Auvik Network Management (ANM) Reviews

I do internal IT for a company and I use Auvik for most of my daily tasks as they relate to firewalls, switches, and routing.

The automation of network mapping enables junior network specialists to resolve issues directly and helps to free up senior-level team members to perform more involved tasks. It can be a key tool in environments where somebody who doesn't have a strong network skillset can go in and see, "Is it good, is it not?" and be able to make a decision on whether it needs to be escalated to me or not.

It also automatically updates network topology. One of the things that I really enjoy doing, when I first get into a new environment with it, is to watch it rebuild the map as it learns in real time. I can see its process and for me, as a very technical guy, that is one of the most entertaining things to watch, as it learns and updates the changes in a network in real time. It saves time maintaining network topology since the tool actually does it automatically. I have a high level of confidence that the information is correct, and it is immediately available. Just last week, I got a call from one of our internal auditors who needed to provide some information. He said, "Yeah, this usually takes a few weeks. Can you provide firmware information and serial numbers?" During our phone call, I was able to get into Auvik, pull the list, get it sent over to him and say, "Here you go. We're done."

Auvik has also decreased our mean time to resolution. Being able to go in and look at what's not broken, very quickly, and get that confirmed, means that I can look at what I actually need to fix. It eliminates a whole bunch of other problems and a whole bunch of checking. It has reduced our MTTR by up to 80 percent in some cases.

And because we've got it triggering PagerDuty alerts, if something problematic really fires off, I will know about it and be in the tool looking at what's going. I can say, "Hey, this is a problem we need to alert," or, "This isn't a problem and we just need to be aware," very quickly.

Another benefit is the TrafficInsights feature which shows network bandwidth usage without the need for expensive, in-line traffic decryption, and it does it very well. That is a very nice-to-have in my current role because we don't have issues with our network bandwidth. But in other environments that I've been in, where there were issues with bandwidth, it is a very well-put-together tool allowing me to find the answer and say, "This is what our problem is." It enables me to tell the business that we either need to spend more money on bandwidth, or we need to deprioritize a certain type of traffic. It gives that information in a format in which I can give it to somebody who is less technical than me. I can show them the graph and say, "This is what's going on and why."

TrafficInsights helps to show you where your system is experiencing performance issues around capacity and what is the busiest traffic. It can help improve network performance by letting me know exactly what's going on. It lets me see whether it is an application misbehaving, a lack of bandwidth, an upgrade that we need to make, or a configuration. It gives me these choices so that I know for real what's going on. In some cases, people "feel" that something is going on, but this gives me the facts to know what's going on. I would estimate TrafficInsights has improved our network performance by 50 percent.

In multiple environments I've been in, we've been able to eliminate other tools and use Auvik as our single network management solution. In those environments, I've had up to five tools that I have been able to decommission by using Auvik. In that environment where there were so many tools in place, replacing them probably saved $100,000 a year.

Some of the key features that I get out of it are that it is a well-rounded monitoring solution, so I know when something fails—whether it's a device or a service on the device. But it also performs backup, in inventory, of some of the key things to control and manage the network.

And one of the best things about Auvik, and it's why it's one of my go-to products, are the remote access capabilities. Without a VPN and without any other way in, I'm able to get in and work on and troubleshoot my devices through the remote access console. It has multiple options for that and has been very useful and a huge time-saver. That's one of the killer features. It's one of my must-haves and that's why I like it so much.

In addition, for products in this category, Auvik's ease of use is one of the best. It's really built for people like me. I'm heavy into the parts of IT that are not server-related, including routing, switching, firewalls, et cetera, and it is organized for somebody like me. It is the network engineer's toolset. It gives me what I need upfront in a way that I understand well. Auvik speaks my language.

When it comes to its network discovery capabilities, It is the best that can happen. I've used it in multiple environments, and as long as I've got the right starter information, it can go find information in an hour that would otherwise take a person weeks. It's very good and very quick. I've been able to benchmark it against competitive tools and it is way more useful, giving me information that I actually need and can use.

The automated, out-of-the-box device configuration backup capability is one of the key features for me in Auvik. To manage a network, one of my key requirements is to be able to rebuild that network if something catastrophic happens. Having up-to-date backups is a must, and this is a tool that I count on to get that right, and it has always performed as I expect. I am able to very quickly and easily audit that the backups happen and I know that they're there. I can also restore to a previous point with very little hassle, if anything goes wrong. Compared to other backup solutions, it saves me 80 percent in terms of my time.

The logging features could be a little bit better polished, although that aspect is relatively new. It comes in as raw data, with different formats for different vendors. It's not immediately clear to people what's going on with some of that and you have to read through the codes. Some of the higher-end logging solutions, like Splunk, which is very expensive, can parse through it and correlate items better. Improvement to the logging features would be a value-add, but I'm still very happy that it exists.

There are a few edge cases where I have found support for devices to be a little bit lacking. I'm migrating away from Check Point right now and Auvik and Check Point do not get along at all, so it was very troublesome to get those put in place.

Another issue that I know is already in progress, but that will be very nice, is full integration with PagerDuty. I'm using email connectors right now that have a little bit of a lag, so once the APIs are in place between Auvik and PagerDuty, it will give me better alerting when something breaks. I know that's on the roadmap because I've talked to them about it.

Between two different companies, I've been using Auvik for about three years.

The availability is 99 percent. They do have maintenance windows where it's not available. I've been happy with their communication on the maintenance windows and they pick the times very well when it's not going to be available. I realize that everyone needs maintenance, but it works out very well.

