I use SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability for monitoring the environment.
SolarWinds Observability SaaS
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Clear, Practical Dashboard That Simplifies Database Monitoring Across Systems
What do you like best about the product?
What I like most about the SolarWinds database is how clearly it shows what is happening inside the database without making things confusing. Even if you are not a database expert, you can still understand where the problem is coming from. The dashboard feels clean and practical, not overloaded with unnecessary information. It saves a lot of time because you don't have to dig through logs or run multiple queries just to understand performance issues. Slow queries, high CPU usage, or memory problems are highlighted in a very straightforward way. This makes daily monitoring less stressful. Another good thing is how it works well with different databases. Whether it is SQL Server, MySQL, or another database, everything can be monitored from one place. This is very helpful when you manage multiple systems.
What do you dislike about the product?
One thing I don't like much is that the setup can feel heavy at the beginning. It takes some time to configure everything properly, especially if the environment is large. For new users the first few days can feel overwhelming. The pricing can also be a concern. For small teams or companies, it may feel expensive compared to simpler tools. Not everyone needs all the advanced features, but they still come as part of the package. Sometimes the alerts can feel too frequent if they are not tuned well. Without proper configuration, you might review notifications that are always urgent, which can become distracting.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
SolarWinds Database mainly solves the problem of not knowing what is wrong when a database slows down or behaves unexpectedly. In many systems, when performance drops, teams waste hours guessing the cause. This tool removes that guesswork. It clearly shows which queries are slow, which resources are being overused, and where bottlenecks are forming. Because of this, troubleshooting becomes faster and more accurate. You don't fix things blindly anymore. This directly benefits day-to-day work because issues are resolved before they affect users, applications stay stable, and downtime is reduced. that improves trust from both customers and internal teams. It also helps with long-term planning. By looking at historical data, you can understand growth trends and prepare for future loads. This avoids sudden crashes or last-minute fixes. It helps reduce stress during incidents because you don't have to panic or guess where the issue is coming from. The data is already there, clearly shown, so decisions feel clearer and more confident. It improves teamwork because developers, DBAs, and operations teams can all look at the same information. This avoids blame games and long discussions about whose system caused the problem. it save a lot of manual effort. Without this tool, people often run scripts, export logs, or check multiple tools. SolarWinds database brings everything into one place, which speeds up daily work. It helps avoid repeated problems. By understanding the real cause of past issues, you can fix them properly instead of applying temporary solutions that break again later. it improve overall application performance. When the datbase run smoothely, the apps depending on it also feel faster and more reliable for end users. It supports better decision-making for upgrades. You can clearly see when hardware, memory, or database tuning is actually needed, instead of upgrading blindly and wasting money. it build confidence with management and the client. When asked about performance or outages. You can show clear data and explanation,s which makes you look prepared and professional.
Monitoring has improved hybrid cloud uptime and simplifies troubleshooting across environments
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability offers observability with problems and issues for troubleshooting in the hybrid cloud environment.
One example is monitoring a server instance with high CPU and memory usage, which I can troubleshoot effectively across SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability.
I appreciate the interface and alerts panel, which have a very good design.
SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability has a full-time positive impact because I need to have great availability in my cloud environment.
Positive changes include improvements in uptime, faster troubleshooting, and reduced downtime.
What needs improvement?
I think that SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability can have improved integrations with other cloud providers, such as OCI, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and Ocean Cloud.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability for seven years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have experienced a problem with SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability, although I cannot detail the specific problems I have encountered.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability is faster.
How are customer service and support?
I found that customer support is adequate.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
How was the initial setup?
My advice to others looking into using SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability is that it is very easy to install and deploy across my cloud ambient and server cloud providers.
What other advice do I have?
SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability is deployed in private cloud and hybrid cloud environments.
I use OCI, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and AWS Amazon Web Services for my private or hybrid cloud setup.
I also use Cloud Watching as a reference.
I believe features about billing can exist, and I use it in AWS where the billing cost is managed.
I would rate this product a 9 out of 10.
Unified Dashboard Makes Monitoring Effortless
What do you like best about the product?
I like the unified visibility across infrastructure, applications, and networks from a single dashboard, which simplifies monitoring and speeds up troubleshooting.
What do you dislike about the product?
The learning curve can be a bit steep initially, especially when configuring advanced features and fine-tuning alerts
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
SolarWinds Observability solves the challenge of fragmented monitoring by providing unified visibility across infrastructure, applications, and networks, which helps us detect issues early and reduce troubleshooting time
Comprehensive Observability with Powerful AIOps Features
What do you like best about the product?
