The features which I believe to be the most valuable for PRTG are its easy setup in general, including its alarm setup; along with its out-of-the-box monitoring checks.
The fact that it's simple to use network-based monitoring, and at the same time is reliable and robust.
This product in particular provided network traffic control, net SLA measurements which are always quite practical. Also, it allowed us to report downtime on sites in a very easy and comprehensive way.
Its most important quality, in my opinion, is that it's an out-of-the-box functional product. This means you won't need a lot of technical know-how to properly make it function, at least on a basic level. It's easy to configure and make an operator know how to interpret the information gathered and apply the information it reports.
They could improve on application monitoring, user defined OS sensors, its lack of agent defined monitoring. Also, they could include customized reports and network maps, more detailed SLA reports, better item relations. Lastly, they should improve on distributed monitoring for customers on remote networks.
What it offers is far from being enough. It's dashboards, GUI and reports are too simple for cases where you'd need advanced monitoring tools.
I've used it on two different sites for over three years.
None at all, I'd even say that it's the best thing about this program: you don't need to know about monitoring to make it run.
We've had no issues with the stability.
It does consume a lot of hardware resources, and over time you can notice it going slower. This is especially so when you've added/erased a large amount of checks, alerts or customizations from what are called "sensors" . Just like many Windows-oriented tools, you sometimes feel the urge of just resetting everything and starting over -but that's mainly because of how it handles during daily tasks- usually it doesn't have major issues with bugs or general usefulness.
I haven't had access to it, the client did not provide me with that information.
Technical Support:I haven't had access to it, the client did not provide me with that information.
I've worked with a large variety of solutions, mainly Zabbix, Nagios, Cacti and Pandora FMS. In this case I resorted to PRTG because the client already had a license for it. One of the times I had to set it up from scratch and the other time I had to take over an installation which was already functioning.
It was quite simple although, as always, you have to get used to the terminology used which is unofficial.
In both cases I had an In-house team.
It was quite good, considering the product is inexpensive for commercial standards and that it won't take a long time to learn to use properly.
It's a good product for simple environments, but its price/feature ratio scales rapidly in larger environments. In really complex or large environments, this product just isn't enough, it's lacking a lot of features that would otherwise be necessary for these types of environments.
generally work with open source solutions such as Zabbix, Nagios, Cacti or Pandora FMS. In this case it could be compared to WhatsApp Gold, but I think PRTG is more useful for compact and simple environments.
I would say that in general it's good software, yet I would advise newcomers about some of its limited features, but you can't really expect pinecones from a palm tree, if you know what I mean.
If you need a simple and solid tool, and you're willing to spend a buck, it's a good option to consider. It's a tool that's been tested and you can easily see what it is or is not meant for.
What was the most helpful strategy you found to adjust to the unofficial terminology used in the solution/setup?