I've used this for everything from companies that are in a single building up to a company that had offices in 20 time zones with almost 100 offices, some of them with 1,000 users, and it was able to scale up to that. I've never had worries about how big this can go.

Their technical support is fair to good. There have been a few times where I've had to escalate to somebody higher, when I thought the lower-level person should have understood it, but I've always ended up with a good answer.

The initial setup is straightforward and, as far as the product category is concerned, it's the most straightforward. I've used this in an MSP environment and I've done deployments into close to 30 companies with Auvik and it is, by far, the fastest way to do it for a fresh deployment.

We can get the initial install going in a few hours and we can be confident in the data in a week or two. Comparing that to other tools, it would be an initial deployment of a week or two and two months until we're confident with our data. It has probably reduced the time spent on setup by 90 percent. And when dealing with an MSP, it cuts down a client onboarding by at least a month, which lets revenue start coming in earlier.

The implementation strategy depends on the size of the environment that we're going into, but we usually put in collectors at key locations and first let them do their discovery and see what's out there. Then we'll tune them down so that the collectors are monitoring from the right locations. But we like to get as much data in as possible, initially, and then tune downward.

As a cloud-based solution, it requires just about no maintenance and that's one of the other benefits of Auvik. With other solutions, we have spent more time updating and babysitting the servers and fixing our tools, instead of fixing our environment. That's a major plus.

When I was first evaluating it and we were going through pricing models, I was able to make the case that, for a team of five, this would be better than adding a person to the team when it comes to getting work done.

When I was new in this environment, I was trying to get a lot of stuff together. I brought Auvik as a solution to my supervisor and said, "This is what we used at my last company," and he was familiar with my last company. He viewed them as very good at what they do. I suggested we take a look at Auvik. As soon as he got the pricing during the first sales call around Auvik, he said, "Sold. Well worth that money." They didn't even have to finish the presentation. He saw what was being offered and he also based his decision on the fact that I'd used it before. The cost easily made it worth it in his mind for what it would provide to us.

The pricing is fair for the value and time saved that you get out of it. The larger you go, the more sense it makes per device, because as you hit different pricing tiers, it becomes much more affordable per device.

Auvik is billed by network device. They've got a very clear-cut definition of what is a device and what isn't a device, and that's very convenient. Anything like a server, or a phone, or an access point, is not billed but they are still captured for data, which is very useful. Auvik is very upfront that the solution is not a good server monitoring platform, but it's a fair server monitoring platform and that comes along for free with everything else. My server guys have another system they use for monitoring servers, but they find being able to look at Auvik as well has been a huge value-add.

I have used LogicMonitor, PRTG, the N-central suite, the ManageEngine suite, and the SolarWinds products.

In terms of the differences between those solutions and Auvik, I would summarize them this way: Auvik is a tool built for the network guys, primarily, whereas a lot of other tools are built for the server guys first and then add in network. It's a tool really built for what I care about and it values my time. I'm able to get it put in fast, I'm able to use it fast, and my information is fast. It lets me do more with less.

Definitely go through the proof of concept testing. The results speak for themselves. It's a fully rounded product and everyone I know who has used it has been happy with it.

When you're first deploying it, understand how you need to set up your locations. Otherwise, you're going to end up redoing work. If you're in a larger environment, you need a little bit of knowledge about where things are to be able to put stuff in the right places. If you're small, you can just drop it in and be super-happy with what it gives to you.

Overall, compared to everything else out there, it's a solid 10 out of 10. I haven't found anything that gives me what I need better.

We are a multinational company in almost 55 countries. One of the reasons why we selected Auvik was we wanted to have insights into our networks. Ultimately, we can control them at a central level. Auvik was the best fit because it has:

1. A cloud-based solution using a SaaS model. 
2. Visibility into end users using tools. 
3. Terminal auto-connect, where we can connect devices from Auvik. 
4. Some sort of an audit. 
5. Backup consultations in the tool, which it maintains. 

It has really eased our life in terms of network operations.

It is improving our network operations in 55 countries, including the US, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Oceania. 

Auvik automatically updates network topology. Since it automatically updates the topology, we proactively know what is happening in a country or our branch offices. It also alerts us if there is a topology change, e.g., if it discovers anything new in that country. So, it has reduced the number of failures in our operations. We went from being reactive to proactive. So, we are no longer reacting to what is happening and others are doing. This has saved us about two to three hours a day. We used to spend two to three hours every morning checking the firewall and router logs for malicious behavior.

The automation of network mapping enables our junior network specialists to resolve issues directly, freeing up senior-level team members to perform higher-value tasks. The type of views that we have Auvik automatically discovering has helped our operations, as issues get resolved at Level 1 or 2 with the help of the topology. They don't go to Level 3 until they are serious. 

Auvik has decreased our mean time to resolution. Around three years back, there always used to be a heavy load on Level 3. Nowadays, in a month, there are maximum two tickets that reach Level 3. They all get sorted out in Level 1 and 2.

The most valuable feature is the auditing part. Whenever we are doing any changes, it captures those changes. Date-wise, if we want to refer back to them, we just need to view the date when we did those changes and it will give us a comparison of what has been changed from the last concept. 

The Auvik terminal's service is a value-add to our operations.

It is very user-friendly. It is easy to use, understand, and deploy. My guys have not taken any training from Auvik, but we have learned the systems quite quickly. Because it is user-friendly, you don't need professional training for it.

Auvik's network discovery capabilities are awesome. It not only discovers the network, but it also gives you a map by designing how your network will look like in your environment.

