Device42 Reviews

Device42 uses your infrastructure discovery and network device discovery to get information about your infrastructure CMDB. It uses this when you are migrating your on-prem servers to the cloud or VMware Cloud to public cloud. For our purposes, customers use it to discover their infrastructure, services, applications, features of those servers, CPU, memory, and RAM. All these details can be discovered in their infrastructure using Device42. Then, you can easily migrate to the cloud. 

We have used the solution in conjunction with our clients’ migration to the cloud. The view it provides of assets and application dependencies assists in getting things to work post migration because of Application Dependency Mapping. We can easily migrate the business and infrastructure applications, thus determining the other applications it is dependent on. This way we can easily predict how to migrate and the things that need to be done while migrating.

We provide support for Device42 as a managed service provider. Currently, I have two customers: one is on Azure and the other is on VMware.

I am using the latest version. 

It is good tool for our customers if they want to go into the details of their infrastructure for migrating their on-prem environment to the cloud.

Device42 provides almost all the details of your infrastructure. Its reporting is very good. It has reports that you can fetch easily and are easily readable. There are a few scripts that you can also use for downloading reports in different formats.

It requires only two or three ports to be open while doing discovery. Therefore, you can have an environment which can be installed in a DMZ environment or on the customer's environment. It won't affect the security or customer's infrastructure.

Continuous asset discovery lets you continuously monitor the resource utilization when using Device42, such as: 

• Resources being used on your infrastructure. 
• If there are new communications happening on your servers, then they are being captured in Device42. 
• If there are any changes in your CMDB infrastructure, they are getting captured in your Device42 reports. 

You can download also these reports with a ServiceNow and other tools.

• Device42 is very easy to install.
• It has lighter graphics. The graphics are easily loadable.
• The front-end is good and user-friendly. 
• It provides network device discovery and Application Dependency Mapping.
• It has agentless discovery; you don't need to put agents on your servers. You can open one or two ports to discover all your infrastructure.
• It has a Remote Collector facility where you can use that facility to discover your DMZ environment as well as your load balancers and domain appliances.
• It provides inbound and outbound connections for your servers.
• Application Dependency Mapping helps us understand on which servers are our applications dependent and what things affect our application.

For the iPhone, the device diagram cannot be downloaded. You have to go to each device and download the device diagram for that device. E.g., suppose there are a 1000 or 2000 servers. You cannot go to each server or device to download a device diagram for each device. There should be a one-click solution for downloading all device diagrams.

I have been using Device42 for two and a half years.

It is quite a stable solution. You can have 4 CPU or RAM for your appliance. You can also configure more CPU and RAM for your appliance if you want to discover more servers.

They have frequent updates, though sometimes you need to get Device42 updated to fix bugs.

Right now, we have two or three technical service engineers managing Device42.

The scalability is good. Depending on the number of servers that you want to restore, you can scale up or down. You can have one or multiple Remote Collectors for more stability and load balancing.

We have three different customers using Device42, and I have supported seven to eight customers until now. One of our customers, they are doing their plans in waves: wave one, two, and three. In wave one, they managed to discover almost 500 servers. In their second wave, they helped manage 400 servers. In wave three, they are now managing 500 to 600 servers.

It has very good, prompt support.

It is very easy to setup Device42. 

I have setup it 600 to 700 times. 

On average, the deployment requires only four to five hours. However, the requirements gathering that we need to forward to customers to follow their change process to open all ports may take two to three days.

There is no implementation strategy because it depends on customer. A few customers helped us and others deployed it by themselves. In these cases, we provide the documents, then the deploy it themselves. So, it depends on the customer.

The solution has reduced the time spent managing IT assets.

Customers are happy with the solution. They can easily deploy this solution for cost-effectiveness.

The product cost is low. It is quite cheap.

We also evaluated Microsoft Mover, but it was not approved by our management.

I haven't used another solution with customers.

It is a very good tool. It is very easy to use for migrating an on-premise to cloud. The tool is user-friendly, easy to understand, and flexible. It has good support. It is the least expensive. This is all beneficial.

