Auvik Review

Overview 

Auvik is an easy-to-use cloud-based networking management and monitoring software designed to monitor and track the performance and availability of IT infrastructure, including networks, servers, applications, virtual machines (VMs), and cloud services in real-time.

With Auvik, organizations can monitor critical IT infrastructure components such as network devices, servers, applications, network protocols, and system metrics. Auvik monitors and reports key performance metrics such as network utilization, CPU load, and disk space consumption; it enables users to collect, analyze, visualize, and receive notifications regarding impending issues before it gets out of hand.

Key Features and Capabilities:

• Auto-discovery: Auvik automates network discovery by periodically scanning the network to discover devices, and gives you complete network visibility and control—and keeps all of your information up to date as the network evolves, so you don’t have to worry about it.
• Network traffic analysis: Gives you deep visibility into traffic flows across the network with Auvik TrafficInsights. TrafficInsights leverages machine learning and traffic classification to show you which applications—like Dropbox, Netflix, or Slack—or protocols are using up the bulk of the network’s bandwidth, so you can confidently make the case for a network upgrade or expansion.
• Visibility and Services: Allows you to gain visibility into your entire IT operations. Auvik can show you services that are running against network elements, servers, and workstations on your network. Auvik also shows you how many devices are running each service, which devices they are, and which ports they’re sitting on
• Network monitoring and mapping: Auvik streamlines and simplifies network monitoring and troubleshooting to help you keep your users connected to business-critical resources. It pulls data from sources like CDP, LLDP, and forwarding tables to meticulously model the Layer 1 network diagram. Layers 2 and 3 are built from ARP tables, IP assignments, and VLAN associations to show you exactly what’s on the network, where it is, and how it’s connected.
• Inventory: Auvik’s automated inventory uses network protocols to detect and capture full details for every device on the network including make, model, serial number, IP address, and the physical switch port to which the device is connected. If you know which device you’re looking for but don’t know where it’s located, you can easily find the device and every other device it’s connected to.
• Hardware lifecycle data: Auvik pulls lifecycle data from supported devices to show you whether they’re on current or expired support contracts, whether there are more up-to-date software versions available if devices are eligible to receive critical security updates, and if devices are still available for purchase.
• Live and historic data: Get real-time metrics about your network as it changes—and go back to review the data whenever you need. Auvik is constantly monitoring and polling your network—from topology to config history to device performance—to give you a real-time look at your network at a single time. The network data Auvik detects is stored for years, giving you a rich archive for troubleshooting, analysis, planning, and reporting.
• Problem detection: Auvik automatically detects problems and lets you remediate failed network components before it gets out of control. Get to the root cause of network issues faster and reduce your MTTR. Auvik centralizes syslog for all of your network devices. You can view the logs directly from the device dashboard, giving you more context, so you can quickly troubleshoot network issues.
• VPN Monitoring: Protect remote workers from VPN capacity issues. When SSL VPN monitoring is enabled on a firewall in Auvik, you can instantly see how many VPN sessions are in use and if you’re approaching your license limit. You’ll save hours otherwise spent manually collecting the data one device at a time and protect remote users from unnecessary downtime caused by capacity issues.
• Security: Auvik servers use an industry-standard four-tier architecture, with security protocols at every layer. This architecture includes data isolation, encryption, access control, single sign-on (SSO), 2FA, and role-based access controls. All collector connections to the cloud are encrypted to ensure communication is always and only between the collector and Auvik servers.

How Auvik Works

As an agent-based network monitoring software, Auvik uses client applications called collectors. The collector plays a key role in Auvik’s monitoring, as it gathers data from your devices and sends it to the Auvik servers for processing. As such, it may require network administrators to tweak firewall configurations to allow such traffic to pass through. Once the Auvik collector is successfully installed on your network, it automatically searches on its local subnet to find more networks.

When new networks are discovered, you can choose whether to have Auvik scan them or not. After you approve scanning, Auvik uses a tool called network mapper (Nmap) to identify active hosts on the network. The system looks for open ports to help identify many characteristics of the host, including make and model. During the network scan, Auvik looks for network devices that expose key information such as ARP tables, forwarding tables (Layer 2), IP assignments, VLAN associations, and others:

This information is pulled from SNMP through various management information bases (MIBs), and by issuing “show” commands through the CLI on network elements. From there, Auvik uses logic to determine connections and model your network. Where definitive connection information is unavailable, the system uses a set of proprietary algorithms to infer the remaining connections. Once a device is discovered, Auvik looks for open services, so it can identify the class of device, such as printer, switch, firewall, access point, laptop, or phone. The system uses a number of tools and services such as Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), SNMP, Multicast Domain Name System (mDNS), SMB / Samba, and others to refine device information.