Auvik has very good alerting modules. If a connection or device goes down, it alerts us right away. A good part of that alert is it has some sort of intelligence mechanism. For example, if the router or network device has some sort of malicious activity or critical issue, then it alerts us upfront. It will say, "Hey, you have some issues that you might need to check." It alerts us to critical elements before something bad happens. 

They need to improve the reporting system. They still don't have a proper reporting system in Auvik. They have built a dashboard in Power BI using APIs, but they should build some sort of report within Auvik itself. If Auvik fixes the reporting or comes up with a good reporting module, it will change the game.

I have already talked with the CEO of Auvik about this. He agreed that he will be working on getting some reporting systems in Auvik. As of now, they only have reporting via Power BI, and it is an additional cost to get the Power BI licenses. Another drawback, the Power BI reporting is not that accurate and you really have to struggle to get the reports.

I have been using Auvik for three years.

It is a SaaS-based tool. Auvik takes care of their hosting environment. So far, I found this solution to be more stable compared to other tools that we have used on-premises.

The scalability is good. An important thing about Auvik is that this tool is available from anywhere. For example, we are in a pandemic situation today and forced to work from home. Auvik gives us the capability to do our network operations from anywhere. This is one of the important features that I like about Auvik. For the on-premise solution, you have to make sure you are in the company network and have the VPN connected with the resources.

In my department, we have 46 people using it.

We are expanding Auvik into other countries. For now, we have expanded it into Europe and Asia as well as starting to expand it into the US. So, we will have a long journey using Auvik.

Their technical support is good. They need some improvement. They are not quick. Whenever we raised an issue with Auvik, which was two or three times, the technical support was a bit slow in responding to our issues.

We used to manage the firewall and routers manually, connecting to the countries' VPN. Today, we don't need to have them connected. We can just manage it from a single Auvik console. This has really changed our network operations. 

The initial setup is an easy, straightforward process. You just need to download the Auvik collector, and it is just three steps: next, next, and next. Then, it is complete. From the employee perspective, it saves you at least four to five hours. Other tools take people  a working day to deploy one site. Whereas, Auvik takes just a few minutes. The reason for that is they have their automated discovery capabilities, where you just put in your SNMP credentials.

I deployed myself in five minutes.

Three years ago, we used to work out of the office for hours doing maintenance, like patching and upgrading tools. My guys are no longer doing night duty for operations like that. We don't do any maintenance on Auvik because it is done by Auvik.

Compared to other products, Auvik's pricing is more feasible since you get all its features. You pay for licenses on a per network device basis. It monitors hypervisors, but does not bill for that. There are no additional costs, which is something that I like.

We did evaluate a couple of tools, both on-premises and cloud, then we decided to go with Auvik.

Auvik works smoothly compared to other tools. It also discovers the entire network in a respective area, then Auvik maps it automatically and gives you a good topology. This was a key factor in our decision.

Auvik is for any networking department. If you have a very complex network or a lot of devices that need to be monitored, Auvik would be the best fit. Auvik is not for a simple environment. If you have 10 devices or 10 branch/site offices, then Auvik is not a good fit because it will become expensive.

We are still in the testing phase of the TrafficInsights feature, which gives you full visibility into what is happening on your network. Also, the TrafficInsights feature will help you to say where protocols or services are consumed heavily. In the long run, it helps you to optimize your bandwidth based on your country consumption. It gives you a lot of details and integrated traffic insight, which we unfortunately need to hold back on because of data protection laws. 

It doesn't configure out-of-the-box automatically. That is a manual job.

For an enterprise environment, I would rate this solution as 10 out of 10.

Our initial purpose was to look at network data from our endpoint protection units. We wanted more visibility into the traffic coming into and out of the organization.

One of Auvik's big benefits is that it's cloud-based. You have agents that you deploy locally, but other tools require us to deploy a virtual machine inside our network. We needed to secure the operating system on the VM and ensure it was always functional and patched. With Auvik, we don't need to worry about that. We periodically need to patch the VM that reports back, but it's not as frequent as managing your own virtual machine.

NetFlow data is available in Auvik. That's an advantage over other reporting tools. You can be certain about the data going in and out, so it's easier to troubleshoot bottlenecks and look at the network switch interfaces to see which ones are overwhelmed with traffic. 

Auvik has decreased our mean time to resolution by around 10 percent by improving reporting. We pick up errors that we could probably find with other systems, but the Auvik system is a little quicker about sending us the alerts. 

People typically use Auvik to look at NetFlow data, but we went for it because we wanted a convenient cloud-based platform to collect data that we don't have to host locally. We like that having space available is not our problem. You can deploy an agent on your network through a virtual machine running on a secure Linux operating system. It's a secure product, and the data we need is available in the cloud.

The interface is easy to use. You need to refer to the manuals, but there's enough documentation for you to get started without the need to contact support. We primarily use it for NetFlow data instead of network troubleshooting, but we launched a little project to look at internal traffic, and it was quite intuitive based on my experience. 

Price sensitivity is an issue in the country where we use Auvik because of our exchange rate. It would be helpful if they could offer a slightly more affordable price in this region. I'd also like to see Auvik introduce more AI-driven features. 

We've been using Auvik for probably a year already.

Auvik is 100 percent stable.

It seems like Auvik can scale quite quickly. We don't have a large network, but I believe it can scale well. 

I rate Auvik support eight out of 10. I haven't contacted them much, but I was satisfied with our limited interactions. 

