Device42 Reviews

We use Device42 to report and manage all the assets on our company's private cloud and compile information on infrastructure like network equipment, virtual machines, etc. 

It's part of the toolset we use to investigate what happens when there is an event or a problem in a customer system. For example, we had a customer environment with 20 or 30 servers. Each server can be online or offline and has various resources. Device42 displays all that data in real time. If a customer has downtime, we can tell what is happening within Device42 and other monitoring tools.

We have hundreds of users. Some work directly with Device42, pulling information from the reports, but we also have some indirect users working with automations Device42 is running behind the scenes.

Device42 is a core solution at my company. Everything uses Device42 data. People in the company use Device42 to understand our needs in the cloud and define automated tasks. It is our source of truth for data manipulation and management in the cloud. We are unaware of what's happening in the cloud without it.

It helps with migration and many other projects involving large amounts of data. Device42 is also our tool for those jobs. It is one of the primary resources we use to execute these projects successfully.

Device42 helps us with decision-making about resources like CPU, memory, hard disks, etc. Using information from the cloud, we can determine if we need to buy more equipment or decommission and replace outdated devices. It significantly speeds up daily tasks. It's hard to quantify in a percentage because it's comparing a manual task to automation. Without Device42, we had to run scripts manually to understand the data assets on the basic level of it. 

The REST API abilities enable us to run scripts that push information from our servers about every aspect, from the bottom up like hardware, software, storage mounts, etc. Anything we need is pushed through REST API to the Device42 server and reflected in the report it generates. 

Device42 has auto-discovery abilities, but it isn't our primary data source of truth. The agentless discovery is crucial because it reduces our dependencies and any problems that might arise between an agent and a server. Without an agent, we only need to report to Device42 using REST API. The auto-discovery that Device42 provides is agentless. It retrieves the information directly from the network or through tools like SNMP, requiring less configuration and no dependencies.

Device42 auto-discovery is divided into a few things. There is the generic discovery that browses anything on the network and gets feedback from the network about what's there. And there's another kind of discovery more specific to Cisco discovery elements or other tools like DNS, CyberArk, etc.

It depends on the license the customer buys from Device42. The benefit is getting information by installing Device42 and running that feature without more complex configuration or integration. It also has other integration and plugins with companies like ServiceNow and CyberArk and many more. 

The architecture is a bit old-fashioned. Device42 is on one server and runs as a closed appliance as a virtual machine or guest. We are loading more into Device42 than it can hold. Overloading Device42 with REST API calls or tasks will directly impact every aspect because the server will be too busy to answer requests. that is why we invented some creative ways to reduce that load from devicd42.

A better system would be a frontend server with a backend server and a database-like architecture. The fact that everything is one server causes a significant performance problem. It would be better if Device42 could restructure the product and make it more scalable.

I have been using Device42 since 2016.

I rate Device42 support an eight out of ten. They are professional and respond quickly. Frontline support can handle basic problems, but they will escalate serious issues to R&D or other people in Device42. 

Setting up Device42 wasn't complex, but you must complete some prerequisites to get it into production. The initial installation itself is straightforward. It's a server on an appliance. After that, you must set up and configure the solution and run auto-discovery. Finally, you need to build a robust script for REST API to push all the required data for Device42 through REST API. 

Total deployment time, from testing to production, took about a month, and I mostly completed the job alone. Device42 is one server located in an environment, and you also need to deploy some remote collectors to gather information from other sites. Those collectors are not in the same environment but are deployed remotely to send Device42 the information.

After deployment, Device42 doesn't require much maintenance. For example, if disk usage is growing, we need to free up disk space. We also install upgrades every few months or so, but there isn't much real maintenance work.

We've seen an ROI. It's hard to measure precisely how much time we've saved, but if we translated what Device42 does into human labor hours, it would cost more than we spend on the solution.  

Device42 is cheap compared to other solutions, and we get many benefits from using it. It's worth what we paid for it. 

Device42 can be used for network discovery, migration, CMDB, and data center infrastructure management. It discovers your on-premise and cloud infrastructure. 

You can deploy Device42 on the cloud or on-premises. It's a Hyper-V or VMware virtual machine. Customers typically deploy it on VMware, but it can also be in AWS or Azure. You can put it wherever you want as long as you open the ports on your firewall.

