Auvik Network Management (ANM) Reviews

We originally purchased Auvik to map our network because I didn't have any kind of network diagram. I thought this would provide a better view of our network. 

In the past, we had several solutions for monitoring our network. Switching to Auvik saved quite a lot of time. We have a small team with limited resources, and we saved a lot of time trying to do all this. It has increased our IT team's availability by about 40 percent. When we implemented Auvik, we didn't have a network admin, so Auvik helped fill that void. Auvik provides a general idea of the network layout and our infrastructure, allowing me to work with third-party and in-house engineers.

Auvik has helped us automate repetitive tasks and streamline processes. For example, it's easy to recognize when we need to upgrade our firmware or patch something. It has reduced our resolution time because it can take time to resolve issues if we don't have a network diagram. Auvik's cloud SaaS model saves money because we don't need to maintain devices or pay for overhead on our end. 

I like that Auvik keeps track of our contracts for the network devices and tells us what updates are needed. Using Auvik is pretty straightforward. We've gone through onboarding a few times there with the representative. It's easy to use if you have a good grasp of network administration.

It has a nice dashboard that rolls a few solutions into one. That integrated platform is crucial because we don't need to navigate multiple dashboards. It's a single pane of glass. Auvik's interface is intuitive and gives you an understanding of what to look for.

The discovery of devices in your inventory could be more automated. It doesn't find anything without an SNMP string. If you have an SNMP string, it'll find it for you and keep it in the inventory. 

We've been using Auvik for about six months.

I rate Auvik 10 out of 10 for stability because we haven't seen any issues.

I rate Auvik support 10 out of 10. We have had ongoing contact with Auvik support. They check in with us periodically to make sure we're doing good. That's pretty consistent.

We started with Auvik.

Setting up Auvik is straightforward. I implemented it by myself with some guidance from the vendor. It was a matter of running a wizard and ensuring we had the right credentials. We used the out-of-the-box configuration. After deploying the collector, our network map started populating instantly, but we allowed 24 hours to ensure the collector had run its full course.

We gave it about 24 hours just to make sure. It started populating almost instantly, but we wanted to make sure that we had everything there and that the collector ran its full course.

We had support from a vendor consultant who helped with the setup and followed up with routine maintenance. The service has been great. 

Looking up every device to see if it's on contract or renewal takes time. Auvik provides a single pane of glass with all your devices, which saves considerable time. I estimate it's an 80 percent reduction. 

Auvik is a good product for the price. The license is reasonable. We took a chance on it and figured it would work for us. It did even more than we expected. 

The closest network mapping solution was SolarWinds, but it couldn't offer the same visibility into firmware updates, contract renewals, etc. SolarWinds was a lot more expensive, too. Price was the deciding factor.

I rate Auvik 10 out of 10. I would recommend it for companies looking for an easy way to get their network mapped and features like device contract management and inventory. Auvik's ease of use and price are the most important factors, especially for small teams. 

You should do a proof of concept before you deploy it.

I'm a system administrator. I use it to monitor and automatically draw a network map of our network.

It has helped us determine better ways to organize some of our physical networking, and it also allowed us to locate and troubleshoot issues more quickly.

It saved me at least a couple of days of work in regard to network mapping. There's a lot of detail that it figures out automatically that otherwise, I would have to do manually. It definitely helped that way. The monitoring is a little bit redundant. We already get emails for some of the things it warns us about, which is fine, but it also warns us about other things that we are not aware of. It saves me some time that way as well.

The network visualizations are quite intuitive. It comes with a number of different controls to manipulate, monitor, and change the visualization of what you're seeing. They're pretty intuitive and don't require many instructions.

We recently opened up a branch office, and it allowed us to visualize that remote network in more detail than we would have before. This visibility is quite important so that we have a better understanding of the way the network is configured and if there are any problems with it. Before, we had no way to visualize which devices were connected to other devices. It just had to be common knowledge or certain documentation, but now, we can visualize our network in real-time and troubleshoot if any issues arise.

Automatic network mapping, alerting functionalities, and TrafficInsights are valuable.

The monitoring function is quite easy. It's already set up with a lot of good defaults. So, I didn't have to change too much. The management function is also pretty useful. The interface sometimes takes a little bit of learning to navigate, but besides that, it has been pretty useful so far.

I like the methodology of its deployment and how it's set up. I like how we simply have to put a simple virtual appliance in our environment, and it figures out everything for us. The methodology of how it's designed to be used from that cloud environment works well. 

Some of the network map customizations could be improved to show or hide certain components if desired. There are already some tools built in to do that, but they could be improved upon.

Some of the discovery methodologies could be improved upon. It removes the device that is offline, but when that gets added back, if there is any custom information saved for that device, such as it's a smartphone, you have to change and reenter the information all over again. It would be nice to not have to manually modify certain devices that get added to the network.

I would give it pretty good marks in terms of helping to visualize the network mapping or the topology of our organization, but sometimes, the map refreshes in a way that doesn't always make sense. I have to create a support ticket to ask why the map is showing things the way it's showing, but that's more of a learning curve related to learning about the tool itself, but for the most part, it automates that whole process quite well and makes it easy to see what's on the screen.

