Auvik Software

In the past, we as an MSP would try to offer Managed Network but it was too costly for us to do so or we missed a lot of things due to time and human errors. Now with Auvik we can truly offer Managed Network services quickly and better than ever, We can actually sleep better at night because our customers have Auvik on their networks and we are really taking care of the network.

Pros

I like how easy it is to install, setup, and use. I had it running in about 20 minutes... I really love the searching capabilities they have you can find anything with a simple name or part of a name to help you navigate to any device or link quickly.

Cons

Has a lot of flexibility can get lost in the many different options, but once you get familiar with it is easy to use and take advantage of the advanced features.

Historically, MSP's can be perceived as a threat to IT departments for fear of outsourcing their teams. Auvik has helped Mytech as an MSP to relieve that tension, to work in concert with information technology departments and increase their value in the organization. The typical SMB IT manager¿s toolset exposure may be limited to the last system they used or freeware monitoring systems. Mytech, positions Auvik and its integration with our PSA system, ConnectWise, as a true co-managed value add, to help elevate that IT manager with easily aggregated and targeted insights that help make educated decisions, and a positive impact for their organization. As a win win, it gives our technicians a deeper understanding of our client¿s networks and sales opportunities for our account managers. When one of my former, well researched, senior engineers took an IT Director Positon for a medical center, and approached us specifically about Auvik, I knew that this solution was a game changer.

Pros

I helps me to help IT professionals

Cons

nothing comes to mind

Advice to Others

not at this time

This is a great product as long as you know exactly what it is. It is an excellent graphing, diagramming, and configuration management tool for network devices. It allows us to make good judgement calls for clients and helps us to diagnose things before they become huge. It is not great at telnet/ssh connections, lacks some in supporting all vendors (graphing), and isn't very fault tolerant. We've had issues in the past with support giving us canned answers and not being very attentive to our issues. Overall, though, it is a great product we use every day and continue to pay for, which says something!

Auvik has been great from the moment I spoke to the staff at a peer group meeting. We setup a demo of the functionality of Auvik and then decided to test it out a couple of client sites on a trial basis. We were happy with what we saw and decided to purchase 100 licenses for use. We plan to roll it out across all of our clients eventually, but for now we use it in some of our larger environments where we need insight into what is happening from the networking side. We had never really used a product like this before and we are seeing some good returns on it from our engineers who have been able to use it to identify issues and cut down on the amount of time it takes to diagnose a problem. We are still learning how to best utilize it as far as alerting and some of the functionality it offers, but Auvik has training classes available that they encourage you to attend and run every couple of weeks. Overall, I would highly recommend Auvik and I look forward to continuing to grow our use of it.

Pros

It's easy to configure initially and is able to pull a lot of information for being so easy to run on a client's network

Cons

It can get a bit pricey

Auvik is a good product with a fantastic premise, when you start to realize the full capabilities you begin to understand how it could best be utilized. Working with Auvik feels like I'm working with Next Generation technology, that just isn't mature yet.

While the product is great, it still feels like it is in it's infancy, it does a fantastic job of hooking right into SNMP data that you set but there are some major downfalls that inhibit us from using it on a larger scale. The need for new features are identified quickly but implemented slowly.

We've been working with Auvik for around 6 months and they still have not added; 2FA administration capabilities (cannot remove my own users devices from their accounts), Vanity URLs for site logins, RBAC (Role Based Access Control) for users and groups (no groups available at all currently, lack of multiple sets of credentials (would like different privilege level SSH logins to my devices based on group membership etc).

In my eyes those features list above are must-haves before I would rank Auvik as an excellent tool, in a larger environment it's just too cumbersome to manage everything individually.

Negative aspects aside Auvik blows other utilities out of the water that I've utilized. The ability to SSH into a network device from anywhere over browser is extremely convenient but the true value in my eyes comes from the configuration backups and line differentials to see what has changed.

All that being said, I would still opt to include Auvik into any network I expect to manage, but so far the comments above are what keep me from pushing it everywhere, I would simply spend too much time managing the users and permissions.

We never know that we could see so much of our client's networks without the use of a $ Fluke Network device. We are able to see more then out expensive RMM tool is able to provide at a barebones cost. This is a must have for every MSP in their network management tool kit. We are now looking to use it with our Network Audit accounts. The reports are very through and elevate what you are able to document and show your client.

Pros

How thorough the software is in gathering information on everything that is on the network.

Cons

It takes some learning to get the handle on how to properly install the software. The command line entries are one of those points of difficulty that I'm speaking about.

Advice to Others

Create NFR/Network Audit accounts for MSP to use to gain more end users for the software.