Customers deploy Device42 to discover their entire infrastructure. It can be based in one location or several. You have a primary appliance and remote collectors. If you've got multiple data centers, you can place a remote collector in each that talks back to the primary appliance. If you want, you can deploy the collectors to specific sites or areas of the network. It's entirely up to the customer.

Device42 has a module called Utilization that runs on devices to show you how servers are being used. If you migrate to Azure or AWS, you can see the resources the server is using versus what has been allocated to the device. For example, if a server has eight CPUs and 16 gigs of ram, Device42 can tell you whether you need that capacity after you migrate to the cloud. I've run the utilization tool on customers and found they have multiple unused servers switched on and consuming power. They can turn those servers off. 

It has a new component called Insights+ that includes some preset dashboards and they plan to release more that are tailored to specific customer needs in the next few releases. It's a visualization tool that executives can check themselves, so I no longer need to output reports to an Excel spreadsheet and send them to the CEO. 

Insights+ saves some time. I know where to find the data, but it's more convenient for management because a CEO or CTO only needs to input the server name, and all the information comes up. You can see an overview of all your devices, like the number of virtual machines, laptops, desktops, etc. It is all visualized, so it's easier to find all the data on the dashboard than in an Excel spreadsheet. It doesn't necessarily save me time because I'm not the one viewing the reports, but it saves management time because they're easier to read. They don't need to comb through multiple worksheets of data to find what they need. 

Instead of migrating a server, we perform migrations based on applications because many live on the same servers. Device42 uses application dependency mapping to show incoming and outgoing dependencies from a server 

When you're migrating, you start with one application and look at the servers within that application. One application might turn into four, so you end up migrating four applications to save the customer time. Instead of having one server down four weekends in a row, you do it all on one weekend and migrate all of the servers within several applications. Device42 is an efficient migration tool, and you can leverage the utilization tool to see everything inside the device that's being used. The migration features can save you 30-40% of your time because you can see what you're doing. 

Device42 helps us troubleshoot issues faster. For example, in one of my last projects, I was discovering network switches. We got an error during discovery, so I told the customer that the switches were down before they knew themselves. It isn't a monitoring tool per se, but it can do some monitoring that helps the customer. 

It doesn't help you monitor daily, but it helps you understand what you have and the communications between each device. That's where it will help you rather than telling you when a device goes down. It really depends on how you want to use it.

In addition to discovering all your assets. Device42 has built-in CMBD functionality, so people can consolidate their applications. You get CMDB and IP address management built into Device42, so you can get rid of other applications. Other customers use NetBox, but Device42 includes NetBox information, so they got rid of that. 

Device 42 is an upgrade from those other tools because it knows what you've got. There is integration with other tools, but Device42 is close enough to real-time that the integration could potentially be once a day. If something gets upgraded and your information is sent over to ServiceNow, it will always be behind depending on how many times you sync with ServiceNow, whereas Device42 is written in real-time.

I like the discovery tool because it finds everything the customers have. Many customers don't know what is installed on their networks, and Device42 will tell them. As long as the customer gives us details about their networks, Device42 will discover everything on that subnet, including Windows, Unix, and Linux devices, or network devices, such as switches, routers, storage, and physical servers. 

They've also just created some new interactive dashboards. CEOs can see and interact with the data rather than scrolling through endless Excel worksheets to find what they need.

Device42 can do agentless and agent-based discovery. It depends on the customer's infrastructure. Agentless is good because you don't have to install anything on customer devices, but they need to create accounts with permission to read or log onto the devices and pull back the data. Both methods are helpful. For example, you can install agents onto laptops, so it automatically sends device information back to Device42 when the users log on. 

I have used Device42's data center infrastructure management when customers required it. I'm a Device42 consultant, so I deliver what the customer needs. For example, I can show them what they've got at their data centers. If they need to add a new server to a rack, you can see it on the screen before you go to the data center and identify the spaces in the rack where it should go. 

The reporting could be better. The Insights+ component is an improvement, but they even admit it isn't the greatest. The documentation on their website could also be improved, but Device42 is constantly changing, so the documentation would have to change almost daily. 

I have been using Device42 for about five years.

Device42 is fully scalable.