There could be a mobile app or some type of mobile interface to review details on the go. I haven't tried it yet, and I am not sure if there's one.

I have been using this solution for approximately three to four months.

For the most part, it has been quite reliable and stable. There have been a few maintenance windows recently where they needed to fix some issues. It didn't affect me per se, but there was a little bit of downtime for the problems they were having with the collectors. They had to push an update for it, but it didn't concern me too much because it was over the course of a weekend. So, I wasn't paying too much attention to it. I would rate it an 8 out of 10 in terms of stability.

It seems it would scale very well to a large network, but I don't have experience with it in that scenario. From the way the tool works, it seems that it would be able to map out quite complicated networks and all the details.

Currently, Auvik is monitoring about 220 devices in our organization.

Their support is excellent. I've reached out to their support a couple of times, and every time, they've been very professional and quick to respond. 

I reached out to them recently, and there was very quick detailed research done into the issue. It wasn't a simple issue, but they were able to dig into it and get back to me with some good detailed answers.

I would rate them a 10 out of 10. So far, my experience with their support has been good.

Positive

We used PRTG, but we didn't necessarily switch. We're using both. We're still using PRTG, and we're also using Auvik. So, for managing the network, we are now using two tools. Previously, we used one tool, but now, we're using two tools.

It was straightforward. We implemented it out of the box. Network mapping started to populate in less than 15 minutes after implementing the collector. So, once it's configured, it does the job very quickly.

Its setup time is similar to other solutions. It takes a few hours of installation and configuration and then going from there, you just wait for it to collect the data.

It takes a little bit of time to configure and make sure that it's scanning and pulling in the right information. Some of the information, such as the system name and the type of the system, needed to be updated manually. So, a little bit of manual work needs to be done after the setup, but once it's properly set up, it does help to save time. It took extra three to four hours just for configuring and manually making changes to improve the data collected.

In terms of maintenance, it does require maintenance. On occasions, I need to clean up and monitor unknown and generic devices that show up in the list of devices just to determine if they are trusted devices that should be on the network. So, it's used for seeing what's on the network and paying attention to those devices that get added. We then ensure that they're trusted and should be on the network.

I implemented it on my own. I also take care of the maintenance. I do have other users with access to the service, but they only use it for monitoring. They don't make the changes.

We have seen time-to-value with Auvik. It's able to automatically make network maps that otherwise would take a lot of time. It would also take time to customize them manually. So, it has helped automate that task for sure. It has definitely saved about 48 hours.

We haven't seen a reduction in our meantime to resolution (MTTR) because I can't think of any situation where the tool has been involved in those types of scenarios per se. It's more to show the information that we were already aware of. So, it didn't necessarily change that for the better or worse. In the future, there might be a problem where it'll help us troubleshoot deeper by using some of the tools that we didn't have before, such as TrafficInsights.

It's quite reasonable, although it's reasonable for us right now only because of the small number of devices we're using. If we had a lot more to monitor, then I'd have to double-check the pricing and compare it with other solutions to see if it would be competitive.

To someone comparing network monitoring solutions but concerned about pricing, I would suggest that trying the product first is key and based on that, you can determine the value. I find the pricing to be reasonable, and I was able to try it first to make my decision.

We didn't evaluate other options. I knew about using Auvik from a previous employer. They had a good trial setup. The reason why I used it in the first place was that I was looking for tools to do network drawing or mapping, and I was aware that Auvik could do that type of work automatically. So, I just signed up for the trial and went from there.

I would suggest letting the tool add all of the networks automatically first as opposed to manually adding certain details and letting it fill in. Just let it gather all the information it can and then worry about cleaning things up. 

Also, I would advise monitoring generic and unknown devices just to understand what is present in the network. I would also advise getting familiar with filters and setting up filters in a way that allows you to customize the tool to suit you best.

Auvik has a single site that allows us to perform a number of dedicated tasks. Having this single site is moderately important for us because we do use other tools as well to collect data on what we're looking for. We're always looking for tools to add to our listing. We don't just always rely on one tool to do all our monitoring. This is an additional tool that we're using, but it offers functionality that our other tools don't necessarily have. That's why we're using it.

Auvik hasn't helped reduce repetitive low-priority tasks through automation because we're just using it for some passive monitoring. I can't think of a situation where that's had to occur per se.

Its automation hasn't had an effect on our IT team's availability. More time has been spent in the software configuring it, and now that it's set up the way we want it, we just go into it every once in a while to browse and see how things are going.

I would rate it an 8 out of 10. There are a few things to improve on, but for the most part, it does exactly what I'm hoping to do, which is automatically help generate a visualization of a network to better understand it and troubleshoot it.

We use Auvik to manage our network, infrastructure, and servers across various locations. We don't use the automation portion of Auvik except for automated integration with our ticketing system. Auvik sends alerts, but we haven't set it up to resolve issues automatically.

