DX Unified Infrastructure Management Reviews

We install and configure UIM to replace other products like OmniVision, InfoVista, and open source products like Nagios and Cacti with a standardized product, with the new capabilities for the market, like virtualization technology, topology, analysis. It's too difficult for non-technical users, non-software developers, to develop their own monitoring tools.

Scalability and flexibility. The product can grow with your infrastructure so you don't have to install other products. Just add components. It's very simple.

The second major feature is the user-friendly interface. It's the best feature for our customers, because we are the implementers of the software. It's easy for us to install and configure the product, but our customers want a simple interface with only the options they need to run and monitor their environment. 

Recently, important features introduced were the Discovery capability, Auto-Deploy profile manager, and alarms.

Another feature is reporting. We discovered new ways to generate new reports.

This is a very complex question, because it depends on the customer's needs. Some customers need more network capabilities, but UIM is all about IT monitoring. It's an all-inclusive software. 

It's difficult to become the best in monitoring all of the parameters in technology. Some customers want extended capability in the network, or the system overall. But it's difficult to ask the vendor to integrate all of capabilities in one product. We prefer to capitalize on the synergy of products, and not to add features, and features. 

Three or four years in the future, there will be a product with a lot of capabilities, but if one of our customers wants a simple product, not expensive, we can't provide them a product with thousands of capabilities when he will only use ten.

We prefer to follow the market standards, and use a product with a simple and user-friendly interface. That's what we want.

The major problem we have when we sell CA UIM is that we need to sell additional products because it doesn't cover cover all the features. The problem comes down to price. That's the major problem for us. When you have to sell many products, the customer will say, "Oh, it's too expensive," and he won't purchase all the products. So, we think when you have to sell many, many products, they have to do better on pricing.

We would also like to see automatic network topology.

With the new release, the new version, it is more stable. The last releases were less stable than the new one. We think version 8.3 wasn't that stable. But with the 8.5.2, it's alright. It's really stable now.

We make ourselves available on call to our clients and it's now maybe one or two nights per month that there is downtime.

The scalability of the product has not evolved because it has been very good from the start. It's a very important point. CA UIM has a history of a lot of customers with successful ventures, so scalability is important for its customers. 

When a customer starts with a new product, they want to know it has scalability. They won't use all of the capabilities but scalability has to be there.

Even ten years ago, if a large bank or transport or trading company used UIM, they knew the product was scalable, flexible.

Scalability is good.

I had to call them one time at 4am, and I think they saved my life, because they called me back about five minutes after I opened the case. It was a high-impact incident, and they resolved it after about 10 or 15 minutes. So I'm really happy with the technical support. They are nice guys and technically good.

We are partners for CA but we also partner with other providers, like small French providers for the local market, not the worldwide market. we can use UIM for the best monitoring and use features from other products as well. CA lets partners work with other products. We are honest about the futures of the CA products. Most of the time, it is stronger than the other products.

We have implemented it for three or four customers in the last two years, a bank, an insurance company, among other smaller companies only known in France.

For us, the implementation is really easy.

With version 9 of CA UIM arriving soon, we think we will rate it even better, at nine out of 10. With the current version of the product it's a seven. CA UIM has a long history, but as a result, it's difficult for CA to follow market standards. The new version will arrive on the market with beautiful capabilities and very nice interfaces. The new version will enable CA to catch up to market standards. It's a great choice.

Be sure to correctly plan what you need, it's very important. In a lot of cases, the customer asks for a monitoring product with some needs. When we arrive for the workshop, we discover they have other needs. It's important for the customers to not only ask partners to make a proposal, but they should go to the market, got to the forums and community, and see what exists on the market. Ask partners detailed questions. Not, "I need system monitoring," but why. What more do you need? That's important.

Secondly, don't forget that proprietary products like CA have a price. This price is justified by the capabilities. Don't compare open source products with a proprietary product. It's not the same. We look very expensive because they compare us with Aegis or Centurion, but it's not the same product. It's not the same team. It's not the same methodology of work or technical support.

We use it for monitoring our infrastructure. 

I think it's a great product. It really brings it into the 21st century of Web UI. This latest version, version 9, that is supposed to be announced here at CA World, brings more of that HTML5 interface in and really steps it up to be a great UI. Easy to use, quick.

It's the probes. They have probes for all different types of technology. Whether it's WebSphere, JBoss, or you want to do JVM monitoring, you want to monitor just CPU usage, even Docker, they have probes for that. If you have a technology out there, there's a probe. And if there's not a probe somebody's creating a probe already. The probe library it pretty extensive.

