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SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs Splunk Enterprise Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

SolarWinds Server and Appli...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.5
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (17th), Server Monitoring (8th), Active Directory Management (8th)
Splunk Enterprise Security
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
386
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (1st), Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) (1st), IT Operations Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Application Lifecycle Management solutions, they serve different purposes. SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is designed for Server Monitoring and holds a mindshare of 3.0%, up 2.6% compared to last year.
Splunk Enterprise Security, on the other hand, focuses on Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), holds 7.1% mindshare, down 9.2% since last year.
Server Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor3.0%
Zabbix10.7%
Nagios XI6.1%
Other80.2%
Server Monitoring
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Splunk Enterprise Security7.1%
IBM Security QRadar5.2%
Wazuh4.6%
Other83.1%
Security Information and Event Management (SIEM)
 

Featured Reviews

NikhilKalwint - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Specialist at ServiceIO
Monitoring over a thousand systems has improved decision making and operational visibility
From an advantage perspective, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is comparatively cheaper from a commercial point of view. It is easy to install and configure, very user-friendly, and quick to get up and running, allowing you to see the early value adds in your organization. It is compatible with most technologies for monitoring with very few chances of incompatibility. Configuration also allows us to monitor all the technical parameters we are looking for, making it a very good experience for us. The alerting feature in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is a main advantage, as it alerts based on threshold breaches and can raise tickets to the ticketing system, send SMS, and email notifications, allowing engineers to work on those tickets to resolve issues and avoid further impact. The visibility into server health is a beneficial feature that I am utilizing. We widely use various application performance metrics in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor such as database monitoring and server monitoring, which are quite good enough for any monitoring solution. We utilize the customizable dashboards in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor.
Sathis-Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager at Bank of America
Helps us detect cyber threats quickly and integrate multiple feeds effectively
Overall, the product is good, but when it comes to some infrastructure issues, we have to dig into more logs. There is no straightforward indication of an issue. Health check kind of dashboards are not available. More AI would help us, and more optimization, since security products run more queries. The AI module could suggest solutions, optimizing queries or workload balancing. If the product itself advises on running queries during peak times, it would be similar to what ChatGPT currently offers. We see quite a few issues on stability. Even last week, we faced something, and identifying bottlenecks is not easy. We need more SMEs, and there is no mechanism to tell us about indexer or search head issues. Self-monitoring dashboards could be beneficial. The technical support still requires more improvement. Often, primary support takes a lot of time and forwards most solutions to the engineering side. The primary support team has very limited knowledge to provide.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"If you are looking for a single pane of glass to monitor Windows products then SolarWinds is your product."
"SolarWinds SAM has significantly improved our workflow by allowing us to develop a comprehensive knowledge base of known errors and automate responses to specific alerts."
"It is scalable."
"SolarWinds SAM has provided us with dynamic thresholds based on historical trends and requirements, so the threshold gets configured automatically, and it's no longer necessary to configure it manually every time."
"The initial setup was relatively easy, and we didn't have to install anything; all we had to do was put on the devices we wanted to monitor."
"Hardware health: It allows for proactive monitoring of the hardware health and is a game changer."
"As I mentioned in one of the other points: "Simplicity at its best"."
"Identifying the problem statement is easy."
"It's better than IBM, in my opinion, because it's an independent entity."
"We solve issues that we previously could not since we now have the data."
"The ability to identify risks as they come in is quite good."
"Good for log collection and log management."
"Three features stand out for me: the SDK for writing Python, the customizable and adaptable diagnostic dashboard, and the optimizer for collecting data."
"The feature that I have found most valuable with Splunk is the ability to sift through a bunch of data very quickly."
"The benefits my company has seen from the use of Splunk Enterprise Security revolve around the speed of detection it offers."
"Splunk has improved our operations by giving us access to more information and allowing us to deploy more use cases."
 