In the past, we had to use the web UI or an SSH prompt to access a network switch and make modifications, but now we find that we can do that through Auvik. It saved us a significant amount of time by bringing everything under one roof. It's a big time saver to go to the Auvik website and make those changes. It's hard to quantify, but I would say it reduces the time needed by around 80 percent. We can respond to alerts and resolve them more quickly. I estimate that decreases our resolution time by about an hour per alert.

Auvik has also helped us manage our IT team. We have multiple people in the department, so it's also nice that Auvik creates a record of who checks the network equipment. I can find out precisely who checked and cleared an alert or who might have tunneled into a piece of equipment to make changes. The audit trail benefits us greatly.

We get alerts about any issue that's happening in the infrastructure. We're able to take those alerts. If it's a low-severity issue that can be fixed over time, we can assign it to a lower-level engineer. The critical alerts go to higher-tier engineers who can respond accordingly. The Auvik platform makes it very easy. Some alerts come in by default. Many of them are already pretty well-tuned to detect what's critical and what is just informational. We've built on their current alert system with a few modifications, but those alert systems allow us to prioritize who resolves the alerts. I don't think the device inventories save us time, but it's nice to see our count. 

The ability to map out the network topology is one of the top features I like about Auvik. It's one of the best on the market. They have a feature called Loopback Detection, which has helped us, in many scenarios easily detect that without having to physically go to the location to see if there is a loopback somewhere. 

The monitoring and management features are easy to use, and the documentation Auvik provides is clear and easy to understand. We set up a collector, and it's on its way. We have never had any trouble. It's great because even my junior engineers can set it up without a problem. Auvik offers a single integrated platform for managing our devices and infrastructure in one place. It isn't essential, but it's nice to have.

Although the network topology is excellent, it has a hard time picking up some devices on the network. A device might not be fully supported, or Auvik is unable to pull all the information from it. 

The only other problem is the SNMP logging credentials. Sometimes, when I input these credentials, logging into the devices takes a decent amount of time to see if the credentials work. It would be fantastic if they could improve that.

I have been using Auvik for about three years.

Auvik is highly stable, and they communicate well about the maintenance windows. I don't think I've ever had Auvik go down in the middle of the day. It's very reliable.

Auvik is extremely scalable. They have options for scaling to multiple sites. I don't know if there's even a theoretical limit to its scalability.

I rate Auvik's support a ten out of ten. They're super knowledgeable. They typically have an answer for any question I throw at them.

Positive

Setting up Auvik is very straightforward. We started with a trial, and from there, we could follow the guides to get everything set up. Our initial trial deployment was out-of-the-box, but once we purchased it, we reached out to Auvik to get it perfected. 

Our deployment team consisted of me and one other person, so there were two people to deploy to every site. It was quick once everything was set up the way we wanted. It was a staged deployment, so it took longer than usual. If I were to do it right now, it probably wouldn't take longer than an eight-hour day.

We deployed it ourselves with vendor support. We got everything set up and configured the way we wanted in an hour or so.

I don't know if time-to-value is necessarily a metric I would consider because it's mostly internal, but from a productivity standpoint, we can respond to IT issues faster. I don't see it in my organization, but I can totally see how companies that support multiple clients could see a time to value.

I believe that Auvik is one of the most expensive tools, but it is also the best.

We tested various solutions, but Auvik was our first choice. However, I wouldn't say we tried other solutions in the same depth as we used Auvik. It was three years ago, so I'm having difficulty remembering names. There was another solution that was part of the ticketing system we use. We tried that because it was built in, but it was subpar compared to Auvik.

I rate Auvik a ten out of ten. If you plan to implement Auvik, you should deploy it in a testing environment to ensure it's running perfectly and customize the alerts that you want to get. With the out-of-the-box configuration, you will be getting alerts that you might not necessarily care about. If you take the time to go through those alerts and set everything up, it will probably make your life much easier.

The primary use case is for monitoring networks, traffic, etc. 

The solution provides us with alerts if anything goes down. We have an RMM tool, but if an entire site goes down, then the monitor we use for RMM will also be down and unable to inform us that it can't reach other devices. With Auvik in the cloud, we still get alerted if something goes down, such as a firewall or core switch. We received alerts through Auvik that we didn't get from our RMM tool, allowing us to get ahead of issues with our clients.

The product affects our IT team's availability; it frees up their time by helping them troubleshoot quicker and making them available for other tasks. 

We have seen a reduction in the mean time to resolution (MTTR). Auvik currently plays a small role in that, but once we leverage it more, we expect it will have an even more significant impact. It's more our overall tool stack that helps lower our MTTR.   

The mapping is excellent as it allows us to see where elements connect and got us out of a few binds. I accidentally wiped the configuration of three Meraki 48-Port Switches, and we could see each of the VLANs and their configurations using the solution. We utilized Auvik to see how individual ports were configured, which allowed us to get back up with much less effort than if we hadn't had Auvik.