The improvement is because we can deploy agents (they call them "robots," most people know them as "agents"). As most people know, agents are bloated, they can do whatever you want. With UIM, you put that robot out there and you place the probes you need, only the probes you need. So you have a base agent and here, for example, I only want to monitor server CPU, memory, storage, and maybe I want to monitor JBoss on this box. I just put the CDM probe out there, I put the JBoss probe out, and that's all you need. You don't need the load and probes for Docker or something else that you don't need to use.

More HTML5, more flexibility, and reducing the number of screens, fewer mouse clicks, fewer mouse movements. They should really take advantage of the features that the newer web technologies allow for. We're administrators, we're doing thousands of things every day, lots of clicks. Automation, automation, automation is what we want.

It's been a great product compared to some previous monitoring tools we had in place. Every time there were software updates for the server for security, from Microsoft or any other vendors, that would require reboots. A lot of the times we would have crashes or we'd have to do some recovery to bring them back up. With UIM, we've been running it for about nine or 10 months now and I think I've had to go and reboot the servers once.

Scalability seems great because they use hubs, so if your hub is hitting capacity on a number of servers, devices it's talking to, you can just add another hub. And it's a message-based system.

They've been great. Actually the guys that are doing the UIM product really know their stuff.

We have SolarWinds and we had some older Spectrum products that CA had, as well. But, the user interface was not as modernized as UIM.

The product we had was just nearing it's end of lifecycle for us, and we needed to move on to something else that the users would be more comfortable with using.

I think it was pretty straightforward. We did have, just as a disclaimer, a CA person on site helping, one of their sales engineers, just in case anything came up. The process went smoothly. Honestly, we probably didn't even need him there.

Our criteria when looking to switch to a different product include the user's ability, their willingness, to use it. And another main consideration, you can get data in but can you get data out in the formats you need? If you can only get data in, but you can't get data out, it's of no use.

I give it an eight out of 10 because, as I said, I think it needs a little bit more improvement around the UX, but it's getting there. And they're making a concerted effort to make that happen.

I would tell a colleague who is researching this type of solution to really look at your feature functionality. What do you need? Does it meed your needs?

The most valuable features are, I would say, the flexibility and the performance. It's easier to use and to configure.

It enables us to use multiple solutions in one software package.

It needs more report capabilities; things that make it easier to find them. It needs a central, global, point of view for inventory. Currently we have to get it piece by piece.

The stability is good. Many releases every year. It's something which is quite stable and pro-rating well.

It's very scalable. We need scalability. We are pro-rating and putting it in multiple sites.

I think we use it about once a month. I think they are responsive, although I don't use it directly.

We were using OmniVision. We switched because CA Unified Infrastructure Management integrated multiple features.

When selecting a vendor I would say the most important criteria are a history in infrastructure domain and credibility.

I would advise to start from a blank slate and not to try to make it from another solution.

Complete IT infrastructure monitoring including servers, applications, database, cloud, and network devices.

• Ease of usage for administrators.
• Flexibility with monitoring and statistics collection.
• Latest version of tool comes integrated with Jaspersoft reporting solution, giving excellent reports.
• Dashboards are pretty good.

• Stability
• Alarm segregation

Two years.

WASP failed to start on time.

Yes, prior to version 8.5.

An eight out of 10.

No.

Initial setup was a straightforward and a comfortable operation.

Vendor plus in-house.

Not applicable.

Reasonable setup cost and licensing prices.

• Cloud monitoring

• Easily skinnable
• SAP monitoring
• Reporting Tools
• Probe packages and probe deployment

Through action automation (using NAS and robot actions) we got reduced operational effort, improved operative tasks, and optimization of resources.

I would like to see improvements in the maintenance mode area. I would like to set only a probe from a robot or group in maintenance or place profiles from probes in maintenance. Making a GUI with criteria such as selection by robot/hub/probe etc.

I've been using it for five years.

No deployment issues encountered.

No stability issues encountered.

No scalability issues encountered.

We didn't use customer service.

10/10 CA Support team is excellent we get from them issue resolution within a single interaction and anchoring alternative solution.

Previously we had multiples tools to monitor IT infrastructure and other apps e.g ManageEngine to monitor databases, Nagios to monitor telco devices (switches, and routers, etc.) We switched to CA UIM because we had a lot of issues when we tried to correlate events and get unified metrics from our monitoring tools databases, in the same way we had maintain multiple tools and open tickets with multiples vendors.

Initial setup was straightforward. Installing and deploying software was very quick and easy. We have experience with similar tools implementation.

We did the full implementation in house.

Licensing model and packaging:

Server pack - Charged per server.
Server and application pack - Charged per server.
Service response time advanced pack - charged per site.
Ping pack - Charged per device.
Network advanced pack - Charged per device.
Flow analysis - Charged per device.
Storage pack - Charged per terabyte.
Ecometer pack - Charged per device.

