Cisco Cloud Observability Operators

I work with Splunk Observability Cloud .

Splunk Observability Cloud  is effective for detecting anomalies and preventing system outages.

There are pre-built dashboards where I can check service centers and monitor spikes in errors and traces. I can also check error logs, and everything is consolidated while providing anomaly alerts in case there is any deviation from the baseline.

The personalized dashboard helps my team. Splunk Observability  Cloud has its own query language that can be used to build easy dashboards. Multiple teams can build their own, replicate them, and also have role-based access control, which is beneficial.

The application management feature helps with end-user experiences because front-end monitoring helps track user issues and any back-end issues that may be causing them. It shows how the user experience is overall and identifies any outages. Front-end monitoring is very useful.

As an integrator, I think the biggest advantage of Splunk Observability  Cloud is because it is part of the Splunk ecosystem, it is good to correlate logs with application data through traces and metrics. Overall, it is an evolving product, not top class, but it is getting there.

I see many good things about the product and many advantages. Regarding the negative side, I think the licensing can be much better because it is based upon host units and there is additional licensing for the number of traces that I can bring in. A simplified licensing model would be much better, similar to what other tools offer. Pricing could be either based upon ingestion or directly based upon host units, rather than multiple different trackers. There are licenses for custom metrics, licenses for the number of traces that I can ingest, and host unit licensing. A better licensing plan would be beneficial.

I have been using Splunk Observability Cloud for more than two years.

I have not seen any issues with stability. The solution is very stable.

Regarding scalability, I do not think there is an issue with scaling. I have never encountered any issues with that.

Support is good.

I have worked on Coralogix , which is also an observability tool. I worked in the product company itself. I have also worked on Dynatrace , and now I am working on Cribl .

The installation and deployment process is somewhat challenging, but there are multiple ways of deployment that give me a lot of options. I would say it is acceptable and not that complicated. I can deploy agents with Splunk deployment server, which is beneficial. However, there is some dependency on the deployment server.

As an integrator, I deployed it and made it workable with OpenTelemetry .

I am able to observe significant ROI with Splunk Observability Cloud. When I worked with a previous solution, it was one-third of the cost of Dynatrace , so there was definitely an exceptional return on investment. It helped reduce costs by almost 50%.

Splunk Observability Cloud is affordable. I have visited the PeerSpot  website and downloaded reports on Azure , Grafana , and Splunk Observability Cloud.

When I compare Splunk Observability Cloud to other vendors, the good part is the branding because the support is good. There is a large community where I can look for known issues. However, experience-wise, DataDog is far more superior and easier to use. DataDog has its own agent for tracing, so I just deploy one trace. With Splunk Observability Cloud, they are dependent upon OpenTelemetry , and there is a learning curve because it is open source. The onboarding is not as smooth as DataDog or Dynatrace.

I deploy both on-cloud and on-premise options for clients. I have deployed Splunk Observability Cloud on Splunk Cloud. I have not used threat detection because there is a separate tool for it. I have not deployed a solution on AWS  Cloud or purchased it from AWS Marketplace  in my career. I would rate this review 7.5 out of 10.

Currently, we are in the process of migrating from on-premises to Splunk Cloud as well as Observability . For metric-based monitoring, we can monitor via Observability  and are migrating it there. We are setting up private locations to monitor synthetic tests, such as ping checks, port checks, and URL monitoring. The rest is metric-based monitoring, which is being done by Splunk using Splunk OTeL, which is an OpenTelemetry  agent for Observability. This agent brings metrics from end devices to Observability. Based on these metrics, we set detectors and rules to trigger alerts.

Our observability is not yet live in production with Splunk Observability Cloud . It is currently being built, and we are adding new components, but it is not yet fully ready.

Comparing to Cloud, Splunk Cloud, or any other solution, the most valuable feature of Splunk Observability Cloud  is that it is entirely based on metrics. The agent is also very lightweight compared to Splunk UF and does not consume much compute resources on the end server or host from which we are pulling data. However, it can only monitor metrics and cannot monitor logs.

Regarding how Splunk Observability Cloud has benefited our organization, we are yet to go live, but most of the configuration that requires conditions and triggers on Splunk Cloud involves writing queries. With Splunk Observability Cloud, the process is quite simple. We can directly get metrics flowing, set thresholds, and everything is UI-based. This requires less time to set up and use. I do not have that much visibility with Splunk Observability Cloud at this time as I am working as an administrator. It has helped us create dashboards for visualization purposes.