This platform offers comprehensive observability across public cloud, on-premises, network, and hybrid environments. It makes it easy to monitor metrics like CPU, memory, and network latency, and the dashboards are simple to customize. Integration with automation and ticketing tools is supported. The addition of AIOps features such as correlation and forecasting provides extra value.
What do you dislike about the product?
The initial deployment and configuration can be challenging, as it demands a high level of technical expertise. At present, it only supports ServiceNow ITSM out of the box, so integrating with other ITSM platforms requires custom work. Additionally, the pricing might be a concern for customers with smaller budgets.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
SolarWinds offers a unified interface for monitoring both cloud infrastructure services and network devices such as Meraki. This helps minimize downtime and improve mean time to resolution. The platform's automated alerts and API integrations further enhance the efficiency of incident response.
Traceability has guided our monitoring decisions and now exposes onboarding and autonomy gaps
What is our primary use case?
My main use case when I tried SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability was to find a solution, and we tried with Grafana and with another observability solution, and at the end of the day, Grafana was the best.
I was looking to solve traceability for the infrastructure for a telco with SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability, but it needs a partner, and the partner was very expensive, so this is a pilot. Grafana has all the information for their own, and we can do it for us.
What is most valuable?
In my opinion, the best feature SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability offers is traceability.
When I mention traceability, it stood out during the pilot because it was great since they give you some information about where the issue or the error was generated or created, so that was amazing. This is a very good tool, and we saw that in the demo, but not in the pilot because in the pilot, we could not do it on our own because it was really tricky to do that.
SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability has positively impacted my organization by helping to understand that Grafana was the best, as the decision to go for Grafana was made quickly because we needed to go faster and we needed to go with our internal team.
The specific outcomes from that decision are time saved and autonomy, as it was to be autonomous, and we did not need an external party to create our solution.
What needs improvement?
SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability can be improved by creating more content. They should create a kind of figure or person that can help and guide you, but not strictly with partners.
I think that with SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability, they need to have more knowledge, webinars, or tutorials so that it would be possible for internal teams to work by themselves.
I don't have more to add about the needed improvements because the onboarding is the same thing; I needed a partner, and the partner does not move forward without being paid for a full year.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability for a short time as I tried once, but I did not prefer it, so we moved back and we do not use it again.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability is stable in my experience if we can deploy the solution in a stable infrastructure.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
In my opinion, SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability's scalability is a ten, as I can give you that score based on the demo, in the commercial demo.
How are customer service and support?
I never knew about the customer support for SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability because the pilot never grew up; it never moved forward.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I previously used Grafana before trying SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability.
What was our ROI?
I have not seen a return on investment from my experience with SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability, as the pilot was not successful. I think that we quickly moved to Grafana and we did not waste three months of work on something that we never would be able to buy.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it is a lot because I have more than twenty years of experience. Before, everything was licensed. Now with SaaS, it is easy, but some companies say that they are SaaS, but their business model is a license, so it is difficult to do business with them.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability, I evaluated other options including Grafana, Zabbix, and Snowflake.
What other advice do I have?
My advice for others looking into using SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability is that if they are able or willing to buy a SaaS model but with a license model, they should go ahead with this platform. But if not, if they are looking for a SaaS platform, SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability is not the option. My review rating for this product is a six.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Unified Dashboard Makes Monitoring Effortless
What do you like best about the product?
I like that SolarWinds Observability provides a single unified dashboard where I can monitor infrastructure, applications, logs, and network performance in one place. The correlation between metrics, logs, and traces makes troubleshooting much faster.
What do you dislike about the product?
Some features feel a bit complex to configure at first, and there can be a learning curve for new users.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
SolarWinds Observability gives us a unified view of our applications, infrastructure, and logs. It helps detect issues early, reduces downtime, and speeds up troubleshooting, which ultimately improves system reliability and user experience.
Provides timely insights that help prevent network outages and support critical infrastructure decisions
What is our primary use case?
My main use case for SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability is proactive monitoring, which allows the network team or the NOC operations monitoring team to know when there are downtimes or possible issues with a service provider's links or a branch. This capability helps us provide remediation actions long before major operational issues occur. When there are links down or degraded or there's a service issue, I come in the morning wanting to see the state of the network just by viewing one pane of glass. Therefore, I frequently create dashboards for monitoring and generate reports for management.
I remember a specific time when we had complaints of slow links. In my current institution, we have over 500 branches, and we observed various complaints regarding slow links, prompting us to investigate the issue. Initially, complaints came in singly, and we escalated them to service providers. However, after analyzing the reports at the end of the day, we noted over-utilization on the ISP backhaul at the HQ, and SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability provided this insight due to the frequent reports generated. We caught this issue and upgraded the backhaul links by engaging the service providers to change from 1 gigabit interfaces to 10 gigabit interfaces while ensuring proper negotiation.
SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability also helps us see the health statistics of devices. Recently, we picked up on high CPU and memory utilization on our internet routers using SolarWinds, which reported this through the SNMP credentials. We were able to raise a ticket with Cisco to solve the issue, making it another valuable use case for us.
What is most valuable?
The best features of SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability include its various monitoring tools and excellent dashboards. It is one of my favorite tools because it allows teams to see and monitor multiple locations at a glance, such as our 500 branches, creating interactive dashboards that clearly indicate what actions to take through color codes. The second major advantage is its superior reporting capabilities. SolarWinds produces clearer reports than average monitoring tools, allowing us to make strategic comparisons and create custom reports that enhance our insight.
SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability offers great ease of use, and I have utilized it alongside integrations with Sophos and various other partners such as Fortinet. The ease of use regarding integrations has been very handy since we can monitor various third-party infrastructures. However, we experienced issues recently with integrations with Huawei, which is fast-growing in the African market. We noticed that the integration with Huawei was not providing as much information via SNMP compared to the flexibility seen with Cisco and other third-party integrations.
SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability has positively impacted my organization by improving our reporting capabilities, allowing us to send regular reports to management for constant analysis and visibility of the network's state. It has also helped reduce downtime and meet SLAs, achieving over 99% uptime for services, internet links, and spoke sites. We proactively identify issues before they occur. For example, when a site with two links has one link down, we ensure the second link is operational, which maintains service uptime, leading to an overall increase in uptime statistics and better visibility for management.
What needs improvement?
SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability could be improved, particularly regarding integrations with Huawei solutions. Given Huawei's rapid growth in the tech and network space, the integration with Huawei is not meeting the standards set by integrations with other providers such as Cisco. This is essential for the continued effective use of SolarWinds in the African market.
SolarWinds has excelled in its user interface and reporting capabilities regarding custom report creation. However, communication on how to create those custom reports can be enhanced. While many of us figure it out after time, a smoother process for creating custom reports would significantly aid engineers.
I chose 9 out of 10 partly because I have recently had issues with integration with Huawei, which is quickly becoming a significant player in the market. Since we operate a majority of our spoke sites with Huawei, SolarWinds tends to lose some advantages because the SNMP criteria for monitoring Huawei devices are not providing the comprehensive reports we need, leading me to deduct one point.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been working in my current field for about six to seven years across various institutions.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability is stable. I have used it in other environments with success, though in my current environment, we have experienced instability likely due to the deployment not meeting required standards. Consequently, we have had to perform frequent server refreshes before it becomes usable again. Despite this, my previous experiences affirm its stability when appropriately deployed.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability is great. We recently worked with a third party, Tigalogic, to increase the number of servers provisioned for SolarWinds, leading to fewer breakdowns and enabling us to carry out more activities by utilizing new resources.
How are customer service and support?
Customer support from SolarWinds is generally great, though it could improve in understanding the challenges faced in the Nigerian market. The complexities and internal processes in approvals necessitate a more tailored support approach, ensuring that assistance is relevant and timely. Recently, we have encountered issues where the support provided did not meet our expectations, underscoring the need for knowledgeable personnel familiar with our circumstances.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Previously, we used different solutions, including PRTG, which is SolarWinds' closest competitor, and ManageEngine. Although PRTG was a good solution, SolarWinds offered better dashboards and superior reporting capabilities, facilitating easier connections and support. I have also tried the Netis iOps tool for Huawei, which excels in analytics but falls short in monitoring. Overall, SolarWinds remains a superior choice, though it seems to be losing ground due to its monitoring limitations with Huawei devices.
What was our ROI?
I have certainly seen a return on investment with SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability because the product does what it claims to do. The primary return comes from its effectiveness, leading to significant cost savings, especially since we can create tenants and allow multiple countries to utilize the nodes through shared tools. Additionally, we have observed a reduction in downtime by at least 15%.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing, we engaged with SolarWinds through a partner, and negotiations were conducted by our procurement team. We received a discount initially, but noticed that pricing changed upon renewal, leading to some confusion. The new pricing models lack clarity in communication, bundling services that we may not actually need, leading to unnecessary costs. This issue is more pressing in Africa, where companies prefer to pay in local currency instead of dollars, though I understand the pricing rationale.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I evaluated other options before choosing SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability, including Netis iOps, which is a Huawei monitoring tool. We conducted a proof of concept but found it to be more investigative rather than a monitoring tool, leading us to reject it. Other options included ManageEngine and PRTG, which were also considered, but SolarWinds outperformed these competitors in reporting and dashboard visibility, ultimately guiding our selection.
What other advice do I have?
