Auvik Network Management (ANM) Reviews

We use Auvik to monitor two different domains and to review any trouble that might come up. It's opened our eyes to some problems that we've had on the network and now we're working to fix those.

One of the things we noticed is that our wifi access points were throwing a bunch of errors. So we're in the process to replace those access points.

It is also very good at notifying you if the network goes down, and then it'll tell you if it's cleared or if it's come back up. 

Auvik started providing value right away. The APs immediately started sending alerts. It's really important that the wireless network works properly over at that location. Looking at the alerts, it's got big problems, and it's just because of old devices.

The alerts that it sends out are the most valuable aspect of this solution. The maps are okay. The interface is okay, but the alerts are what I really like.

Auvik is easy to use. The first thing you see when you open it up is a map of the United States or wherever you are, and it shows the locations of all of your network endpoints. For discovery, you set credentials and manage the credentials and it tells you when it needs a new credential. So you just click the "Manage Credentials" button and it takes you to the right spot. You enter in a new credential and then it starts looking closer at the device. It can give you all kinds of information from inside the device's log. We use it for CIS logs and we use it for just regular logging. The CIS log was something I was looking for in the other products, just so we have a place for the CIS logs to congregate so we can look them up.

The menu on the left-hand side is very straightforward and clear. If you want to see it, just log on to a certain endpoint, bring up that endpoint, click CIS log on the left-hand side, and you'll see the CIS log.

It's easy to navigate. Everything is intuitive and easily accessible.

The network discovery capability is very good. Last week we refreshed one of our locations, and while an employee was out there refreshing the location or replacing devices, I could sit and watch Auvik find the new device and start mapping it. It automatically updates our network topology.

There's only one other team member and he doesn't use it. So it's just me that uses it. And I use it to make sure that there are no loops in the network or the network is not configured wrong. Every once in a while, the map will do something funny and we'll have to try to figure out what it did. You are better off if you physically document the ports that things are plugged into and then put those into Auvik, which is not hard. You just click on the connection line and go ahead and edit it.

We never would have known that the access points were a problem until Auvik came along. The location that has the bad access points was running slow and we could not figure out why without Auvik. The network was basically configured wrong. Something was plugged in and created the loop. Within hours, we could have somebody go onsite to fix it.

We use the TrafficInsights feature a little. It shows us network bandwidth usage without the need for expensive inline traffic decryption. The part that's important to me is the application breakdown. It breaks down the applications that are running and taking up bandwidth. It lists all the applications that are taking up bandwidth.

The map would be the first thing I would like to see improved because sometimes the maps get really odd-looking and the automated placement of things on the map, devices on the map is sometimes not right. In fact, I was just looking at the map and something got moved. I'm sure it didn't get moved, it's just that Auvik realized it was supposed to go somewhere else. So the map could be better if there was a little bit of manual manipulation that you could do.

Everything else is pretty simple and straightforward and easy to use.

I have been using Auvik for six months.

It's always been stable for me and available. They do have scheduled downtime, but that's usually in the middle of the night and it's usually pretty quick.

We have a small network. We do have two domains, which a lot of things don't work well with as far as network tools, but Auvik works great. It just picks out both networks and we go from there. 

We're monitoring 575 devices with Auvik. We've maxed out on our network. We might add other devices.

It requires zero maintenance from our side. 

I've used support once or twice and they were efficient, quick, and solved the problem. I don't remember what the problem was, but they were quick and efficient about it.

The initial setup was very easy. We use VMware, so we set up the connectors that we needed and Auvik just started working. It started going through the network and building maps at each location. It was very simple. The setup took a few hours to a day.

It's too soon to have seen ROI, but I'm sure we will.

The value is there. It's not that expensive per device and it's licensed per device. Unlike some of the other tools that I use, it's not really expensive. It's a good value for the price.

Out of those 575 devices, 49 of them are billable. The non-billable devices are workstations and printers.

Everything just worked. The important thing is to set up your devices properly so that there are passwords and ports that Auvik can use so that it can get in, get the configuration, and also flag any alerts.

I would rate Auvik an eight out of ten.

We use it for visibility into remote sites. We use it to fix misconfigurations that come up, investigate network issues or network slowdowns, and alert us if devices go down.

In terms of deployment, it is pretty much all cloud-based. There is an agent that you put on a server for your site.

We have been able to see potential misconfigurations across the network where things like STP are not set up properly. 

It has helped us to deal with issues proactively. When disk space is low on endpoints or servers, we have set up alerts to preemptively reach out to people so that we can take care of it before it becomes a bigger issue. We are able to let users know that we need to upgrade the storage on servers or endpoints.

