DX Spectrum Reviews

I use the solution for monitoring and configuration management. 

The tool is very mature, and its valuable features are monitoring and configuration management. 

From a functionality perspective, the product is not doing what it should. Also, there are some concerns about the accessibility. I would appreciate additional out-of-the-box troubleshooting scripts, like templates for addressing various issues. Currently, when troubleshooting online, I need to create my scripts. It would be beneficial if the platform could provide pre-built scripts or templates to help automate certain troubleshooting tasks.

I have been using the product for eight years. 

I rate DX Spectrum's stability a ten out of ten. 

I rate the tool's scalability a ten out of ten. I can scale it for hundreds and thousands of users easily. 

DX Spectrum's technical support is good and responsive. 

I have used OpenText before DX Spectrum. 

I can complete DX Spectrum's deployment in two hours. 

DX Spectrum's pricing is neither expensive nor cheap. 

I have my own script to analyze the data and perform actions in the backend, like repairing a configuration. I rate DX Spectrum a nine out of ten. 

• NCM
• Discovery: Scheduled, on-demand, synchronized with eHealth
• REST API
• Spectrum integration with CABI, eHealth, SOI, and EEM
• Modelling of custom device models
• MRTG graphs in real time for interfaces
• Dynamic Global Collections
• Distributed landscapes
• OCC console client
• Web UI console
• Integrated GIS maps
• Self-certification
• Condition correlation
• Event configuration
• OOB Probable Cause database
• MPLS Transport and VPN managers
• Watches and thresholds

CA Spectrum allowed our client, a Tier 1 TELCO, to manage their E2E network infrastructure. The distributed architecture and eHealth integrations enabled a powerful solution for providing Hosted Managed Services to an Enterprise customer. It proactively monitored Enterprise: GMPLS, IPVPN, ISDN, LTE and Leased Line services against set SLAs and maintained a top quality of service.

The easy integration of topology views to a web portal allowed the client to expose actual real time performance and health status of enterprise infra setups. This greatly benefited the client by providing a "wow" factor to their consumers/customers.

• NCM: Needs to be more user-friendly and refined. The ability to quickly see changes across various time configured backups helps to quickly identify changes which could be a root cause to a prevalent problem due to incorrect configurations.
• MRTG graphs need to be more intuitive.
• The GIS map feature needs to be enhanced and synced with topology views of containers and global collections.
• The probable cause database needs to be enhanced.
• As Cisco and Alcatel lose out to cheaper competition like Huawei, ZTE, etc., device certifications need to be updated.

We have been using this solution for four years.

Scheduled discoveries with modelling of large numbers of multi-element devices like switches, MUX, SAN, IP-DSLAM used to freeze up the SpectroServer in r10, although such issues were not faced in r10.1.

We didn't encounter any issues with scalability.

CA Spectrum Technical support is very good, especially the ready availability of extremely skilled technicians across the globe, 24/7.

I am not aware of any previous solutions.

The setup of the distributed SpectroServer is complex for large environments, including the integrations with distributed eHealth environments.

It is very pricey. With the current trend of enterprises moving towards cheaper and more modern looking solutions like ManageEngine, SevOne, ServicePilot, and Paesller.

CA needs to cut down its pricing strategy.

HPE OV and CA IM2.0 were tested, but were found either lacking in scalability or user-friendliness, including the lack of a modern, crisp UI.

It is a great product. It is easy to setup if technically strong resources are available. It reduces the cost of underlying hardware due to the higher monitoring capability per server. Always stick to a distributed approach as it helps in fault tolerance due to the unavailability of HA/DR.

1. NCM – Network Configuration Manager – It is very helpful in maintaining the configuration backups of network devices in a multi-vendor ecosystem involving large number of devices. Device configuration changes can be identified on real time and helps administrators to identify unapproved changes and recover from faulty changes leading to device downtime quickly. Reference configurations are helpful in setting a device configuration and naming convention benchmarks and enables admin teams to work without dependency on resources, as the proper and standardized configurations can always be referred to during making changes to devices.

2. Discovery – CA Spectrum’s discovery utility allows IT/NOC teams to find and model the network and view the topology in the Universe and Global Collections views. Bulk discovery is possible to be run using seed files providing the device IP address and using pre-configured policies containing the list of SNMP community strings. This way large networks can be discovered and modelled in one go. It allows us the flexibility to choose the elements to be modelled and how to model them. The inventory data can be exported in desired file format for further review and distribution to key stakeholders. Device changes can be re-discovered into CA Spectrum using the scheduled discovery feature, ensuring that device changes do not place a device model in risk of getting out of live monitoring and avoiding incorrect alarms.