Auvik provides a single integrated platform, which we integrated with ConnectWise for reporting. As far as viewing from within Auvik, it's a single pane of glass, and that's pretty significant for us, especially for scaling. 

Auvik is excellent for helping us visualize network mapping, especially as we can filter by network devices. We can easily see where all switches interconnect, which isn't as important in smaller environments, but we have a few environments with upwards of 15 switches. It's essential to visualize if one switch goes down, whether it will take down the entire network or if it is safe to take it down for maintenance. We know exactly what will go offline and how important that would be to us. Auvik allows us to hover over specific ports to see if they are connected, which is especially useful if we have to go on-site for troubleshooting. The overall intuitiveness of the network visualization is good, though there could be improvements; SNMP is only on some devices, which can limit our ability to get information from those devices.  

More capabilities in terms of default OIDs, so we can leverage more of the information from SNMP would be good to see. It's been a while since I messed with the OIDs, but the last time I was trying to get additional information from printers, such as the model number. I was able to find that information, but it took a good amount of research to figure out how. I want to see more default capability regarding what information gets spit out from SNMP.

I've been using the solution for five years. 

The solution has always been stable, in my experience.

Auvik is scalable; I never had an issue scaling it. It's ideal in this respect, especially for an MSP.

I've contacted technical support on several occasions, and they are great; they responded quickly and effectively.

Positive

At a previous company I worked at, we used ConnectWise Automate, which wasn't a great solution. It was a hope and a prayer that we got the monitoring portion correct and used whatever we could find, not anything centralized.

The first deployment was relatively straightforward, and the fine-tuning took more learning and familiarity with the tool. The deployment at the company I'm currently with was much smoother as I was more familiar with the product, and it was relatively seamless.

I carried out the initial setup by myself for the most part, and the solution requires minimal maintenance. We go in occasionally to see if there are new devices SNMP has been found on, find out which devices and get them added.

I'm unfamiliar with other network monitoring applications, as I've been using Auvik for so long, but it is one of the more expensive solutions. However, we have used the product to troubleshoot different issues. For example, one of our clients had an issue where their phones were constantly going down, and nobody could figure out the problem. We put Auvik on the network and found a loop in their switches, so it simplifies our lives, increases resolution speed, and makes us look like competent technicians.  

I rate Auvik eight out of ten. 

My advice to others is if you want to know all the details and all the ins and outs of your network, Auvik is the tool for you. It makes visibility easy and shows how everything is interconnected.

Regarding the solution reducing repetitive, low-priority tasks through automation, we're getting there. We don't currently use much automation on the Auvik side, more on the RMM side.  

The solution affected our IT team's global visibility into our remote and distributed networks, and they've been able to use this for troubleshooting. This visibility is more important than our IT team currently appreciates because they need to be more familiar with all the solution's capabilities to leverage it fully. As the tool isn't used to its full potential, its visibility is not as vital as it could or should be. 

Regarding Auvik helping delegate low-level tasks to junior staff, it helps somewhat, but it's another area where we need to utilize the solution's full capability. One other technician and I deal with the alert tickets, and we sometimes send them to our service desk, but we mainly deal with tickets ourselves. We could delegate more, but at the same time, dealing with the tickets ourselves helps prevent issues from growing larger. 

The solution helps us keep device inventories up to date to an extent. We use a combination of Auvik and N-central, our RMM tool. Auvik can get some information that N-central cannot, such as important information from Meraki devices, including serial numbers. The tool can push this information to our PSA, but it also has limitations. Our RMM tool tends to be better for pulling data from desktops and laptops, but in terms of network devices and equipment, Auvik is more effective for inventory purposes. This is another area where we need to leverage the solution more, including focusing on high-value tasks and delegating low-level tasks to junior staff. 

Auvik keeping device inventories up to date helped save us time for network devices but less for workstations and servers. It has helped us out when trying to find out where a device is, as we can utilize the solution's inventory. 

We are a managed service provider, but we look after a couple of thousand customers all over Australia. We look after their total IT solutions, and we use Auvik as a network monitoring platform and alerting engine. 

We use Auvik to manage our customers and collect configurations, diagnose issues, trace cables, and access devices remotely. We also use it internally for our own support purposes.

We're an outsourced IT company, so we provide IT to other companies that don't have their own departments or don't have the skills. We might go into a company with an IT department and do projects for them that they don't have the skills or resources to do.

We will be able to better meet our SLAs with this solution. We have quicker resolution times, and we waste less time on troubleshooting. As an MSP, we charge per user, per month. We charge a fixed fee to our customers, so saved time results in direct profits for us.

The solution's automation has supplemented our IT team's ability. It has saved us in a few niche cases. We're able to access equipment that was otherwise inaccessible.

Auvik helps keep device inventories up to date. We use it with ScalePad, which is a warranty tracking system that generates reports. We use that report and go to our customers and say, "You have five switches that are at end of life and need to be replaced." It helps us a lot.

The ability to trace cables is the most valuable feature. The solution provides link detection and port detection features with the switches. It's invaluable to have the ability to see where one device is connected and identify the exact port without having to trace any cables.

