Plixer Scrutinizer Reviews

Our primary use case is monitoring bandwidth and being able to go back and look at bandwidth issues.

We are on the latest version.

It helps us determine what is going on with our Internet and who is hogging it all up. If we get a real high throughput or a throughput that's going over and getting dropped fairly quickly, we can tell who (or what device) is consuming that traffic. That was our main use case for buying it to start with. Going forward, we will start using it for other stuff too.

We have only had it a couple of months, so we've not really dug into it a lot, but being able to know bandwidth is the main thing.

• Being able to monitor VPN user traffic has been nice. 
• Being able to monitor interfaces, in general. 
• We do a little bit of reporting, but we're just getting into that.

I wish the reporting side was easier to work with, but it does a decent job. I also wish the reporting side was a little more intuitive or they offered more reporting examples.

Their user videos could be a little better. They provided me a couple of training videos, but they were very generic in nature. E.g., if they had training videos specific to Cisco or Palo Alto firewall to give training to show you specifically within Scrutinizer what you could be looking at. They did provide a basic and an advanced training video. However, even the advanced training video doesn't break down into detail, and on the configuration side, that would be nice.

We've had it about two months.

I haven't had any stability issues with it at all. I haven't seen it flake out or experienced database issues.

I'm the only person who maintains and upgrades it.

It is easily scalable. I haven't seen any issues with it.

It is in full production. It monitors several firewalls, like Cisco Firepower, and IPS.

We only have three users who are using this solution as end users. We are all network administrators. It gives anybody within our group the ability to troubleshoot it easier.

The technical support was good.

We have Splunk, but Splunk doesn't give us the type of info that this does. Splunk is really clunky and hard to use. We still have Splunk, but we use it more as a security means for network means.

We have used the free version of PRTG, but that solution was clunky.

It was a pretty straightforward setup. I wouldn't call it complex.

The deployment took about four hours. We still expanding on it though.

I did the deployment.

We have seen ROI.

The solution has helped to reduce the time to resolution for network and/or security events by 50 percent.

There are no extra costs. It's about $8,000 a year. The bang for the buck (cost) is definitely a plus.

They gave us a 30-day license. We did a 30-day demo. We installed it, knowing that if we bought it, we could just add a license and continue on. So, we did a 30-day PoC, and they gave us good support during that time.

The solution has been around for a while. The monitoring of our firewalls was the driving concept for choosing it. They did well with demonstrating that ability.

We evaluated Cisco Stealthwatch, but it was so cost prohibitive that we did not go that route. It was about 10 times more expensive than Scrutinizer. Cisco Stealthwatch was very clunky and use. The menus were very different. While you could get a ton of information, you really had to dig to get it. There was some better features obviously, because the cost is a lot higher. It's more of a security network product, but it was hard to use and cost prohibitive. Also, we saw that its ongoing maintenance to keep it running would be a nightmare. There was a lot you had to do to keep it working correctly.

I would rate it an eight (out of 10).

My company's clients use Plixer Scrutinizer for network monitoring elements, like CPE, and for a bit of network inventory management.

Plixer Core Platform is a valuable feature and a good software. Plixer Scrutinizer uses NetFlow analysis to monitor whatever is there in a network. Price-wise, Plixer Scrutinizer is not an expensive product. Basically, Plixer Scrutinizer is an affordable product. Plixer Scrutinizer is a tool that allows for customization, especially in scenarios where customers need new product features.

Plixer Scrutinizer is a tool that can integrate with any other brand or product in the market, so it is not an area of concern.

I don't have deep enough knowledge to comment on what requires improvements in Plixer Scrutinizer.

In Plixer Scrutinizer, scalability is an area with minor concerns where improvements are required.

I have been using Plixer Scrutinizer for four months. My company operates as a distributor for Plixer Scrutinizer in the Indonesian market. I use the solution's latest version.

I would describe Plixer Scrutinizer as a solution offering a medium stability level.

Plixer Scrutinizer is a highly scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Plixer Scrutinizer allows its users to monitor more than 100 devices.

My company's clients who use Plixer Scrutinizer are mostly enterprise-sized businesses and a telecom company.

