What was life like before using SolarWinds? (Include what you were using and why you decided it was time for a change)
On the network side we had been using NPM for monitoring for quite a while, but our SysAdmin counterparts were using nagios and a few other tools. They were looking to expand their monitoring capabilities and wanted a single tool to monitor everything. The tools they had were kind of a mess with different groups monitoring different pieces and no uniformity about how things were being monitored or alerted on. One of the biggest complaints was about the number of false alarms they received.
Which SolarWinds product(s) saved your bacon?
We discussed the types of things they wanted to monitor (CPU, Memory, Volume usage and applications) and added APM (now SAM) to our Solarwinds installation.
Did you consider other options, and why did you choose SolarWinds?
They were already planning to move to WhatsUpGold. Fortunately I found out before they did. I let them know that we had evaluated WUG and decided on Solarwinds. WUG seemed slow because inputting and changing things was not the most intuitive. Everything seemed to be designed to look pretty which lead to having to go through a lot more screens than necessary for most tasks. I offered to show what we could do with Solarwinds and setup a 30-day Eval of NPM and APM. By the end of the eval they were convinced seeing how easily the monitoring and alerting had been consolidated.
How has life been since you've rolled out SolarWinds in your environment?
The biggest thing since the implementation has been how much they like not getting all the false alarms. They are monitoring a lot more today than they did before and the number of alerts they get is significantly less, (which makes them more effective since lots of false alrms tends to get real alarms ignored). The more we use it the more we like it. With the new features in the recent releases we are able to consolidate more into Solarwinds and eliminate other tools. We really look forward to seeing what new thing will be next.