It's easy to use the monitoring and management functions. We trained most of our staff on how to administer and monitor the solution without any issues. We have a range of techs from entry-level, all the way to experienced engineers. We haven't found it to be difficult, even with the new people.

Auvik is one of many tools that we use, but it integrates with our other platforms to share data and fit in with our ecosystem.

We have seen time-to-value with Auvik. It has saved us a lot of time. A good example is the automatic configuration backup. One of our customers recently had a switch fail, and it was quite complicated. Reverse engineering what was in place and recreating the configuration would have taken 10 to 20 hours, and the customer would have been down for days. We were able to pull the previous configuration that was automatically generated from Auvik, restore it to a new switch, and have the customer back up within two hours.

I like the auto-mapping feature, but I would like to see more layouts and predefined views. At the moment, we're restricted to default views without much customization. The devices and reporting provide a nice map, but it's not at the point where we could generate a 100% accurate topology map because of some of the equipment at some of our customer sites.

The solution doesn't reduce repetitive low-priority tasks through automation as much as we had hoped. The repetitive issues that we see could be solved if Auvik's reporting engine was more configurable. The default reporting is basically limited to what is available out of the box. We can't customize any of the notifications for specific issues. We had to turn off the automatic case generation because it wasn't able to do what we needed it to do.

The reporting engine could definitely be improved, but I've been told that an overhaul is happening.

The stability is great. Every time there's been an outage or an interruption, we've been notified. The uptime is within what we'd expect. No platform is 100% perfect, but it's on par with the market leaders.

We don't have any problems with the scalability.

I would rate technical support a nine out of ten.

Technical support is excellent. I've never had an issue with them. They've always been responsive and more than willing to help.

Positive

We evaluated SolarWinds and some other vendors several years ago. We chose Auvik because of the integration with vendors. All of the vendors we use are supported. The instructions on integrations are great. The device communication is easy, and the platform is very intuitive and well-polished. Our only complaint is that it's lacking a few key features, but it has ticked most of the boxes and has required the least amount of overhead.

The setup was straightforward. The knowledge base is quite comprehensive. Everything we wanted was documented. If we had any questions, the support team was excellent.

We implemented Auvik out of the box. For accurate results, it took 24 hours after implementation before our network mapping started to populate.

It took 1/10th of the time to set up Auvik compared to other solutions.

Four people were needed for implementation. Their responsibilities were to configure sites. We're an MSP, so we initially deployed Auvik at 50 sites. The tasks were delegated. We have an internal process for everything we do, which includes snippets from the Auvik documentation, but we created our own customized documentation. 

I was responsible for project management, documentation creation, and task delegation. I delegated setting up the sites and configuring the sites to our senior engineers, and they deployed Auvik at 50 customer sites.

We're an integrator, so we did the setup ourselves.

The solution has saved us time by 80%.

I would rate this solution as eight out of ten. 

There are a few things that are missing that we've been promised in the future and that would make the product excellent for our needs. In terms of what we need, it definitely adds value. 

To someone comparing network monitoring solutions but concerned about pricing, my advice is to make sure that the solution fits your needs. Check out the feature set and the reporting, and be realistic about what you expect it to do.

The solution is scalable. You pay for what you use. It's a comprehensive solution to monitor everything. The pricing is fair, and you only pay for what you use and for the devices that are managed by Auvik. It's quite affordable compared to other solutions, and it's scalable.

We're an MSP, and we have deployed it to monitor the customer network and environment and make sure that the configurations are backed up and know when things were done.

It's easier to manage than what we used before, and licensing-wise, it's easier to understand what you're going to be paying for and not.

It has reduced repetitive low-priority tasks through automation, especially configuration backups. The time saved depends on the customer and how many configuration changes we make. It's difficult to measure it.

Previously, we didn't have visibility into our remote and distributed networks globally, but now we definitely do. This visibility is important. At this point in time, it's an invaluable piece of what we do. So, it's very important at this point in time.

Automated configuration backups and automated network diagrams are the most valuable.

The one feature we need is that when something goes down, we need a phone call, a text message, or something like that, not just an email alert. This is something they don't do. So, we have another service that does that for us. It would be nice to have that integrated into this, but at the moment, we have a way around it, which is with another partner of ours. It's not like we have to sign up to a new service for it, but it would definitely be nice if we can set up more detailed alerting schedules and things like that. However, we have found a way to make it work.

The automated network maps are really nice. Sometimes, I wish we could make the manual tweak to them because sometimes, it doesn't quite get what the network is like, but overall, it's doing a great job. It's a lot easier than doing it manually. Where it misses the mark is that we would want to make some manual tweaks, which is not possible, but the overall intuitiveness of the network visualization is pretty good.

Auvik helps to keep device inventories up to date, but I just wish it would be easier to sync with our overall inventory software. At the moment, most things live in Auvik. We would like to think it should be possible, but we haven't been able to get that to work. So, there's still some improvement to get there, but overall, it has definitely been an improvement.

