[Xymon] Xymon vs Solarwinds

[Scot Kreienkamp]

I've used both, although I've got little experience with Solarwinds.  From what I know of it you already hit the nail on the head.  Great for SNMP, and that's the only way to poll.  So if you have a system where you can't turn on SNMP, or the stats you want are unavailable via SNMP, then you can't monitor it.  Solarwinds is like any commercial product.  You can do what they allow you to do and that's about it.  Xymon is infinitely extendable due to Henrik's efforts in many areas and his early design decisions.  That's why I run it.  Specifically in my case, there is no built in way to monitor an F5 load balancer in Solarwinds.  While that is also true of Xymon, I did spend a few days writing a script that would interrogate an F5 and report all kinds of information back on its nodes, pools, and VIPs.  That would be MUCH more difficult to integrate with Solarwinds.  Also, while nobody has asked on the list yet, I would offer it if someone did.  Community is a good thing to have.  On the other hand, the lack of professional support is frustrating at times, so I wouldn't completely discount them wanting a product with professional support.

Also, it looks like at least one company has endeavored to professionally support Xymon, so that may be one way to nullify the support argument.

http://www.xymonmonitoring.com

Scot Kreienkamp
skreien at la-z-boy.com


-----Original Message-----
From: xymon-bounces at xymon.com [mailto:xymon-bounces at xymon.com] On Behalf Of Gore, David W (David)
Sent: Thursday, October 20, 2011 7:35 AM
To: Vernon Everett; Xymon mailinglist
Subject: Re: [Xymon] Xymon vs Solarwinds

May be a bit beyond the point at this time Vernon but you may want to point your client to this page:

http://support.sas.com/rnd/emi/Xymon/index.html

If Xymon is good enough for a billion dollar company perhaps it is good enough for your client.  Perhaps making smart decisions on how they spend their money is part of the reason they are billion dollar company.

I have never heard of SolarWinds but we are just a support group with no money so there is no reason to look beyond Xymon.

~David


From: xymon-bounces at xymon.com [mailto:xymon-bounces at xymon.com] On Behalf Of Vernon Everett
Sent: Thursday, October 20, 2011 03:17
To: Xymon mailinglist
Subject: [Xymon] Xymon vs Solarwinds

Hi guys

I have a client that dislikes open source software. They feel it's "out of control", there's no support, and no backup.
They prefer something where they can get "professional" support, and licensed software and all the crap we have all heard before.
Somebody at the top, decided that SolarWinds is the corporate standard.
>From what I have read, it's SNMP based, so great for network, and stuff running SNMP, but not so good for anything else.

Has anybody had any hands-on experience with both Solarwinds and Xymon, who can give me a short breakdown of the advantages and disadvantages of Solarwinds compared to Xymon?

Regards
    Vernon

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