DX Unified Infrastructure Management Reviews

There is a large selection of Application specific probes available. We are primarily a Microsoft shop, and most all of our needs are covered with what is offered. This relies on backend sources such as PerfMon counters, event viewer, services and similar. It covers our basic monitoring needs in this regard.

We use this in a Multi-Tenant environment as an MSP. Prior to UIM deployment, we were using SCOM which was overly complicated and difficult to manage. UIM fulfilled our needs at the time by allowing simpler deployment and management.

Although it is better than SCOM, it still needs major improvements to usability. If you need a rapid deployment solution, this is not the best tool for that job. You can create Super Packages which allow you to pre-configure Probes, but it still requires a lot of invested time to set up and still needs customized to each environment if they are not identical. UIM and its agent/probes rely on JRE7u45. Support is not offered for any newer versions at this time. I would like to see better rapid deployment options, interface updates, and less reliance on Java.

We have been using this solution since before CA bought it from Nimsoft. I have been using it for about a year.

We have run into instances where probes are no longer supported and are integral to our monitoring, and there is not a bulk solution for replacing with the new supported probe. If you are using the SSL Tunneling in the Hub Probe, Support has been unable to identify a method to monitor the tunnel status which is built into the Windows Service. Many times, the tunnel will experience communication issues and being queueing thousands of alarms, alerts, qos but we have no way of being notified until we notice we are no longer getting metrics. The Hub probe has not been reliable for us in the past several versions across various sites and we often need to work with their developers to resolve issues. SAN and Networking appliance compatibly is severely lacking (Dell EQL, Nimble, StorSimple, Cisco ASA, and more all have issues or have no support). You can custom create via SNMP MIBs, but this requires manual implementation.

Support has been very responsive to our requests. They understand the limitations of the software and do their best to accommodate our needs and issues, but the software just doesn’t seem to be meant for smaller businesses and needs a lot of hands on attention.

We previously used SCOM which is similar in many regards. This was the first product we evaluated and chose it mainly because they offered to customize it to fit our needs. Other vendors were not as responsive to our requests, although I feel they may have been a better fit overall.

It was not straightforward. There are many modifications you need to make to text based configuration files that are not well documented is deployment instructions. We have multiple CA solutions that were not easy to integrate. This required and still requires time with their developers to resolve issues.

We had an outside company assist with the installation. I would recommend getting as much hands on time as possible with an expert. UIM is not intuitive, there is a high learning curve.

If you have a large scale deployment or resell services and have a dedicated administrator with java dev experience, pricing may be suitable for you. CA is one of the more expensive solutions, and not one of the best in its category.

UIM is showing its age, and need a major overhaul to keep up with competitors. I would recommend using other solutions.

This product helps our organization by providing a shared model to the customer which reduces the cost for humans and infrastructure via the multi-tenancy feature.

• Storage monitoring

• Bi-directional Integration with ticketing tools like ServiceNow, BMC Remedy etc.
• Application code level monitoring for the entire workflow on different platforms like Java, .NET, etc.
• Server certificate monitoring
• Bi-directional integration with other monitoring tools like IBM Tivoli, SCOM, ScienceLogic, SolarWinds etc.

• Only EMC Clarion, IBM, Hitachi and NetApp is possible
• No exhaustive viewable dashboard on the health of storages
• Capacity forecasting not available
• Doesn’t support SMS alerting via GSM modem, but works with cloud SMS web application which in-turn requires lot of manual effort to configure
• Enterprise alarm console view lacks event correlation even from the base level
• No run book automation feature in place to enable
• Reporting customization for needs is a complex mechanism
• Less capability on individual device dash boards and service health dashboards
• Huge customizations for creating each dashboard as there are no OOB dashboards available
• Network Discovery is less than excellent on the devices categories, discovery modes (SNMP, WMI).
• Doesn't have the intelligence to group devices automatically based on the device type
• Network topology is not automatic as it requires lot of manual interventions to define
• Web portal views for different categories of infrastructure components is not in OOB feature, needs a lot of manual intervention
• Web portal is not available for OOB like the application HA
• HTTPS enabling for web application doesn't work as expected due to certificate issues
• Multi-tenancy feature lacks in segregation of devices in the database which has the same IP in multiple customer environment

We've had no issues with deployment.

