SolarWinds Virtualization Manager Reviews

We predominantly work with financial organizations such as large banks, stock exchanges, and insurance companies, as well as IT-enabled services (ITES). I use SolarWinds Virtualization Manager at our customer's place for optimizing virtual environments.

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager optimizes VM performance and virtualization. It provides me with recommendations for resource allocation, indicating if a virtual machine is under-provisioned or over-provisioned. This allows me to reclaim resources, such as reducing the number of CPU cores or RAM, which is beneficial. Its capacity planning feature is also very useful for me. The GUI is highly simplified, cutting across various virtualization platforms, including VMware, Hyper-V, and Nutanix environments.

SolarWinds needs to support integration with other virtualization platforms like KVM or Linux-based systems.

I have been working with SolarWinds Virtualization Manager for about three to three and a half years.

The implementation of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is straightforward. I simply point it to the virtual environment, and with the right credentials, it's done in a matter of a few minutes.

This solution delivers significant cost savings, especially from a capacity perspective. Consistent monitoring is essential in a virtualization environment, and Virtualization Manager, or VMAN as it's called, provides both monitoring and management. It addresses resource issues and optimizes resources effectively.

The overall rating for SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is eight out of ten. 

My advice is to consider the solution for its effectiveness in resource optimization and easy integration into existing virtual environments.

The problem or issue with the product is related to its pricing. The solution can be made free, especially for those who are using Dell products. The monitoring part is taken care of after SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is integrated into Dell IDRAC. If the aforementioned integration is not carried out, then you have to pay money separately to receive or utilize the services from SolarWinds.

In the future, the product should have reporting features. The reporting feature would allow users to get whatever information they are looking for rather than having to do it manually.

I have been using SolarWinds Virtualization Manager for a few years. Though I don't directly use the solution, I manage it. I am a user of the solution.

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution because you can easily make editions to increase its capacity.

The ones involved in the monitoring activity and the ones who are being monitored are the people who use the solution in my company. In total, my company has more than 1,000 users of the product. Only three administrators are required to take care of the solution.

Since I haven't used much of the technical support provided for the solution, I will have to research first in order to be able to speak about the product's technical support.

I used OME at my previous workplace.

The initial setup of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager was straightforward.

The maintenance and support are a part of the package, meaning it is included in the product's price.

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is a great tool that is easy to use. The tool also gives out all the information you need to do your monitoring activities.

I rate the overall tool a six out of ten.

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is used for to virtualization of servers.  The SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is only a module of the larger solution which supports a different type of operating system that it supports.

The most valuable features of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager are the non-Windows servers' monitoring and capacity planning. 

The cluster monitoring is simple. You can mention the cluster IP and all the sub-servers under the cluster would populate and you can receive more information.

The SolarWinds Virtualization Manager platform in general can have a better response time in the performance.

I have been using SolarWinds Virtualization Manager for a few years.

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is stable.

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager can scale to some extent.

There are approximately 20 people using this solution in my organization.

The technical support is good from SolarWinds Virtualization Manager. The response has been fast.

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager was straightforward to implement and the process took approximately two hours.

I used an integrator for the implementation of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager.

We have two engineers that do the maintenance and support the solution.

The is an annual subscription needed to use this solution.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate SolarWinds Virtualization Manager a six out of ten.

The primary use case for Solarwinds Virtualization Manager was it's ability to monitor/measure VM level IOPS which allowed us to do manual storage tiering with our Dell EqualLogic SAN's.

We were able to leverage this product for Hyper-V Cluster Shared Volume (CSV) free space monitoring and alerting based on customized thresholds which we were unable to do before without the use of custom PowerShell scripts. It also allows for more granular VM level monitoring that can be beneficial, i.e. Disk level metrics (IOPS, Read/Write Mbps, Queue Depth), Network level metrics (Bandwidth In/out, errors/discards), etc. This can be especially useful if you're looking to put in a Tiered Storage solution in the future or looking to implement Storage and/or Network QoS.