I rate Device42 support nine out of 10. They're fantastic. They have a portal on the web to your contact information, a description of the issue, screenshots, reports, logs, etc., and it opens a ticket in a few minutes. In less than half an hour, you'll get an email confirmation that they're looking at the problem. 

They'll send you instructions on how to resolve it if it's an easy fix. If it's a more serious issue, they will have you send the logs from the primary appliance or do a video call to get more information. You will typically get a response the same day, regardless of how long your SLA is. 

Positive

I've used BMC and ServiceNow. All of the solutions are about as accurate. The only difference is that BMC and ServiceNow are giant corporations compared to Device42. That sounds negative, but Device42 offers a quicker turnaround on feature requests and support tickets. It's second to none. When you raise a ticket with ServiceNow, you may get a reply in a week. Device42 responds the same day.

I'm not involved in the pricing, but I know people who have switched to Device42 from ServiceNow or BMC due to cost. It's considerably cheaper, but you get the same result.

Setting up Device42 is straightforward. It's an OVF you give to the VMware team. They start it up, and you can configure it with the memory, CPU, and disk space you require. You can deploy it in 10 minutes, but the planning might take days. 

You need to talk to the networks and infrastructure teams about where to put it. Once the customer signs off, I create a solutions design document with a diagram of where to put it. Next, I ensure the security and network people are happy with its location. The implementation is fast, but it requires some time to plan where to put it.

I create all the network diagrams, but you need someone else to build the server and implement it, so it takes at least two people to do it. However, you might need several teams to ensure the customer is happy with the deployment. Implementing it involves the network, infrastructure, and security departments. They only need to sign off on it. 

Device42 requires regular maintenance. They do product enhancements, and bug fixes every two weeks. BMC and ServiceNow did not release enhancements that often. They release new features roughly once a quarter. 

I rate Device42 eight out of 10. There is a little room for improvement, but I know it's making progress because I see what's on the roadmap. It's an ever-changing tool because it covers all IT rather than one specific segment. New bits and pieces are always coming out for storage, servers, etc. 

The discovery is fantastic, but there is space for improvement. It's all on the roadmap. It's challenging to manage from an infrastructure network storage point of view, but they consistently update and release new versions. If a customer can justify why a feature is necessary, Device42 will jump on it straight away.

I recommend new customers do a proof of concept in an area where they know what they have. It could be one VLAN or application. If Device42 returns all of what you know you have, you can say that it has captured your infrastructure 100%. You're confident it can completely capture the rest of your network. 

We were using Device42 for its configuration database manager, so we imported all of our devices into Device42 and tracked the changes that we made on our devices. We assigned them to owners. We used Device42 for mapping items. 

We tested Device42, moved it to production, and did all our dev on it.

The most helpful feature in Device42 was the import feature, where you can seamlessly import your information into the configuration database manager. It was straightforward to get everything in there. It was also easy to find basic information, such as the RAM and device information.

Mapping items wasn't as intuitive as importing in Device42, so this is an area for improvement.

The real-time configuration also has room for improvement in the solution.

Importing was easy, but once you had all your data there, it was hard to find precisely where everything was except for basic information. For example, when you go to the program list of what's on the Linux box, as my company was using Linux boxes, it was a little harder to find that information, and it was also hard to recategorize. If you imported your data wrong, you had to start over, and you couldn't just drag and drop items to other places.

This limitation, I feel, is due to Device42 wanting you to ensure you have the correct configuration when you import so that other people in your organization can't just move stuff around.

I want Device42 to make it easier to import and move items around and then add a lock feature, so people won't be able to do anything to the items after.

I also want better integration between Device42 and Jira because my company uses Jira as a base to make sure nothing's missing. Jira has been in the company even before Device42, so my company imported all data into Jira and then used Device42 for mapping. Device42 is housed in a database, while my company used Jira for the front-end view of all items. The issue with the integration between Jira and Device42 is that Jira has a language that isn't compatible with Device42, so integration with the two should be improved, or at least there should be a mapping function where you can tell it what to display on Jira and Device42.

I used Device42 for seven months on my last assignment, June 2022.

Device42 was highly stable, and it was nearly one hundred percent stable. I didn't experience any downtime from the solution.

Stability-wise, it's a ten out of ten.

I found Device42 pretty easy to scale up, so its scalability is a ten out of ten.

