1. What was life like before using SolarWinds? (Include what you were using and why you decided it was time for a change)
Life before we added SAM 6.0 was rough. We generally found out after a system was down for 10-15 minutes due to the Helpdesk sending us a ticket regarding the outage. We had another system here that wasn’t maintained, didn’t have most of the servers in it, didn’t monitor anything on the application side such as services, mail queues, restarting services that failed and the all-important system down.
2. Which SolarWinds product(s) saved your bacon?
I implemented SAM 6.0 about a year ago. We started with a small lic pool and then realized over time all the great things we can do with SAM...It didn’t take long for us to move into the unlimited lic.
As for saving my bacon….We had a power issue in our data center which caused a couple racks to drop…with SAM we were able to ID the system, services, websites and applications that needed to be addressed beyond just turning the server back on because of all the monitoring we do.
We’ve also purchased Dameware for our team for those times when RDP just doesn’t want to work. This product has paid for itself many times over during our patching cycle.
3. Did you consider other options, and why did you choose SolarWinds?
No, I didn’t consider anything other than Solarwinds. We used it at my last job and I know how good the product and support is. I knew firsthand that when Solarwinds is setup correctly and maintained it can be a huge asset to you.
4. How has life been since you've rolled out SolarWinds in your environment?
Since we put Solarwinds / SAM in things have really calmed down. We know when systems/services go down right away and can address them before users flood the helpdesk with calls. We have several service restarts setup which has cut down on our on-call issues when something stops running. I would have to say, SAM has really made life easier from an infrastructure monitioring and response standpoint. Whenever something bad happens in our environment the first thing I do is try to determine how we can use SAM to avoid the issue down the road. It's become our go-to application.