[186168] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: SevOne Monitoring
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Chad Myers)
Wed Dec 2 18:07:33 2015
X-Original-To: nanog@nanog.org
From: Chad Myers <Chad.Myers@theice.com>
To: "Naslund, Steve" <SNaslund@medline.com>
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 2015 22:00:03 +0000
In-Reply-To: <9578293AE169674F9A048B2BC9A081B401C7B2FE1D@MUNPRDMBXA1.medline.com>
Cc: "nanog@nanog.org" <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces@nanog.org
I took a look at SevOne back when you could download a free, 500-element ve=
rsion of it when I was looking for something to deal with Netflow. I'd hea=
rd of it prior but nothing from the website seemed overly appealing. Actua=
lly -using- the product though it was wonderful seeing a tool built to auto=
matically deal with a lot of the things that are fairly routine but are tim=
e consuming to deal with. Automatic filtering of what is monitored based o=
n user customizable rules. For example: Junos device? Ignore all file sys=
tems that are mounted from /dev/md*, ignore pim([de])|lsi|gre|ipip|dsc inte=
rfaces, and so on. If an interface is set to admin-down automatically prev=
ent alarms from it. Then don't alarm on it being down. If it later change=
s so it isn't admin-down then start monitoring & alerting on it again autom=
atically.
As Steven pointed out though the pricing model escalates rapidly since they=
do it by each individual object. If using netflow, each netflow interface=
is considered 100 elements if I remember correctly. Even if I ignored net=
flow, a single EX8216 would consume a few thousand elements or more if I wa=
nted to monitor all of the interfaces in the chassis. Just looking at it f=
or lab usage over ~12 Juniper devices, if I wanted to get full monitoring o=
ver all devices, without netflow/sflow, it was a few hundred thousand eleme=
nts. When I try to extrapolate that to our production environment with tho=
usands of network devices I can't even imagine what the element count and s=
ubsequent cost would be. When comparing against similar tools the cost is =
simply outrageous due to the licensing. And I just realized that it actual=
ly becomes more cost effective to have an internal development team dedicat=
ed to writing & maintaining custom network monitoring tools when compared t=
o licensing costs like this.
Independent of that, I'm miffed that the free, 500-element version I was us=
ing for home and lab use is no longer usable. It says the license is valid=
until sometime in 2031, but won't actually let me beyond that point until =
I upload an updated license file. Can't even do a reinstall since the orig=
inal license file is only valid for a few weeks before it expires. I keep =
forgetting to contact support about it when I'm at home but since they comp=
letely removed the free version I'm doubtful that they will provide an upda=
ted license file.
So yeah, fantastic tool, not as pretty as Solarwinds, but it gets really ex=
pensive, really fast. And when talking with them I got the impression that=
the licensing was per year versus a one-time license cost and then recurri=
ng maintenance cost for support & software updates; the above licensing beh=
avior in the free version supports that impression. I don't know if that i=
s correct though as I didn't think to ask while I was talking with them.
-Chad
On Nov 25, 2015, at 12:04 PM, "Naslund, Steve" <SNaslund@medline.com> wrote=
:
> I looked at SevOne and liked the product a lot. One thing we found was t=
hat the pricing model escalates pretty rapidly because they count every OBJ=
ECT you monitor, not every device. So if I am looking at Bytes In, Bytes O=
ut, Errors In, etc on a single interface those are all counted as a separat=
e OBJECT against your license count. You really have to be more selective =
about what you want to see which to me is really inconvenient because often=
you don't know what SNMP object you want to look at until a problem surfac=
es. One of the strengths I really liked was the trending capability that h=
elps you predict capacity issues before you hit them.
>
> Summary: Good product, real expensive in wide deployment.
>
> Steven Naslund
> Chicago IL
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: NANOG [mailto:nanog-bounces@nanog.org] On Behalf Of Paul Stewart
> Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2015 2:55 AM
> To: 'NANOG'
> Subject: SevOne Monitoring
>
> Hey folks.
>
>
>
> Looking for feedback from actual customers on SevOne for network monitori=
ng . anyone using them and willing to share thoughts online/offline?
>
>
>
> They have an appealing system for network monitoring and considering it a=
s a replacement to Solarwinds.
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Paul
>
>
>
>
>
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