The collector plays a central role in Auvik’s monitoring, as it gathers data from your devices and sends it to the Auvik servers for processing. As such, it may require network administrators to tailor configurations (particularly in firewalls or proxies) to allow that communication to pass through.

System Requirements and Deployment

Auvik is a cloud-based network management and monitoring application, which means there are no on-premise system requirements and no installation hassles. However, you’ll be required to install local agents for the device or service you wish to monitor, for the most part. An agent-based mode means no auto-discovery feature, so you have to deploy an agent for all your devices individually.

Auvik’s agent, known as the collector, is a piece of code that uses industry-standard protocols to gather information about a network, such as topology details, configurations, and network statistics. The collector summarizes and sends that information to the Auvik servers over encrypted connections. All collector connections to the cloud are outbound and encrypted.

Dashboards and Visualizations

A dashboard can be a great way to keep tabs on what is going on in your network. Auvik comes with out-of-the-box dashboards. This allows you to create and use dashboards designed to provide network operations teams with customized strategic views of your systems, presented in the way that is most relevant to your business, environment, or needs. The interface is well organized and provides an overall view of how similar devices are performing across groups, customers, or locations.

Auvik dashboard is entirely customizable and maintains a high-quality appearance. The management interface is crisp and comes with well-defined color-coded displays. Auvik has a number of different dashboards that give you at-a-glance details about your entire network or specific portions of it.

The dashboards include:

• Home dashboard: Gives you an overview of your entire network. Any element of the dashboard can be clicked to access more detailed information.
• Network dashboard: A network dashboard gives you an overview of a specific network.
• Device dashboard: A device dashboard gives you an overview of a specific device. There are a few different device dashboards such as common device dashboards, firewall VPN tunnel dashboards, printer dashboards, virtual machine dashboards, and more.
• Interface dashboard: An interface dashboard gives you an overview of a specific interface. The following graphs are available on the interface dashboard: interface details, KPIs, interface bandwidth, and interface packet loss

Within each dashboard are a number of graphs, KPIs (key performance indicators), and navigation elements. You can also download data into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet (.xlsx) from each dashboard. Auvik’s global and site-level dashboards are designed to provide real-time operational views into your networks. For management reporting or trend analysis, Auvik recommends using a data visualization tool like Microsoft Power BI.

Alerts, Integration, and Reporting

Auvik alerts and notifications allow you to stay on top of network events with preconfigured and customizable alerts as soon as it’s deployed, Auvik begins monitoring the network with over 50 preconfigured alerts tuned to industry best practices and ranging from informational to emergency. It also allows you to tweak preconfigured alerts, add your own, and choose how often you receive notifications for each one.

Auvik also allows you to extend its capabilities via its supported custom integration, which can be achieved with the in-built REST API functionality. Auvik APIs allow you to pull various data points from Auvik and integrate them into a third-party application, or use the data yourself.

It also comes with built-in reports that you can use to review key information for alert data, monitored data, resource configurations data, and user data including user accounts and roles. Auvik provides various Power BI reporting templates such as QBR reports, inventory management reports, NOC service reports, and device performance management reports. For example, Auvik’s QBR report template, for example, is a management report that highlights the business side of network management. This template provides a roll-up of the network uptime, network device inventory, and alerts to help communicate what’s being managed. The template also shows potential candidates for infrastructure upgrades based on correlating different at-risk metrics.

Licensing and Price Plans

Auvik’s licensing comes in two flavors: Essential and Performance. Pricing includes unlimited users, network sites, endpoints, and support. All plans include unlimited users, unlimited network sites, unlimited endpoints, unlimited support, and no additional maintenance fees. Pricing is per switch, router, firewall, and physical Wi-Fi controller. All other devices, including access points and endpoints, are monitored for free. You can explore Auvik pricing plans and find the right fit for your organization, including possible volume discounts that may apply. A 14-day free trial is also available on request, with no credit card required. The table below compares Essential and Performance licensing:

Concluding Remarks

Auvik is a powerful solution that can meet the needs of any organization, from SMB to large enterprises. Most IT teams find it easy to deploy, use and administer. While the feature set can be overwhelming for some, network managers will find it hard to run out of options. Auvik’s cloud-based model makes it ideal for organizations that don’t want to burden themselves with any resource-intensive on-premise monitoring solution.

Service-oriented companies, SMBs, or smaller networks that don’t have dedicated IT personnel to keep tabs on the infrastructure at a granular level will find Auvik’s feature-rich tool suitable. More extensive networks with multiple remote locations may find Auvik’s agent-based model inconvenient since agents will need to be individually installed. But if you can successfully get past the agent installation and setup process, Auvik is an excellent network monitoring and infrastructure management tool.