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

We wanted a rich database of all of our assets and multiple teams were keeping different Excel spreadsheets, etc. About two years ago, a consulting firm recommended Device42. We took a look at it and have been using it ever since. We collapsed a lot of information into it, then week by week more teams adopt it.

We are using the latest version that they have out right now.

Having general software inventory in one location has helped us tremendously, even around Service Desk. Our Service Desk tool integrates into the asset management. When a user calls with a problem, we can link their device to it. Then we see a history: 

• Do they have old, aging hardware?
• Does it need to be replaced?
• Is this model continuing calling in for issues?

We have been able to make educated decisions about replacing hardware and software due to this solution.

We are doing discovery of cloud asset management devices. This has given us more rich enhanced data to make decisions on where to place things based on like-minded services.

I have used the solution in conjunction with audits of our IT assets. I am able to pull reports in minutes instead of it taking days of putting everything together.

It has helped us identify some areas of security enhancements.

The asset inventory and software inventory are the most valuable features. The asset inventory is great because previously we had devices all over the place. We have been able to do multiscans to find devices that we didn't know about, which was great. From the software aspect, we have been able to keep a detailed history of software that has been installed on machines and version controls. Then, we are able to make educated decisions on, "Is this software being installed as a one-off and part of the corporate image or should it be deprecated as the software gets older where we plan to do upgrades this way?"

The solution’s automatic IT asset discovery and inventory functionality was great when we first implemented it. We made some changes that didn't allow us to use some of those automated discovery tools. However, the software was good and adapted to our needs. We just went in a different way using the same software. The asset discovery is very comprehensive. We found a lot of information that we didn't even know we had.

We use the solution’s Application Dependency Mapping. It has been able to help us with troubleshooting. We now have a deeper understanding of how our applications talk to each other.

It would be nice for the agent to have an installer versus a single file across multiple systems.

It'd be nice to have the reporting be a bit more user-friendly. The workflow could be a bit more intuitive. Though, the support has been great on helping us when we have ran into educational issues.

About two years.

It is very stable and updated on a regular basis with new enhancements and features using a very agile approach. Every week, we can get a feature in the pipeline that we/they have needed.

We require two people for deployment and maintenance for Device42: a network administrator and a dedicated system admin.

It is very scalable and have had no issues. We are running the device across multiple divisions, organizations, and regions across the globe. Device42 is everywhere in our company. There are 30 to 40 users, e.g., help desk administrators and auditors. We will potentially be using it for vendor management down the road. Also, the DevOps teams is using it for information.

In the beginning, the solution did not reduce the time spent managing IT assets since we didn't do any management. There was a lot of turnover of teams with every team doing it differently. Therefore, we had to focus a lot on it. Now, it's part of the day-to-day management.

We previously used Excel spreadsheets.

I took over the solution last year. I set up the whole thing up again from the ground up at that time. The setup was straightforward. The documentation was there. You just followed a few steps to get it up and running.

When we redeployed, it took approximately a week. It took a half a day worth of build, then a week to discover all our assets.

Our implementation strategy in the beginning was to start with each office and redefine what their needs looked like, then scan each network which had devices on it.

As we have grown the system, less time has been focused on managing managing IT assets. We don't need dedicated teams to do this anymore. We have been able to reduce this role to a shared resource across multiple teams.

We have seen ROI. We have been able to streamline multiple teams having different options on how to do asset management and doing different things into one process for every team.

Our licensing costs are on a yearly basis.

You should definitely implement this product. In a normal environment, it is a set and forget it type of thing.

In the beginning, the solution’s agentless approach to asset discovery was very impressive because we heavily utilized it. However, as we made decisions on the network to not trust any device unless it was on VPN, agentless didn't work for us. They had a solution that was good for us, so we were able to pivot to an agent getting that same deep, rich information. In some areas, we do run it agentless. It's just more often we are relying on the agent because of our own infrastructure changes.