You can scale it where you need it and even do a satellite setup. For example, suppose you had some servers in California, and you had to collect data from California, or you had a hot site in California. In that case, you could put a note on Device42 that collects your device information in California, and it could send the information to wherever your base is.

For example, if your base was on the East Coast, DC, then you could send all that information, and it doesn't have to be connected 24/7 to the internet. It can send information whenever you schedule.

Once you're reconnected to the internet, you'll receive the data, so that was an excellent Device42 feature that allowed for more scalability. You could also add more notes to ensure you didn't get a lag, or you could mitigate that lag.

Device42 support was phenomenal and responsive.

When I sent an email to the support team, the technical and sales staff would call me, but I didn't find it a salesy call.

I was the lead on the Device42 project for my company, so if I got stuck, I would be able to reach out to the technical support team, and within two hours, if a staff could hop on a call with me. Otherwise, Device42 support will schedule a call with me soon. Other times, support will email me with the resolution.

I found the support team for Device42 proactive because the team also sent guides that had complete information or everything you needed. You can also search for a Device42 guide online and download a PDF version.

It was easy to talk to support and get support whenever needed. I'd rate the Device42 support team as ten out of ten.

My company's only issue with Device42 support was that my company had to move quickly to rate the solution. Still, because it's a government project, the government moves slowly, so Device42 had to give three extensions because it took longer to get it set up due to my company's internal process.

For me, the Device42 technical support is a ten out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup for Device42 was straightforward because you have guides you can follow, plus the Device42 support team will go on weekly calls with you for the setup process. You can even go on biweekly calls with support if you need to.

Integrating Device42 with the company's system and getting started on it was easy, so I'm giving the initial setup a rating of nine. The total time it took from start to finish to have a fully functioning Device42, including the planning, was seven months.

Based on the use case for Device42, I found the solution a bit expensive. However, when you look at the support and the industry standards, Device42 was on par with the industry.

Device42 is a little more affordable than ServiceNow and BMC, but in my opinion, Device42 has a bit more diminished functionality in terms of all-inclusive CMDB. Even when Device42 can display all items for you, for my company's purposes, I wouldn't say I liked the interface as much as the Jira interface. Interface-wise, you can customize Jira better based on how my management team wants to view the information.

Functionality-wise, Device42 is on par with industry standards, but price-wise, the solution is expensive.

I'm rating the pricing for the solution as eight out of ten.

My rating for Device42 is nine out of ten because it still has room for improvement. Uptime-wise, it's not one hundred percent.

My company is a customer of Device42.

We had a customer who was interested in using this solution, and I was involved in the implementation, installation, and support of the tool. One of the customers already had Device42 in their environment and wanted us to support their Device42 environment. They had a clustered environment.

I have also used this tool during the migration process. One of the customers wanted to do a migration. Discovery is the first phase of every migration. For discovering the environment, they used Device42. It was helpful for the migration process. It provides a good level of information from the infrastructure side as well as from the application side. It creates good reports, which are helpful for the cloud migration journey. It also has good dashboards. It supports DOQL. So, you can write SQL queries and get the data you need from the infrastructure side or from the application side. All these things help in the migration process.

It is helpful for asset management. We can discover customers' environments and see the pain areas. The infrastructure of one of the customers was big and segregated. They had one data center in the US and one in India, and they didn't know about the types or number of devices they had. We could collect all this information by using the Device42 discovery tool. It gave a holistic view of a data center or infrastructure. We could see the kind of devices they had and how they were interconnected. We could also see how many data domains they had and how the domains were interconnected. Once we had all this information, we could integrate it with CMDB. 

The best thing is that you can integrate it with different kinds of CMDBs. You can integrate with ServiceNow, BMC Remedy, or Jira. After integrating it with a CMDB, you can push all the discovered information about the servers and network devices into the CMDB, where you maintain all the asset details. CMDB is nothing but an asset management system. All the asset details are coming from the Device42 discovery tool. It is the main and holistic source of information for any asset management system. It is required to update your CMDB or asset management system because the scan happens on a regular basis and you get updated infrastructure details. Therefore, a discovery tool like Device42 is very helpful in your environment for getting the updated inventory of your infrastructure.

