Device42 - Discovery & Dependency Mapping - Cloud & Hybrid IT

I primarily use Device42  for migration opportunities where workloads have been running in the on-premise data center. Before migration, I need to ensure that I discover everything running in the on-premise data center. I started using it as an assessment tool to explore workload discovery of on-premise data centers, virtual machines, and resources.

One specific project where Device42  helped with workload discovery and assessment was when I was using other assessment tools. In one workload assessment opportunity, the customer was explicitly looking for application-level assessment, which could not be met by other third-party tools at the time. I was really impressed by the workload discovery of applications discovered by Device42. I started using it for application discovery, including the infrastructure discovery of the complete workload.

I started using Device42 because I needed a robust migration plan to ensure that I was not left with any dependency during assessment, since assessment plays a vital role in determining the number of move groups required. During move group planning, I cannot leave any system that is critically dependent on another system in the on-premise environment during migration. To be cautious of workload discovery, Device42 provides more granularity toward ensuring that the number of systems parked in the move group are safe to migrate without leaving any dependency.

Device42 offers the best features for workload assessment, particularly useful for cloud-to-cloud workload or on-premise data center workload, especially when planning for workload migration to the public cloud.

For application and infrastructure discovery, Device42 has enabled me to know the number of machines running in the on-premise environment and has managed to capture complete utilization metrics or trends of their utilization. This has benefited me in right-sizing systems for my public cloud total cost of ownership (TCO) planning, providing me granularity to right-size these systems while planning a migration to the public cloud.

Device42 has positively impacted my organization by providing granularity toward application discovery compared to other assessment tools, which is a differentiator since none of the other tools provide such granularity, leading to better decision-making for my migration to the public cloud.

Device42 has improved my migration projects by providing granularity around system dependencies that gave me confidence knowing which systems communicate with each other parked in a particular move group. My move group planning became so robust that I am not leaving any system behind in the on-premise data center from my planning, which saves a lot of time and effort, leading to cost optimization—a value addition.

The features I appreciate most about Device42 are the agent-based service providing more granularity and metrics. However, I foresee areas of improvement for the agent-less solution, which could be very useful for those organizations that might not allow configuring an agent in their source machines for workload discovery.

I think the graphical representation of all associated machines needs improvement to better illustrate how these systems have dependencies on each other. The network graph representation can be matured, which I find useful.

I have been using Device42 for four years.

Device42 is stable and has been reliable for my organization. I find myself more confident using Device42 because I have been well-versed with this tool for a couple of years.

Device42 handles my organization's growth and changing needs well. Although it has some dependency on the number of agents, if you understand all the prerequisites shared by Device42, it is very much scalable and allows you to design your discovery solution without facing any challenge.

Customer support for Device42 is fantastic. They have quick SLA responses and provide support through call, email, and chat, effectively assisting me with any agent configuration or troubleshooting issues.

Prior to Device42, I was using Cloudamize  and Migration Evaluator. Before choosing Device42, I evaluated AWS  native Migration Evaluator.

As part of workload assessment, Device42 has enabled me to meet the required TCO calculation, helping to generate ROI while doing a workload assessment with TCO of five years and three years. It has facilitated bringing in the right-sized systems for the public cloud environment, ensuring these systems are rightly sized based on metrics and inventory captured for on-premise systems. The TCO calculations based on five years and three years have yielded a remarkable ROI compared to on-premise workload, validating the business case submission to the customer.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Device42 is that it is really reasonable. Compared to other competitors, it does not cost much, and I would recommend it from a cost perspective.

For anyone looking into using Device42 for workload discovery of their on-premise data center resources and planning to move to the public cloud, I recommend Device42 because of the level of granularity it generates, which instills more confidence during migration.

Device42 is a fantastic tool for workload discovery, and I believe everyone should start using it if they have plans to do so; it is a top-notch tool in the market. I gave this review a rating of 10 out of 10.

Public Cloud

Amazon Web Services  (AWS)

What do you like best about the product?

They are great at using the latest trends in asset management, most complete hybrid IT discovery.

What do you dislike about the product?

Some users reported occasional performance slowdown especially dealing with huge data or requests.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Automated asset discovery and dependency mapping, it reduces manual work + cost saving.

What do you like best about the product?

The platform helps enterprises gain visibility into their IT assets, applications, and network dependencies.

What do you dislike about the product?

The organization should provide a demo or free trial for businesses and individuals to try out if the platform meets their need.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Device42 provides comprehensive solutions for IT infrastructure, including asset management, data center management, and dependency mapping. With a growing customer base and strong industry presence, Device42 is recognized as a reliable and innovative IT asset management solution provider.

What do you like best about the product?

Overall we're ery happy to be a Device42 customer, they're very customer oriented and working together with them happens always on a partnerhsip level and in a very kind way.

Their support is really outstanding, of course during the implementation there were challenges and areas for improvements, but they picked them up and made sure they get solved. This was not just limited to the beginning, they really try to make sure we're continously a satisfied customer.
In case we run into questions or issues we can always rely that the support is picking it up very open minded and tries to help us to get it solved, without questioning immediately whether we can proof that the root cause isn't in our environment but in Device42, that's great team work.

They're also very good in continuoulsy developing the product further, release new features and strive to make it better and better. The solution is very user friendly designed, but also very powerfull with all it's discovery features.

At the beginning I was a bit missing a standardized training approach, like web based trainings to have an easier entry to some topics, as it might be a bit overwhelming studying the documentation or always engaging a Customer Success Engineer, but recently they also started their Academy which contained from the begining a good set of trainings and also a certification apporach. Also here the content is constantly growing and improving.

When we were looking for a discovery solutions with Application Dependency Mapping feature, Device42 made a big difference to their competitors during our evaluation from a functional perspective and also with their support concept and they proofed it until today that we went for the right solution.

What do you dislike about the product?

I can't really say there is somehitng I dislike.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Device42 is designed in a way to cover everything you need, to discover your environment entirely and get great visibility to everything. Previously we struggled that we have ONE solution to discover all kind of servers properly, be able to do Application Dependency Mapping and also be able to dicover typical data center infrastructure devices and their relations in an easy and professional way, Device42 definitely solved this challenge. Furthermore they also do there best to get most out of the data in an automatic way and show what we have in our environment (e.g. overview about subnets, vendors, models, software).

What do you like best about the product?

Device 42 is a tool easy to use, but also easy to manage and maintain. Easy to run updates, deploy settings etc ...
Year after year, we receive valuable new features and the product increasingly meets business needs.
Every time we have support request, we have someone engage to close the case.
On top of that, with API provided by D42, we do many integration with our internal tools, it is very help full for us.

What do you dislike about the product?

We run D42 for years, there is nothing we dislike, but if we can have an external database to offload VM load when we have high volume of requests.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Datacenter are most of the time hosted outside of the company. Having a sharp idea of how our datacenters or server rooms are is very important to be able to take good decision and be able to run remote support with physical devices.
Also audit period is very stressfull, now with D42, we have scheduled reports and it is easy to show to auditors what they need.