I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

Positive

I rate the initial setup of Plixer Scrutinizer an eight and a half on a scale of one to ten, where one is a difficult setup, and ten is an easy setup.

I rate Plixer Scrutinizer's price a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price or affordable, and ten is high price or expensive.

Plixer Scrutinizer is a tool that is able to fulfill the needs of my company's customers who use it in their environments.

I recommend the product to those who plan to use it.

I rate the overall tool an eight out of ten.

The primary use case was statistics. Now, it's mainly security and operations.

I am using the latest version.

It has become an essential and helpful tool for in my daily work. If we didn't have access to the tool, we would have more difficulty getting a long-term overview on the growth of our network. As we have gathered statistics for more than 10 years, we know about the implementation of traffic on our network to also justify our work and investments. From my point of view, it would be more difficult without a NetFlow accounting tool.

The solution helps enrich the data context of our network traffic. A very good example is a feature recently discovered denied firewall flows, which helps us understand what's going on in our DMZ. It also helps us figure out misconfigurations, It is really a very helpful feature.

It shows us the saturation of the network of devices. It gives us a clear view of the flows in the network to understand, for instance, planning upgrades in the network to get an idea of what's going on in the network for traffic flows. It gives us insight, for instance, on what's going on our VPN Client. There are a lot of things where it provides very helpful information. It also gives us our security reports with quite detailed information on what's going on in the network, and whether there are data exfiltrations and so on.

In a few cases, it has helped resolve network events. It has also helped resolve security events. We found a couple of security issues that we wouldn't have found without the tool.

• The automatic reports that we use for statistical purposes.
• The security analytics.
• The security alarms.

I have been using it for more than 10 years. My company has been using it longer.

On a scale from zero to 10, the stability is about an eight. From time to time, we have some issues that need to be fixed by their support. Usually, the support fixes the issues quite quickly. I would say it is between good and very good, in that range.

There is one person (the head of the network group) who maintains the server right now. There is also a backup if they are not available. We have a few people who are able to do some configurations on the system.

My personal impression right now is that we've reached a limit, or we are near a limit of flows per second, because we see that our system is getting quite slow. I suppose it's a hardware issue, not an issue of the software.

The actual size of the network is above 3000 users.

They are really great. With my most recent experience, two days ago, they responded quite quickly. They're immediately available. Usually, they have a solution to fix the issue during the call or web conference. With the most recent call, I had four questions and issues. They didn't say open four cases. They fixed or answered the four questions, then asked me whether I had other questions at the end. The support is perfect.

I never used another NetFlow accounting solution. I got to know the NetFlow concept at my current company.

The initial setup didn't seem to be that complicated. I found it already implemented, but we did a lot of migration steps. It seems to be quite easy to implement.

If I would have to implement it again, Scrutinizer is not that difficult to implement versus any other appliance. It is more complex to configure the exporters, but there is a lot of current, good documentation on the Plixer site for this.

In our situation with 25 exporters, it might take a half a week to do the implementation of the server. It's usually performed by Plixer, or with the help of Plixer and the hotline. First of all, I would use the test license to do a proof of concept to do the implementation. Then, I would test one or two devices, gathering some reports. I would also create an implementation plan.

We have seen ROI.

We recently bought a license upgrade, so we will integrate more exporters. We upgraded from a 25 exporter license to a 50 exporter license. Therefore, there will be more flows, and this will be an extension.

Compared to other solutions, the functionality Scrutinizer delivers is better.

I have one comparison to another product, which also has very basic NetFlow accounting.

When dimensioning the server hardware, we decided to have many CPUs, much memory and a large storage, but we learned that the storage has to be as fast as possible. It would have been better to invest in SSDs instead of HDDs.

We thought about using FlowPro. We see a very good use case for it, but right now we are working just with the flow collector for enhanced reporting.

It is really a very good security improvement. In the last two years, we learned that it's a very good security tool to learn more about what's going on in the network, not only in terms of network saturation, but mainly in terms of security incidents and break out.

It's a NetFlow collector.

It helps provide reporting information to our customers, which is also part of certain regulations that we have in the UK. 

The solution is similar to an automation process because we can automate and schedule reports. From a workflow process, the pipeline is automated. We would need to have a lot of people doing many reports in Excel instead of using one product. The solution emails us when we need it and on a periodic basis automatically.

