DX Unified Infrastructure Management Reviews

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.

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 deploy these solutions to customers like big banks, here in Nigeria, as well as in some government agencies. We liaise with the OEM of the product to deploy the solution for the customer. We do infrastructure management projects, all with CA products.

We use it for infrastructure monitoring across the board. We monitor our clients' infrastructure from a central location: their servers, applications, etc., from end-to-end.

It used to take longer to identify issues and to resolve them. But with this solution, we are able to know exactly where an issue is coming from and to tackle it. It helps us to reduce the time and cost involved and the number of employees involved. That's where it gives us added value.

It gives us visibility inside applications. It helps us to dig down and find the root cause of any issue within the network. It flags issues and sends an alert or SMS so we can dive down and know exactly where an issue is coming from, and resolve it as quickly as possible.

One issue I'm having with CA now is the complexity of the solution. They have APM now, Application Performance Manager, as part of it. I think they are still trying to understand how the application works. In terms of deployment, it's not straightforward. We are having issues with that. APM is not really user-friendly, in terms of the dashboard. People want to see a dashboard on the screen, to understand in real-time what is happening.

Also, there is something a customer requested from us. They wanted to know if we could manipulate the script to do the following. If an alarm is sent by the product they want to see it scrolling on the NOC monitor, instead of them having to click it.

There is also room for improvement in the reporting. It is not really good enough, according to our customers. So what we now usually do is use Power BI to get them the kinds of reports they want.

Sometimes we contact CA itself. They log in and help us to resolve some of the issues. I would give them 8.5 out of ten.

We did not have a previous solution. I have tried other solutions, such as Microsoft SSCM and SolarWinds. I've played around with them, but I have not really used them.

First of all, we get the stakeholders together and gather their requirements, exactly what they want to do. We can then provide them with the tech for the solution. We engage their different units to understand their processes. So, by the time we present the concept for approval, they will sign off and we can commence implementation.

We use an in-house consultant to gather the information. There is also a company called Feedware, a foreign company we partner with. They are quite good, but in terms of response time they do respond on time. In all other ways they are okay.

CA is a very nice solution. Before you make a final decision though, make sure all the stakeholders understand the solution and how it works. If they don't understand how it works they might not be able to appreciate it. It's a powerful solution, but give them some visibility into it, its capabilities and what they can do with it, before implementing it.

I would rate the solution at eight out of ten. It's not a ten because of the reporting aspect. Apart from that, the solution is okay. It's the reporting that users complain about.

Complete IT infrastructure monitoring including servers, applications, database, cloud, and network devices.

• Ease of usage for administrators.
• Flexibility with monitoring and statistics collection.
• Latest version of tool comes integrated with Jaspersoft reporting solution, giving excellent reports.
• Dashboards are pretty good.

• Stability
• Alarm segregation

Two years.

WASP failed to start on time.

Yes, prior to version 8.5.

An eight out of 10.

No.

Initial setup was a straightforward and a comfortable operation.

Vendor plus in-house.

Not applicable.

Reasonable setup cost and licensing prices.

The product is easy to configure. Simplicity is the most valuable asset of CA UIM.

Monitoring has been easy and streamlined. Its ability to integrate with CA SDM and its capability to receive SNMP traps from other tools, makes it simple to integrate.

Improvements could be made to the reporting and analytics features. The OOB report templates and analytics can be improved.

I have used it for 3 years.

There were no stability issues. It is a very stable product with agents not failing that often.

There were no scalability issues.

Technical support has been good.

Initial setup was straightforward. For someone with experience of any monitoring tool, read the manual once and implementation is pretty easy.

I found the product to be cost effective and licensing is not complex.

Go ahead and implement it. Keep it simple in a phased manner. Set expectations correctly. (This is not a synthetic or real user monitoring tool.)

It provides us with great detailed information that can be easily reported and delivered to customers. The mobile app takes it to the next level. You can have the customer log in from anywhere and access the data.

We can deliver quality information to the customer, but then also add or bill revenue to solve those issues that were identified through UIM. It seems like the direction moving forward is not an infrastructure manager and this component and that component. UIM brings it more together, but simplification would be good.

It takes a bit of getting used to with all the different acronyms and terminology. It's also not the easiest tool to use.

We've had issues from the get go, but they have gotten better since we upgraded 8.31. Through implementation, we discovered that the company that architected the solution did it incorrectly. So four months in, the install had to be redone and reconfigured to a tiered architecture. We have had a couple issues that support has never seen before, but we were able to work through it. I think we are on a pretty good path now.

It's great. We're considering large scaling, but at this point we have a vision to be much larger and we think we can utilize that functionality.

We've had some good and we've had some bad technical support. It seems like they are very quick to deliver just a .pdf document that says, "Try this." Once you try that, you get higher upper-level support. They really know the product and they're always willing to help.

The initial setup is pretty complex. We had their preferred vendor do the install and there were some issues from the get go. It would have been better to have an initial evaluation, where they could have learned the environment just a little bit for a day or two and then apply that to their standard practice. We were delayed because certain network things were not disclosed and different requirements. That kind of drew things out for a bit.

You can get some good information from UIM. Just make sure to ask a lot of questions along the way and make sure that you have a good understanding of your business before you actually move into implementation.

It reduced cycles for a lot of quick out-of-the-box functionality. 

It also allowed us to get away from being stuck in SNMP, VTP V2, based off of agent deployment.

Easy admin functionality. You can quickly do all the admin functionality without reducing the cycles. 

Continue to advance the filter capabilities, and more input fields.

It's very great, it's always up, it's available; don't have any outages.

Great. It's easy to push out across numerous servers. Very scalable. 

Resolution of problems happens quickly. If not, it gets advanced to product support and they do an exceptional job working with us.

We used eHealth, which was owned by CA. It was getting close to end of life, and it was also stuck on SNMP version 2. Moving to UIM allowed us to remove ourselves from the REST registry, and start doing agent deployment.

I give it an eight out of 10, for dependability, reduced cycles, and functionality.