We also looked at OpsView and SCOM.

Monitor governance and solution sizing are key topics to start solution implementation.

Basically, the most valuable feature for us is that the dashboard if easy to use as it aggregates all data.

It's really been beneficial to the applications teams in their ability to see CPUs and disc memory. It monitors memory on the servers associated with our applications.

One of the things I would like to see an improvement on is the ability to do mass deployment. Also, I'd like a federated identity feature, where I can give our users a login and they can choose whatever thresholds they wish to have.

Even better, I would like to see a synthetic transaction report from the reporting feature that our business unites can use to record their transactions and provide it back to us. That would save us a lot of time.

Finally, I'd like some self-service functionality out-of-the-box, so that you can assign probes, or deploy with thresholds, or whatever you want to do. You just put it in a server and let it self-service.

There's been no issues with deployment on my end.

It's been very stable for me as an end-user. We haven't had any problems yet.

No scalability issues so far. That's been fine.

I don't use tech support for anything. I rely on our in-house team for that.

I wasn't involved in the setup.

If I had to choose all over again, I'd probably look more into the mobile function of it.

Monitoring infrastructure and business applications are the most valuable features.

By getting an early warning about problems, services can have high availability and perform well. In addition, we can respond automatically to failures so services can be recovered immediately.

It would be good to implement views showing the aggregated status graphically. For example, they could use colors reflecting the status, and the possibility to drill down to detailed information. The views should be configurable so the administrator can organize them the way he wants. Dynamic views should be supported. That means the members of the views changes based on conditions defined by the administrator.

I have been using this solution for over five years.

We have not had stability issues.

We have not had scalability issues.

Technical support is good.

We were using HPE Operations Manager and SCOM. We switched because it's less resource demanding and has more functionality out of the box. Especially when it comes to support for different monitoring techniques, so that fewer custom-made solutions (scripting, etc.) are required. There are probes available for most kinds of monitoring metrics, applications, and operating systems.

Setup was very straightforward. It's possible to have a fully functional monitoring system up and running within one day by use of the easy-to-use setup procedures and the automatic robot deployment functionality.

The license cost depends on the number of probes and robots. I advise customers to be selective with which probes to deploy on the different servers.

We looked at SCOM and HPE Operations Manager (OpenView).

Be aware of your exact needs so you can ensure the product will meet your needs.

The main feature for us is its flexibility with their message bus and their API to make it do what you need it to do, since everyone's different. There is flexibility in the SDKs to customize it.

It really depends on where you're coming from. In 2009, we were working with Nagios -- before it was UIM and called Nimbus -- and weren't particularly unhappy, but there was an executive decision to go in a different direction. We were out-of-date and weren't taking advantage of some of the new features to see whether they would make a different for us. There were new capabilities, such as analytics and machine baselines versus static thresholds.

That said, it does provide us with a reduction in signal noise levels. It gives an alarm when there's something going on, not just when there's an expected spike that happens every night on a server.

Although this may not work based on our environment, but topology discovery and root cause analysis would be nice to have. Right now, we don't have the RCA and rootcon topology awareness. It may be in the new version, but based on our architecture, it may not work. It would be a big win, however, if we had it.

Another useful feature to have would be automatic configuration per standard by new robots that check in for any particular customer. This could help us decrease the configuration time.

We've had the same version since the install in 2009. We're looking to upgrade, and we do have the latest version in our lab, but I'm anxious to have it available in prime time.

We've had no issues with deployment.

We've had some issues that may to do with versioning, though not completely. In our backend, the database structure and message bus are on the really old version, though the hub is the newest version. There's a point when new features on the hub may no longer be possible. This may be where our version is hurting us.

Sometimes our hubs get choked up and support has never been able to isolate the cause.

We do have times where the hubs get choked up and we've never been able to isolate why with support. Is it something in our environment or is it something they see from other customers? Is it hubs that are too busy? Is it our REX infrastructure? We've never been able to isolate the cause. I've had several support cases over the years about a scenario where the hub gets into a partially functioning state and so all the robots have realized it's not working normally and have moved over to their backup hub. That hub itself still expects to hear from all those robots and so we'll get a flood of hundreds of alarms saying, "Robot inactive. These robots are not checking into me." It's really that they're just checking into the other hub.

That's the issue -- there's no intelligence at that layer. And because of that, one of our most common alarm floods is from the hub itself.

I had an escalation one time to double check that the hub failed-over okay and was back online because they got a hundred tickets opened all at the same time. That's the main point that we've had in terms of instability, is on the hub. We have hubs at other sites that don't have as many robots or aren't doing as many ping checks and they have much fewer issues. It could be that some of these hubs are just too busy and they're more likely to get choked up.