3. Spectrum Integrations –

a. CA BI – CA Spectrum uses CA Business Intelligence (CABI) for reporting purposes. The flexibility offered by CABI to design user defined reports and display data in a variety of info graphical formats lets admins design reports which can display to management in a glance the state of entire network/ sections of the infrastructure. CABI leverages the powerful SAP BO technology which offers a complete suite of information management, reporting, query and analysis tools in a user friendly and intuitive UI.

b. eHealth – CA Spectrum – eHealth integration offers functionality to map existing eHealth elements with the Spectrum device models to allow eHealth generated performance based alarms to be shown on Spectrum alarm dashboard against the relevant device element model. This creates a single pane of glass view for the NOC teams to view all fault and performance alarms in a single dashboard and helps in reporting and carrying out triages to determine RCA of faults. Also, detailed OOB designed eHealth reports are made available to users of Spectrum on a single click and discoveries can be scheduled on eHealth using only CA Spectrum system. Thus, it eases the system administrator’s job while providing a in-depth analysis of the entire network’s state and performance in real time.

c. SOI – Integrating CA Spectrum with CA SOI is now easy using the CA SOI connector. It helps to collect CA Spectrum data into CA SOI, convert it to a common format and expose the data for visualization, analysis,, management and reporting to organizations senior management. It helps to get a management view on a distributed and large network into a single dashboard view including Cis and alerts consolidated into a single frame. The entire infra can be broken down into logical business services and thus impact of faults can be analyzed on services running / hosted / provided by the underlying infrastructure easily.

d. EEM – This integration enables SSO feature for CA Spectrum. Single Sign-On (SSO) lets CA Spectrum users integrate with LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) and Active Directory user management systems.

e. API – CA Spectrum provides web based and REST API for integrations. We found it very useful in creating a custom solution to monitor dynamic IP based devices. It can also be used in embedding CA Spectrum information in web sites or third party apps and fetching data into CA Spectrum especially updating custom attributes of device models with data from external systems.

4. Dynamic Global Collections – Global Collections allow us to model network views from any modelled elements in Spectrum. By specifying rules based on device naming convention/IP address/device type etc. we can dynamically add models into various global collection views as and when they are discovered and modelled in Spectrum. These views are very helpful in breaking down the entire network into logical segregated views based on any criteria which fulfills your business use case.

5. Interface Information - You can view information about the interfaces of a device model by selecting the model and selecting the Interfaces tab in the Component Detail panel. The Interfaces tab displays a list of the configured interfaces and sub interfaces for the selected device, along with the parameters of the interface models. The % utilization (In/Out), packet, errors/discards (%) rates can be viewed in graphical format and thresholds can be set to generate alarms.

Some of the most valuable features are:

• The ability to have a topographical map of our infrastructure
• Downstream suppression
• The ability to capture SNMP traps from non-network devices

It allows us to resolve issues faster when they occur in our environment. We're able to easily detect and alert when something goes down almost right away. We can be more proactive, and we're trying to reduce the number of incidents that our users experience. The graphical user interface has improved, so it makes it easier for our technical team to use it. It is a little easier than Spectrum was five years ago.

I would like to see a better, more simple web interface. Getting rid of the Java requirements would be awesome. We have a lot of different applications that use Java. Sometimes there are conflicts. For example, we have some web based applications that are proprietary to our company, which use a different version of Java than Spectrum, and this creates a conflict.

The Java requirement to run the console causes issues in some cases. It is possible to update the JAVA_HOME path, but requires knowledge of client operating systems. Having an HTML interface which does not require Java would be ideal.

Out of all of the CA products that we use, I would say this is the most stable. We very rarely have issues with it, which is great because it is monitoring almost 10,000 devices for us.

We've had no issues with any sort of scalability. We grow through mergers and acquisitions, so the ability to just roll out another server and have fault tolerant servers is great.

My team uses technical support and it's been great for this product.

We were using SolarWinds previously and it just did not offer a lot of the features that CA Spectrum does. CA worked really hard to create a strategic partnership with us which is very important. Being a large company, we have a wide range of products that we use from various different vendors and we need that support. We chose CA over IBM, and also SolarWinds. So again, the scalability of the product, the ease of implementation, and the account team was way easier to work with than any of the other vendors.

Spectrum installation was pretty straightforward. We had our primary servers acting as our fault tolerant servers. We were able to import a lot of our information from our old tool, which made it a lot easier to get up and running quickly.

Take into account more than just features. Look at the way that the organization provides support, the way the vendor provides support, and also if they're willing to work with you for the long term on adaptation within your company.