We've had no issues with stability.

We've had no issues with scalability.

Support SLA for response and resolution is pathetic, even the quality of resolution is not up to the level of expectations. Take enterprise support subscription as the basic support will not be effective during critical incidents.

We have it integrated with Salesforce, so it’s great for auto creating, sending data to Salesforce and creating cases, proactively monitoring our customers' systems.

Deploying and setting up are pretty straightforward; the only issue I’ve seen is slowness of the infrastructure manager GUI because of the size of our install.

It allows us to maintain our SLAs with customers by alerting us when there are or about to be issues – drive space alerts, service status, ping alerts, performance alerts.

The UI seems sluggish at times. When you go to maneuver or browse through, it takes a while to update. When you set up new systems, it takes a while for them to show up. Patience is key. I’d be curious to see if there are any plans to have command-line management capabilities to deal with the sluggishness of the GUI.

Deployment was straightforward.

I see performance issues when I’m in UIM and it’s due to the amount of hubs we’re monitoring.

I’ve used other products in much smaller implementations, but I like the way you can preconfigure things; you can drop the packages and probes on the servers you’re using. It gets done.

We deploy to customer sites so I spend a lot of time dealing with firewall administrators, so if you’re going to be using it in this type of environment where you’re sending alerts back to your central office, you’d want to make sure the ports are open. Make sure you configure antivirus exclusions as well.

• The nimbus architecture
• Scalability
• Modular design
• Product coverage
• Ease of deployment

• Documentation
• Product releases
• Testing
• Transparency regarding bugs and closed support cases
• Honesty from the vendor on what is and what isn’t important from their portfolio of products

I've used it for five years.

It depends on the version.

The probes (basic components that can, amongst other things, monitor particular systems) can be buggy. More often than not new releases are to fix issues rather than add new functionality. The core components are fairly robust for the environments I have worked on. CA support are quick to act when issues arise however and the community has excellent contributors which can provide key insights into problems as well as identifying them before they arise.

I think the product is quite strong in this regard, but maybe not so much the underlying database. If the deployment is going to be extremely large than a clued up DBA is a must.

It's very good, they give us regular product updates. We also have calls with our account manager, and attend biannual conferences.

They are generally very good but occasionally I feel like I’m being purposefully stalled so that their SLAs aren’t breached. However, I can appreciate that all of the basics must be ticked off in case something basic was missed and so that a clear picture of the problem can be built up. There is always the opportunity to escalate to the account manager who returns with a swift and clear response.

No, but I have evaluated other solutions and deemed them unsuitable to switch to. Some solutions do, though, have novel ideas which could be more appealing to organisations with different needs.

This really depends on the environment in question, whether it is a single subnet on a Windows lenient group policy, security policy, short data retention periods, basic reporting to internal staff and a small amount of industry standard hardware/software is fairly easy to set up. Thousands of distributed, diverse servers and devices in a multi-tenant environment that needs years of data to be at the fingers tips of people with different access privileges across the world would not be so easy.

The sizing of the environment is very important, and the deployment needs to be carried out by someone with a bit of experience.

We implemented it in-house.

• ScienceLogic
• SolarWinds
• System Center
• Nagios

Get an expert to guide you through it. Don’t expect miracles, you get out what you put in, no solution is the holy grail. You should become a developer to really see the benefits of the product and get involved with the community to share your thoughts and ideas, CA listens to their customers feedback.

Extensibility - ability to centrally manage large enterprises.

Consolidated multiple enterprise monitoring tools into a single toolset (Nimsoft). Reduced staff required to support the enterprise.

Reporting.

Approximately five years.

Minimal, if any.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

8/10.

6/10.

