IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) Reviews

• Flexible architecture: You can extend the system and its capacity by attaching another cluster pair.
• Very intuitive management interface: Adding and discovering new devices is a very simple process.
• Very useful and flexible end-user GUI interface: Reports or statistics can be prepared by a person who has no knowledge of performance monitoring.
• Automatic reporting: You can very quickly prepare a report to be periodically sent to recipients.
• Very fast reporting engine: Even very complex reports are generated in seconds.
• Many predefined Top-N reports are available out-of-the-box.
• Grouping capability: Each device can be assigned to many groups, which means you can report any interesting network factors according to the multiple group allocation.
• Baseline: The functionality that allow us to monitor a particular factor (like throughput or CPU load) based on some historical data (the value of the factor at similar period of day should be more or less the same)
• Virtualization of network elements: Many physical interfaces that exist on different physical devices can be aggregated as a single logical device with many logical interfaces. This is very useful functionality for network operators.
• Trend analysis: The system predicts the value of the traffic in the future based on existing behavior.

We provide customer internet access services and the 95th percentile is our target. Every month, we prepare a detailed report per customer that shows the current percentile value (does it exceed 95 or not), and we have to prepare detailed traffic reports that show the real traffic graph in the last month.

All of this was done manually. With SevOne, this process is fully automated and the reports can be sent directly to business customers (after a simple verification performed by another colleague).

Our version is quite old. In version 5.3.3.0, we see a lot of room for possible improvement. However, from SevOne support, we received confirmation that most of those expectations are met in version 5.4.x or higher.

Therefore, we have to think about upgrading to the later version as soon as possible.

SevOne should work with the graphs legend functionality. Now, you are able to put a part of the graph description as a customer description, but most of the original description stays unchanged. This means that sometimes the legend under the graph is unreadable (indicator names are sometimes not humanly readable). It would be nice to have a solution similar to the one in Cacti, where you can replace (or rather overwrite) an existing description with your own string.

It has now been almost one and a half years.

Currently, we are using version 5.3.3.0, but we are now just upgrading the system to version 5.3.10 due to several minor issues.

Not, over the last one and a half years.

Yes, but this was caused by special and very uncommon expectations from our side.

Together with SevOne, we implemented the solution which allows us to automatically add any new network device that is added to our external (independent from SevOne) database.

We use the SevOne API to add those devices and interfaces to SevOne. In case of devices with a huge number of interfaces, more than 100, SevOne was not able to load them into its own database.

SevOne recommended an upgrade to a later version to resolve this limitation.

This is the part I am happiest about. Their response is great.

Of course, I sometimes have to wait a week or two, but mostly that is because of the nature of the problem and its complexity.

Most problems are resolved within two to three days.

In our case, the SevOne platform was implemented by a third-party integrator. So, at the beginning, our contact with SevOne was very limited.

Now, for simple or medium issues, we contact SevOne directly through the SevOne support webpage because it speeds up the problem solution time. However, for more complex issues, we still contact the third-party integrator.

We were using Cacti and Zabbix (both open source solutions). We decided to switch mainly because there were some business expectations to have a platform that would prepare reports we can show to business customers.

On the other hand, we would like to have a tool ready to prepare reports on demand and by the non-technical staff.

In a standard solution, the instalation is very simple. In our case, we decided to integrate SevOne with an external database (an external application). All network devices devoted to that application should be automatically inserted into SevOne database.

The integration interface was the part of the solution that was performed by a third-party integrator in cooperation with SevOne.

From the operator’s point of view, it is quite painful to have to remember that every device costs us some cash if added to SevOne (CAPEX and, later, yearly OPEX).

Prices per license are not huge, but they exist.

It is very visible when we connect a big number of network devices (due to some new company acquisition). At once, we have to connect 100s of network elements, and it is hard to find extra money for that.

On the other hand, the existing model is very flexible from a financial point of view (pay-as-you-grow).

Yes, but there was a tender, and I am not authorized to provide such information.

I can only say that there were a few big players in the area of performance monitoring system vendors.

