DX Spectrum Reviews

The use case for Spectrum is to perform fault management for our managed services infrastructure. We are monitoring around 150,000 endpoints with the tool. 

The root cause analysis, fault isolation engine, and the overall event management that Spectrum brings you.  

It drives topology based views. It gives us network visualization, and lets us detect faults. 

Definitely the way this product needs to go is more web-based. They need to put more emphasis in the web technology. There is some there, and it is being developed, but it is not all the way there. There is a Java fat client that they have not moved all the support from the Java client into the web and that is what they need to do.  

It is a very stable product. No software probably is without any downtime. There has been downtime here and there, but we have maintained well over 98% uptime with the product, and I have been using it for over 10 years. 

Scalability is one of the best factors of the product, because it scales horizontally. 

The CA support is pretty good overall. They get behind what your company is trying to do with their tools. Therefore, they try to understand your use cases and just be there as a partner to help you out.  

I was involved in the initial setup. It was pretty straightforward.

I would recommend this solution.

The event management that the tool provides is extremely powerful, but with that comes a bit of complexity. For beginner type users, the event management might be a little overwhelming, but as you work with it over time, you can really see what the solution provides for you. With a little bit of time spent, you can get a lot of value out of the product, but it takes a bit of time and understanding.

• 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.

• Works excellent for heterogeneous networks (lots of different vendors)
• Error correlation
• Root-cause analysis
• Service intelligence
• Lots of add-on products for Spectrum, e.g., VMware integration
• Local extensions/developments for special needs, e.g., new vendor xyz

With the object-oriented design of Spectrum, from its very first version, we had very important issues, such as fault isolation and root-cause analysis implemented by default!! Which means that we had through all these years very precise fault indications on where to look for the error and were not overwhelmed by long lists of alarm, which were only effects of the real fault.

So we then concentrated on building a virtual picture of the complete real IT infrastructure inside Spectrum. This includes today a very wide range of devices, which are modelled inside Spectrum and interconnected in the correct hierarchy as in the real environment. And, as the big buzzword today is IoT, this means for us as a service provider to our university users to deal with MoT = Monitoring of Things!!

The “new” things include devices such as coffee machines, fridges, temperature sensors, worktime badge systems, door opening scanners, house automation systems (for light, sun blinds, climate, etc.), smoke and fire detectors, etc. This list increases every year with new “things” popping up on our network radar!

Of course, the real IT devices like routers, switches, firewalls, servers, storage devices, WiFi access points, IP phones, and, importantly, printers, form the base of the big “virtual” Spectrum picture.

And last but not least, Spectrum by design can be expanded in its function by a series of add-ons, such as VMware integration, which reads out automatically the virtual servers in the vCenter and models all VM’s inside Spectrum in the corresponding physical servers. Another example of an add-on is the integration of a performance probe with scenarios that run periodically (i.e., log in to a webmail portal, check for the existance of a message xyz, lookup the calendar, etc.) and map those scenarios to objects within Spectrum, which can be handled like devices, so you can put thresholds on them and get alarmed when violated!

Thanks to Spectrum, we are able to monitor (and send out alarms for) our whole IT infrastructure 7/24 without having more than a minimal number of technical persons.

• Reporting
• Full web-based topology view
• Path view

I have used it since fall 1990. We’re a simple - but extremely long-term customer.

I only encountered stability issues in very rare situations; mainly when we used our own extensions for private management modules.

I have not encountered any scalability issues so far!

Technical support is excellent - 9.5 on a scale 0-10 - but this also includes support from the local Spectrum partner here in Switzerland.

I did not previously use a different solution. At the time (fall 1990), there were only very few products available, where just two or three of them had a graphical visualization.

Initial setup was completely straightforward, as the product already included a discovery and an auto-connect function.

Start small and include as much of your IT infrastructure as possible, so that at the end you have a picture of the “big” total.

We use DX Spectrum for monitoring secured networks.

The most valuable feature is the event correlation mechanism.

I also like the product's multi-customer approach.

They need a seamless integration to launch cloud-based management products of Broadcom.

In the future, more cloud-based solutions will be offered. It is necessary to strengthen the integration with other cloud-based products.

They also have other products that are Operational Intelligence, which is currently stand-alone and usually requires tighter integration. It should be simplified as well, as it is rather complex to create, and doesn't match the ideal situation. 

If the integration is simplified or improved, it will be a unique selling point in comparison to the competition on the market.

I have been working with DX Spectrum for 15 years.

Spectrum is quite stable.

DX Spectrum is very scalable.

Technical support is okay. A few years ago it was better, and I would have given them a ten out of ten, but now I would give them an eight out of ten.

We have extensive knowledge when it comes to using Spectrum. Some teams around me are using Zabbix.

