Is Solarwinds products misunderstood?

I will say, I've done several head to head comparisons between Orion and other monitoring tools where other vendors send whoever they have to show the client how to do a list of tasks in their tool, then I come through and show them how to do it in Orion.  I've never lost a deal in those scenarios, even when there were people in mgmt who had their heart set on another product that they knew from the past.  So Orion can be a really compelling case in the hands of someone who knows how to really take advantage of it.  On the other hand there are definitely tools that do more for you out of the box, they usually require a vendor lock in to a particular product line, or whatever you are paying for Orion just add another few 00's to the end of it for a completely automatic solution.  I've never seen a cheaper tool able to do nearly what I can do in Orion, but when the wallets are deep enough there are products that will do more with less user interaction because they already coded in the edge cases.   I find Orion straddles the line nicely between being pretty affordable for the depth of capabilities, but those capabilities do put some burden on the admin to actively manage the tool.  And if your admin invests in the skills to really harness Orion it can be a great value for the company.

I used to be hardcore into the free monitoring tools like Nagios, but I realized that by the time someone was skilled enough to really make a Nagios environment into a fully automated dream, they were also skilled enough to do linux administration at a level that earned them a pay check way more than most companies were paying for their monitoring engineers, plus the company would want to pull them to other projects to make the most use of all that talent.  You always have to consider the cost of a tool in conjunction with the cost of the person who can run it, factored in with the level of information the company actually needs.

Exactly! I share your pain in many similar ways. I love thwack for this very reason. Usually when I have issues I can’t resolve or find a reason too I come on here. I look at Solarwinds support team for more basic common problems and go through complex problems on my own.

I took experience the instabilities you mentioned that has been on sticking point I’ve had with Solarwinds as a whole. I remember back to version 10.4.2 with service packs and hot-fixes applied it was the most rock solid system I had every administer in my career. I loved it because back then Solarwinds took more time in development instead of dishing out half cooked software. 10.4.2 not only had great development when it came out but after general release was nearly flawless.

Today I find an issue I call support and before my issue is resolved they already launched a new version of the software and turn to the song and dance of install the new version it’ll fix the system. One specific time in my history I had that happen 3 times in a row without a problem being fixed. It got to a point my management looked me in the eye and said your not doing anything else with them environment until this problem is fixed and I don’t care wha Solarwinds says.

I mean it it became a whole mess where our VIPs where in the phone with Solarwinds vips arguing and Solarwinds still dug there feet in the ground and said no upgrade no help.

The previous environment i managed has crashed crashed several times since I left and outages have been days at time because the person in charge now isn’t technical follows the guides literally and isn’t a real administrator to begin with.

when I was there we had outages but they where few and far between when they happened they where resolved in minutes or less because I’m certified in Solarwinds and know what I’m doing. I was proactive constantly monitoring logs and system changes and at the slightest change I would jump on it and get things fixed before anyone even knew about it.

but like you said people get mad pull trigger on a cheaper solution and ultimately down the line end up regretting their own decisions.

It is nice to know I’m not alone with this pain points

I kind of look at it like a Swiss army knife. It covers a wide range of uses but there are a lot of point solution tools that you need if you need to dig in deeper. 

The interesting part is that we all know Solarwinds isn’t by any means perfect. But when comparing to our solutions that I have worked with it doesn’t really compare. I mean any tool can poll snmp data for example but what it does with the data is what to me at least that makes Solarwinds stand out.

But I can see what you mean.

You're heard it before--"You can't please everyone; you've got to please yourself."

Reading the manual, getting the right training, and setting things up in a test environment go a long way towards providing a product you can support well.

Understanding the product, and ALSO understanding the customers' needs and wants and requirements is the second part of the solution.

The final step is communicating the product's abilities effectively and showing the user how the tool can fill their needs easily and quickly.

Anything that doesn't take human psychology into account won't provide the right experience for all who are involved in the transactions and decisions, and communication will be drawn to a close by one party or another.

Know your audience, know your product, and determine ways to succeed based on both.  Sometimes it really IS a "game" you have to play, to get people on your side and to help them understand what's possible, what's easy, and what's good.

All great point! And yes everyone hears that at least once in their life time. I agree.

But Murphy’s law loves me. Because when I’m working on it everything makes since and works flawlessly the second I need to present it, it fails and proves the point of the other side.

The worst for for me is those that fight me on things. For example I had a manager that never trusted a word I said but followed the guide literally to the detail. What I mean is even though the guide said “as a reference” that Solarwinds can run on two cores. That manager wanted me to build a two core system to take a load of 20 k elements in aggressive intervals and over 25 k Sam components. I said we need more resources he said call Solarwinds I got one of the entry level guys I believe who agrees with my manager. So out of anger I swallowed my anger and built it as requested. Sure enough it couldn’t handle it the system was starved for resource. My manager told me to call Solarwinds and argue it out to them and I’m saying why waste my time... get me a system spec’d Out correctly and we avoid all this.

he denied it. After nearly 7 months of fighting we finally get a dev on the Solarwinds side that is completely on my side and tells my manager that we should should spec the system correctly. My manager blames me for the waste of time and problems and said next time he would go to Solarwinds directly.

I went through three years wondering why I had been hired to begin with if I’m not trusted to do the job. And keep in mind I provided docs. Explained. Taught him, reworded myself into a pretzel to prove to him Solarwinds could do it all and just recently in talks with people at my old office I found they ditched the software in favor for a much less inferior competitor and now they are asking me why they can’t get nothing done. I had to politely say I don’t care and I don’t work their anymore you guys figure it out.

this is what I meant when I said that Solarwinds gets a bad rep for no reason. It’s these closed minded people that bash a software they don’t even understand then spend resources in hiring an admin that does just to not trust them. Why not just go to another solution and be done with it?

Thankfully my new employer trusts me fully. And allows me to do the job I was hired for. They have bad apples here going against the software but here when I talk to these people and explain it to them at least they understood and where able to see the value. Just the way things are supposed to go.

I enjoy these kinds of discussions. Helps me see that in the community I’m not the only one with pain points. And also helps guide me in case I’m focused in the wrong thing. We learn all the time. And that’s the fun about speaking with others in the field.

I appreciate the response.

Don't get me wrong, A Swiss Army Knife is a great tool and if its all you have it's the best tool. However if I to wanted to fillet a fish I might choose something else.

Here, here... or is it Hear, hear. We have all experienced the pain but rschroeder​ so eloquently pointed out:

First, it is good to have a good understanding of what the product can to. Solarwinds is a virtual army knife of goodies, but as the site engineers, it is really up to us to make sure that the products fit the nature of our customer's business. Can it provide everything the customer wants (think pie in the sky)? No

Second, as we share our need for SolarWinds to the powers that be in the organization, they need to buy into what we see that it can do and help the organization and not the other way around. That is why I do a proof of concept first to show how SolarWinds can provide what they need at that moment in time. As their requirement change, then we can revisit and recommend what can help them to accomplish it.

Finally, we leave it in their hands praying that they do the right thing and if they buy in and purchase SolarWinds products then they leave me alone and let me configure it the way it gives them exactly what they wanted in the first place.

It is sometimes an unenviable position that we are in as IT geeks, but somebody has to do it.

As a final note with regards to SolarWinds products as they mature: There are some of us, want to upgrade and can't to the latest version because it run on Windows Server 2016. We want the latest capability especially logins for users, but can't get into the party because they are not backward compatible. The Government is normally slow to migrate because there are many security issues that need to be secured before it can be implemented in a live environment. I want to upgrade, but I can't.