The automation of network mapping has allowed us more time to focus on things that we deem necessary. It has enabled our junior network specialist to resolve issues directly and freed up senior-level team members to perform higher-value tasks.

I am sure it has decreased our mean time to resolution, but it is something that I need to reconfirm with our local system administrators. 

It automatically updates our network topology. It has also simplified our operations and saved the time of our staff members to a limited degree. Our structure is a little bit different from most companies, so I can't describe the full impact, but it has been helpful for the visibility that it provides into local networks.

The visibility that it provides is probably the most valuable feature because we need to know what our sites look like. Understanding what our sites look like and knowing about what kind of network gear or network equipment these sites are running is very important for us. Previously, we didn't have visibility into everything.

Its network discovery capabilities are excellent. It is able to automatically scan subnets as long as they're reachable from the host machine. After you have installed it, you can choose which subnets you want to scan to build your network. It will automatically build a topographic map of the network, which is good to understand the structure of each of these networks. It does this in a fairly quick response time and with ease of use and ease of access. 

Alerting is a great feature. We have been able to set up alerts for devices to preemptively reach out to users and let them know that we need to upgrade the storage on servers or endpoints. 

It is very easy to use and deploy. You can easily configure network monitoring on the sites.

They can definitely build more alerts. Firewalls can be more integrated to provide more information, and there can be better integration with Meraki. 

It also needs ports for stack switches. Getting into the Office 365 realm would also be a good thing for them.

I have been using Auvik for about eight months.

It is rock-solid in terms of stability. We have not had any downtime. It hasn't gone down on us. Maintenance windows are scheduled appropriately, and notifications are sent out in advance.

It is very scalable. It is currently being used in 15 to 20 different networks. Across global sites, we probably monitor more than 1,000 devices.

I haven't really had to use their technical support. We've just taken help from our onboarding success manager.

We needed something that was easy to deploy and gave us visibility. We also needed something that we could standardize across the sites.

It is certainly easy enough to deploy. Our strategy was to work with each site for a couple of hours to install the agents and have the credentials in place in Auvik. We repeated this for every company that we had, and it took us about two months to deploy it to more than 20 organizations. 

In its deployment, 10 to 15 system administrators were involved. Auvik has an onboarding specialist, and this specialist was the only person whose help we required. Their specialist was top-notch, professional, and caring, and our experience was great.

It is a cloud-based solution, so we don't have to do any maintenance. 

We have seen our return on investment in terms of visibility and standardizing of platforms. Auvik has enabled us to standardize our platforms. We have replaced all of our other local network monitors with a single platform. I don't know if it has really saved us in licensing costs. It is not cheap, but it has allowed us to consolidate all our other platforms.

Taking into account Auvik's setup time, automated network mapping, and documentation,
it has a pretty good time to value.

Its pricing is a little on the high end. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees. 

It is more expensive than other solutions, but their per-device model is very fair. Anything other than the networking gear is monitored by Auvik at no charge.

We evaluated LogicMonitor. LogicMonitor has a much wider breadth in what it can do and monitor. It is also much more configurable than Auvik, but Auvik is easier to roll out in a quicker timeframe. Auvik also wins with the autodiscovery and mapping features.

It is definitely for larger networks, and the ease of deployment is where Auvik shines. 

It provides automated out-of-the-box device configuration backups, but we do not use this feature. We are also not using as many TrafficInsights features as we would like to use. We are planning to use more, but at this time, we do not utilize many TrafficInsights features.

I would rate Auvik an eight out of ten.

We really needed something for reading logs, so we can go back in time, and also something to monitor our network and our infrastructure in real-time. I use it for everything as far as monitoring in real-time goes, to see what's going on in our network, along with Kace. 

It's deployed on-premises, but it's using the cloud to get to you. You can use it on-premises, but we prefer the cloud.

Its network discovery capabilities are very quick and very precise. It really drills down and finds different devices. It found devices I didn't know existed. As a network administrator, that is horrifying. Our team is pretty small and we were hired to tighten things up. Auvik has helped us to do that. It has taken a while, but we found some little switches that people put in years ago that I didn't even know existed.

In addition, it has decreased our mean time to resolution. Something that would take me a couple of hours now takes 30 minutes.

For what I do, the real-time monitoring is the most important feature. When I log in, I can drill down into the network where I'm seeing the issues. It sends an email, "Hey, I cannot communicate with the server." Sometimes it's a false positive, but when I see it several times, there is something else going on and I drill down into that.

It also automatically updates network topology. Once it discovers something new, and we allow it, it will update it within the interface. Then, when you log in to the cloud, it shows it. It's kinds of neat. It shows you exactly where things connect. We can see and connect the dots. It shows you, for example, that this switch has access here, which has access there. And maybe you didn't want it to have access there. It helps you drill down and say, "I didn't want to go this far."