Asset management is a difficult, time consuming thing. However, Device42 has helped me streamline that so I can focus on other areas that need improvement.

I would rate this product as a 10 (out of 10).

Our primary use case is to track all of our IT information in one spot. So instead of using spreadsheets and other tools, it's consolidated here for us.

We had all the information in a mix of spreadsheets, homegrown applications, and databases, and then we moved it all into Device42. For example, we had one system that was tracking our device inventory, and we had spreadsheets for IP address allocations, while password management was completely separate. This solution really enabled us to lump everything together in one place.

Having the ability to see how things are connected and keeping track of, for example, which server, and which ports on the servers are plugged into which network switches is very helpful when we're looking at network troubleshooting, and we want to do things like mirror ports and mirror traffic. Tracking which MAC addresses belong to which devices is also linked in there.

The topology view enables us to show how our applications interact with each other and with the rack elevation we can see the equipment in each individual rack and which power outlets they're plugged into. That has also been really handy in a few cases.

It definitely saves us time, but I don't know how to quantify it because we've been using it for such a long time. I don't remember what kind of time it took to track down information in the past. Right now, it's super-simple to find whatever we're looking for. I would imagine it saves us a few hours each week.

Just having this solution at all has been really solid for us. If I had to pick one part of it, it would be a toss-up between the IP address tracking and the password management. I'm not sure which one of those I'd rank higher.

We have a lot of different devices and some of them have many IP addresses, so keeping track of which ones are assigned where is very critical for putting new devices on the network and giving them new addresses. All of our devices are statically assigned, so if we don't keep good records then we could accidentally assign a duplicate, which would cause problems on the network.

As far as password management goes, before we had this we didn't have anything. We had shared passwords, which is always a horrible idea. Now we have the ability to know who has accessed a password, who's looked at it, and when it's been used or when it's been changed. That's helped us from a security standpoint.

In addition, the solution has some very good relational capabilities that show us how certain devices relate to each other and how some of our environment actually works together.

It also helps us track equipment replacement to know when we have swapped out parts and how much money we've spent on a particular server over its lifetime. We try to utilize all the pieces of it that we currently license.

We use it to track our servers, storage, switches, firewalls, and most recently we started putting our desktops and laptops in it too.

One thing I have brought up with their product team, and we opened up a case and a feature request for it, is having a requisition-style system in the software. Right now it does have the ability to track purchases, which is okay. But I would like the ability to create a request and say, for example, I want a new server. 

The way that it works right now is that you have to create the server object before you can assign it to an actual purchase. Obviously you won't have the server until you've bought it, so it's something of a cart-before-the-horse scenario where, in order for me to create a purchase, I already have to have the device, which doesn't make sense. It's fine if you're entering the data after the fact, but I would hope to use the system in a pre-purchase scenario, where I or one of my technicians could log into the system, create the request, and then forward that request to my purchasing people or to our ERP.

The other area where it causes us a little bit of a hassle is if I want to track the cost of spare parts. Recently I had to order about a dozen hard drives for servers. For me to use Device42, I had to wait until the drives came in so that I could create the drives and assign the serial numbers to them, and then assign a cost to each drive. A better scenario would be where I'd say, "Hey, I'm buying 12 drives," and be able to have 12 generic drives in the system without serial numbers. Then, once the drives came in we could assign serial numbers and then further assign drives to servers as we need to.

I worked with their product team at least a couple of years ago to express that concern. They claimed to like the idea, but I haven't seen it implemented yet. I don't know if it will ever make the cut. And I would like it not to be a paid upgrade feature. If they could include it with the license we use, that would be extra nice.

I have been using Device42 for at least five years, if not longer.

It's been very reliable. We had a case last year when it was unavailable because I failed to pay attention to the warnings about our license expiring. That temporarily caused us a glitch because I didn't have our subscription renewed on time. But that was entirely on me.

I would assume it would be fine for all of our future needs. But we're a relatively small organization, so I don't think we're ever going to really stress it.