Syncing the assets that are in there through a third-party program definitely needs some improvements. There should be better synchronization of its assets to different asset management platforms. The alerting capabilities can definitely use improvements. We use third-party for that at the moment, and then the way they look for performance on network equipment is really heavy on heavily used devices, such as firewalls. It taxes certain equipment pretty heavily when it does performance monitoring. So, the SNMP calling that it does can be way improved.

I have been using this solution for about five years or so.

Its stability is very good.

Its scalability is good so far. We use it for a variety of different customers but not all of our customers. We have about 20 sub-customers in our portal at the moment, and they are across the US with multiple locations in some instances. So, it's deployed in a variety of different ways.

I have interacted with their technical support. I would rate them a seven out of ten. In the beginning, they were way better and closer to a nine. Lately, it's been less.

Neutral

We were using LogicMonitor. At the time, LogicMonitor was overly complicated for what we needed it to do and also more expensive.

It was straightforward. We've deployed it at 20 different customers so far, and there was probably one instance where we needed to make some network changes for it to work. For most customers, we needed to add SNMP credentials and things like that, and generally, it just worked. When we get the correct credentials in place, after the collector is implemented, network mapping starts to populate immediately.

In terms of the time and cost to set up and maintain Auvik versus our previous solution, the previous one was also cloud-hosted. So, there was no maintenance cost there. So, it's the same, or it's virtually none because it's cloud-hosted.

In terms of maintenance, it's just set up and go. Auvik takes care of all the software updates, and you don't need to worry about anything. With an on-prem solution, you normally need to do the upgrades and everything yourself. However, some high-compliance customers can't give any data to the cloud providers. If we need to have something on-site, we can't use Auvik. That's the only issue we have, but for everything else, it's an advantage to have it in the cloud rather than to self-host.

We did it in-house. We are the integrator for other customers, and we've done more than 20 installations of it.

We have different people doing different deployments. It depends on the complexity of the network, how many searches we need to add SNMP entries to and gather credentials for, and things like that, but generally, it takes under an hour to set up the site and the collector.

We have definitely seen a time-to-value with this. I don't have the metrics, but I know it does what it needs to, and it saves time.

We have seen a reduction in our mean time to resolution (MTTR), but it's very difficult to know how much because previously, we didn't get alerted or knew of any issues going on. Now, we do, and now, we mainly get alerted before issues become issues. So, we can prevent them from ever cropping up, but it's very difficult to put a number on that.

The pricing is good, but I haven't looked at the pricing in a while. So, I don't know if it has changed or not. As far as I know, the pricing is still where it should be. I have no issues with it.

We didn't look at other solutions. It was recommended by a partner of ours. So, we looked at it. It did what it needed to do, and that's why we went with it.

If you're considering it, just install the trial, and it'll sell itself.

It's pretty easy once you get to know it. It's not that difficult. If you want to get into the advanced details, as with any software, it takes a little while to get used to all the advanced options, but in general, it's pretty easy to use. Its ease of use is important, but more important is that it works if something happens, which it does.

I am not sure about the effect its automation has had on our IT team's availability. It's difficult to say how busy they would be with or without it, but I would think it would have had a positive impact.

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten.

I use the monitoring on a daily basis. I receive the alerts. We have two monitoring software solutions and Auvik complements the other one. We use Auvik to cover the gaps in the other one. We get alerts from both sides.

Working at an MSP, I come across very different networks. No two are quite the same. Auvik makes it really easy for me to get a logical outlay of what switches are connected to what switches and what equipment is connected to what equipment. It takes a lot of the detective work out of the equation for me.

Without a doubt, it has affected the visibility our IT team has into remote and distributed networks. Having everyone in one portal, they click on their client and, as long as we have it configured properly and we're getting that accurate picture, it's absolutely incredible. That visibility is fantastic. We'll hop on a call and the other guy will also log in to Auvik. We can say, "Hey, search for this. Look at this path. The VLAN is everywhere except on this device. What are we going to do here?" It really helps us out with collaboration and brainstorming.

Auvik makes it much easier to trace connections and log in to a switch without having to jump through all those extra hoops. It makes logging into switches accessible for some people who may not be comfortable with that.

The network mapping, the logical layout, is the part that I love the most, showing what switch is connected to what switch. I couldn't live without it. That is the big selling point for me. If somebody asks me a question about a network, I log in to Auvik, 100 percent, to look at their network before I can make any decisions or answer any questions. The overall intuitiveness of the network visualization is excellent. I don't know how I lived without this solution before.

Most people will also use Auvik for one of my favorite functions that it provides, the remote terminal. That's pretty much the preferred way as far as management goes. We still have people logging in to a service locally using SSH and getting into networking equipment. But personally, in the last year, I have really shifted over to Auvik-first management for my tasks.

In addition, we are all about consistency, and having one unified platform is very nice. Familiarity breeds efficiency. It's important to use a unified platform because you're going to know where things are at for all your clients. You're going to know what you're looking for and where your tools are. That's why I've been shifting to Auvik-first to administrate my network devices. I could be at any one of 150 clients in a day, remotely, and Auvik makes it such a breeze because they're all showing up in one platform.