It does out-of-the-box backing up of your running-config for your routers or for your switches. If I need it, it just takes seconds. I can just go to our Auvik port in the cloud, and it's there.

You have to use MFA with it, always. And it's constantly updating for security, and that's very important in today's environment.

This is not even a bad issue, but when Auvik can't get to your network or can't get to a device for whatever reason, it does send you alerts. But sometimes we get false positives, which every now and then is not a big deal. But it would help if they made it a little easier to suppress some of the alarms. But that's really a feature I don't have to have. Sometimes more is better. If you had to twist my arm and to make me come up with something, that would be it.

We bought Auvik in the fall, about eight months ago.

Generally, we have not had an issue. If it's going to be offline, Auvik will tell you well ahead of time that they're going offline for maintenance. It's almost never down. It's only been down twice and the most recent time it was back up very quickly.

It's very scalable. I would definitely give it five stars on that. In our environment, it's looking at 1,562 devices.

I've only had to use their technical support a couple of times and they were top-notch. They were polite and, both times, it was a very dumb question on my part and they didn't make me feel dumb. They are very sharp men and women.

We didn't have a solution before Auvik, other than manual scripts that fit our needs until we grew. Once we grew and it got so overwhelming, Auvik really helped with that. It was very robust, but it wasn't all over the place. When it was said and done, we really loved the whole platform. It was very user-friendly.

It tells you right out-of-the-box the credentials that it's going to need, such as SSH, your logins, et cetera. You set up the network that you want it to go monitor and, with the IDs and passwords, it pulls all the information in. You have to open up and allow Auvik in from your firewall. There are some prerequisites you have to take care of to use it and you may want to suppress a few alarms, out-of-the-box. It took a couple of days and then it had what we need, right there. 

It took some getting used to, but I started figuring things out. And they were always available for any questions that we had.

Currently, it's just our director,  the engineer, and myself who are using Auvik in our company. We're looking to get everybody more access but we just haven't gotten there yet. I'm still trying to figure it out myself, to learn more as I go with it. 

As a cloud-based solution, it requires no maintenance on our side, unless we have to update a password. But there's nothing for us to do in Auvik in terms of maintenance.

For me, part of the return on investment is just knowing it's there. If you need to pull back for litigation, or our 911 facilities are down, that's when you get your return on investment. You don't know how much your return is because it prevents stuff from happening, stuff that could be very costly.

The time to value is excellent. It's worth every penny that you pay for it. It will save you money. It might not be something that finance or an accountant can see, but if you look at what it's preventing, or what it's helping you monitor in the long run, where downtime and the like could be an issue, it helps you get ahead of the game and you're saving money in that way. We're government, so we're not making money outside of taking your taxes, but at the same time, it is saving money. You may not be able to put a dollar value on it, but I can tell you, you are saving money.

For me, it's security. That is why we have it; for security and to help prevent something from happening that would cost a bunch of money. That's where it saves you. And for auditing purposes, it helps you with litigation.

I didn't deal with the pricing of it. Our director did. It took some back and forth negotiating, but we did get close and came to a compromise. Definitely look for your sales rep to take care of it. They really went out of their way to help us out so that we could get the product.

We looked at several products, including Splunk, NetScout briefly, and PRTG. SolarWinds was a product the company used before I got here but we just didn't use it after I started.

With Auvik, I really like the reporting. That's really what sold it, along with the layout. It was just easier to get around and it made more sense. I don't have to sit down and really study logs. And it works in real-time. Some of the other products took a while to give us the reporting, but with Auvik it is right there. If I have an issue with, say, a switch or there is a network where everything is going down at times, Auvik has a great reporting tool and I can just pull up my reports. I can see all the problems I've had. And you can pinpoint things. It tells you, "Hey, you might want to look here. And these could be the reasons why this is happening." The other products didn't do that.

The auditing of the syslogs was important to my director. That was a big selling point for her and that's how we finally got her to buy Auvik. She really likes those for auditing purposes. It was exactly what she was looking for. And for the rest of us, the engineers, it had what we were looking for. It does it all.

My advice is to use their technical support. Yes, you can learn it on your own and it will help you, but don't be scared to use their technical support. Their support is top-notch. Most of them have probably forgotten more about network security than you have ever known about it. Use them. They want to help you. They have training available, so use the training. They offer it to you as part of the package. Watch the videos and do the training, but do not be scared to use their technical support. They're there to help you.

For what Auvik's doing with the switches, I use it all the time. I always look at my emails for any reporting that it does. I usually know a site will go down, because of alerts from Auvik, before anyone calls. Anything from Auvik goes to my alarm. As soon as it reports, I know they're down, even before they call. I use it a lot.