It has been helpful for cloud-migration projects. It provides a lot of good information that is helpful for preparing your cloud migration plan. You get good hardware-level and application-level information. You also get all the dependency information. Device42 also provides the current sizing of the device. By looking at the current sizing of the device, you can plan your target sizing. This information or reporting is helpful. There is basically a remote collector that does all the discovery work. It also provides you with the cloud readiness report to see which device is ready to move to the cloud, and it also provides you with a comparison such as which cloud is suitable for the device or whether it should go to Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud. The cloud readiness report helps you to do better migration planning.

The most challenging part of a cloud migration project is the discovery and assessment phase. If you don't have good tools in your hand for the discovery information and assessment report, it takes a lot of time. In a cloud migration project, most time goes into the discovery and assessment phase, but if you have Device42, within 20 days, you get all the discovery, dependency, and sizing data. You also get the cloud readiness report. So, you save 80% to 90% of your time by having all this information readily available to you. If you do all these things manually, it would take you almost six months to collect all this data. 

It has helped to solve day-to-day IT problems faster. Device42 is the main source of information for any CMDB. In the previous IT era, the support team used to do monitoring manually. If a server crashed, they would raise a request or a P1 incident in the ITSM tool. With Device42, all the server information is in the CMDB. We can create automation where if any server is having an issue or has crashed, it can check the details of that server from the CMDB, and through the orchestration tool, it can create a ticket. It raises an alert, and through that alert, it creates a ticket in ITSM. That ticket is automatically assigned to the support team. The support team gets the notification that a P1 ticket has come to the queue and resolves the ticket. If there is a known issue, the orchestration tool can also automatically resolve the problem. For example, if it is a RAM issue and a particular service is stopped, then through automation, you can automatically start that service, and your server is up and running again. So, a lot of time is saved through this automation. It has saved about 70% of the time.

It helps to save costs. You have all your infrastructure information in one place in a CMDB. So, you are not managing anything manually. You are saving the money that you would have had to pay five to six consultants to manage your CMDB. Managing infrastructure is not easy, and you need to put a team together to manage your infrastructure. Device42 manages your infrastructure automatically. 

Its reports help you to consolidate things and close any gaps. It provides a utilization report through which you get to know which server is under-utilized and which server is over-utilized in the environment. You can decommission the servers that are less utilized and save money. For the servers that are more utilized, you can increase the RAM or CPU. So, it helps in reducing the size of your infrastructure and consolidating it. If one server is running an application, you can put that application on another server and decommission the server. You can consolidate the applications that are running on different servers and save money through this approach. Similarly, if you are using multiple network devices for the same purpose, you can consolidate those. You can remove the network devices that are not being utilized or are not useful. By looking at the reports and seeing the information that Device42 gives, you can create a consolidation plan for the server side, as well as the infrastructure side.

The reporting part is valuable. You have classic reports, and you can also do advanced reporting. They also have the DOQL feature for queries. You can write SQL queries to get your data and create custom reports.

You can do Application Dependency Mapping (ADM) and design your rack rooms and buildings. You get a tree view of all the servers. You can see how a server is dependent on other servers. You can create a dependency mapping and see which server or device is connected to which devices and on which ports. Affinity is another useful feature.

It does agentless discovery, and it also supports agent-based discovery. You can put an agent on the target server, and you can do the discovery through the agent. Agentless discovery is a good feature where you can discover the target environment without putting an agent. It is similar to credential-based discovery. You just need a service account on all the servers. You don't need to put an agent, whereas when you go for agent-based discovery or scanning, you need to put an agent on the target device. You also need to restart or reboot the device after putting the agent for which sometimes you don't get approval because they are production servers. In such a case, you go with the agentless approach and just configure the service account on the target server. You do a lightweight scan and get most of the information from the infrastructure side in terms of application dependency and server dependency. However, some of the information is missing when you are not using an agent. If you have an agent on a target server, you can also get information about the software running on the server, whereas with the agentless approach, you can't get that information. This is a difference between agentless and agent-based discovery. Agentless discovery is good if you want to start using the tool because you don't need to get any approval for putting in an agent and rebooting the device. That's why most people go with the agentless approach.

Its price needs to be improved. It is more expensive than some of the other tools out there.

Their support is good, but their knowledge base should be better. There should be a common area where we can search and find solutions for our queries or issues. We don't always need to raise a ticket with the Device42 support team.

