SolarWinds Observability SaaS

My main use case for SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability  is proactive monitoring, which allows the network team or the NOC operations monitoring team to know when there are downtimes or possible issues with a service provider's links or a branch. This capability helps us provide remediation actions long before major operational issues occur. When there are links down or degraded or there's a service issue, I come in the morning wanting to see the state of the network just by viewing one pane of glass. Therefore, I frequently create dashboards for monitoring and generate reports for management.

I remember a specific time when we had complaints of slow links. In my current institution, we have over 500 branches, and we observed various complaints regarding slow links, prompting us to investigate the issue. Initially, complaints came in singly, and we escalated them to service providers. However, after analyzing the reports at the end of the day, we noted over-utilization on the ISP backhaul at the HQ, and SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability  provided this insight due to the frequent reports generated. We caught this issue and upgraded the backhaul links by engaging the service providers to change from 1 gigabit interfaces to 10 gigabit interfaces while ensuring proper negotiation.

SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability  also helps us see the health statistics of devices. Recently, we picked up on high CPU and memory utilization on our internet routers using SolarWinds, which reported this through the SNMP credentials. We were able to raise a ticket with Cisco to solve the issue, making it another valuable use case for us.

The best features of SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability  include its various monitoring tools and excellent dashboards. It is one of my favorite tools because it allows teams to see and monitor multiple locations at a glance, such as our 500 branches, creating interactive dashboards that clearly indicate what actions to take through color codes. The second major advantage is its superior reporting capabilities. SolarWinds produces clearer reports than average monitoring tools, allowing us to make strategic comparisons and create custom reports that enhance our insight.

SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability offers great ease of use, and I have utilized it alongside integrations with Sophos and various other partners such as Fortinet. The ease of use regarding integrations has been very handy since we can monitor various third-party infrastructures. However, we experienced issues recently with integrations with Huawei, which is fast-growing in the African market. We noticed that the integration with Huawei was not providing as much information via SNMP compared to the flexibility seen with Cisco and other third-party integrations.

SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability has positively impacted my organization by improving our reporting capabilities, allowing us to send regular reports to management for constant analysis and visibility of the network's state. It has also helped reduce downtime and meet SLAs, achieving over 99% uptime for services, internet links, and spoke sites. We proactively identify issues before they occur. For example, when a site with two links has one link down, we ensure the second link is operational, which maintains service uptime, leading to an overall increase in uptime statistics and better visibility for management.

SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability could be improved, particularly regarding integrations with Huawei solutions. Given Huawei's rapid growth in the tech and network space, the integration with Huawei is not meeting the standards set by integrations with other providers such as Cisco. This is essential for the continued effective use of SolarWinds in the African market.

SolarWinds has excelled in its user interface and reporting capabilities regarding custom report creation. However, communication on how to create those custom reports can be enhanced. While many of us figure it out after time, a smoother process for creating custom reports would significantly aid engineers.

I chose 9 out of 10 partly because I have recently had issues with integration with Huawei, which is quickly becoming a significant player in the market. Since we operate a majority of our spoke sites with Huawei, SolarWinds tends to lose some advantages because the SNMP criteria for monitoring Huawei devices are not providing the comprehensive reports we need, leading me to deduct one point.

I have been working in my current field for about six to seven years across various institutions.

SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability is stable. I have used it in other environments with success, though in my current environment, we have experienced instability likely due to the deployment not meeting required standards. Consequently, we have had to perform frequent server refreshes before it becomes usable again. Despite this, my previous experiences affirm its stability when appropriately deployed.

The scalability of SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability is great. We recently worked with a third party, Tigalogic, to increase the number of servers provisioned for SolarWinds, leading to fewer breakdowns and enabling us to carry out more activities by utilizing new resources.

Customer support from SolarWinds is generally great, though it could improve in understanding the challenges faced in the Nigerian market. The complexities and internal processes in approvals necessitate a more tailored support approach, ensuring that assistance is relevant and timely. Recently, we have encountered issues where the support provided did not meet our expectations, underscoring the need for knowledgeable personnel familiar with our circumstances.

Previously, we used different solutions, including PRTG, which is SolarWinds' closest competitor, and ManageEngine. Although PRTG was a good solution, SolarWinds offered better dashboards and superior reporting capabilities, facilitating easier connections and support. I have also tried the Netis iOps tool for Huawei, which excels in analytics but falls short in monitoring. Overall, SolarWinds remains a superior choice, though it seems to be losing ground due to its monitoring limitations with Huawei devices.