The insight the solution provides as a result of its correlation of traffic flows and metadata is very good, fast, and accurate. It is one of our go-to tools when there is an issue and we want to do some accounting on the network.

The solution has helped reduce the time to resolution for network and security events by three to four hours.

Visualization of the network traffic is the most valuable feature. It allows you to drill into information quite quickly.

The solution helps enrich the data context of our network traffic. It allows us to easily visualize data flows and data usage. This helps keep management happy.

It would be useful if there was a way to back up the configuration information. E.g., if you wanted to deploy a new instance or disaster recovery, you could quite easily deploy and restore the config, as opposed to having to restore all the NetFlow data. If there was just a button that said "backup config information", that would be good.

About four years.

We're happy with it. The solution is stable.

We have one person who is required for deployment and maintenance. Their role is network administrator.

It's scalable for what we need. It has a lot more functionality than what we use. We can distribute the collection engine and some things like that, but we're not using that because we don't need to. It is there if we do need it.

There are varied roles across different teams. There are about 20 users, in total, who are mainly network operators.

The technical support has been excellent. Any problems that we have had, the technical support has been able to remedy and resolve them. But, there haven't been very many problems.

The workflow integration within a single platform has allowed us to remove redundant tooling. So, it streamlines that process into less workflows. It's allowed us to consolidate network statistical information. We have eliminated tools like SolarWinds, ntop, and some Linux utilities.

The primary reason that we switched to Scrutinizer was the interface. I saw a demonstration of the product at one of the security seminars where it was advertised as Splunk for network data. That's exactly the type of product we were looking for and it gave us that functionality. It was also able to deliver as expected.

Other requirements that we had were that it was multi-vendor, scalable, and a single-appliance solution. So, we didn't need to have a lot of database servers or Microsoft Servers and could run it as a virtual machine.

The product, Scrutinizer, was simple and straightforward to set up. Where we had trouble was not with the actual Plixer product, but with the sFlow sending. Although the issue wasn't with Scrutinizer, the support was able to help us resolve the issue.

The deployment took two weeks, start to finish. We had a test environment. A large part of those two weeks was setting a test environment up, having to play around with how we send data to Scrutinizer, and the NetFlow data. When we did a pilot, it resolved any problems with Scrutinizer directly. Then, we deployed into the live environment.

We deployed it. Plixer was there with technical support from the sFlow perspective. We didn't need them for the actual deployment.

It probably saves somebody at least one day a month at minimum.

We have increased the license over time. We have added more licenses as the network has grown.

There is a recurring maintenance fee after the initial purchase or if we want the license upgrade.

We already had some solutions in place. So, we evaluated Scrutinizer, which did what we needed it to do. At the same time, we were evaluating open source and SolarWinds.

Scrutinizer does exactly what we need it to do. We're very happy with it. We're not looking to change in the short-term or long-term. It's a product that runs without any issues and gives the information that we need.

Compared to previous solutions that we have used, this solution is a lot more intuitive, less clunky, and resource-hungry.

• Remember to save the reports.
  
• Give reports different file names.
• Understand how to back up and restore the configuration information. 
• If you use the building tools for the sizing for history information, they're quite accurate. 
• If you want to go back many months or years, you need more storage for that. 
• If you want a higher resolution to get into the data, make sure you size appropriately.

Try the free demo or evaluation copy of it. You should be happy with it, if it does what you need it to do. 

I would rate the solution a nine (out of 10). 

Our primary use is troubleshooting. Our secondary use is capacity planning, investigations, and reporting. We use it with multiple vendors sending flows to us.

The solution helps us enrich our network traffic. It's really because of the ability to do host-to-host troubleshooting. We can see and isolate where the challenge or problem might be.

When used to troubleshoot a potential bad actor or issue, we have literally able to cut down our time to resolution drastically. For example, we had a "runaway instance" of hogging and taking up excessive resources from a source to a destination, and this allowed us to isolate it within minutes. Any tool of this type, if you know how to use it, will drastically reduce your time to troubleshoot.

The whole thing is valuable because it's such a massive product. We love every bit of it. We use every bit of it that we can. The reporting and generating troubleshooting reports would be the best feature; our host-to-host conversation reporting.