Currently, if you want to ping devices, you need to log into Appliance Manager. This feature should be available on the Device42 side. You should be able to use the ping utility without logging into Appliance Manager. The features that are there in Appliance Manager should also be available on the main Device42 server so that you have more control on one screen. You don't need to switch to another portal, but it is not something critical.

I have been using this solution for almost six years.

It is stable. After implementation, I've rarely seen it crashing. I would rate it an eight out of ten in terms of stability.

Its scalability is good. I would rate it an eight out of ten in terms of scalability.

Their technical support is good. Some of their support people provide very good responses. They understand the problem and reply fast. I would rate them a nine out of ten.

Positive

I have used other discovery tools previously. I have worked with the BMC Discovery tool in my previous organization. It is also a very good tool. As compared to Device42, its price is very less, but you get almost the same features that Device42 has. There are only one or two features that you don't get in BMC Discovery. The main difference is the pricing. Device42's pricing is higher than BMC Discovery's pricing, and that's why most of the time, people opt for BMC Discovery.

Accuracy-wise, both tools are the same, but it totally depends on your configuration of the global settings. Both tools have their own settings, and it depends upon your business requirements and how you want to configure the tool. You have the option to configure the tool and get accuracy within your data. So, it depends upon your global settings in the tool, but accuracy-wise, both tools are the same.

I have worked with the cloud model, and I have also worked with the data center model. Its setup is of moderate complexity. You need to install different components, such as Remote Collector and Appliance Manager. So, it is a bit complex, but it is manageable. All discovery tools are complicated to implement. You need to set up the target environment. Your discovery tools should be able to reach the whole target environment. So, a few challenges are there.

On average, it takes two to three days. It is a one-man job, but you would need some support if you are doing the data center implementation.

In terms of maintenance, if your Device42 appliance has less resources, such as RAM or CPU, you need to check whether it is running fine or not. If required, you need to increase the RAM or CPU. You also need to monitor your remote collector. If any of those are disconnected, your discovery will stop. You need to do the maintenance after every two weeks.

Its return on investment is good. It has so many good features, and you can save a good amount of money. You can optimize your infrastructure by looking at the discovery tool reports, and you can prepare your migration plan and consolidation plan. This is a one-time investment. If you have 10,000 devices, you only need to purchase 10,000 licenses. You don't have to pay for them every month.

I am not involved in its pricing, but I have seen their plans during a discussion with the customer. For 500 servers, they were asking 50,000 USD. The cost of BMC Discovery was less than half. For the same thing, they were charging only 10,000 USD.

Its pricing needs to be improved. As compared to other discovery tools, such as BMC Discovery and ServiceNow Discovery, its price is a little bit higher.

We are not using its data center infrastructure management features. We are only using Device42 to discover the data center infrastructure components, such as servers, network devices, switches, routers, etc. We are pushing all this information into a CMDB. On the CMDB side, we are managing things, but not on the Device42 side.

I have not used the Insights+ feature, but I have heard about this feature. It is useful for getting more detailed information from the devices such as RAM utilization, CPU utilization, and storage utilization. You can get all the utilization data from a device, and you can also get more in-depth information about the software or applications running on the server or device.

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

It's a configuration management database that allows you to track assets and identify potential points of failure. We wanted a tool to map which servers were connected to what network devices so we could troubleshoot if a device went down and know what the dependencies were. Device42 can also monitor service configurations.

We had hoped to use Device42 to solve IT problems faster, but I was laid off before we fully implemented it. 

The topology layout is the most valuable feature. The IT asset discovery was fairly thorough. Device42 is still a growing technology, but it has an active user base and decent customer support. The data center infrastructure management features are essential.

Configuring rPDUs in the data center for Device42 required us to add multiple discovery jobs. The rPDUs were referred to the ISPDUs and daisy-chained. They would automatically assign a unique SMP port, but Device42 didn't allow SMP ranges, so we had to create a discovery job for each rPDU individually. We submitted a feature request to mitigate that.

I have used Device42 for about nine months.

I rate Device42 a 10 out of 10 for stability.

Scalability wasn't an issue.

I rate Device42 support a 10 out of 10. They are professional and resolve issues quickly. 

