ITRS Geneos Reviews

Customizable Dashboard to display real time business flow monitoring. This is extremely useful to operations as well as business user. Not only monitor health but capacity and performance at a glance.

Cater well to Capitals market trading environment. From on exchange order latency to client RFQ type of multi-stages tracking. Geneos is able to provide the tools to capture data in (near) real-time.

Highly customizable. It’s ability to ingest metrics on a given format allow users to create highly customized scripts/tools tailored to their monitoring needs.

Operation team used to perform 20 highly manual steps for the Start of Day (SOD) checks on a particular system which involve checking dozen of log files, running 30+ SQLs, collating information from exchange website and compare to system static data, etc. Porting all actions into Geneos with an appropriately designed dashboard has shorten the SOD checks to just a glance to the dashboard and greatly reduce manual errors.

Its web monitoring capability is very hard to use especially if there is authentication involved.

I've used it for six years.

We had no issues deploying it.

I've had no issues with its stability.

There were no issues scaling it for our needs.

Very responsible customer support. All case logged are followed up promptly.

Straight forward, startup with basic metrics and progress toward bespoke use cases that's where the real value is. Be expected of a lot of a lot of customization and intuitive work around to extract metrics from your plant if it's not readily available.

In-house team with some vendor support or help along the way. People with a little bit of dev skill can make a lot of things possible.

It’s expensive but the number of Sev One incidents prevented is priceless especially where there are regulatory pressures in the capital market.

Many other application monitoring tools are either too infrastructure centric or client experience centric. Not many cater well towards the capital market.

Get an expert in to evaluate what your real APM needs are.

Geneos enables customized aggregate views and alerts for both related and disparate components. This flexibility and insight facilitates proactive and prompt causation analysis. Simply put, you can easily see everything at once. If there’s an issue, you’ll know why within seconds, rather than spend precious time trying to find out.

Global support personnel, even without expertise in market data, can now easily and quickly run respective market checks and escalate with pinpoint data.

The Geneos configuration has greatly improved since the nascent version 1.0 days, but still requires specialist knowledge and convoluted config debugging when something’s not monitoring as expected. A hierarchical variable/component reference tree and more readily accessible examples would be welcome.

I've used it since the early 2000s, in the halcyon days when it was branded as ITRS NetAgent. I had led its feasibility test and global rollout for my previous company’s Triarch and TIBCO platforms. ITRS was new to TIBCO at the time, so we had worked closely to add the necessary platform-specific features; ITRS has always been easy to work with.

We had no issues with the deployment.

One original glaring issue had been the lack of fault-tolerant Gateway Servers, but that had been remedied in a release a few years ago. We also had issues with slow Gateway startup and high CPU usage, but subsequent releases and reducing the number of config include files resolved the issues.

There have been no issues scaling it for our needs.

ITRS support personnel are generally top-notch, with a technical account manager who personally sees through each query or ticket.

Various iterations of TIB Hawk, Traverse, and in-house written apps had sufficed, but never truly provided centralized, customizable, easy to use, and market data specific monitoring available via ITRS Geneos.

Initial setup itself is straightforward. There’s a single server (two in fault-tolerance) running the master “Gateway” process, and each monitored server runs a “Netprobe” process. Each tarball is extracted to a single folder, rather than strewn all over the file system. Upgrades are likewise easy.

To not run Netprobes as root, some network monitoring features necessitated writing in-house scripts to feed alongside into Geneos, but that’s also its flexibility in action.
Rather than a cookie cutter setup, you will likely find yourself continually tweaking features and adding new alerts to suit your needs.

Since ITRS was introducing a totally revamped Gateway version 2, ITRS provided a consultant to advise on the initial configuration template, which we then customized and expanded upon.

The insight into finding the weakest links in the infrastructure has enabled us to proactively upgrade servers and networks in measured phases, rather than in a big bang approach.

ITRS has recently streamlined its pricing model to be a bit less granular (computation engine is now standard, for instance), which may or may not benefit your needs. The accounts team is amenable, so try to strike a deal, whether in cost, free training, and/or onsite consultancy.

There’s a reason even Thomson Reuters retired their own monitoring product, in favor of licensing ITRS Geneos.

The tool is highly customizable and can be tailored to your requirements. Dashboards can be created if needed and database logging can be enabled for analyzing trends and monitoring performance.

It has assisted the team to identify issues pro-actively, i.e. prior to a business user reporting them. This would ensure that the issue is identified and fixed in a timely manner. Also, the tools assists with stability as we are monitoring application infrastructure – application (all O/S), databases, middleware and much more.

It would be good if there were documentation on the ITRS website such as tutorials or plugins which are available to download.

I've used it for three years.

We've had no deployment issues.

There have been no issues with the stability.

We've had no issues with scaling it for our needs.

I have not spoken to the vendor directly.

It was straightforward, due to the automated tools created in-house to assist teams with the installation and set up.

In-house. Several tools were created by the Tech Services team to ensure the Geneos Netprobe installations and other key processes are simplified; easy to understand and use by all teams.

Ensure some of the samplers and types (for monitoring infrastructure i.e. disk space, hardware, memory etc ) can be used by multiple servers to prevent duplicating things. In the Gateway Setup Editor, follow the same generic folder structure and set up for all your applications (if you have more than one). This will make the Gateway easier to manage.

The monitoring of queues which helps us to stay ahead of issues and fix them before users start complaining.

We use this in our production and test environments. It has helped to centralize the monitoring in one place.

We would like to use Geneos integrate with mainframe applications.

We've been using it for one year.