Positive

We have used other solutions, but we haven't used something that would be considered Auvik's competitor. Previously, we used a combination of tools. We used some of the native reporting tools that came with products of some of the switches. Auvik's reporting delivers more granular details.

Auvik is a cloud-based solution, but you need to install an on-prem agent that communicates with the cloud service. The deployment was straightforward, and you can get the solution running in a few hours. It takes a little longer to start ingesting the data. We have two people monitoring the solution. It requires limited maintenance aside from periodically updating the agent. 

I can only say that I think Auvik is worth the price, but I haven't calculated an ROI. We spent less time implementing and maintaining it, and it has improved our resolution time. 

From our perspective, Auvik is slightly expensive because of the exchange rate between our country's currency and the US dollar. It makes a significant difference. Some devices are covered at no charge. We don't use it extensively, so it isn't that essential. Maybe we'll use it more in the future, so it's nice to know that they have free offerings we can use as part of the solution. 

I rate Auvik eight out of 10. 

We primarily use Auvik for network discovery, visibility, management, and minor monitoring.

The solution's alerts led me to discover network aspects I wasn't aware of.

The SNMP discovery features are impressive; few products are as robust in their abilities, and it discovered objects I didn't think it would.

Auvik's management and monitoring functions are straightforward to use, though I'm tech-savvy, and this ease of use is important.  

The product increased visibility into our remote and distributed networks, and that's paramount to us.   

Auvik is a helpful tool for keeping device inventories up-to-date, which helps with delegation if the organization has the staff. 

Auvik keeping device inventories up-to-date saves time, as it's much more advantageous than having to do a facility tour in person, manually checking all the devices and adding them to s spreadsheet, for example. We do that for auditing purposes, but the solution makes keeping devices up-to-date much more manageable.  

The trial could be longer, especially for attracting small and medium-sized businesses like us.

The pricing model could also be improved, as the unlimited selection isn't unlimited. The billing work on the build devices and components, and I've tried to set up the solution in a few different configurations, resulting in multiple build devices each time. Therefore, I question the cost-effectiveness for a business of our size.

We've been using the solution for over a week on a trial basis. 

The solution seems stable, though I haven't been using it for long enough to fully evaluate that. 

Auvik seems scalable, and the initial deployment was straightforward. I can see how it would be difficult in a complex environment with multiple locations.

I have never had to contact tech support thus far.

We didn't previously use a different third-party solution; we use what we built in-house or what's available as part of our equipment.

The initial setup was very straightforward; it took me less than an hour to deploy Auvik on our network. 

Compared to other solutions, Auvik is much faster to set up; it was almost immediately available for use following deployment.

For small businesses with many devices, the tool is potentially unaffordable. Auvik Networks Inc. is competing with other companies offering very expensive products. Still, there's a gap in the market and potentially a lot of lost revenue for smaller customers, especially those with complex IT environments.

Auvik would be worth the money if we continued past the free trial if we were a bigger enterprise. From a value perspective, automation and related features could be very valuable.

There are a few solutions on my list to evaluate, but I still need to get around to them.

I rate the solution seven out of ten. 

I haven't had long enough to evaluate Auvik for its automation capabilities or to determine if there has been a reduction in our meantime to resolution. 

We are a managed service provider, so we use the solution to monitor our customers' network environments.

Auvik provides a single integrated platform for network monitoring, but we integrate with other platforms for ticket generation and another dashboard we use, BrightGauge. 

The alert generation is excellent; we need to be able to look at a customer's network and see if there are any issues we should be aware of, like emergencies and offline devices. Auvik provides this and alerts us to issues before the customer calls about the problem. We had a case where a device failed, the solution notified us right away, and we were able to use the automatic backup configuration, which we restored to a replacement device.

The monitoring and alerting are the most valuable features. 

The automated configuration backups are another excellent capability. 

Auvik provides excellent visibility into our remote and distributed networks, which is especially helpful when onboarding a new customer. The solution offers great insight into the network we're taking over from a single pane of glass. This gives us situational awareness, allowing us to address issues, find credentials, configure, and correctly monitor network elements.

The solution's monitoring and management functions are more challenging than needed; the interface is sometimes unintuitive and confusing. That may be because I've never had formal training with the tool, so it can be difficult to navigate sometimes. This can be frustrating, as I sometimes need to go back to square one and follow multiple steps to get back to where I've just come from. For example, to access a list of devices I was just looking at because there isn't a direct path back.

I've had some issues where the solution repeatedly discovers a device I don't want to manage and alerts me about it. This is probably me not using the tool correctly, or it could be Auvik recognizing the device in different ways.

The solution sometimes finds networks and devices it sees, but I don't know where to begin looking to try and find out where it could have seen these from. Therefore, I want to know the path or details about the discovery, where the tool discovers a new network, and what way it takes to get to it and find that it's available to scan.

I also want Auvik to identify itself differently on networks because we have some firewalls that identify it as a potential risk, not only because of what it's doing but also because Auvik can present like a foreign intrusion into the network, which scares some of our customers.

We've been using the solution for almost two years. 

The stability is excellent; we've never had a stability issue.

The tool scales well, though we have yet to push its limits. We can manage multiple customers, and it's a tenant-based solution, so Auvik is as scalable as we need it to be.

I never had to contact tech support. 

We used MS Power Automate to monitor some of the devices we now use Auvik for, and Auvik does a better, more thorough job. We've also used the Kaseya VSA platform for monitoring. Still, Auvik is geared more towards the network, discovery, and monitoring aspects, which works better for us than other platforms.