There's also the issue of portal performance. We have UMP released and it's not awful for our customers. If a customer logs in, from a security stand point, they're only seeing their data. If they have 10 servers that we manage for them, the performance isn't awful in that scenario. As an internal employee, when we log in and we have the permission to see all of our data from thousands of devices, the performance is a lot slower and a lot more painful and that's something that we're several versions behind on the portal.

We've had no issues with scalability.

We've had some concerns, especially since CA's acquisition and re-branding of Nimsoft. For a while, there was a dedicated support center just for the monitoring product. But now, there's a more standardized support structure where Tier 1 is not as specialized. I haven't, however, had a lot of cases to claim that it's worse than before, but we have had tickets that have dragged on for a long time.

There was an instance where they fixed a bug after 6-8 months, but it was the wrong bug. There are a couple of threads on their forum about comical support interactions where they get told, "Oh, that's an enhancement. Go type it and we'll vote on whether to fix it. Go type it out on the forum." I don't think that's always the experience in every case, but we have had some challenges like that, where it's like, "How are you calling this an enhancement? This is just basic core functionality that's not working" and getting agreement on that. At times that's been a challenge.

When we first implemented Nimbus in 2009, it wasn't fully vetted by the technical staff because management pushed it on them. For what we pay, I know many executives don't think we're getting enough ROI. We doing basic monitoring -- CPU memory, disk space, SQL responses, URL's, pings, and custom probes we've written using their SDK. Writing our own probes is one of the perks with something like Nagios.

The licensing cost is several hundred thousand dollars a year, and we're only getting several hundred dollars' worth of value since we're doing basic stuff. That's the challenge.

And we're hamstrung because we're still using the older version, and we're not getting great ROI. There's a lack of clarity on where we want to go, but we could do a whole lot more than we're doing.

There are things that are nice in just covering the basics for us, but then we have pain points on some of the more advanced stuff.

• Weblocker service
• Perimetral antivirus
• Firewall security
• VPN service
• MultiWAN and Balance service

These features are very valuable as they allow productivity to be supported by blocking and monitoring websites accessed by collaborators, as well as controlling the levels of access to the various services we have in our operation, in addition to functionalities such as Load Balancing and Multiple WAN connections to help us in business continuity.

I think it has helped in different ways:

• It has provided greater security for our most important asset which is the handling of information.
• It has given us greater control and management of the flow of information that transits our data network.
• It has generated confidence in our customers and suppliers, so that they know that their information and ours has a higher level of security.
• It has improved the productivity of our employees.
• It has supported us in the process of safeguarding confidentiality and the correct handling of information.
• It has provided us with help in offering IT service to users.
• It has helped us to make the IT department more productive and efficient.
• When in charge of the infrastructure department it gives me certainty about what is happening in the company network.

• I think it can be improved by a greater provision of specialized technical support, as there are very few trained personnel there.
• Improvement in the technical documentation of the system.

We have used this solution for four years.

I did not find problems with stability. I think the advice we got at the beginning helped us to get the correct dimensioning of the equipment and the functionalities of the product. Once it came into operation, the product always performed the expected functionality.

We have not encountered any scalability issues.

I would rate the technical support as 9/10, since the support provider always showed knowledge and was able to solve the problems. The only negative point is the availability as they are usually late in responding.

We did not previously use a different solution.

The installation process was simple, especially because the installer was guided by an expert and her way of communicating was always clear and concise. From the first day, the solution came into operation and the tuning process was given progressively.

I think the price of licensing is very accessible, considering the functionalities of the product. The product-price ratio is better than other brands such as Fortinet or SonicWall.

We performed an evaluation on Fortinet, SonicWall, Juniper and Microtik.

The advice I can give you is to first make an assessment of the needs that your company has. Once they have identified the products that offer solutions to their problems, then don't only consider the price but consider also the costs of licensing, support agreements, product functionalities, product positioning etc.

Consider reviewing evaluations made by other technology vendors and if possible ask for a demo to your local IT providers. They will be happy to show you the products and their different advantages.

• Service oriented views include physical and virtual servers as well as network devices
• Predictive analysis
• Log monitoring
• Alarm correlation
• Scheduled reports

We are transitioning to a proactive monitoring. By using thresholds and predictive analysis, we are reducing incidents.

Network monitoring beyond SNMP.

I have used this solution for ten months.

We have not had stability issues yet.

We have not had scalability issues yet.

There has been good technical support so far.

We used an open source solution for some time, but decided to get a fully supported solution to improve service availability.

The initial setup was simple. We just had some issues with the initial database setup.

It is not the cheapest solution, but it has competitive prices.

We evaluated SolarWinds.

Check or ask for a compatibility matrix to ensure that your environment (server OS, virtual environments, etc.) is supported.