Positive

We installed Device42 on a virtual server and deployed remote collectors. The initial setup was easy. We handled the deployment in-house. After the deployment, it ran by itself, but we had to install periodic upgrades. 

I rate Device42 a seven out of ten.

I use the solution for physical assets management, IT management, and application dependency mapping.

There was a lack of information about what was installed in the data center and how they interconnect with each other. We had the information in Excel before. We installed Device42 to get the information from our environment into the Device42 database.

The solution supports our compliance and audit processes. We take a lot of advantage of it. We use the reporting to audit institutions. We can send the queries and get the reports directly from the tool. I rate the process an eight out of ten. I would have rated it ten if the product had AI features.

The solution is agentless. Application dependency mapping is a valuable feature. These are the two reasons why I believe the product is very beneficial. Before, we had servers. Every time we made some changes to the service, there was a gap between what was expected from the server and what the server was doing.

Network visualization is a basic function. The information is gathered using SNMP. It's not different from others that I've known before. A main aspect of network discovery is that we use it to manage the IP addresses. We use that feature because it is part of the core module.

The product must provide AI features. It would be very useful if I could create datasets or queries from an AI interface.

I have been using the solution for six years.

I rate the tool’s stability a ten out of ten.

The tool’s scalability is very nice. We must speak to the vendor, and they will send a new key code. We can install it and start working. It's easy to scale the product.

The technical support team is very responsive. Everything has an answer. If something can’t be done, it is because the product doesn’t do it.

Positive

We were using another tool. We wanted to integrate an asset management solution with it, but we couldn’t do it because we had to manually set the relationship between all the assets. It was time-consuming. So, we switched to Device42.

The initial setup is very easy. I rate the ease of setup a nine out of ten. It would be very easy to set up if we knew how things work.

I will recommend the tool to others. Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

It's our CMDB for the whole company.

The way Device42 has improved our organization is that we now have visibility into our on-premises infrastructure. Previously, we didn't have any access to or visibility into it because we had consultancy firms. With this solution, we're able to see what is going on inside. That visibility helps us understand the impact of a problem.

It has also saved us money because we no longer have to pay the baselines of the contracts with consultancy firms. It is saving us 2 percent, but that is a lot.

The features that I have found to be most valuable in the product are the

• service discovery
• business applications
• application mapping between services.

The agentless discovery is very important because I don't have to install agents on every host.

Also, the Insights+ component is useful for us because it does business application mapping and helps us visualize it. It saves us time because we don't have to hunt for data. When I get a request, I go to Device42 and get the data. It saves me the time of writing emails to different people to get the information.

The breadth and depth of the solution's discovery of IT asset information means the system does most of the work, but they need to work on improving the database discovery part, especially for Oracle Exadata.

Also, the analytics reporting is very good, but there is a little bit missing when it comes to documentation about custom queries.

Another area for improvement is being able to distinguish the services on the individual machines. There's a lot of data and you can't map it. We need to clear the data. Because there is so much, we're not able to get what we want.

I have been using Device42 for almost two years.

It's stable.

We haven't tried to scale it. We use the solution across multiple locations, on-premises and in the cloud, and for multiple teams and organizational units. The number of end-users who access the Device42 dashboard in our organization is about 20.

The technical support is okay, but the response times are a little bit slow.

Neutral

This is our first such solution.

The initial setup was straightforward and very easy. We have the main appliance on GCP, with the agents distributed all around: on-premises and in other cloud environments. The deployment took half a day. I did the deployment myself, and then the networking team opened all the required ports and did the user creation, et cetera.

There is no maintenance required, as far as I am aware, other than making sure it's up to date.

We have not yet seen a return on investment.

It's in the top-three most expensive solutions in terms of cost, but it has all the features that are needed. The pricing is okay. It may be a little bit expensive for other companies, but we had the budget. That kind of pricing is normal because the product has a lot of functionalities.

My advice is use it, but carefully evaluate the database side because it does not support a lot of database types.

The tool helps with network scanning and the discovery of asset management. 

We faced outages in the data center before implementing Device42. The tool has improved it and helped us with asset management. 

I like the tool's agentless discovery feature. The tool configures the devices based on the documentation provided. I am also impressed with its auto-discovery feature. The tool also keeps on tracking and finds whatever is in the environment. 

I would like to see API management as an additional feature in the tool's future versions. It will give more API security. 