I wasn't involved in the initial deployment, though I've been involved in the deployments to some customers' networks. In terms of maintenance, there are specific tasks we carry out as part of our obligations as an MSP around monitoring Auvik, but we don't need to do any maintenance with Auvik itself.

I'm an engineer, so I'm unfamiliar with the cost of Auvik and the other options on the market. My advice to those concerned about pricing is to do their homework and compare all the offerings. They could also demo Auvik to see if it meets their needs and justifies the cost.

I rate Auvik seven out of ten. 

A monitoring solution like Auvik is essential for any MSP, but other contenders exist in the marketplace.

Regarding reducing repetitive, low-priority tasks through automation, we're not currently using the solution for that. We could benefit from this area, but we have yet to leverage the capability.

As far as helping to keep device inventories up-to-date, I imagine the solution would help, but we don't use it for inventory.

As to whether the solution reduced our mean time to resolution (MTTR), I don't have access to those reports, but it's unlikely it impacts our resolution time. We don't continually monitor Auvik or have a staff member dedicated to working with it full-time. If we took advantage of the automation, I can see how the tool would reduce our MTTR, but we're not currently leveraging it as effectively as we could be.

My advice to others evaluating Auvik is they will need the hardware to run the collector at customer sites.

I run an engineering team with a dynamic cloud-based environment. I was interested in tools that can help me understand what we have deployed. 
There are about five people administrating it. In terms of the number of locations, it's hard to say. We're a distributed remote team, but we have multiple cloud environments. We don't have locations in the physical sense of the word anymore.

One of our core objectives is to understand the services and systems deployed in the cloud. It's not always obvious. I'm hopeful that Auvik will help.

Having a single platform is somewhat important. It's also essential to integrate Auvik with other solutions. However, I don't think there's a situation where one tool can be the single integrated platform within a space. I checked out the API and the integrations around that. It all looks good, but I didn't use it that much. I did some basic integrations, but I don't think having a single integrated portal product is everything. The right amount of features are integrated into Auvik, but it doesn't need to have everything integrated, and nothing ever will be fully integrated.

We use various tools, including our homebrewed management scripts, some monitoring tools, and cloud portals. They aren't all applications per se, but we have various overlapping tools. Switching to Auvik would save us some time, but some key hangups prevent us from proceeding with it. 

The automatic discovery would help us avoid repeated configuration steps. The automated device inventory feature is potentially valuable. Employees are expensive, and we want them focused on high-value tasks. 

Visibility is crucial. Auvik has alerts that help us be proactive by telling us when something is behaving abnormally. 

The automatic discovery feature is the most valuable, but I've got some issues. The monitoring and management functions are effortless. It couldn't be more straightforward. We use lots of tools, and they need to be as simple as possible. Auvik has an advantage there because I certainly would pick it over something else. However, we often find ourselves using functions that aren't so easy to use because we need them, and they're the only option available.

The network visualization was intuitive enough, but it's hard to say because the network I was testing had a reasonably flat structure. It was good for what I was doing, but I don't know how that scales.

We use a service called Tailscale, a peer-to-peer private networking tool. My biggest issue with Auvik was getting it to scan devices across the Tailscale network. I suspect it's not supported there. That would be a valuable extension for us.

I haven't used Auvik for long. I did a demo for about a day where I set up the features and played with the interface extensively.

Auvik is highly stable.

I haven't stretched Auvik's capabilities, but it's been fine.

I rate Auvik support a six out of ten. They were very responsive, but I didn't feel that the answer was quite accurate.

Neutral

We had a mixture of cloud consoles and self-management scripts. I saw Auvik advertised and thought the automatic discovery sounded handy, so I took a free trial.

I run the engineering team, so I wouldn't do the deployment, but I manage the people who would. It's pretty straightforward, and I implemented Auvik out of the box. It takes very little time to deploy. I could see devices within an hour. I spent most of the day playing with configurations, adding SNMP credentials, and exploring. I could get something running in half an hour to an hour. Auvik was much quicker to set up than some other tools. 

I'm concerned about the price. It seems quite expensive.

I rate Auvik a seven out of ten. Currently, it doesn't work for us because of the limitation on Tailscale. If it weren't for that, I would give it a perfect ten. Unfortunately, it doesn't meet our needs, so I can't score it too high.

The setup was smooth, and you can tell they've put a lot of thought into helping people with that. I'm curious why all the devices have API keys next to them when I know some devices don't have APIs. It wasn't clear what that meant. Maybe the way the APIs work could use a little bit of polish.

We're an MSP, and we support small to medium businesses from end to end, including printers, servers, and networks. We use Auvik to manage our clients' infrastructure. Our customers include companies running factories and hotels.

The ability to manage access points provided by Auvik is a big one for us; it's much easier to track down cable breaks and the specific switch where the lost connection to the access point is. We serve hotels with over 300 access points, so this functionality is essential.

The solution helped reduce repetitive, low-priority tasks through automation, especially regarding tickets. Ticket logging is now automatic, which helps us immensely. A hotel guest is no longer left without a connection for an hour and then complains to the duty manager, who logs a call with us manually. We can see an issue immediately, and start resolving it, which has saved our business a significant amount of time.    

Auvik positively affected our IT team's visibility into our remote and globally distributed networks because we can see all our different devices from a centralized view. It's much simpler and easier to have all our network components visible from one place. This visibility is 100% critical; our customers pay us and expect us to have visibility over the network.  

Auvik reduced our mean time to resolution and significantly reduced the number of issues we face, so we rarely need to resolve anything.   