It was software-based deployment, and we were monitoring the internal network and client devices of an enterprise MSP. We were also using it for generating alerts for ticketing.

We were able to monitor their entire network infrastructure and receive valuable alerting in a timely fashion so that we could react to any instances when there were down devices.

The containerization of different objects was very helpful in building an org structure. Being able to separately manage your MSP clients with separate visibility was also helpful.

Scalability is a highly rated feature of this solution. It is better than some of the other tools that I've used in terms of scalability. We scaled it to tens of thousands of devices.

The granular access control that it provided so that you could only see devices that were related to what you were working on was great. I couldn't see the entire inventory of devices. I could only see the ones that were related to my work. It has got a very granular access control component.

For my use case, incident coordination was an area of improvement. The internal software engine for coordinating outages could use improvement because sometimes, we used to get false alerts for unrelated devices. They did a really good job of trying to make sure that you got one major alert and any of the subsequent devices downstream were just additions to that, but occasionally, the engine wouldn't properly catch the right things, and we used to get a flood of alerts.

Its visualization can be improved. It doesn't have a very advanced GUI. It is very basic and simple, but it does work.

I used this solution for two and a half years. I have used it within the last 12 months.

It was quite stable. We had very few outages during the time I used it.

From the scalability perspective, it was fantastic. We were able to monitor our entire infrastructure at the telco level. We were also able to monitor all of the network tools and devices within our client containers. It was a very scalable product. Overall, 3,000 to 4,000 users were using it, and we probably had tens of thousands of devices.

I did not use their technical support. We didn't get an opportunity to do that.

I was not involved in its deployment. It was done well prior to my being part of the team that was using it. 

In terms of maintenance, it requires just the standard software updates and patching. It doesn't require anything out of the ordinary. You just have to deal with more of the ordinary patching cycles. I didn't actually have any experience updating the entire system itself. That was outside of my scope of work. Because we were deploying it at a telco level, we had several teams working on it. My role was adding and removing devices and updating devices for the customers I was supporting. We would add and remove devices in the client networks and the client containers based on the additions and removal of the hardware in the system.

We've been using this solution for probably the last eight to ten years through ongoing upgrades and updates. If there wasn't a return on investment by using the platform, our organization would have gone for a different solution. We're very cost-conscious, so we were able to get the value that we were looking for out of it.

I would advise others to be prepared to do some fine-tuning and scripting to support the product. With any tool of this nature, there are going to be some customizations to monitor certain devices. You should also make sure that you get your containers organized correctly. If you organize the containers correctly with different groups assigned, it will make your life a lot easier to be able to organize your data. Have a solid structure for that and a good plan.

I would rate DX Spectrum an eight out of ten. It was a really solid platform. They did a really great job. The coordination of alerting was probably the biggest issue we had, just because of the scale of the network we were dealing with.

Our use cases for the solution are configuration backup, performance monitoring and presentations for the upper management. I'm an assistant admin and we are customers of DX Spectrum. 

The presentation layer is pretty simple and straightforward and the dashboard is pretty easy to read.

The visual is good but it's a little archaic. I think it's the way it's compiled, because I've been struggling recently with deploying it in different departments. The software still uses a 32 bit library on the Linux boxes for installation. Every admin scratches their head when I ask them to install, 16 or 17 packages, 32 bit packages on a 64 bit architecture.

Also, they dumped all the documentation from the old versions and re-tagged them with the new version and they haven't updated them for a few years. That's a bit of a problem. They need to get rid of Java and 32 bit applications proctors, and that would be good.

I've been using this solution for two years. 

The stability isn't bad. There are Java issues but that could be because of our setup so I wouldn't blame the software. Although again, using Java is a little outdated. 

The solution can be scaled to an unlimited amount. We have 50 users, usually admins and managers.

I don't have much to compare it to but something that stands out is probably the ease of dealing with tech support. It's one of the better relationships that I've had with tech support. They always respond and they're on time.

The setup isn't complex it's just not up to date. It's 2021, why would anybody use a 32 bit package for an application. 

You need to make sure the product runs in your environment because it might not be compatible with some people's setup. 

For now, I would rate this solution a seven out of 10. 

• Network Configuration Manager
• MPLS & VPN Manager
• Southbound Gateway
• Event rules
• Event procedures

Using event rules and procedures, we improved our event management process. CA Spectrum is very useful for event handling and offers a robust manager of managers console.

Like SpectroSERVER's fault tolerance (FT) functionality, the OneClick console should have a native HA or FT functionality. Actually, the only way to get this is by using a load balancer.