I have a love-hate relationship with the network mapping. Navigating around the map on more complex networks is pretty painful if you're showing endpoints. I know there are filters to knock it down, but sometimes that's not enough. It handles like "early-90s Java."

For instance, I just pulled up one of the clients that I work with a lot. When I get a view of the entire network, it's highly complex. I see a lot of it. When I filter it down to just network items it's great. That sure helps simplify it. But actually trying to get around, for example, if I need to go to the right, I can't quite grab things and move them. It's just not super responsive. 

I would love to be able to use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out on the map, but instead, it scrolls the page, which it's fine. But sometimes it resizes the map too. I have a really high-power system and that map resizing sometimes even chugs my computer down.

In addition, I would love to be able to drag assets and place them where I want to, maybe on a session-by-session basis. Sometimes, if there are a bunch of devices to the left or the right of the core switch or stack or router, the connections blend together. I would love to be able to grab a device or a device group and drag it out of the way a little. It would still maintain the links between the icons, but the ability to place the icons where I want them, spread out a little bit, would be really cool.

I've been using Auvik for just over two years.

I have a very positive impression of its stability.

We had some kind of database error with accounts last year but that was resolved in a reasonable amount of time.  And I do see maintenance banners up for planned downtime, but I can only think of one or two times that I thought, "I really wish I had Auvik, but it's down right now." It's such a rarity so I'm not complaining. 

The stability is very good as far as I'm concerned.

Aside from making the map too big, the scalability is great.

We have it deployed in about 150 locations.

I haven't needed to contact customer support. It's intuitive enough that I've been able to get through it on my own.

I did not use another solution previously. I actually spent a decade saying, "Man, I really wish there was something out there like this." When I saw Auvik, my jaw dropped.

I was not involved in the initial setup but I have installed the agent.

To my knowledge, there is no recurring maintenance. Occasionally I need to move an agent or restart an agent if it stops responding, or restart a server.

Part of the value of Auvik comes from being able to trace connections graphically and visually, rather than having to manually back-trace MAC tables. That alone saves enough time for me.

The only other thing I've ever heard of that is comparable to Auvik is something called The Dude. I looked it up once. I don't get intimidated by technology, but that was pretty intense and I never looked back. When somebody showed me Auvik, it blew my mind because it was pretty much exactly what I'm looking for.

Install it on more than one client, make sure that you have your network scoped properly for scanning, and enjoy. Also, make sure you have your SNMP set up on all your devices. That's the hard part.

Within the last year, we made it a requirement for all of our clients to pay for an Auvik license. This is required software for us, going forward. That's a win.

Although I don't know anything about the pricing, I would definitely say look into Auvik. If the price is right, I understand why our organization has made it required, per client. If I was doing this on my own, Auvik would be a requirement for me as well.

In our organization, everybody uses it and everybody recommends it. Everybody says, "This is the way to go." Everybody hears about the efficiency, ease of use, and what's going to cause the least amount of stress. Everybody here likes it.

We are an MSP. We've got about 500 clients. So, multitenancy is pretty important to us. We're only interested in monitoring and managing network devices, and we define that as switches, routers, access points, and ESX hosts. Even though some of the things that we traditionally consider to be a computer—such as a laptop, a workstation, or a server—appear in Auvik, we do not do any management of them there.

The RMM platform that we're currently using is wonderful when it comes to servers, laptops, desktops, and all that, but it is absolutely horrible for properly detecting or identifying a network device. In other words, SNMP to properly identify a device flat out did not work and does not work in our other solution. Auvik fills that gap and does a pretty good job when it comes to that. We have always used multiple applications, and it comes down to finding out what the strengths are of a particular application. Auvik does a great job when it comes to networking devices, but we couldn't do nearly as much as what we do for servers and workstations. So, we use it according to its strengths and our other tools according to theirs.

Auvik is a SaaS-only product. There is no on-prem version. There are some definite pros and cons to it. Having to rely on someone else to handle all of the security aspects of something that's SaaS, especially in today's world, can be a little bit nerve-racking. When it is on-prem, you've got full control of ingress and egress. You can lock down the firewall and do all of that good stuff, but at the same time, not having to mess with all of the infrastructure and the things that are required to make a product function is pretty valuable. So, we don't have to worry about storage space, server speed, etc.

It provides a single pane of glass, which is very important. We service around 20,000 endpoints, and they include network devices and computing devices. The fewer places our technicians have to go to get information or address an issue, the better it is.

It has definitely given us a much better inventory of the devices that are on client networks. It has also got a fairly decent API integration with other products. We also make use of Meraki products, and through the API, we're able to pull those and all of their data into Auvik.

It is very good for visualizing the network mapping/topology. The network map and visualization of what's going on are really good. For somebody who is not a network engineer but needs to troubleshoot something, it is invaluable. If they're on call and it is the middle of the night, being able to look and see whether there is a switch loop or something weird going on is invaluable.