The solution also helps our projects team implement new technologies into the environment and manage all the teething issues. 

The network mapping is an excellent feature, as each device is represented by a different shape or object, which is great for helping us, our staff in training, and our customers understand how the network is structured. Seeing the bigger picture helps immensely, as we provide remote support; we're not boots on the ground.

The solution provides detailed device information, including serial numbers, lifecycles, and differentiation between devices, which is another excellent feature.

The monitoring and management functions work fine, and we have no issues with them; it integrates well with our remote system. Auvik sends alerts and creates tickets in our ticketing system, which is fantastic for us because we see an alert come in and pop onto Auvik to start our investigation. The ease of use is essential, the easier, the better. We have a lot of customers, and each one wants to feel like they've received five-star treatment. The quicker we can resolve an issue, the better our customers feel, and the easier it becomes for us to get paid.  

Auvik is fantastic for helping to visualize our organization's network mapping/topology; we've used different monitoring solutions, but nothing can give us a network diagram like Auvik. Previously, we made network diagrams manually, a time-consuming, painstaking process. As soon as we had to add or swap out a switch, we would have to edit the diagram. We used Microsoft Project for that and had to pay for the functionality. It was so much effort for minimal reward. With Auvik, we put in little effort and get a lot of rewards. The network visualization is intuitive enough overall.   

It helps keep our device inventories up-to-date; it features a collector that gathers detailed information about the network, which makes management easier. We can see what's online, decommissioned, or coming onto the network when it's not supposed to. This functionality saves us a significant amount of time.   

I want the network map to be faster and more responsive. 

I've been using the solution for almost a year. 

The tool is stable enough for now. Once a lot of items are on the network map, it can get sluggish, but other than that, it's pretty stable.

The solution is scalable, and we have many customers there. As far as I know, we can add as much as we want.

I never had to contact Auvik's technical support. The solution has excellent documentation, so I can always go in there and better my knowledge.

We previously used multiple solutions, including N-central and PRTG Network Monitor. We switched because Auvik allows us to have more devices, different devices, the ability to differentiate between them, and detailed information that the other products could not provide.

I wasn't involved in the deployment, but in terms of maintenance, the solution requires some upkeep. When devices come and go, we have to remove them manually, but it's still straightforward to see what's going on on a network level rather than having to be there in person.

I don't know how much the solution costs, but the fact that we've moved almost all of our customers over to it means it must be worth the value. Our platforms are costly, but we switched to Auvik, so the company must see it as cost-effective.

I rate Auvik nine out of ten. 

The solution does not provide a single integrated platform simply because we use many different platforms. Auvik is outstanding because it provides the most information and has the most capable feature set. Still, we have many requirements within our business that Auvik alone cannot cater to.

The cloud is the future when comparing Auvik's cloud-based solution versus on-prem network monitoring solutions. On-prem can be nice, as it can be a little faster, but we have to be in the cloud now. Having one place to go, one platform, is too valuable, and it's much better.  

I advise those evaluating the solution to play around and use it before implementing it. I recommend the platform.

Our primary use cases are for monitoring the network and backup for the switches and firewalls.

The daily backups monitoring and the notifications if something goes down have improved my organization.

Auvik has decreased our mean time to resolution. It's easier to find the devices on the network and pull out the information. Of course, the SNMP is also good to get the logs. It helps in the network debugging or if we have to find any problems. 

The backup feature is really good. The monitoring feature is the main reason why we use Auvik.

Auvik is really helpful and straightforward. I like the free training as well. It's easy to use.

It's done a pretty good job when it comes to its network discovery capabilities. It's pretty accurate. Although, we have a few VPNs and maybe a bit more complicated setup. It's complicated to do it the right way, but it's fine. It's not a big issue. 

We tried the traffic insights feature. My director uses it to report issues about traffic things. It shows the network bandwidth usage without the need for expensive inline traffic decryption.

This feature to check the bandwidth is good because we have a high bandwidth development, so it's hard to check. If we saw high bandwidth usage, it is not an issue for us because it's part of the development.

We use automated out-of-the-box device configuration backups. Before Auvik we didn't have any solution and we haven't had any script or task to do this. And it was one of the selling points for us to have the backups and see the differences between the configurations. So it's not to save anything. It was one of the reasons why we subscribed to Auvik.

I would rate Auvik's time to value for setup time, automated network mapping, and documentation a ten out of ten. 

The cost savings we have realized to the solution versus its cost is an eight out of ten because we haven't saved a lot but it improved our system. 

It's missing the license checker feature. We are using Salesforce and the license is a really crucial part of the development, and we have to monitor it. Now, I have to write a script and then run it on a random Linux box and get a notification if it's expiring. It's a really specific feature. I'm not sure Auvik will develop it.

We used Nagios for monitoring. Since it's an open-source thing, you can easily extend it with plugins. We had the license-checker in Nagios and I miss it in Auvik. There might be a solution to check this license. I just haven't had time to check it.

I have been using Auvik for around a year. 

We haven't experienced any stability issues. 

The scalability is pretty good. We have two studios and two offices and it works perfectly.

We have 50 PCs on one side and 200 PCs on the other side. 

We have one or two users actively using it. 

It requires zero maintenance. Nagios was a continuous polishing and setting up of stuff. Auvik is totally different. Auvik just works out-of-the-box. Nagios needs parenting.

We had one ticket and they solved it. That was our experience with technical support. 

We previously used Nagios. I liked Nagios, but Auvik has much more features. It's an enterprise product instead of a normal one. We tried Auvik, we liked it, and we bought it.