The ability to see VM-level IOPS data without the use of an agent is the most valuable feature in my opinion. Some of the monitoring capabilities, including Hyper-V CSV Free Space (%) monitoring and disk latency/read/write speeds come in handy, as well. Also, the Chargeback and Showback features are a nice touch. The dashboards are pretty nifty if you're looking for a quick overview of different information as they are all customizable. The Capacity Planner and VM Sprawl information can also come in handy when used properly.

The UI is a little cumbersome at first, but the more you use it and get accustomed to it, the simpler it becomes. It does leave a bit to be desired though.

I believe the reporting could be improved upon and some of the customization options could be simpler. The creation of custom reports and queries can be a bit challenging at first and can take some time to grasp. Once you get the hang of it, you will see the benefit and value add behind building custom reports.

No, the only issue we encountered was due to a bug in which we did not have the latest HotFix from SolarWinds installed. Once we installed the HotFix, we were good to go. Solarwinds is always quick to develop hotfixes and new releases for most of their products, especially compared to some other older companies in the same realm.

No, we ran this on a single Hyper-V virtual machine without any issues. It should scale across multiple sites without any issues.

Customer Service:

SolarWinds customer service has always been excellent and extremely helpful. One of the better custom service/technical support departments out there.

Technical Support:

We always received top notch technical support with this SolarWinds product along with the others. The engineers were very helpful and would even go the extra mile to help fine tune the settings and product if requested.

We did not use a vendor to implement the product and would not recommend it, unless you are a very small shop or do not have any staff with the technical expertise to implement this product.

No other options were evaluated.

If you’re looking to get a lot more insight into your virtualization environment and more than just basic information, SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is the choice you should make. You will be able to see Chargeback, Showback, VM Sprawl, Snapshot Usage, and VM sizing recommendations along with customizable dashboards, alerting, and reporting. Not only that, you will be able to utilize the Capacity Planning feature to always stay proactive with your virtualization environment.

The features like trends, capacity planning, recommendations, and diagnostics are the main items I focus on for added value. The trends help me when I am looking at how my VMs are performing.

There are times when we need more performance out of certain VMs. With trends and capacity planning, you can really focus on the items and help get a better picture of how you can move things around to streamline your infrastructure.

The Recommendations are a life saver. They have valuable, daily information regarding your VM network. I don’t always follow the recommendations but when I do, it’s usually automated, so there is no other interaction needed from me. It’s like having another employee.

The diagnostics simply help me make sure I am meeting my required KPIs.

VMAN recommendations have helped us manage the VMs to perform more efficiently. It notes everything from storage to processor utilizations. It helps us, in the organization, to make informed decisions about whether or not we need to expand the infrastructure. This saves us time and money.

I would like it to be fully integrated into Orion.

Although there are many pieces that are integrated and make it a very good application for managing and monitoring your VM environment, I would like to see more of it in Orion. I don't want to switch between sites for information.

I believe that some of the trends and environmental maps and items like that in Orion would be very beneficial. We create NOC views in Orion, which would add many of the VMAN dashboard items. This would add value.

We have been using this solution for more than four years.

I had some stability issues. I lost my environment. But with the help of SolarWinds support, I was able to get back to a stable platform and install the upgrade to VMAN to bring me up to v7.

The Appliance for VMware would lock up and I was unable to shut it down properly. If I didn’t reboot, I could not see the VMAN admin console.

So I was had to shut it down through VMware, thereby corrupting the appliance. SolarWinds was not sure why this happened. After several days, we were better than before, and there has not been a hiccup since.

We didn’t encounter any scalability issues for our infrastructure. We only have a 50 VM license and we are currently using 27 of them. We are not one of the lager enterprise environments. The speed and stability has been great.

Since 2012, we only had the one major issue. That is pretty good. If Windows were that reliable, what a world we would live in.