I have certainly seen a return on investment with SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability because the product does what it claims to do. The primary return comes from its effectiveness, leading to significant cost savings, especially since we can create tenants and allow multiple countries to utilize the nodes through shared tools. Additionally, we have observed a reduction in downtime by at least 15%.

Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing, we engaged with SolarWinds through a partner, and negotiations were conducted by our procurement team. We received a discount initially, but noticed that pricing changed upon renewal, leading to some confusion. The new pricing models lack clarity in communication, bundling services that we may not actually need, leading to unnecessary costs. This issue is more pressing in Africa, where companies prefer to pay in local currency instead of dollars, though I understand the pricing rationale.

I evaluated other options before choosing SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability, including Netis iOps, which is a Huawei monitoring tool. We conducted a proof of concept but found it to be more investigative rather than a monitoring tool, leading us to reject it. Other options included ManageEngine and PRTG, which were also considered, but SolarWinds outperformed these competitors in reporting and dashboard visibility, ultimately guiding our selection.

I advise others looking into using SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability to explore its licensing models to identify the best fit for their needs while consulting a partner for advice. Ensure deployment uses the standard required resources to avoid frequent breakdowns in applications and track licensing effectively for timely renewals to enjoy the service fully. Support is available, and following these points should lead to a positive experience. I rated this product 9 out of 10.

We used SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability  for monitoring purposes. I was into server monitoring earlier. In that team, we had airline accounts and banking accounts. For server monitoring purposes, we used the HCO of SolarWinds for network performance monitoring and other tasks.

This was primarily a monitoring job. When I was in the monitoring team, we had different sets of teams working in shifts. Everything was installed, and we were the operators. At that time, we handled network performance monitoring, server application monitoring, database observability, log management analysis, cloud infrastructure visibility, and other insights.

SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability  offers excellent features. It has end-to-end visibility, flexible deployment, and hybrid support from the support team. AI ops, scalability, and enterprise features for distributed environments, such as more polling engines, web servers, and high availability are very good in the HCO.

Before HCO, many organizations used multiple SolarWinds modules such as NPM , SAM , and WMAN. With SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability , they gained a unified, single pane of glass view for the network, server, databases, and cloud resources. It reduced monitoring silos and enabled fast root cause analysis to easily identify what occurred during incidents. This improved collaboration between network, infrastructure, and application teams.

Reduced downtime and faster issue resolution are significant benefits of SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability . Features such as PerfStack, NetPath, and intelligent maps allow organizations to visualize dependencies and pinpoint problems quickly. Mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to resolve (MTTR) have dropped significantly. Fewer war room calls and blame games occurred as teams now act on collaborated data instead of guesswork. One enterprise user reported an average incident resolution time improvement of 40% after consolidating their tools into HCO.

Currently, SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability monitors AWS , Azure , and virtual environments, but it is primarily built on the traditional Orion platform. I think deeper integration into Kubernetes , serverless functions, and cloud-native tracing can be implemented as these matter to many organizations. Additionally, the user interface and modernization of the UX can be developed.

I used SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability for approximately two to three years when I was in a different project.

I have not experienced any stability issues with SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability. It performs well.

For SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability's scalability, SolarWinds publishes scalability engine guidelines for large deployments. A single polling engine with enterprise supports up to 100 additional polling engines, monitoring up to 100,000 elements per instance. For large users, web servers and polling engines can be scaled. There are case studies of real customers showing growth and their ROI. The enterprise scale edition helps with scaling.

The customer support for SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability is excellent.

Other tools from SolarWinds were used before SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability. Netcool and other solutions were also utilized.

SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability helped save time, money, and resources.

I do not have information about pricing, setup cost, and licensing for SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability because those aspects were handled by a different team in the organization.

Before choosing SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability, we evaluated IBM's solutions. Kyndryl , being a spin-off from IBM, provided other options. The product is made up of IBM, so they were explored.

Start with clear visibility goals, size your environment properly, start small and then expand, and invest in the database layer. I would recommend all these things to anybody who is trying to implement SolarWinds HCO.

On a scale of 1-10, I rate SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability a 9.