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ipMonitor v9 - DON'T UPGRADE

 I suggest that everyone currently running ipMonitor doesn't upgrade to v9.  We did this evening and have found the following, major issues: 

1. The web interface is incredibly slow (we have 1700 monitors).  Slow to the point that IE and Firefox both complain that the website is running a script that is causing problems with the browser.  As in, good luck trying to do anything productive in ipMonitor.

2. The upgrade procedure creates a bunch of "devices" (new convention in ipMonitor v9).  Well, while we monitor aorund 200 actual servers, we ended up with 700 devices and there appears to be no way to move monitors between devices. 

 3. Did I mention that the interface is slow, slow slow???

 4.  There are a large number of interface consistency issues (for example, if you select to edit something from one area of the interface, when you are done editing that something, it will return you to a totally separate area of the interface. 

5. The upgrade didn't leave our SSL settings intact.

 

 So, just to recap the past year:

1. SolarWinds purchases ipMonitor.

2. SolarWinds increases maintenance for ipMonitor by 350%

3. SolarWinds releases an update that basically breaks the product.

 

Stay away from v9 ...
 



 

  • I upgrade this morning and while it looks a lot better I've also got a couple of gripes, I haven't noticed the interface slow down yet as I'm only have 74 monitors currently but that will grow.


    1.I'm quite new to the product so having the help drop down underneath the item your looking at was great now I have to switch between two screens to get help, why change something that worked previously.


    2.When you add a new device it puts it in the subnet folder, if you then delete the device you also have to delete it from the all managed nodes folder also, why, surely you delete it in one place it should delete it everywhere?


    3.I'm unable to add new monitors to the folders for devices I imported. It works fine with new devices that are added.


    4.Unless I'm missing something you cannot add a new montior unless you've added the device the monitor needs to be based on, I have a lot of montiors where I haven't added a device because just wanted to montior certain services or particular monitors ie I monitor the Solarwinds services but I haven't added the Orion server as it's on Orion and also I've got a RADIUS monitor setup for our ACS box and need to add another one but can't without adding the device first which is a waste of a monitor license and personally I think is a step backwards.


    Thats all I've found so far.


  • Jay,


    We appreciate your feedback and your frustration with the results you experienced in the upgrade. We've had several folks upgrade from v9 without issue, so I'd like for you to give us the opportunity to work with you to resolve your issues.   Please contact our support organization and we'll have somebody contact you immediately.  


    Also, regarding your timeline above, I think you missed step 4.   That is, SolarWinds expands functionality by 1000% with v9 ;-)   I think once you see all the new functionality we've added you'll be quite pleased (e.g. network mapping, groups within groups, SmartGroups, dashboard, more out of the box reports, enhanced device discovery, etc.).  One thing to understand is despite extensive testing by our own QA teams, we cannot replicate all customer scenarios with all new features.  To help ensure quality, we enlisted over 100 of our customers to help us test the product to help us account for all scenarios, but there still may be some configurations we may have missed.  


    I want to assure you that we're absolutely committed to ensuring that v9 works in 100% of our customers.


    Thank you for your continued support and patience,


    -ipMonitor Product Team


  • Hi Jay and everybody,

    I don't have in mind do defend this product or SolarWinds at all. But I think we have to listen another customers and their experiences upgrading ipMonitor and its results. Are another customers face same behaviors or not ?

    Me myself until now still can not find the link to download ipMonitor v9 on my SolarWinds support portal even though I can login to the portal using my SolarWinds account (SW.......). I have already complained this matter through the ticket (Case #30102) and more than one direct email to customerservice@solarwinds.com. But I have no replied yet until now.

    Another thing which was made me surprised that I just found an empty table/list on "Software Keys", "License Satus", and "Maintenance Status" section below "Support Overview" tag on my SolarWinds Customer portal. I don't understand why it should be happened ? I'm an existing ipMonitor customer since November 2006, before it was acquired by SolarWinds. I know the license period of my ipMonitor was experied on November, 29th 2007 ago. But it had renewed on December, 5th 2007 ago.

    I hope this problem could be solved soon.

    Regards,

    Fauzan
     

  •  Fauzan-

    Your account has been provisioned now and you should be able to upgrade. Do keep us updated.

  • Just to follow up on this thread, I'm currently working with Jay to resolve the issues above. We expect to provide a performance improvement via a patch. Stay tuned.
     

    If you are experiencing a slower than expected UI within the Device Tab and you have lots of groups, you can make things faster by not expanding Groups unless needed and/or split the groups up from a flat list. This only applies if you have hundreds of groups.

    Here's a simplified example of what I'm referring to:

    [ From a flat list of Groups ] 

    • GROUP1
    • GROUP2
    • GROUP3
    • GROUP4

    [ To nested Groups, based on your logical grouping. This should also facilitate a more high level view in dashboards and NOC views. ]

    • TEXAS
      • AUSTIN
        • GROUP1
        • GROUP2
      • DALLAS
        • GROUP3
        • GROUP4
  • I havent had the problems you have, but I do agree about your comments on increasing the price.  There are some nice new features there, but I think they spent a lot of time on reworking a UI that already worked well.  The mapping ability is nice though! 


    I dont have near the number of monitors you do, and the same might apply for a lot of beta testers.  That might explain why the issues with thousands of monitors were not spotted before release.



  • I havent had the problems you have, but I do agree about your comments on increasing the price.  There are some nice new features there, but I think they spent a lot of time on reworking a UI that already worked well.  The mapping ability is nice though! 

    I dont have near the number of monitors you do, and the same might apply for a lot of beta testers.  That might explain why the issues with thousands of monitors were not spotted before release.

     

    I have over 1400 monitors and v9 is installed on a 4-year old 1.3Ghz Pentium III server with 1GB of RAM and runs fine with 10+ people browsing the web interface.  We experienced slow response twice - once when a curious NOC guy started poking through the maps without knowing what he was doing and once when I re-imported all my exported monitors and devices.  For some reason, when re-importing all the devices, it put them into the root "My Network" folder.  I experienced the same thing that the OP is/was - however, I simply let the script error out and moved all the devices into the "All Managed Devices" folder and all is good.

    If more active development, customer feature request implementation, and community participation (Thwack) means higher prices, then I'll gladly pay.  ipMonitor 8.5 was pretty good, but it took several versions and a few years since v7.0 to get the Mass Edit feature into the software.  After SW purchased ipMonitor, it was less than 6 months before the beta of v9 was released to customers like myself.  I'd say that it's worth the higher maintenance costs, but please don't tell my boss that :-P