data Architect at a non-tech company with 201-500 employees

Real-time analysis, easy setup, and open source

We stopped using it for analytics because of its price, and at the moment, we are using it mostly for log centralization. If you use it with high traffic for analytical purposes, as well as for the logs, the infrastructure costs are unbelievable. Graylog is a great product backed by Elasticsearch as the storage and query engine. It is just an interface on top of Elasticsearch and some Elasticsearch management. The indexes that are kept in Elasticsearch are managed by Graylog software. Elasticsearch is a decent product, but it's very infrastructure-heavy. It requires lots of resources, and if you make a mistake with provisioning, you are likely to not get a cluster back. We had a couple of outages like that, and we hated that. So, we ended up over-provisioning resources just to avoid such situations from happening. If you have a whole team trying to fix the Graylog instance for two days, that's a bit too much. That may be my Norwegian take on it, but the engineering resources are expensive. It's better to just provision the infrastructure. Overall, the product is great, and the features are just fine, but the infrastructure cost is what is killing it. The infrastructure cost is the main issue. I like the rest. If the infrastructure costs could be lower, it would be fantastic. I'm not sure if they can improve the infrastructure cost with the way Elasticsearch is. If they keep using Elasticsearch, maybe there are some opportunities there, or they can support other backends with cheaper storage. They could have a different backend to replace Elasticsearch or do some tweaks to Elasticsearch to reduce the costs. There could be partial parsing of logs or parsing on demand so that when you write data through Graylog to Elasticsearch, it doesn't need to crunch in every detail requiring that much CPU.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The solution's most valuable aspect is that it can be fully integrated with Microsoft solutions and it doesn't impact the productivity order."

"In terms of features, the querying is great."

"The product is scalable. The solution is stable."

"One of the most valuable features is that you are able to do a very detailed search through the log messages in the overview."

"I like the correlation and the alerting."

"This had increased productivity for the dev and support teams, because we are directly notifying them."

"Storing logs in Elasticsearch means log retrieval is extremely fast, and full text search is available by default."

"Graylog is very handy."

"Open source and user friendly."

"Real-time UDP/GELF logging and full text-based searching."

More Graylog pros

Cons

"The pricing could be improved. It needs to be reduced."

"The customer service and support could improve their approach to questioning issues. They tend to ask questions one at a time, which creates a lot of back-and-forth communication."

"I would like to see a default dashboard widget that shows the topology of the clusters defined for the graylog install."

"The infrastructure cost is the main issue. I like the rest. If the infrastructure costs could be lower, it would be fantastic."

"The biggest problem is the collector application, as we wanted to avoid using Graylog Collector Sidecar due to its architecture."

"When it comes to configuring the processing pipeline, writing the rules can be very tedious, especially since the documentation isn't extensive on how the functions provided for these rules work."

"Over six months, I had two similar issues where searches were performed on field "messages". It exhausted all the memory of the ES node causing an ES crash and a Graylog halt."

"Lacks sufficient documentation."

"More customization is always useful."

"When it comes to configuring the processing pipeline, writing the rules can be very tedious, especially since the documentation isn't extensive on how the functions provided for these rules work."

More Graylog cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is per user. The cost is approximately $15/user on a yearly basis. If you need to, you can always upgrade as well."

"Consider Enterprise support if you have atypical needs or setup requirements."

"I am using a community edition. I have not looked at the enterprise offering from Graylog."

"You get a lot out-of-the-box with the non-enterprise version, so give it a try first."

"It's open source and free. They have a paid version, but we never looked into that because we never needed the features of the paid version."

"Having paid official support is wise for projects."

"I use the free version of Graylog."

"We're using the Community edition."

"We are using the free version of the product. However, the paid version is expensive."

More Graylog pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Computer Software Company

18%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Government

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Change Auditor for Windows File Servers?

In terms of features, the querying is great.

What needs improvement with Change Auditor for Windows File Servers?

They've already made improvements! They have a tool called IT Security Search, which lets you perform queries outside of Change Auditor. It's much faster. This is a really good addition and helps u...

What is your primary use case for Change Auditor for Windows File Servers?

I use Change Auditor for Windows File Servers to log history. It's helpful when we have critical changes in Active Directory, like adding or removing items. I use it extensively for monitoring.

What do you like most about Graylog?

The product is scalable. The solution is stable.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Graylog?

We are using the free version of the product. However, the paid version is expensive.

What needs improvement with Graylog?

When it comes to configuring the processing pipeline, writing the rules can be very tedious, especially since the documentation isn't extensive on how the functions provided for these rules work. P...

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Product Reports

Download Change Auditor for Windows File Servers product report

Log Management

March 2025

Change Auditor for Windows File Servers report

Download Graylog product report

April 2025

Also Known As

No data available

Graylog2

Overview

Change Auditor for Windows File Servers helps you control and audit changes to Microsoft Windows file servers efficiently and cost-effectively. It proactively tracks, audits, reports and alerts on vital changes in real time and without the overhead of native auditing.

You will instantly know the “who, what, when, where and originating workstation” details, and get the original and current values for fast troubleshooting. You can then automatically generate intelligent, in-depth forensics for auditors and management, reducing the risks associated with day-to-day modifications and ensuring confidence at your next audit.

Quest Software

Graylog is purpose-built to deliver the best log collection, storage, enrichment, and analysis. Graylog is:

Considerably faster analysis speeds.
More robust and easier-to-use analysis platform.
Simpler administration and infrastructure management.
Lower cost than alternatives.
Full-scale customer service.
No expensive training or tool experts required.

Sample Customers

Dragon Capital, Howard County MD

Blue Cross Blue Shield, eBay, Cisco, LinkedIn, SAP, King.com, Twilio, Deutsche Presse-Agentur