We previously used Solarwinds Orion (NPM), and IBM Netcool. The main issues with them were scalability, features, and cost.

It was complex due to the size and requirements of our company. Most deployments are typically not as complex.

Primarily our in-house team.

• BMC Patrol
• IBM Netcool
• HP Operations

Ensure that you have a competent and experienced person doing the initial architecture.

Their concept of probes, where you have a lot of predefined items that you collect. Also, their baseline thresholds that speed up a lot the implementation, and the evolution of the monitoring system.

For example, once you have applied the SQL Server Probe, it collects all sorts of data -- from the log size to the time that each query is taken to execute on the database -- with the same click.

In terms of features, it is easy to use and implement, and CA provide solid support.

In the past we would spend months in meetings with a new customer, defining what they wanted to monitor, and most of the time we would come back home to see if that was possible to do. However, with CA UIM, we can provide our clients with a predefined menu of items to collect, and we can select those faster and more efficiently.

We have been able to automate the Active Directory user provisioning integrated with the HR systems. This means that was can provide users with a self-service password reset tool. Also, it has given us Log Management for our daily routines.

They need to improve in their mobile interface to enable access to the dashboards through that channel. Their application requires a lot of servers to run, so that architecture is also something that requires attention.

A module for keyboard and mouse actions would be very interesting, for actions that cannot be performed differently. Also, it would be interesting for them to enable SAP integration in the future.

We have been using UIM/Nimsoft for about two years now.

It requires a very skilled team to be able to deploy that application, and if you don’t invest in training and don’t go over a long training period, you might find it difficult to deploy.

The application requires a lot of capacity to run and grow, so it’s important that you be aware of the impact of the growth of your IT infrastructure on the monitoring system.

Capacity management must be done on a regular basis if your IT environment grows too quickly.

6/10.

7/10.

We used to use a Nagios-based solution that was cheaper, but the problem was that we didn’t have the proper support, especially for application management such as SAP, Oracle, Citrix, Amazon, etc. With CA UIM we were able to start monitoring those applications out of the box.

The initial setup was complex due to the training hours, as the technical team had to go through it to be able to use the application to its full potential.

We did it in-house.

I think that’s always something harder to measure, but I would say that we were able to gain some clients due to this change to CA UIM.

Since we provide services using the CA UIM platform, I would say that for a partner they have a very strong pricing approach.

We evaluated SolarWinds and Nagios.

First of all design do a analysis of what kind of process you can automate in your company, that way will be easier for you to capture value from a solution like this. It's important to pay attention to the infrastructure requirements.

Easy to setup, easy to maintain, lots of different probes out-of-the box. Well-documented API for custom scenarios.

This product serves as our eyes. Once it's broken - we're blind.

Web GUI (WASP) should be further developed as in some cases it has issues and instabilities. Some functions are being duplicated in Web and console, I wish they were in one place to avoid overwriting the configuration.

Been using it for 5 years already.

Most of the time all goes well. Sometimes (very rare) in a complex network with lots of firewalls a communication issue with robots can occur and it's not always easy to diagnose the cause.

Stability issues I faced were caused by wrong planning and extremely high load on the DB. Once this is sorted out, the core is stable. Web GUI sometimes had stability issues, but 98% of the time it's stable.

No issues with scalability, the product can be used in a large enterprise. Different admins can manage their scope of devices and their hubs without interfering with main servers.

Can't say anything bad about CA's customer service.

Support is good. Though, colleagues say that pre-CA it was better.

I haven't used such enterprise-grade tools before Nimsoft. Only specific ones, like Wireshark & PRTG.

Initial setup was straightforward. Though, of course, it has to be planned in advance in case of complex system.

First one was an in-house one. Now I am working for the integrator and we're implementing these systems for our customers.

Yes, we did evaluate other products, but I don't remember which ones. We liked Nimsoft's ease of use and inner design.

If you need an all-in-one solution that's easy to maintain, to scale and that you can rely on - Nimsoft Monitor is a good solution.