I have been working with the tool for five months. 

The tool's technical support is very knowledgeable. They helped me with my queries. 

Positive

I would rate the tool an eight out of ten. You need to use the product for one month and see if it offers the best value for your company. 

I used Device42 for security purposes during my internship over the summer. I was tasked with trying to figure out a way to manage and secure the assets that the company I was working for had. We noticed that most of them were actually not secure, and also found out that Device42 was not up-to-date either.

Because I was using the solution to track our assets and see which ones were secure and which were not, so that we could better secure the latter, just having them all in one place definitely made it easier in some ways.

If I hadn't had Device42, I would have had to manually go through each asset, and that would not have been fun.

The most valuable feature was the ability to look up the different assets and see the different attributes that each one has, as well as being able to compare them to other assets.

It's also very important that the software provides agentless discovery.

In addition, I really enjoyed the dashboards and visuals. It was easy to navigate.

A lot of our assets didn't have information, which either meant someone wasn't keeping things up-to-date or just we didn't have enough information to go on. But for what we did have, the analytics were decent.

It was hard to know which assets I'd already looked at because if I looked up another asset with a similar name, they would still pop up. I would have to make sure I was looking at the right asset. The search function should be improved.

I used Device42 for about four weeks.

Device42 did crash on me a couple of times. I'm going into the security field and I'm an information systems major, but you can't really be working on a website designed for security and have it randomly crash on you.

This may be very cliche, but do your research on it first. Not every solution is perfect, we all know that. But if it doesn't match your needs, then it's probably useless. Having to go back and redo all the work you already did would be a disaster.

We are not using Device42 for its monitoring capabilities. We are using it just as a CMDB. We are storing the server data and using this tool for data storage. We don't do many day-to-day activities apart from updating the device information as and when it comes.

Customers are constantly expanding the environment. So, it's easier for us to keep track of how many devices have been added. We are using another tool for monitoring, and we are using Device42 as data storage. Whatever devices have been decommissioned and commissioned are in it. So, it's a central database for us. We are not relying on just one tool for device information.

The import/export for bulk operations is a valuable and good feature. 

The resources table needs a few tweaks. We've raised a feature request for this. When you click on resources, it opens up the entire CMDB or the entire data stored in Device42. If that could be customizable, it would be good. We should be allowed to add our own columns to that by writing a script or something like that. There should be an option to add or limit whatever we want.

There should also be a customized dashboard. We should be able to include widgets on the dashboard. Currently, for app insights, only predefined dashboards are there. There should be an option to create our own dashboards. Instead of using scripts, they can provide a bunch of widgets, similar to what SolarWinds provides.

The discovery option is fairly simple to understand and use. If they could include an option where we could discover devices using an IP range for a subnet, that would be helpful. I'm not sure if that option is already present because we are not using this tool for monitoring.

I have been using this solution since July. It has been five months.

It's stable. We haven't had any major issues since I have been here. 

It's scalable. It all depends on how a customer purchases its license. Overall, it's able to handle the capacity.

It's being used in just one environment. It's not deployed across multiple environments. There are four to five admins who use this solution. 

They're good. I've spoken to two guys from their technical support. Whatever they told me, I have not forgotten it yet. They're good. I would rate them a 10 out of 10.

Positive

I've been working in this organization for the last five months, and I am not sure which solution they were using before. 

I don't know about its deployment, but in terms of maintenance, every now and then, we need to do some upgrades. We recently applied certificates. So, there was a little bit of downtime. That's where maintenance comes in.

Go for it at your own risk. There is a learning curve to it. There are some options or tools that I don't clearly understand. So, there is a learning curve, but once you get a hang of it, it's pretty easy.

It does agentless discovery, which has its advantages. If there is an emergency and we have to commission a server, we don't have to first install an agent on it. If it's a critical server and the customer doesn't want any downtime, we don't have to reboot the server after we install the agent. A reboot is a recommended action across all environments for any agent. However, the disadvantage of being agentless is that it limits our options for monitoring because agent-based monitoring is a good way for gathering data from devices. SolarWinds does it, OpenManage does it, and most monitoring tools, including even Splunk, have agent-based monitoring. So, not having that as an option is probably a disadvantage.

Overall, I would rate it a seven out of ten.