Cons

"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is not stable. We have to maintain the platform and it goes down frequently."
"It needs time-based functions for monitoring. Some things need to be polled on a specific schedule or only during a specific window."
"A lot of times, we have to do a lot of manual cleanups."
"Scalability was an issue in the past."
"Downside of the tools is the web console are hung or crash. It need to improve the performance."
"The templates could use improvement. Currently, they are quite complex."
"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve the server monitoring and the web application monitoring features are not good."
"The current script monitoring feature has limitations, especially when dealing with custom scripts."
"VMware and security device integration looks a bit complex."
"The solution could improve by making it more business analysis oriented. The way it is now is designed more for developers."
"The user interface is not user-friendly for non-technical users."
"I think the licensing costs for Splunk Enterprise Security are on the higher side, but I am not certain."
"The biggest thing with Splunk is making sure that the documentation is maintained."
"On-premises scaling of the solution is a bit more limited than it is on the cloud."
"I'd love to see more integrations, which is one of the primary points of the key node with Splunk Enterprise Security."
"Better education for users would be beneficial as they often don't know what they don't know or how to look for certain features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are on an annual license to use the solution. The price of the solution is expensive. The price is based on a bunch of factors, such as the number of engines and elements."
"I have always said SolarWinds is very “proud” of their products, meaning they are expensive. I cannot afford to purchase all the licenses I need for all the SolarWinds products."
"The licenses start from USD 3000.00 and go up to USD 20,000.00 for the year. It's a perpetual license. Nothing is free in SolarWinds, anything that you need is an additional cost."
"I think SolarWinds' pricing is very decent compared to other competitors in the market."
"The solution's price is reasonable. Though it's on the higher side, the tool is worth the money."
"I would advise potential buyers to wait until the end of the quarter, end of year, or other time to place orders. There are actually great deals to be had at those times if your budget cycle can match up."
"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."
"We pay around $ 2,000 to $ 5,000 yearly for the solution."
"The price of Splunk is too high for our market."
"The price of Splunk is reasonable."
"Splunk Enterprise becomes extremely expensive after the 20GB/month license."
"While licensing can be a concern, there are ways to reduce the licensing costs including filtering some events."
"Splunk Enterprise Security is expensive. I would rate the cost an eight out of ten with ten being the most expensive."
"Although Splunk is an expensive product, it is designed to be utilized across your organization in order to maximize your ROI and lower your TCO."
"The pricing is very complicated, and it is very pricey. You do require a lot of different licenses in order to get a comprehensive solution that is not just the SIEM solution."
"It is a pretty high cost solution, but if your organization has the funds, it can bring many benefits."
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Comparison Review

VS
Manager, Enterprise Risk Consulting at a tech company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Feb 26, 2015
HP ArcSight vs. IBM QRadar vs. ​McAfee Nitro vs. Splunk vs. RSA Security vs. LogRhythm
We at Infosecnirvana.com have done several posts on SIEM. After the Dummies Guide on SIEM, we are following it up with a SIEM Product Comparison – 101 deck. So, here it is for your viewing pleasure. Let me know what you think by posting your comments below. The key products compared here are…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business117
Midsize Enterprise51
Large Enterprise269
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
There is definitely room for improvement besides simplifying its setup. As a non-technical person, I believe the dashboards could be improved. Everything we use appears on video walls, and we need ...
What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?
I am doing research as we currently have both solutions, and I am looking to see if we need both or can manage with one. Currently, the outcome indicates that we need both. The focus point is diffe...
What SOC product do you recommend?
For tools I’d recommend: -SIEM- LogRhythm -SOAR- Palo Alto XSOAR Doing commercial w/o both (or at least an XDR) is asking to miss details that are critical, and ending up a statistic. Also, rememb...
What is a better choice, Splunk or Azure Sentinel?
It would really depend on (1) which logs you need to ingest and (2) what are your use cases Splunk is easy for ingestion of anything, but the charge per GB/Day Indexed and it gets expensive as log ...
How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?
Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...
 

Also Known As

SolarWinds SAM
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite
Splunk has more than 7,000 customers spread across over 90 countries. These customers include Telenor, UniCredit, ideeli, McKenney's, Tesco, and SurveyMonkey.
Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs. Splunk Enterprise Security and other solutions. Updated: May 2023.
892,868 professionals have used our research since 2012.