It is very intuitive in terms of network visualization. It is almost like an org chart. You can see the ingress point at the very top, and then you can see what's connected to other things. It visually flows very nicely from top to bottom to give you a quick idea of where things are.

It has reduced the visibility of our IT team in a positive sense. We like our techs to be able to work under the hood and not disrupt clients, and it definitely provides a lot of the right remote tools that are needed to go in and address issues or provide updates, firmware, and things like that, but visibility for us is really not a key. As an MSP, we do have a number of ways to provide evidence of the value that we bring and the work we have been doing under the hood, such as the number of patches that have been successfully applied and things like that. 

It does a very good job of keeping device inventories up-to-date. It helps our teams focus on high-value tasks, which goes back to the initial configuration of determining which alerts are high priority and which ones are just standard response and maintenance. They were very easy to configure.

Auvik keeping our device inventories up-to-date has saved us time in a huge way. A part of the value that we provide is that we help our clients develop a five-year tech plan so that they can start to budget. Having an up-to-date and accurate inventory of all of those network devices feeds into those reports through our own automation on the backend. So, it is very valuable.

It is a combination. The discovery portion of it is extremely valuable. It allows us to get a good inventory of what is actually on a client's network. You can turn on TrafficInsights, which is basically a NetFlow feature, for troubleshooting. It allows you to get more detailed information on what's going on with a particular device. So, you could determine why a client is complaining that the internet is slow at 1:00 p.m. every day.

Its interface is very sluggish, and that's probably its biggest impediment. 

It is easy to set up. However, with the wizard-like setup, the choices are lacking. So, there is a lot more that we feel like we could be doing. If it is outside of their pre-configured monitors, you start getting into a level of difficulty.

I have been using this solution for close to three years.

It is very stable. There is sluggishness in the interface, but it is rock-solid.

There could be some potential problems with scalability. We took on a client not too long ago that was fairly close to enterprise-level. We were forced to break them up into different geographic sites so that the web interface would present smaller chunks at a time. That was because it simply fell to its knees if you tried to open up the full site for this particular client. It was just too much for the interface to handle, and that was definitely a negative because it would've been really advantageous for us to see the full network map as opposed to seeing only small pieces of it.

They do a solid job.

Positive

We used to use PacketTrap, and it had basically gone end of life. It had a lot of good features. It was an older product. There was a one-time payment upfront for it, and there were no recurring fees. Those were the days, and those days have gone. Because PacketTrap was the end of life, we were forced to go for something to take care of our clients.

Switching to Auvik hasn't saved us any time. It also hasn't reduced our mean time to resolution (MTTR). That's because the product we had before was solid. It had just aged and had to be replaced.

It is easy to set up. 

We have seen time-to-value with Auvik. Despite the sluggishness of the interface, it has definitely provided a significant amount of value for us.

Its pricing is definitely competitive with everything else that's out there. If somebody has not shopped for a product like Auvik for a while, there's probably going to be some sticker shock because it is not cheap, but that's true for all the products that we looked at.

Its pricing is fair based on what I've seen for everything else that's out there in the market. They're certainly not looking to gouge people. For whatever reason, network management products are just expensive. Before this, we were using a product for which we had paid a one-time payment upfront. We had paid for it and bought it for years and years. There was no additional cost for us. So, we definitely suffered from sticker shock when we started shopping around.

There were quite a few. We looked at around seven different top-level products. We did product reviews for around a year. We were looking for something that was the best fit for how we tend to do business, and Auvik came at the top.

We have a checklist that we go through when we're evaluating a product, which includes:

• Things that are important to us and are required in a product
• Its integration with our other systems

A good example is that we use ConnectWise Manage for our ticketing system. So, it has to have full integration with that. We have multiple teams that handle different verticals, and each one of those teams has its own board. A lot of the products that we evaluated claimed to have good integration with ConnectWise Manage, but when we were really getting into the nitty-gritty of the evaluation, we came to find out that they could only send tickets to one single board. That was a deal killer for us right there.

Having a good, robust API is also very important to us. Again, some products would claim that they had a good API. We would go in and research it only to find out that you could get the minimal amount of information possible, which is a no for us. There is an API, but it is not useful.

Ease of setup is extremely important to us. Some of the products were very complex to go in and set up and configure. In addition, not all products provided the ability to set certain rules that would be global at the top of our hierarchy so they would automatically be applied to all clients below. Fortunately, Auvik has that, and we were able to make really good use of that hierarchy and inheritance to our advantage.

I would advise negotiating as hard as you can on price per agent because that did help us do a fair amount of pre-planning. This would have been true for any of the solutions that we looked at. You need to know how you plan on grouping your clients, or how you plan on organizing. Knowing how that structure is going to flow makes a huge difference in your onboarding time.

It hasn't helped us reduce repetitive, low-priority tasks through automation. There is almost no automation. It is great at learning. It is great at visualization and things like that, but there is no automation in there. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten. There are areas where it could do better, but all things considered, it is a good, solid product.