• The grouping capability is very simple and a very important issue in terms of system reporting capability. You should do your homework carefully so you will have a flexible reporting tool in the future.
• Enabling baseline functionality: We decided not to enable it at the beginning and very quickly decided to change our minds. It is a very useful mechanism for data comparison (today’s traffic to the week’s traffic, to weeks before at the same time, and so on).
• Report preparation: It depends on the agreement, but SevOne is ready to prepare some predefined report at initial integration. Let them do this to save you time, but it requires some time to think about your expectations.
• In SevOne, you pay mainly per object. Do not enable all object pooling by default. In a case with 10,000 devices, if you decide not to pool ICMP (not to ping devices to check availability), you can save 10,000 objects, and save real money. (We did so and we do not regret that decision, but it depends on the particular expectations of the company implementing the product.)
• The same as disabling ICMP pooling, you can decide to disable memory and CPU monitoring (if it is not necessary). Money that again stays in your pocket.

The platform is as flexible as an open source system can be. It has a very useful end user GUI interface, which means working with the system is very easy and intuitive.

The reports and the graphics. With this tool it is interesting to show the info to the client and explain where the traffic is.

I can't, I arrived in the last days of the project, just to make reports.

The method of searching for SIP and the way to create the groups.

Four months.

No.

No.

Eight out of 10.

I didn’t do the switch, the company had the product when I arrived.

I didn’t do the setup.

I can´t answer that.

I didn’t choose the product but I had used others.

Although it is a very good monitoring tool, it can be confusing when you try to add devices and they don’t appear correctly. Then you need to check SID on the SevOne database. There it does not display when the error pops up.

It's given us the ability to create various real-time network performance reports and distribute them to any colleague who can access these reports immediately. They can access them any time without needing their own user account to the system.

• SevOne threshold monitoring alerts help to improve our network monitoring.
• Procedures in troubleshooting were built on predefined SevOne reports.

Single device-based baseline monitoring works well in SevOne, but sometimes device independent base-lining in redundant network environments. Software upgrades can be tricky is not easy.

I've used it for five years.

The software upgrades can be tricky.

The appliances run quite stable.

Scalability is just a matter of adding new appliances to the cluster if needed.

They have good customer service.

Technical support is very professional and fast in developing solutions.

We chose it because it has a fast working reporting engine and because of the scalability of the solution.

The set-up of the basic monitoring is straightforward, but customizing for special needs, such as calculation pollers, takes some effort.

The implementation was performed by a vendor team together with an internal one. The vendor had a high-level of expertise.

It's provided us with improvements in network monitoring and troubleshooting as well as advanced reporting solutions payback.

The SevOne tool was convincing from the beginning, and after testing it there was no need to test anything else.

By default the tool provides a lot, you need to focus on your needs, adding something else later is usually no problem.

This is a new tool for our company. This project is the first one on which we're using this tool.

It is inexpensive compared to other monitoring tools and it provides agentless monitoring, where we don't need any kind of installation of servers. SevOne has a feature which is a policy browser. We just assign the policy and it will automatically apply it to all the servers, and it will create the thresholds as well for each and every server.

The automation feature is good because if your CMDB is OK and it is already in sync, then the automation part is good to go. Auto-closure of the ticketed issue is resolved and ticket will auto-close, which is very helpful.

There is no service mode setup in this monitoring tool if you want to snooze alerts for any specific amount of time, to account for any activity change or major incident. That is one of the drawbacks.

We have also faced some issues regarding SNMP traps.

Another difficulty is reporting. There is a limitation, per report, of 1,000 servers. Consequently, if your environment has 5,000 or 10,000 servers, you have to create separate reports, and each report will have 1,000 servers. That requires us to compromise with customers, that each report will only show 1,000 servers.

SNMP can't page exact disk utilization. So consider Unix servers. Unix servers' utilization is around 95%, and their reserve space is 5%. So SNMP will not page that extra 5%. it will only page the rest of the 90%. So from the OS end, it will see 95% usage, but in your tool you will see 90% usage because SNMP doesn't page that 5% of reserved space. That is one of the drawbacks that is not tool based, that would be considered as SNMP.

One other thing. Log monitoring is not possible from SevOne and that's why we are still using another monitoring tool. URL monitoring is also not possible.

No. There is high availability. We haven't had any issue like appliances going down or the server going down.

The alerts are also properly generating, as per the policies. So if you correctly create the devices and correctly ID the devices in your tool, then I think you will get proper results with this monitoring tool.

No problems here. Regarding reports and alerts, everything is good in this tool. The only thing we faced is SNMP traps, like snoozing the servers for a specific time, which is a maintenance mode issue.