Knowing that they're coming out with a new user interface, that is an area where there is room for improvement. There are so many variables. They should limit the variables in the user interface and create some classes, like "simple," "novice," and "expert" to narrow down the variables within it.

We have been using the solution for about five years. We keep the version up to date, within 30 days of whenever it's deployed. We use it on-premise, but we literally just asked for a quote for the private cloud version.

It's rock-solid. 

It sits there and it runs solidly. There are multiple people in there every day doing some sort of report-generation or review. We don't have any plan to expand usage.

The scalability is excellent. It more than meets our needs. We had a certain size and we've had no problems scaling up and down.

The solution's technical support is second to none.

They set it up for us. It was straightforward. Start to finish, we were done in two days because that's how long they were onsite.

It was done by the vendor. Our experience with them was fantastic. They are some of the most knowledgeable people. I would put their knowledge — the people that they have and how long I've worked with them, how long they retain them, and how good they are, and how much they all know — I would put them on par with the best I've worked with in my 25 years in IT.

Our entire solution, amortized over five years, is in the vicinity of $40,000 to $50,000 a year. There are no additional costs because they're appliances. We buy them full-blown.

We liked this one the best of the ones we evaluated. We chose Scrutinizer over two other solutions. One was the incumbent but it was so long ago that I don't remember its name. We also reviewed LiveAction LiveNX.

The capacity the Plixer system can handle and the cost of that capacity were among the deciding factors, as was the performance when you run reports and get results. This is a big tool and it's analytics. Minutes count when something's broken. Scrutinizer did it faster. If something took five minutes, Scrutinizer took three.

I don't think it lost in any category that we cared about.

Compared to the other solutions, it is in the top two for usability, and it is at the top for capacity, performance, and cost.

In addition, the vendor's years of experience in delivering security and network visibility influenced our decision absolutely. We knew their support was excellent, that the vendor has the knowledge, and there was also the fact that they did this one thing and this one thing only. They concentrate on doing it really well. It wasn't a secondary offering. This is their job. This is their only task, and they do it really well.

Whatever other solutions you want to look at, benchmark them against this solution. No matter what product you're looking at, do a bake-off with this and see who wins. If you don't give him a chance, you're not going to know. You're going to miss out. I really feel, after reviewing three at one time and knowing some other ones, the bang and performance for the dollars, and the capacity and the flexibility; it's really second to none in those situations. Other ones might have matched it in one or two of those criteria, but all they did was match it. They didn't win in any of them.

It's a collector of information and it works great.

Our biggest lesson from using Scrutinizer is that, even as you generate reports and use it, it feels like an educational tool. It helps to educate us. You learn a lot more about general networking using the tool mainly because you understand it, in the same way you learn your ABCs before you learn to spell. It's the whole crawl, walk, run theory.

There are about 25 people using it, and their roles are all IT infrastructure. This helps everybody in the organization, all 3,500 people. But if you ask them, aside from the 25, only five in the broader organization would know that it helps them. You couldn't even ask them whether it helps them because we get warnings and reports and we're able to isolate and troubleshoot in ten minutes an issue that might have taken more than ten minutes. That's why we have the tool. We let everybody view certain things, so if I click "Send a Report" to somebody in IT, all 500 people in IT could look at it and it might mean something to them; it might not.

In terms of maintenance, there are only two people who maintain and run this on an ongoing basis and it takes less than one percent of their time. They have plenty of other stuff to do. That's why it's good to have this tool. It's just stable and solid.

We used this solution for MTA. I am responsible for the network; I would have been the only person using this solution.

As I didn't get it fully up and running, I can't really say what features were best. 

When you download Windows 10 and first log in, it says something like, "Welcome. We're setting up a few things, we'll be right with you. We're going to customize some things and get it going for you." Then, it just loads to a desktop and nothing else happens. You don't have the applications installed. You don't have any customization, it's just a default setup. That's essentially what we had. We had a default setup. We were trying to set up some configuration, but it just wasn't quite working properly.

We couldn't get it set up properly. We had multiple meetings. They apparently noted down what I was asking for, but we just went back and forth, and we just couldn't get the thing to work or configure properly.

