SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset vs. Sunbird DCIM

[SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset is] a great tool for monitoring database servers, highly recommended. The very good thing is that it keeps the history for two weeks, and you can see the time slice for all the server activities. Helps a lot to identify the memory and CPU bottlenecks, research blocking issues and kill the sessions, if necessary.

Incentivized

There are a few things that need work from flexibility within the asset process documentation. The interfacing with CMDB will be easier if the asset documentation had more flexibility in the standard fields. The product will support our need for a central depository of all assets, connections, and usage within our data centers, which at this time is managed by a spreadsheet with limited access. The ability to review and set goals of environmental and capacity has not been easy, with dcTrack this has become much easier than dealing with Excel tabs.

Incentivized

• Debugging Tools
• Saves Time for basic checks
• Ping, Telnet, SSH right from the console and hence easy user management from console itself

Incentivized

• Inventory tracking.
• Capacity planning.
• Integration with PowerIQ - manages power, cooling and humidity status.
• Provide power and network/SAN connect paths.
• Statistics on the infrastructure within a given data center.

Incentivized

• The unifying component that is intended to be the initial interface to the tools seems clunky. I prefer to start the tools individually rather than using it.
• The port scanner could use some improvements to make it easier to use.

Incentivized

• Connectivity simplified.
• Flexibility in port and connection definition.
• Asset documentation of owners, project and responsible teams.

Incentivized

Very easy to use and intuitive. Just be careful with the WAN Killer...it does what it says.

Incentivized

Our organization uses it regularly. It is reliable, and we keep finding new uses for it

Incentivized

These tools complement the Engineer's Toolset. They are excellent at detecting most issues and at keeping the network monitored and protected. However, when it comes time to dig into an issue, especially a hard to fix intermittent issue, these products lack the granularity of monitoring needed for these types of issues. Having said that the toolset is not made to do full time enterprise level monitoring. With these tools and the toolset I am able to have a more complete view of the network and deliver higher levels of service and quicker responses to issues.

Incentivized

• Spend less time downloading free buggy tools
• All the tools in one spot, so you don't have to look around for tools
• Get to the solution sooner

Incentivized

• Hard to say at this time what I will gain or the company will gain for the user but to understand all assets in a Data Center in a single location is a great tool for support and maintenance cost analysis.
• To be able to see or understand the power needs of a given location provides the need of understanding cost impact under the different location cost models.

Incentivized