The initial setup was straightforward. My director implemented it and we have two collectors in our two offices. So it was pretty easy. We only had issues with the authentication.

It took around a week. It took one night for him to install it and we were able to fine tune it the next week. We are still learning it.

We did the deployment ourselves. 

The licensing is really good. I felt the price was a bit expensive, but it wasn't my decision.

Auvik only charges for certain devices and not the endpoints. We like the way it's licensed. 

We didn't evaluate other solutions. Auvik wasn't my choice. We had Nagios and we didn't replace it but we started slowly using Auvik and phasing out Nagios.  

My advice would be not to forget to set up the external IP because it was also a good feature.

I would rate Auvik a ten out of ten. 

It is our primary monitoring tool for devices.

We have virtual machines running the Auvik application. The collectors are also installed on the virtual machines.

The benefit is that it is our primary monitoring tool. 

To some extent, Auvik helps us put out fires with its backup connectivity, before end users even know that there is a problem. If we can access devices faster, then it helps resolve issues before they are noticed.

Monitoring: It lets us know the state of our business and statuses.

Discovering by IP range is okay.

We have backup connectivity in case of some failures. So, it has been of some help. Our mean time to resolution has been decreased by half an hour.

Sometimes, it is easy to use. Sometimes, it is painful to add something and get some of the features running. For example, we had a problem adding interfaces to the monitoring. When some features are not yet deployed, sometimes we struggle with configuration problems, adjusting it in the proper way.

There have been some problems with the implementation of the monitoring. Because we can't monitor as we would like, we aren't introducing anything more to the platform at the moment.

It needs flexibility for the pooling of information. Because it is fully automated, it is pooling everything from the device from a given category. There is no way to exclude things that are not important or if you want to temporarily remove them to see statistics of other things. For example, we get about 100 MB from Auvik. We are unable to limit this. We would rather stop monitoring something, since some features will always give you alerts, because they shouldn't be monitored. However, it is impossible to exclude them, e.g., the internal interface. If somebody disconnects the device from the internal interface, we get an alert. So, this is something that is really painful for us. More flexibility would solve most of our issues.

We can only see the global picture, not the detailed one. This is something that we don't have in Auvik.

I have been using Auvik since I came to the company, which would be less than a year ago. I think it was deployed in our company about two years ago.

It is stable. We are well-informed about planned maintenance from Auvik.

It does not require much maintenance to keep Auvik running.

We need to install many instances in each network, which is kind of a problem. A collector needs to be installed for each network. This causes problems with the scalability, especially if you have a network divided by firewalls.

I am using Auvik mostly when there are alerts or something is wrong.

We are monitoring around 40 devices.

Auvik's support is pretty helpful and fast in their response. 

This was the first monitoring tool that we used.

I was only using some obsolete systems five to seven years ago. Auvik's setup is much easier than it used to be for those.

The initial setup was straightforward and easy. The portal is pretty simple and self-explanatory. The process of deploying does not take long. Basic functionality takes about 40 minutes to set up. If you want more features, then it will take more time.

Auvik was first configured for the virtual environment. Then, we created instances for it.

Evaluate whether it is suitable for your purposes and network, in terms of scalability and flexibility, versus using other features, like disaster recovery or emergency login.

We haven't discovered a lot of devices with Auvik.

It is based on the identified networks. Though, it is not scanning all interfaces, e.g., if you don't have the appropriate subnet. You need to define the range by, e.g., IP devices, then it will scan that range and update the topology automatically. However, it is not an out-of-the-box automatic discovery.

It is worth having two instances on two different parts of the network to have more reliability on a network level.

I would rate this solution as a seven out of 10.

The primary use case is network monitoring.

One of the things that I like the most is being able to see what is connected to each switch port. If there are 300 switch ports, I can find out which port any given computer is connected to on the network, assuming it is physical. We then can label certain ports as uplinks, servers, or storage. It is easy to find where a lot of traffic is coming from because we can get to that individual switch level, which is a lot easier to do in Auvik than it is to do native in the equipment.

Remote accessibility of the network devices is the most valuable feature. I often have to log into switches and routers to make changes, and I can do so from any computer as long as I have an Internet connection. I don't need to have my laptop or a VPN. Auvik is faster.

Auvik automatically updates our network topology. The topology map is drawn in real-time. Seeing the network versus visualizing is helpful. With real-time and historical monitoring, we know when devices are offline or if there is high utilization, specifically with the SNMP monitoring and SSH monitoring.

Its network discovery capabilities are really strong. With the right access, it can detect additional networks, then scan those networks. 

It is easy to use, yet not easy to administer. If I am a technician, then I just need to log in to a switch or see what the network is doing and what it is connected to, which is very easy to do. If I am an administrator, then I have to maintain, clean, and label that environment. Auvik's utility in that regard is cumbersome. It is hard to find where certain things are configured. Also, it is sometimes hard to figure out why Auvik is doing what it is doing.

There is a weakness with the network discovery capabilities, e.g., if it has access to virtual machines, then it is picking up on networks that don't matter. These are private virtual networks on individual computers, but Auvik doesn't know the difference. So, it is constantly coming up with new networks that it thinks it needs to scan. In my environment, I have 250 computers with probably 100 people who are running Hyper-V. Each one of those instances is creating virtual networks that it is getting discovered, then I have to tell it to ignore it. I have never seen the ability to say, "Ignore the networks or submits that look like this."