The initial setup is quite complex. It takes a lot of knowledge, but it is well worth the effort.

We have our own consultants who are very knowledgeable key users.

The price is high enough to expect an ideal solution. It's expensive.

The price should be lower, it's not cheap, but we are willing to pay for it. For example, If you are asking for a Rolls Royce, you have to pay for a Rolls Royce.

I have been evaluating the differences between Spectrum and Zabbix, as well as the pricing.

For us, within that technology area, it is the standard for solutions that we can select. We haven't seen a better product.

Overall, I am happy with this solution.

Based on the current market, I would rate DX Spectrum a nine out of ten.

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.

The primary use case is eyes on glass, operations, responding to tickets, alerts, and incidents tickets. Performance wise it is good. We have a lot of different monitoring tools in the background, so orchestration has been a little bit of a challenge, but I think that is everybody right now. Overall it is a good tool.

• The ability to quickly identify and isolate incidents.
• Automate ticketing

With the service manager today, we are moving the service now into the future.

A lot of the filtering and orchestration of the background takes a lot of manual work. There are a lot of processes involved and it is hard to keep it up-to-date with a lot of moving parts. Making it more dynamic could be better. 

Stability has been good. We really have not had any issues.

Scalability has been good. 

I have not personally used the technical support.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

It is good, but there is a lot of growth opportunity in the space. I think CA and a lot of other companies are moving in the direction of orchestrating cross-platforms. Right now, the way we are using Spectrum is really only covering infrastructure and infrastructures out of the house. I think the future with APM and other tools, being able to see more holistically what's happening, is very critical. 

The most important thing is implementation, how it is implemented to enable the operations. In my current role, the operation's visibility and usability are the most important thing. So, making sure it is implemented in a way that it meets the requirement of the operation space. 

Spectrum is our correlation engine and an integration point of external monitoring tools. Also, we send UIM traffic to it, then we forward it onto SOI.

• The correlation
• The integration point

The biggest issue is our integration right now between UIM and Spectrum is lacking. It does not allow us to pass all the details. There is a new integration, which has the new version of UIM. I hope it clears up everything.

Spectrum has been very stable.

I do not think we had any scalability issues with Spectrum. We have one of the largest environments, and it is handling it just fine. 

For Spectrum, it is good. For other things, we have had some issues. We had a six day outage once on SOI, but we worked with CA to try to improve that. 

The negative is they have a tendency to ask us to do things that basically we have already done, like balance a service or disable all the policies or something like that. You can tell, they are just walking down a script. This not going to help; logic says this is not going to help anything. 

It would be helpful if they would try to look at the situation and decide this is something that really needs to happen or not. Instead of just doing it to say they have done it.

I was not involved in the initial setup. However, the biggest issue is setting up some of the custom traps is a little complicated. So, you have to have someone that really knows the tool. It could be a little more intuitive overall.

A valuable feature is the topology view. You can view the topology. Other valuable features are the host configuration, the NCM feature, the policy manager that it has and the scalability. That's one of the biggest ones.

When I started working, we only had 35,000 devices in there. Because of the scalability and all that, we have over 100,000 in Spectrum right now. All of them are SNMP managed.

We have a DR site. We are testing the latest release right now. In our production, we have 9.3.3 and it's running good. With our requirements as they are expanding, for example, one of the issues that we have is the global collection, the real-time global collections. For example, let’s say, just the southwest region has 15,000 devices, and that group wants to have interface global collection; that's going to be over 300,000-400,000 interfaces, and they wanted real-time interfaces. That really bogs down the database, so we are looking at 10.1. In there, the scalability is going to improve a lot with that.

There are certain attributes that we would like to be able to send northbound to different applications or different API calls that we can use. That is one area for improvement.

Also, I would like to see a unified poller, which they have already talked about. If I have Performance Center in Spectrum, I don't need to have separate servers for those same applications. I could have one unified poller, which is getting the traps and also polling information.

I have been using it for two years.

It is a very stable solution. Once you launch it correctly, you barely have to manage it.

The level-one support is the same as the support you get everywhere with every vendor, but the layer two and above, they are very good.

I am not sure how they knew they needed to invest in a new solution, but when I got in, Spectrum was on the rise of being implemented. Before this, we had NetCool.

When I select a vendor, first, I look at the product; how viable it is. Second, I look at the support that I'm going to get from the vendor. Those are the two major things that I look for.

Initial setup complexity depends on how big your environment is. If you're doing a distributed setup, then you need little bit of architecture help on how it's going to be built, but on a scale from one to ten, with one being easy and ten being hard, initial setup is between six and seven.

My company, they looked at vendors before Spectrum, but now Spectrum is the primary vendor for fault management.

My rating reflects its scalability and reliability. There are some minor issues, but that can be resolved.