There is one thing that could be improved in Splunk Observability Cloud. We have the capability in Splunk to connect to Splunk agents such as Splunk forwarders from a deployment server and update the end agents and forwarders using server classes. We can push and update configurations from our own hosted servers without needing to access the end device. In Splunk Observability, the OTeL agent cannot be updated from our end. Every time we need to update, we have to reach out to users or gain access to the host to update the configurations. There should be a solution to update OTeL agents from Splunk Observability Cloud itself.

I have been working with Splunk Observability Cloud for approximately five to six months.

Splunk Observability Cloud is reliable based on my experience with stability and reliability so far.

We were facing some challenges with the stability of Splunk Observability Cloud regarding the login page. It was not working several times and was not accepting SSO  authentication. The observability team found a solution for this issue, though I am not fully aware of the details. There were several times when opening the page did not directly log in and showed some errors.

I have not encountered any scenarios regarding the scalability of Splunk Observability Cloud. It should be good because it is cloud-based. I am not aware of the licensing model and how it scales or what the rules are for scaling.

I was not directly involved with technical support for Splunk Observability Cloud, but I am aware that my teammates reached out to support. They were finding issues regarding configuration, installation, and deployment of Observability for specific components. Since Observability is cloud-based and hosted by Splunk, the components we own on-premises are the OTeL gateways, agents, and private locations. They reached out to the vendor regarding these components, and the support was quite smooth. They have raised some bugs as well for the vendor to fix. I would rate the technical support from Splunk an eight out of ten.

Since it is cloud-based, Splunk Observability Cloud was ready to use upon deployment. The OTeL gateways were built by our team and required configuration. I was not part of that process but am aware that we needed to configure the OTeL gateways to route data to them as an endpoint and from there it would be ingested to Observability or forwarded to Observability. There were no significant issues with this process and it was quite smooth. However, configuring private locations on a few gateways was quite difficult to set up and maintain because Docker  was going down at times. There were some issues that were discussed with Splunk vendor, and they provided guidance on how to fix them.

My use case for Splunk Observability Cloud  is primarily for monitoring and cloud management, and it serves us well.

The best features in Splunk Observability Cloud  that I appreciate the most include its comprehensive monitoring capabilities and its user-friendly interface.

The solution has significantly helped improve my operational performance and my company's resilience by providing real-time insights. The enhancements to my operational performance and resilience are noticeable.

It has saved me a considerable amount of time and resources by streamlining our monitoring processes.

My impression of the AI-powered analytics and guidance provided by Splunk Observability  Cloud is that they are very effective and enhance our decision-making.

I do use the no-sample tracing feature to eliminate blind spots in data collection, and it is quite helpful.

My team has effectively utilized the ability to enrich data with custom metrics to improve our analytical capabilities.

The out-of-the-box customizable dashboards are effective, and they help showcase IT performance to business leaders quite effectively.

In Splunk Observability  Cloud, the areas that have room for improvement include usability enhancements to make it even better.

I have been using Splunk Observability Cloud for a considerable time, and I can share my experience with it.

Regarding stability, I would rate the stability of Splunk Observability Cloud as a 9, indicating it is very reliable. Splunk Observability Cloud performs exceptionally in terms of stability under varying conditions.

From 1 to 10, I would rate the technical support as an 8 since it is generally responsive and helpful.

The solution was purchased through a partner, and my experience with the partner has been generally positive. My experience with the partner has been satisfactory as they provided the needed support throughout the process.

My experience with lowering the cost of unplanned digital downtime has been positive as it has indeed reduced downtime.

Regarding the pricing of Splunk Observability Cloud, while I believe it can be improved, I would rate it around 7, leaning towards being expensive.

I would compare Splunk Observability Cloud with other solutions as more feature-rich and user-friendly based on my concerns.

For others looking into this product, I would recommend trying it out with a proof of concept to see its benefits firsthand.

Approximately 50 users in my company use Splunk Observability Cloud to leverage its capabilities effectively.

The solution does require some maintenance, but it is quite straightforward in managing it.

In terms of my company's relationship with Splunk, we are currently a customer making the most of their offerings.

I would rate Splunk Observability Cloud a solid 8 from 1 to 10 based on my experience and satisfaction with its performance.