Those discussions were with their sales guy and their sales engineer. They set up a demo for me. They were working with me to try to set up some configurations — some customization within it. It wasn't very intuitive. They gave me documentation, that wasn't very user-friendly. They just didn't seem to understand what I was trying to do. So we just went back and forth, back and forth.

It was like calling McDonald's and asking for a cheeseburger, and they give you some chicken nuggets. I'd say, "This isn't working for me. I want a hamburger. You gave me chicken nuggets". I would ask for this and they'd give me something else that didn't make any sense. After multiple meetings, eventually, I was like, "I'm done." Then I started looking at Awake Security and started looking at some other MTA's out there. 

I used Plixer Scrutinizer for a few months. I never got it fully configured. I ran into a bunch of problems and I just couldn't quite get it working properly.

We didn't experience any bugs.

They need better customer service that can help you make the trial experience better.

We had some challenges with the configuration — that's one of the reasons why we stopped using it.

My advice is to make sure you have a good experience during the trial that you set up.

Overall, from my short experience with this solution, I would give it a rating of five out of ten.

I use Plixer Scrutinizer for Network traffic analysis.

When comparing Plixer Scrutinizer to NetFlow Analyzers and Microfocus NPS (Network Performance Solution), the features I found most valuable in Plixer Scrutinizer are the ease of access, particularly in the GUI, and the ease of the solution.

The most valuable features of Plixer Scrutinizer are its ease of use, accessibility, and UI.

I would recommend having more data points. Plixer Scrutinizer cannot handle high traffic volumes.

This is NetFlow Analyzer, and the number of data points, or the massive volume of information is stored. There are numerous processes running inside a router. As a result, a massive amount of data is being logged in this Plixer Scrutinizer. 

It is my understanding that when the flows are too high, the solution cannot handle them, and it is not simply a matter of scaling it up. For example, on ACI, you can define Cisco ACI core switches, and it is found that on Plixer Scrutinizer they are unable to handle the traffic volume. 

When I'm talking about a core switch or another switch that has a large amount of traffic flowing through it, the solution is also incapable of handling it.

In terms of data aggregation and storage, while I was not managing it, one of the feedbacks, specifically to this solution. I can't comment further on the technical side of things, but from a user standpoint, the team was only keeping the real-time log for one day. Then, for three days, it switches to five-minute aggregation. It switches to one-hour aggregation for one week. For one month, it will be aggregated on a daily basis, to save space. 

It aggregates the data points and removes the individual real-time data points before reducing the data points to conserve storage. I would suggest an improvement in data storage, or how the data is archived and sold so that enterprises have more room to keep data for a longer period of time with less aggregation. It will be kept for real-time value for a month, rather than just one day.

I've been using Plixer Scrutinizer for nine years, but I haven't used it in the last year.

I don't remember what version we were using because I haven't actively used it in the last year, but it was one of the more recent ones.

In terms of stability, it was good, but I wouldn't say that it was excellent.

I have seen a few crashes, however, it's very rare. While it is stable, there is always room for improvement. But it's fairly stable, and in the user experience, it remains consistent.

The solution's scalability is struggling on devices with a large number of flows.

ACI from Cisco, and not the Data points. Data points are improvements to how data is stored or archived. I've noticed that the solution is inconsistent on devices with a large number of flows, such as core switches for Data centers, or Cisco ACI.

To rephrase, the solution is suitable for a brand router or an internet switch, but it is not suitable for, at least in our environment, a core switch within a data center where the number of flows and communications will be high. From what I understand it is that the solution is not very scalable in a high volume traffic environment with a large number of flows.

This solution is used directly by 50 people in our organization. Most of the users were network engineers.

The solution received positive feedback. The usage was already on a daily basis. No further increases were anticipated or planned, but it was used extensively throughout the organization.

I am not aware of the pricing.

I am not an expert user or an administrator of the solution, and I have not recently used it. 

I am a problem manager. I conduct deep-dive analysis and retrospective analysis following the incident. To determine the root causes, we must examine all of our solutions in the application landscape.

I would strongly recommend this solution to anyone who is interested in using it.

I would rate Plixer Scrutinizer an eight out of ten.