We use UIM primarily for monitoring and managing all of our clients. As an MSP we need some kind of tool to be able to go out and do that. CA UIM has fit the bill quite nicely.

It's been pretty good. It does have its hiccups. It takes a fair amount of customization, but overall it's done what we need it to do and, when it doesn't out of the box, we are able to actually go in and tinker it enough to make it suit our needs quite nicely. So it's been doing a pretty good job.

It's the outcome of our being able to perform our job and gather the information we need in order to provide value to our customers. The real value is our being able to pull all the historic data that we need in order to gather every little metric and nuanced piece of information from a given device, a given piece of infrastructure, in order for us to generate alerts. 

If we want to notify our clients, or for us to turn around and maybe run reports to proactively identify an issue with a device, that may not seem evident at first. But when you have all the pieces of the puzzle together, and when you can see these metrics aren't necessarily lining up nicely and they're acting a little bit abnormal, we can put that together for a bigger picture and provide a recommended action.

The convenience of both the web portal as well as the thick client. We are able to go in and actually leverage the thick client for a nice, easy drag and drop solution. It works out really nicely, especially for our front-end team. The team that I am on is actually quite small, so we need to leverage our front-end team to assist with making changes, and actually running the software. Having the GUI, that simple user interface, really helps us to offload that work to that front-end team to help free up our time.

Usually it's reliability issues. Some of the components don't always function as intended, or don't function as you would think they should. 

To give a specific example, within this product there are individual probes, and each of these probes doesn't always necessarily output the same kind of information into our database. So when we try to collect QoS data, from one probe we might get a ton of information, lots of good stuff that we can use in our database, but then from another probe we might not get so much, or we might not be able to pull the things that we want to.

I'd also like to see more probes and more templates. More probes in the sense that we were coming across devices that we're expected to monitor and manage for which, out of the box, there isn't a nice clean solution. There are probes that are dedicated for certain devices and certain device types, which is great. But then there are times we come across nuanced products for which we have to develop our own solution. There are probes that exist in there that allow us to make a customized solution, but it takes a lot more time.

The other element is that there are no real templates, out of the box. Let's go with an example where we do have the probe, which is great, and we do have a really nuanced customer with a small set of devices that maybe not a lot of other customers use. There might not be a template in place, so effectively we have the tool in front of us but we still need to develop a solution. So it would be really nice to see a little bit more of something like a central repository of templates that we could use. That would help us expedite our onboarding process.

Stability is pretty good. As I said, it does have its hiccups at times. We use an on-prem solution, so for the most part it's pretty good. 

Our issue comes in scaling. We're hitting a point with our customer base where we brought on enough clients in using the software that we're starting to hit some interesting connectivity hurdles. As a result of that, some things can take one or two attempts for it to work the way we want it to; maybe probes closing out or a connectivity from our primary infrastructure right down to one of our client sites. It can take two or three approaches, but overall its pretty good. There just are those occasional hiccups. 

They're good. Their response time has been pretty good. They don't necessarily always have the answer I want, but that may be because the answer I want doesn't necessarily exist, so I can't fault them for that. But overall the response is pretty good. As far as the turnaround time, it's fast, the quality of the support answers that we get is usually pretty good.

There have been times where its been a little bit insufficient, in the sense that we might have needed to move it to a different engineer, or they may need to escalate it to go to their development team and get some answers, and the time frame on that can slow down a little bit. But for the most part, it's been pretty good.

I was not involved in the initial setup but we did a major refresher and I was involved with that.

It was pretty easy actually. It's a relatively simple project to set up. It's difficult to master but easy to initially deploy and configure, so I'd say it was pretty easy, off the bat.

My most important criteria when selecting a vendor are

• level of support
• reliability of the tool
• functionality of the tool and 
• cost, obviously. 

Know what kind of products you are going to be using UIM to monitor and manage, and ensure that the compatibility is there. Because if there is not out-of-the-box compatibility, it can take a significant amount of time and effort to make things work.