We've never had any issues with the deployment.

We've not had any issues with the scalability.

We've had no issues scaling it for our needs.

Customer Service:

7/10

Technical Support:

7/10 - the support from ITRS we had in company was very helpful.

This is the first time we are using a product that has the capability to monitor everything in one place.

We were a little bit confused but once we found out what was needed, it was smooth.

We used an in-house team. In order to do this, you should take the training courses.

It's a good tool to use for monitoring complex applications.

The visualization layer and the config editor (with host of out of the box plugins) that makes setting up monitoring on any application quickly and efficiently covering infrastructure and more detailed monitoring points like middleware, messaging and database.

It has helped us re-define the Monitoring operating model which in turn has made support teams more efficient by using features like commented snoozing on various levels, use of knowledgebase articles associated with each alert cell, metric logging for capacity monitoring etc.

I would like to see more integration support via use of APIs. They have released openAccess for the same but hasn’t really picked up. Also, more flexibility in creating own customized plugins (not just using toolkits) and deploying on agents. Also, more data analytics capability would be helpful.

I've been using it for six years.

There is are issues with the compatibility of plugins with AIX servers.

There were performance and stability issues in running gateways and net probes on Solaris servers.

We have had no issues scaling it for our needs.

Customer Service:

Customer service response is really good through raising tickets on their online support portal.

Technical Support:

They generally respond within couple hours for a normal ticket and can respond even urgently depending on the level of escalation. They are happy to come on site as well to work on bigger or more specific issues.

The reason for choosing ITRS Geneos was the availability of its wide range of out of the box plugins and its visualization layer that simplifies and represents the application components well.

The process in itself is simple to setup but getting it working through the corporate securities and restrictions can be a pain, but I guess that would be the case for any new tool setup.

It is a bit expensive so it may not be feasible if you are planning to use it for a specific application(s). But if you use it across a range of applications (like within a whole department) then look to combine the licenses and then it can be really worth the money. Moreover, this way it standardises the monitoring platform to have consistency across teams and set up a standard monitoring operating model.

It may be tempting to get it working quickly using the root, but I would highly advise against it. Create a new user and give it appropriate permissions by identifying what access it may require to run plugins. Due to its ease of usage it can be abused by application support teams so I would suggest to review the setup regularly and make sure there is only 1 or 2 admins changing and updating monitoring otherwise it can get quite messy very soon. Try to rely on watching the visual interface and not on emails as that can grow huge as well. If you do stick to only absolute critical ones.

Try to pilot the project in a small area and learn as much as you can before deploying it across a wider estate. Use ITRS support as much as you can at least in the beginning. Also, have a experienced Geneos professional implement it.

ITRS Active Console has helped us monitor servers and set thresholds for different metrics. It is easy to setup and works with different kinds of servers. It also helps you execute shell scripts as response to alerts.

Active Console allows us to execute shell scripts as a response to an alert.

I believe the product has to improve on reporting. Currently it allows writing events to a database and we have to manually create reports from it. The reporting tool needs to be improved.

I've been using it for an hour and a half.

I have not encountered any issues in deployment of the application.

It's been stable and does not crash.

We've been able to scale it for our needs.

The customer service and technical support are prompt. The best way to reach them is to send an email to their support. They are helpful and prompt in their response.

Make use of their helpdesk. They are helpful and prompt.

• Toolkits
• Compute engine

It provides us with the ability to monitor much deeper into both our infrastructure and applications functional metrics. Deploying simple metrics was simple and we quickly covered the functionality provided by the product we were replacing. The result was a similar metrics monitored at a much better frequency, with a more stable product and a much better user interface. Also, we were able to deploy self-service role-based access by architecting the include files and authentication modules in an appropriate way. That enabled the application support teams to start getting involved in extending the baseline monitoring we had deployed and go much deeper into the monitoring of certain applications than was previously possible. Interfacing the product with our enterprise event management platform was relatively easy.

A few minor incremental improvements we have asked the vendor for would be nice. The main weakness of the product is poor historical logging and reporting. The main difficulty with the product is how to identify performance issues with complex rules or samplers. This is about to change with the new Insights module.

I've used it for three years.

Nothing major. Webserver module did not deploy successfully though

No issues encountered.

Performance can be a problem with complex or greedy rules and samplers.

Customer Service:

9/10. Good service

Technical Support:

10/10. Very committed, very helpful, very knowledgeable.

Our previous product had poor functionally and of poor quality.

The setup can be complex if the solution you are deploying is complex.

We used a mix of both in-house staff and vendor consultants, and they worked as a team.

Know your functional requirement. Gradually build complex monitoring. Start simple.

• Complete End-to End monitoring of Apps and infra

• Key performance metrics to identify and reduce transaction latencies

Multiple views of Trading Apps

None that I can think of.

6 months

No

No

No

Customer Service:

Very good

Technical Support:

Very good

No

A bit complex

Ourselves

Excellent

Expensive

CA APM

No

The critical alerts are valuable.

We have been able to monitor the repeated critical alerts and work on producing a more stable environment for our customers.

Snoozing/maintenance work. A third color would be brilliant to identify whether the servers are being worked on, e.g. blue for maintenance.

I've used it for three years.

Issues with certain gateways. We have around 30 gateways in our environment and a lot of servers, so as you can imagine, there's a lot of data. We sometimes experienced disconnects of the gateways which was a hard one to resolve. In the end, we opened its consoles on the same server to spread the load.

Connectivity as above.

Customer Service:

7/10.

Technical Support:

7/10.

No previous solution was used.

It was done in-house.