Tech support has generally been pretty good. Over the years there have only been one or two cases that maybe took a little bit longer than I thought was reasonable. Other than that, they've generally been very attentive and responsive. There have been no major hiccups with any of their support.

I've never had to escalate. The few times that I've had to talk to support, whoever I've talked to initially has been able to get things addressed for me.

We were using spreadsheets and we had a couple of homegrown databases. We weren't using any commercial product prior to a Device42.

We came across the solution because we needed to find a better way to do keep track of all the data. We did some Google searches at the time to see what other people were out there doing. I'm also part of a few different online communities, and I'm sure I asked around those, at the time, if anybody had thoughts or suggestions.

The initial setup was very easy. It was restoring a virtual machine image. It gets delivered as a virtual disk file. Spin it up on your choice of hypervisor and it's ready to go instantly. For us it was ready to go, full-production. I'm sure there are some scenarios where it could get a little bit more complicated, but ours has always been very simple. It was deployed as a virtual machine. We didn't have any wrinkles.

Even with version upgrades that have had breaking changes — and that we had to do backups and restores for — even that hasn't been that terribly difficult. I just I told the people that use it, "Hey, we're going to be down for about 20 minutes," and ran the upgrade and everything was good.

In terms of a learning curve, it's relatively straightforward. There are a few things here and there that, when you come across them, seem a little bit backward. I can't remember specifically what those issues are, other than the purchasing one I mentioned. But it's mostly straightforward, mostly easy to use.

There is a value to it. 

The part that makes some of the solution's add-ons a little bit harder for me to justify and get approved is that I don't have any mechanism to show how much they could possibly save us, or what we're currently doing on a day-to-day basis that they would somehow help us with. Maybe if they had some kind of ROI calculator or, "Here's what you could be doing if you added on some of these extra features," that might help.

Their pricing model is very poor. For instance, software licensing, at one point in the distant past, was a standard feature. At some point they broke it out as a separate, paid license upgrade. That was kind of rotten. 

Right now I'm looking at my license page and all of the add-ons are disabled because we didn't pay for any of them. The solution is helpful and it is useful, but it makes adding on any of the extra applications or any of the extra components cost-prohibitive, for us at least.

We've looked at a few different products. One of them was called Sunbird and there was something by HPE that we might have looked at a long time ago.

Sunbird did not have a full web interface for the solution, so you had to have desktop software. Quite honestly, I wasn't interested in desktop software. I wanted something that I could hit with either my computer or my tablet, or even my phone for that matter, and still be able to get at our information.

It's all pretty easy to use and you'll get out of it what you put into it. We try to make sure our information is accurate and up to date and we periodically do audit against the information to make sure it is current. The biggest advice I would give is to make sure you don't let your data get stale.

Documentation is important. We've had internal problems where we've lost a hypervisor or our network has gone down and we haven't had access to it. Those scenarios have proven that we rely on the info and we need it. So having some kind of high-availability solution would be good for us at some point. We do have a standby server that takes backups of our data and sends it to a separate Device42 instance, but I have not experienced trying to fail over and make it active.

Maintenance of the tool does not even require one person. It's just something that runs in the background and it doesn't take any extra effort, other than what we normally do with our virtual machines and hypervisors. We treat it the same as any other server that we manage. Because it's deployed as a virtual appliance, we count on Device42 to have things hardened and patched. I'm not sure if their normal software upgrades include any system-level patches, but it's nothing that we manage or maintain.

There are five people using it across our organization. I use it in my role as IT manager. The others are server admins, a desktop admin, and a couple of people who have access to it to retrieve asset information.

We're subscribed to just the core product and we utilize pretty much every bit of it. It would be great if we could get into some of the other stuff, like the application discovery and the application mapping; software license management would be sweet, and power and environmental monitoring would be nice too. But those features are all paid add-ons. Right now, the biggest challenge for us is what we currently pay with our base licensing. It's reasonable in terms of the world. We've looked at competitive products in the past and either the other products weren't as well polished and as well put together as Device42, or they were just completely out of our reach in terms of price.