At times, it’s been difficult to get through. However in the past twelve months, they have reformed their ways and it’s been fantastic.

I have used SolarWinds with three different companies in the past 17 years, and they have never failed to help me. Sometimes it takes some time, but they always get you going.

Of course we used other products, and we still do. One product cannot do everything you want it to do, at least not at a price you can afford. Sometimes it’s better to run a tiered approach, such as with security, so all your eggs are not in one basket, so to speak.

However, most everything else we use is freeware, or open source. SolarWinds is the only fully paid product we currently own.

I found the setup really very easy, if you are familiar with deploying *.ova files. Setup was a snap, and the setup wizard really walks you through everything.

Their documentation is very detailed. If you need support, you can reach out to technical support and also use THWACK, which is world class and ahead of its time.

Well I have always said SolarWinds is very “proud” of their products, meaning they are expensive. I cannot afford to purchase all the licenses I need for all SolarWinds products. But in the case of VMAN, I have exactly what I need and room to grow.

That being said, you are not going to find a better solution on the market for the price.

We were only using tools from VMware and didn’t look at other options. Knowing SolarWinds from using Orion and other applications they sell, I wanted to have my monitoring software to be as integrated as possible. So we looked no further.

DO IT!!! You will not regret it. This product is so helpful out-of-the-box. Even for larger environments, you have a very short roll-out timeline, fantastic benefits, and results.

Alerting expands, and makes, our monitoring and management much more efficient. Also, the ability to see into our virtual world quickly and easily is a great benefit. Dashboards are customizable providing at a glance information that’s extremely helpful.

From an IT perspective, it makes admin work much more efficient since we can go to one tool for a good percentage of the data needed on a day to day basis for monitoring and report on that data over time.

Adhoc reporting takes time to get used to – due mainly to the fact that the team I am on are all admins, and not necessarily accustomed to query reporting in the manner utilized by Solarwinds Virtualization Manager.

I've used it for about a year, and we use the product daily for monitoring our systems. It integrates with Network Performance Manager so we can monitor physical and virtual environments through one tool. Very efficient!

The certificates didn't work as described, and we needed an update to the product, but still experience pop-ups. We are now, at least, one update behind so it may be that we just need to install the latest update.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

I think it's decent although a team mate generally makes the support calls.

In general, the techs are knowledgeable and helpful. There's also a lot of information available on the Solarwinds, and Thwack websites.

No previous solution was being used.

It was straightforward. We already own a couple of products so that makes installing easier, but there were a few items that we sort of tried and had to back track, like the integration with NPM, but we got it eventually, and I don't recall the exact issue.

We implemented it in-house.

Just talk to your account manager, and make sure you are getting the right level of licensing to cover your needs, based on sockets.

We also looked at VMware Operations Manager, which we found to be cumbersome to install and configure, although we didn’t enlist VMware for assistance.

Take the time to familiarize yourself with the available options - view some video's from the website, and read some documents. It's worth the time!

Virtualization manager’s cost analysis comparison report identified areas in which specific customers were being grossly undercharged for their resource consumption levels, as compared to rates available through AWS. Being able to pull up an itemized cost analysis anchored in real-world pricing was an asset when renegotiating contracts and adjusting rates.

Out of the box support for a wider array of hardware vendor/device-specific SNMP mibs could be improved upon.

I was only involved in deployment and initial configuration in production of SolarWinds. I have been using SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) with Server & Application Monitor (SAM) and Virtualization Manager.  I have followed the SolarWinds suite of software for at least five years. 

No issues with deployment.

There is a healthy online community (http://thwack.solarwinds.com) and testing of pre-release software is open to customers with an active support contract, starting with initial Beta and continuing through to the final Release Candidate.

No, the development life-cycle is solid.

No, in my experience SolarWinds products scale well although it may require purchasing additional licensing for additional pollers.

Prior to SolarWinds, multiple products were deployed, which resulted in an overlap, redundancy and ‘alert fatigue.’