SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability Reviews

I work day-to-day on SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability. It covers network, server, storage, and networking.

The most helpful feature is the NPM module, which provides many protocols for proactive monitoring. Additionally, it has an alerting engine where I can define thresholds and configure custom alerts, which can also be integrated with ITSM or a ticketing system to auto-create tickets. The network video monitoring and coverage area are also valuable features.

Event management features can be added as it has limited capability to ingest events from external sources.

I have been working with SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability for more than five years.

Given that I have all the prerequisites in place, it takes a couple of days to deploy and bring up the platform.

There are very rare downtimes, but overall, it is very good in terms of stability.

Customer support is good. I get an instant response and on-call support as well.

The initial setup is straightforward and quick if prerequisites are met, taking only a couple of days.

It is fairly priced compared to competitors.

I have experience with ScienceLogic and Micro Focus's OMI tool. SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability is better in terms of design and ease of deployment.

I would give SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability an eight out of ten. It is a wonderful tool overall.

The primary use cases are for customers who require complete infrastructure monitoring. I mean IT infrastructure, which includes network devices, security devices, and server environments, whether physical, virtual, or cloud-based. The platform can manage any infrastructure component that needs monitoring.

It's an all-in-one platform with all the necessary modules. For instance, server and application monitoring, network performance monitoring, and network configuration management are all part of it. It's a unified platform designed to monitor the entire infrastructure.

Imagine monitoring the network infrastructure, the web server, and the database server. With SolarWinds HCO, I can perform database analytics, web server monitoring, and network infrastructure monitoring.

AI capabilities come into play through correlation. For instance, SolarWinds HCO can identify high utilization on the interface connecting to the database server, indicating a lot of read-and-write operations between the front-end application and the back-end database. This correlation can help determine whether the network condition caused the server issue or vice versa.

The AI continues learning and analyzing patterns such as CPU, memory, and network utilization spikes. If it detects a CPU spike first, it might indicate the server was at fault. If it notices a network spike, the network could be the issue.

SolarWinds HCO platform offers various features spanning components, such as network, security, server, virtual, and application components. Common features include dashboarding, reporting, and alerting. These features provide comprehensive visibility, allowing you to see how one area's issues affect others. For instance, if a network issue impacts server performance, this visibility is crucial.

One of the biggest advantages of this common platform is its ability to correlate issues. For example, if a network alert occurs and the server experiences downtime, you can be alerted to both issues.

Recently, two significant features were added: anomaly-based alert detection and an alert stack mechanism. The alert stack mechanism is particularly useful. For example, if there's high interface utilization on a network switch and concurrent server performance issues, the platform’s correlation engine will link these alerts and show them as a common alert stack, indicating a likely correlation.

The tool's escalation process needs improvement.  More support is needed for the new generation of solutions, particularly SD-WAN support and newer storage components. Additionally, as more vendors move towards API-based monitoring, we anticipate SolarWinds HCO will increase integrations with other solutions.

Another area for improvement is reporting. With infrastructure becoming increasingly diverse, the static infrastructures of the past are evolving into dynamic setups. Traditionally, we had wireless in the office, a backend Internet connection, and connections to head offices and data centers. With the advent of SD-WAN, multiple service providers, and cloud-based options, infrastructure is more dynamic.

Today, most customers are not using on-premise solutions exclusively; they are opting for Office 365, G Suite, or similar services. Therefore, monitoring requirements are no longer limited to on-premise infrastructure but span diverse environments—some on-premise, some in the cloud. This is why SolarWinds is moving towards hybrid cloud observability.

We would like to see more integrations and support for third-party vendors. For example, current support for Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is limited, and expanding this support would be beneficial.

I have been working with the product for three years. 

The tool helps save costs through its additional features and unified platform. Monitoring all components in a single platform reduces the need for separate consoles for different tasks. This consolidation saves time and money, as it eliminates the manual correlation of data, which is prone to errors.

I rate the overall product an eight out of ten. 

The solution's pricing is quite reasonable. It has moved to node-based licensing, simplifying the process. They don't distinguish between different types of nodes, such as server nodes, physical routers, or switches. One node equals one license, making it easy to manage. If you have 500 devices, you need five hundred licenses to get all the features of this unified monitoring platform.

We don't recommend other vendors since we have built our capabilities around SolarWinds. However, it innovates and keeps us occupied.