Spectroserver is the core component in CA Spectrum arquitecture that polls devices in to network, you can use multiple servers to build some kind of "cluster" to provide continued device polling when some server fail. Oneclick console ( web server) is front end of CA Spectrum it do not have an option to provide continued user access when a oneclick server fail ( High Availability). You can use a Load Balancer but is very expensive.

I have been using it for seven years.

No deployment issues encountered.

SpectroSERVER and reporting databases can grow quickly if you don't keep track of trap storms; this can cause SpectroSERVER to crash and performance issues with reporting.

No scalability issues encountered.

Customer service is very good (10/10).

The North America support team is excellent (10/10). The LATAM support team have some things to improve (6/10).

We did not previously use a different solution.

Initial setup was complex because deep knowledge about tool architecture and proprietary software is required. In some cases, if you make a mistake during installation or initial setup, the better solution is to reinstall it or reinitialize a DB.

We implemented it through a vendor team. Their level of expertise is high (9/10).

Licensing usually is expensive but cost efficient.

Before choosing this product, we evaluated Tivoli monitoring.

I recommend you use CA Spectrum mainly to monitor network infrastructure. Use this tool as a manager of managers. Event monitoring is a very powerful functionality. If you want to monitor servers, app and databases, use CA UIM probes instead of the CA SystemEDGE agent.

Auto discovery helps us reduce manual efforts. CA Spectrum automatically discovers all network Cis, including LANs, WANs and all the connected assets and creates the actual topology view.

Network configuration manager (NCM) help us configure capture. It helps detect unauthorized changes and delivers immediate notification.

Root-case analysis (RCA) helps us correlate the symptoms and probable causes for the events. It helps the MTTR and save engineers’ efforts.

CA Spectrum helps our organization improve network service levels. With the help of Spectrum’s integrated automated fault management & fault isolation features, it helped us reduce MTTR by 50% and costs as well.

Reporting and network bandwidth monitoring features needs to be improved. When we generate the outage report, the alarm title does not appear correctly in the reports. Also, sometimes events are not synchronized and are missing from the reports.

Spectrum needs to include historical reports for network LAN/WAN performance utilization and bandwidth utilization.

I have been using it for eight years.

I did not encounter any deployment issues.

I did not encounter any stability issues. Spectrum has built-in fault tolerance options that helps us build a high-availability setup.

I did not encounter any scalability issues.

Customer service is 10/10.

Technical support is 10/10.

We previously used lots of tools, such as PRTG, IBM Tivoli, and SLMO. CA spectrum helped our organization automate fault management across multi-vendor and multi-technology infrastructure. Spectrum integration with service desk helped us reduce manual effort.

It was very easy to set up, install and configure Spectrum.

An in-house team implemented it.

Our ROI is 100%.

It's a very cost-effective tool.

It is a device-based license.

We evaluated SolarWinds NPM and Nagios before choosing this product.

Most valuable to us are the alerting capabilities and the topology information that Spectrum provides, as well as additional services such as device updates and the ability to launch them. These are typical network management services.

It provides us complete visibility into both company networks with one tool, which we didn't have.

I'm not familiar with all the current features and all its capabilities. I only know what it can do now. It suffices for what I need.

Spectrum already collects system information as SNMP data. What I additionally would like to see is utilization information. I only get alerts when the CPU reaches certain thresholds. I believe it does the same thing for links when links reach a certain threshold. I'm interested in statistical gathering. My primary job function is to determine why applications are slow, why customers experience latency, and related issues. I need to diagnose quickly whether its utilization, device failures, or if it's something beyond that. If so, that requires another tool altogether and I need to take a look whether Spectrum provides that type of information.

I haven't seen any problem. I'm a user, I'm not the administrator.

We will have to wait and see if Spectrum can handle both networks. Together both networks consist of about 6,000 to 6,500 network devices.

I have not used technical support.

Our company merged with another company, and since the merger, our company has outsourced all our LAN and WAN management. All our network tools have been at our vendors and we have had no access to them. Pre-merger, the second company did everything internally and used Spectrum as their network management platform. Now, with the integration of both networks, network management is coming in-house.

I recently attended a conference primarily to take a look at the CA Spectrum product and its capabilities regarding what advantages it's going to have when they bring in it.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

Riverbed Technology has a similar product that does network monitoring and gathers statistics. The classics, such as HPE OpenView and other similar products were considered.

Define what you need and talk to the various vendors. You don't need multiple platforms. The ideal situation is where you have a single platform and a single company that provides me with all the features and functions that I need. You need to have a very clear idea of what you are doing before getting into it.