I advise others looking into using SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability to explore its licensing models to identify the best fit for their needs while consulting a partner for advice. Ensure deployment uses the standard required resources to avoid frequent breakdowns in applications and track licensing effectively for timely renewals to enjoy the service fully. Support is available, and following these points should lead to a positive experience. I rated this product 9 out of 10.
Real-Time Visibility and Effortless Monitoring
What do you like best about the product?
I like SolarWinds Observability because it provides me with clear, real-time visibility into my customers' environments, making it easy to identify issues quickly. It simplifies monitoring, reduces troubleshooting time, and helps me support clients more efficiently.
What do you dislike about the product?
Sometimes SolarWinds Observability can feel limited in customization, and certain features still need more maturity. A few areas may be slow or require additional steps, which can prolong troubleshooting time.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
SolarWinds Observability enables me to quickly identify performance issues across applications, servers, and networks in one centralized location. It reduces the time I spend troubleshooting, improves visibility for my customers, and allows me to proactively identify problems before they impact their environment. This helps me deliver faster, more reliable support.
Unmatched Network Visibility and Monitoring Depth
What do you like best about the product?
We are able to monitor the network in much greater depth compared to other monitoring tools. It's really easy to add a device or a service to monitoring. And we can use it not only on-prem servers, but also a cloud-hosted version for use. It's really easy to install the software, since all the steps are integrated into one setup. We can use 24/7 customer support not only from SolarWinds, but also from other premium partners like Loop1. We can integrate SolarWinds with any ITSM platform for better visibility. I am using this daily with a few client environments.
What do you dislike about the product?
There are too many options, and I need to know all the details to achieve the maximum outcome from the tool.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
With SolarWinds, I was able to solve dozens of problems without needing an excessive amount of manpower.
Has improved cross-team collaboration with unified performance insights and faster issue resolution
What is our primary use case?
We used SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability for monitoring purposes. I was into server monitoring earlier. In that team, we had airline accounts and banking accounts. For server monitoring purposes, we used the HCO of SolarWinds for network performance monitoring and other tasks.
This was primarily a monitoring job. When I was in the monitoring team, we had different sets of teams working in shifts. Everything was installed, and we were the operators. At that time, we handled network performance monitoring, server application monitoring, database observability, log management analysis, cloud infrastructure visibility, and other insights.
What is most valuable?
SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability offers excellent features. It has end-to-end visibility, flexible deployment, and hybrid support from the support team. AI ops, scalability, and enterprise features for distributed environments, such as more polling engines, web servers, and high availability are very good in the HCO.
Before HCO, many organizations used multiple SolarWinds modules such as NPM, SAM, and WMAN. With SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability, they gained a unified, single pane of glass view for the network, server, databases, and cloud resources. It reduced monitoring silos and enabled fast root cause analysis to easily identify what occurred during incidents. This improved collaboration between network, infrastructure, and application teams.
Reduced downtime and faster issue resolution are significant benefits of SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability. Features such as PerfStack, NetPath, and intelligent maps allow organizations to visualize dependencies and pinpoint problems quickly. Mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to resolve (MTTR) have dropped significantly. Fewer war room calls and blame games occurred as teams now act on collaborated data instead of guesswork. One enterprise user reported an average incident resolution time improvement of 40% after consolidating their tools into HCO.
What needs improvement?
Currently, SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability monitors AWS, Azure, and virtual environments, but it is primarily built on the traditional Orion platform. I think deeper integration into Kubernetes, serverless functions, and cloud-native tracing can be implemented as these matter to many organizations. Additionally, the user interface and modernization of the UX can be developed.
For how long have I used the solution?
I used SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability for approximately two to three years when I was in a different project.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have not experienced any stability issues with SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability. It performs well.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
For SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability's scalability, SolarWinds publishes scalability engine guidelines for large deployments. A single polling engine with enterprise supports up to 100 additional polling engines, monitoring up to 100,000 elements per instance. For large users, web servers and polling engines can be scaled. There are case studies of real customers showing growth and their ROI. The enterprise scale edition helps with scaling.
How are customer service and support?
The customer support for SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability is excellent.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Other tools from SolarWinds were used before SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability. Netcool and other solutions were also utilized.
What was our ROI?
SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability helped save time, money, and resources.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I do not have information about pricing, setup cost, and licensing for SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability because those aspects were handled by a different team in the organization.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability, we evaluated IBM's solutions. Kyndryl, being a spin-off from IBM, provided other options. The product is made up of IBM, so they were explored.
What other advice do I have?
Start with clear visibility goals, size your environment properly, start small and then expand, and invest in the database layer. I would recommend all these things to anybody who is trying to implement SolarWinds HCO.
On a scale of 1-10, I rate SolarWinds Hybrid Cloud Observability a 9.
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