Sometimes, the UX is difficult to navigate for certain aspects. For example, I like to keep the generic devices out of the topology, so I often will purge those, but I only want to purge the ones that are offline. In the managed devices section, although you can filter by generic device, you can't filter by up or down status. You can only do that in the device section, not the managed device section. So, I have to take a picture of the generic devices that are offline, then navigate to another area where I can actually delete these objects, then select them using a picture. I can filter in one place, but I can't delete. Then, in the other place, I can delete, but I can't filter the same way.

At this company, I have used Auvik for a year and a half. Prior to that, I would say that I used it for about three or four years.

The stability has been fine. I get notifications for network maintenance and there hasn't really been an issue with that.

It requires no maintenance.

The major limitation is the multi-tenant aspect. For example, if I was to put this in a business that had six corporate offices, which is a pretty big business, I wouldn't want all of that under one tenant. I would want that under separate tenants for each location, but there would need to be an eagle eye view of the six locations from a high level, and you wouldn't get that in multi-tenant.

Auvik for MSPs is great because you can segment/isolate the different clients. However, Auvik gets overwhelming when it is a big business with multiple locations, hundreds of networks, and thousands of ports. I think that would be difficult to manage. If you are talking 5,000 to 100,000 switch ports, then you are talking about a lot of networks with a lot of different viewings and protocols. There really is a limit. There is almost no support for any kind of routing protocol. Where there is the Layer 1 and Layer 3 bars that tell you if it is physically connected or Layer 3 routed, the Layer 3 router should really include things, such as, what is the routing protocol that it found or the ability to see a trace route of how it is routed.

Sometimes the technical support is really good, and sometimes it is just terrible. Some of the gentlemen and gals are extremely knowledgeable when it comes to networking. They know the product and are very helpful. Then, some of them don't really get engaged in the support. They will just send an article/link, like, "Read this and do it on your own." I don't reach out to support because I can't find an article or do it on my own. I reach out because there is something I don't understand or don't know how to do. Making sure that they understand what it is that I am trying to accomplish requires a conversation, and some are willing to get on a phone call and some of them are willing to. The ones who are willing to get on a phone call are the ones that I have the best experiences with.

The initial setup was pretty complex. The company that I work for moved out of an office where we had 60 to 70 switches. Now, we are down to about 12. Therefore, the setup was more complex back then, although we only had one location. Now, we have one location and one data center. The deployment took four to six hours.

Auvik's setup time and automated network mapping and documentation provides time-to-value. It is very valuable in that sense. For a small environment, it rolls out for you very quickly, e.g., five minutes. Roll out the collector and let it do its scan, label one or two networks that are there, throw in the credentials, make sure it is identifying everything, and you are done. Then, it just kind of works. The amount of value that you get then in perpetuity to the relative installation is very high, but as a single IT company or an employee in a single company, that quick rollout isn't as valuable because I am only doing it once.

I did the deployment myself. I have used Auvik before, so I just set the collector using VMware OVA. I put a collector in our office, labeled the networks and set exemptions from the scan, and then just let it go. Obviously, I tried to enter all the credentials that I could at the time, but then I found I had to make modifications to group policy so the computers and servers could be accessed. So I probably just threw it out there and then added the credentials later. If I had to do it again, I would have put the credentials in first then threw it out there.

We are not making a profit on Auvik. It is an expense.

Although networking is only a small piece of what I am doing, it can be a time-intensive aspect. So, the time required is significantly less using Auvik than it is to manage the devices individually.

As an individual IP company, Auvik is a little bit pricey. It is a little expensive, but as an MSP owner, I have a small side business. So, I'm an Auvik customer in that sense too. In that, I think it's reasonable to pay $10 to $15 a device or less depending on the endpoint. For the amount of capability that it has, it is very reasonably priced.

There are devices monitored at no charge, such as:

• UPS batteries
• VMware ESX hypervisors
• Wireless access points
• Printers
• Dell EMC iLO cards.

I would probably compare Auvik to PRTG Network Monitor. I think Auvik is a lot faster than PRTG Network Monitor. I am not a very big fan of other solutions. I have never really tried them. 

Auvik gives us inventory. I don't think PRTG Network Monitor does that. So, I can integrate Auvik with our IT Glue cloud status, then we have an inventory of network devices that we don't have to manually create. It saves some time there. PRTG Network Monitor doesn't do that.

PRTG Network Monitor is easier and simpler to set up because it is not trying to do everything that Auvik is trying to do. Once you point it at a device and give it the credentials, it just starts monitoring. At the same time, it doesn't show the relationships between other devices; it doesn't show those connections. It is not an apples to apples comparison. 

We haven't had any SolarWinds Orion products. Now, we wouldn't buy that at all. Auvik is far easier than Orion.

My team members aren't really using it. The other guy is kind of a junior IT guy, and I think it is still intimidating to him. My boss is a higher level engineer, but he is too busy managing to do anything technical. He just relies on me to tell him if there is anything he needs. He mostly wants the solution for the monitoring. He wants to know when a hypervisor module is failing or a hypervisor server goes down.

If you don't put in the credentials, Auvik can't log in and grab those device backups. Once you put those in, then it is automated. It logs in and grabs the configurations. Although, Auvik doesn't support all devices. So if you don't think you have certain types of hardware, it doesn't do anything for you.

Networking has a high learning curve and Auvik lowers that learning curve. It doesn't eradicate or eliminate it though. You still need a pretty strong level of understanding of networking in order to understand the GUI visualization that it is presenting. Just like any other tool, the time invested is largely going to determine the quality of your return.

Auvik has a little ways to go, but I still highly favor it, so I would rate it as an eight out of 10.