Previously we had two other CA tools. But we wanted to do everything, like automation and all types of URL monitoring, in one tool. So that's why we considered implementing this tool in our environment. Only later did we come to realize that not everything is possible through SevOne.

Setup was simple. It was not that complex because one server, one appliance would be the performance server and another would be a high availability server. The selection part was smooth.

But creating a policy, thinking with LDAP, that part takes some time, but in a good way.

This was a management issue. I, being on the technical side, was not involved in this.

If you want one tool for everything this should not be considered. For example, if you want to monitor logs, if you want to monitor URLs, that is not possible from SevOne.

If you only monitor networks, if you want to monitor appliances, you can go with this application. It's good to go with SevOne because the creation of thresholds, of policies, the grouping of servers, that is easy.

One other thing. This is mainly a web console, it's not like any appliance application that you have to go into some server and open an application. That kind of thing is not there. 

Scalability. I have never had to worry about how to handle really big environments.

The GUI: both the dashboard/user view and the admin tool.

More than five years.

No, very stable.

No.

There are some differences between the Bulgarian and the American support teams.

Not applicable.

Very easy to setup the first installation. It is easy and fast to achieve the basic level.

Choose a SevOne partner who can provide SevOne as a service and can deliver professional services and maintenance.

I evaluated from a reseller perspective to find the best product on the market at that time: CA eHealth, Nagios, OP5, InfoVista, etc.

To get the best value, find a good partner to work with who has experience from more than one product vendor. Then, you can get a second opinion and comparisons.

The monitoring of the network is very customizable. That is its unique feature.

One example is in the way you have information of the status of each component of each device in your network.

User-friendly, multi-tenancy.

One year.

No.

Yes, but it is according licensing.

Very bad. The support it is a kind of blog where you leave your question or problem, then they try to resolve it as soon as possible.

SolarWinds, because we tried for a new and cheaper solution.

Complex for the MIBs.

Have a bank of licenses, because it is about the number of objects (RAM, ports, CPU, etc.).

Yes, NetIQ and SolarWinds.

Not all solutions fit all problems. Also, if you are an MSP, SevOne can’t be federated for clients.

Instant graphs, high frequency polling and the ability to create reports on the fly are the most valuable features we currently use.

We are able to see or alert on issues a lot faster.

I'd like to be able to stitch together multiple network elements or services for more of an end-to-end view of network performance.

I have been using this solution for 1.5 years.

I have not encountered any issues with stability.

I have not encountered any issues with scalability.

I would give it a 7.5/10.

I previously used a different solution, but the report rendering was extremely slow.

Licensing costs can add up quickly, so know what you need to monitor and what you don’t.

• Quick response on reports
• User interface
• Scalability of the monitoring
• Reliability

Given the ease of access to the information in a few clicks, the user base of the product has increased tremendously. As the word of mouth spread, the increased reachability of this for the performance reporting space within our organisation increased.

Keeping up to date with market trends, new vendors and with network vendors’ product support.

More than three years.

Our installation is a very large scale one. We initially had issues getting the product to accommodate the number of network devices to monitor. After a set of fine tune steps, we did not need to turn this part back on.

We are one of SevOne's large appliance base customers, and we have not had any issues so far.

8/10

The predecessor was not up to the race! Over the years of it use, it failed to meet the expectance organically. Hence the need to look for a product with better returns in many aspects.

Straightforward I must say… Just get the appliance set up as a vanilla installation in the management systems. It’s sort of plug-and-play. It covered 75% of the network devices and servers farms out of box from day one.

SevOne has a decent pricing model, so far, for production & solutions on the shelf. Given the “object” licensing concept, it simplifies the pricing model in many ways, and gives flexibility for customer to decide.

Thoroughly evaluate what needs to be monitored from SevOne, you’ll look at it as a different ball game for the cost of what needs to be monitored.

Solarwinds – Orion, Nimsoft, IBM TNPM, Netcracker, HP Performance Insight, OPNET Net One, Previsor, TBD Fusion (Vital Suite), Watch3Net, ScienceLogic, Cisco – Prime, Network Instrument – Observer, ZenPM - SysMech.

Clearly outline what needs to be monitored from SevOne and what you aim for your organization. I don’t recommend monitoring everything.

Please engage the SevOne SME’s. It will make the implementation easier in many aspects.