It has generally been a really solid and useful tool. It would be cool if they could get around to getting that purchasing aspect worked in. Other than that, it's been solid. It's done what we've needed it to do so far.

We are using it for our data center operations, to monitor the stack layers that we have. We are also using it for our procurement operations, taking orders and tracking deliveries. In addition, we use it for following up on contracts so that we make sure not to miss any renewal or cancellation of a contract.

Previously, our company had a lot of issues keeping track of all the data centers and the inventory, as well as the purchase orders. All of these were managed by other tools. The good thing about Device42 is that it can be used for all this together. We don't need to spend time checking many other tools and files.

The solution has reduced the time spent managing our IT assets. It's an easy-to-use program and everything is pretty understandable. We are able to manage everything pretty quickly, definitely saving time with the tool. For every task, my colleagues have told me that they save between five and 15 minutes. There might be some 30 tasks to do during the day, so it can save a lot of time.

It's an easy-to-use tool. It's not too complicated with too many settings. It has a pretty friendly user interface and is understandable at first sight. Everything was pretty clearly explained in the tutorial when I started using it.

And I would rate its automatic IT asset discovery and inventory functionality at eight-and-a half or nine out of 10. It works well for us. I haven't been working with the tool for that long, but over those five months it's has been really helpful for us. My colleagues who have been working with the tool longer than I have are also very satisfied with it. It's really helping us to keep track of everything: 

• the buildings we are using for data centers
• all the rooms in them 
• all racks 
• inventory 
• following purchase orders
• and information about all our vendors. 

Sometimes we need to add some details on the purchasing side of the tool. If we have a contract, we need to keep track of the beginning of the contract, the end date of the contract, and a notification period when we need to decide whether we are going to cancel it or renew it. This is related to the reporting because we wanted to add these details in the list which we see on the tool, but even when we succeeded with that, we couldn't see this information on a report. 

But overall it's an easy program and we can manage it without too much trouble.

I have been using Device42 since I started working for my current employer in mid-October last year. So it has been about five months.

It's a really good product in terms of stability. It works in the way we expect. We don't have any complaints except with the support for our request on the reporting, which didn't go as we expected.

I don't deal with the scalability of it. I deal with procurement mostly. But my colleagues say it's easy to work with and they don't have difficulty with this. 

I think it can be a bit tricky when they need to add many assets. We may need to do some internal upgrades when it comes to serial number scanning of small items for replacement, but that's not related to the tool. In the end, all this information will go into the tool and it will help us to track things better.

The only thing which I have noticed so far that is not good is that we had an issue with some reporting from the tool, reporting we had to export. We couldn't do it in the way we wanted to, so we tried to reach out to their support but it took pretty long until we understood how we can manage the reports. We still haven't received a complete explanation of what we need to do and how to do it. We understand that the master admin can do this, but it still hasn't been explained, completely, how it's possible. Their support has been a bit slow.

And we also don't know if the master admin can provide access to other users to download such reports. It's one guy who takes care of all of this, who receives requests from everyone in the company who is using the solution.

I had one other issue, in the beginning. The tool didn't work for the whole company so I opened a ticket and had a remote session with a guy from support. He worked really well and really fast and resolved the problem within an hour-and-a-half. He found there was a programming issue and contacted his colleagues and they fixed it pretty quick so we had access again.

We have definitely seen a return on investment. I cannot give you numbers, but from what I have heard from my manager, they are satisfied with the tool.

We have a yearly license.

If a company with our type of business asked me if they should go for it, I would definitely recommend it if they have the same kinds of operations that we do.

The users of the solution in our company are from the lowest positions to almost the top. It might be over 300 people. We are using it on a daily basis. As a company, we are growing every day and more and more people are starting to use it.

It's a pretty good solution for data center operations, for what we are doing, and for procurement as well. I would recommend it because it's easy to use with a friendly user interface. It's not a difficult program at all. So far, everything is going well.