Looking for a side by side comparison of SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor and WhatsUp Gold? Look no further.

1. Author
Christine Bentsen
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
(SAM) Compared to WhatsUp® Gold
(WUG) Application Management
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2. Agenda
» Top 5 Reasons - SAM or WUG Application Management
» Quick Comparison - SAM Vs. WUG Application Management
» Detailed Comparison
» SAM Dashboard
» SAM in IT Pro’s words
» Resources
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3. Top 5 Reasons to choose SAM over WhatsUp
Gold Application Management
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4. Quick Comparison – SAM Vs. WhatsUp Gold
Application Management
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5. Detailed List – SolarWinds SAM Vs. WhatsUp
Gold Application Management
SAM was designed with ease-of-use as a primary focus. Application discovery,
Expert Templates, and application templates make setup simple and fast.
Ongoing use is facilitated by a simple user interface that typically does not
require any user training before users can become productive on the system.
Intelligent dashboards and drilldowns help you instantly find the information
you need. Additionally, SAM is easily customizable to fit the way you work.
EASE OF SETUP & WhatsUp Gold can be difficult to set up and use. There is no application
ONGOING USE discovery, and there are no Expert Templates to guide you. The workflow for
assigning application monitors is complicated and time consuming. During
ongoing use, the system does not provide dashboards or drilldowns from all
views, and is not easily customizable. Even WUG’s website calls their
application management, “entry level.”*
WUG’s product is a “network management toolset,”* and while they do
provide some server and application monitoring capabilities, that is not the
focus of their product.
*Quotes obtained from Ipswitch,Inc. website, © 2012 Ipswitch, Inc. All rights reserved. Available at: www.whatsupgold.com.
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6. Detailed List – SolarWinds SAM Vs. WhatsUp
Gold Application Management
Healthy applications depend on a healthy infrastructure to
support them. SolarWinds SAM provides comprehensive
hardware monitoring for your HP® Proliant®, Dell® PowerEdge®,
IBM® System X®, and VMware® ESXi/ESX® host servers leveraging
SNMP, WMI, CIM, and the VMware API protocols. Some key
metrics monitored include:
HARDWARE
MONITORING Machine Make, Machine Model, Machine Serial Number, Array
status, Array controller status, Power supply status, Fan status,
Chassis intrusion status, Chassis temperature and/or status, CPU
temperature and/or status, Chassis fan speed and/or status, CPU
fan speed and/or status, Memory module status, Voltage
regulator status.
WhatsUp Gold only provides very basic hardware statistics,
allowing many potential hardware problems to go undetected.
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7. Detailed List – SolarWinds SAM Vs. WhatsUp
Gold Application Management
SAM provides broad and deep application support with over a hundred out-of-
the-box application templates. An easy –to-use wizard allows for the creation of
ROBUST powerful custom application monitoring templates. The active user community
APPLICATION thwack® also offers an active content exchange, with many more application
templates and integration built directly into SAM.
SUPPORT
WUG admits they deliver “entry-level application performance monitoring.”*
Their solution is an all-in-one network management product, and the focus is not
on application monitoring.
SAM’s Expert Templates provide guidance as to what performance counters are
important and what thresholds are optimal for your environment. These
recommendations are based on industry best practices and vendor
EXPERT recommendations. Expert Templates also include recommendations on what to
do when thresholds are exceeded, and how to resolve the issue when it occurs.
TEMPLATES
It’s like having your own IT expert monitoring your environment 24/7.
With What’s Up Gold, there is no similar feature to Expert Templates. When it
comes to optimal thresholds and determining which counters matter for your
environment, you are on your own.
*Quotes obtained from Ipswitch,Inc. website, © 2012 Ipswitch, Inc. All rights reserved. Available at: www.whatsupgold.com.
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8. Detailed List – SolarWinds SAM vs. WhatsUp
Gold Application Management
SolarWinds SAM includes basic virtualization monitoring at no additional cost.
VIRTUALIZATION
WhatsUp Gold is an all-in-one solution that provides a number of product features,
MONITORING
and application monitoring is only one of these features. However, with WhatsUp
Gold, you must purchase an additional plug-in in order to have any virtualization
monitoring.
SolarWinds SAM is provided in license sizes to fit any budget and is easily
upgraded as your organization grows. The breadth of monitoring capabilities and
SUITABLE FOR flexibility of use make it suitable for companies of any size and in any industry.
COMPANIES OF
ALL TYPES & SIZES With WUG, you must buy the Premium Edition to get enterprise scalability.
Additionally, only the Premium and Distributed Editions offer Windows®
Management Instrumentation (WMI) application monitors including SQL Server®
and Exchange monitoring capabilities. SAM includes these at all license sizes.
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9. Detailed List – SolarWinds SAM Vs. WhatsUp
Gold Application Management
SolarWinds is a regulated public company with over 100,000
customers worldwide
WhatsUp Gold is a private company with less transparency to
their customers
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10. SAM Dashboard
SAM Summary page showing several applications being monitored
SOLARWINDS SERVER & APPLICATION MONITOR (SAM) – THE BEST ALTERNATIVE
TO WHATSUP® GOLD (WUG) APPLICATION MANAGEMENT
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11. SAM Dashboard
SAM has hundreds of application templates and it is easy to create custom templates through the
included wizard.
SOLARWINDS SERVER & APPLICATION MONITOR (SAM) – THE BEST ALTERNATIVE
TO WHATSUP® GOLD (WUG) APPLICATION MANAGEMENT
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12. SAM Dashboard
Historical Hardware
Information
SAM also provides out-of- the-box server hardware monitoring to
view server hardware health and quickly identify any hardware failures
SOLARWINDS SERVER & APPLICATION MONITOR (SAM) – THE BEST ALTERNATIVE
TO WHATSUP® GOLD (WUG) APPLICATION MANAGEMENT
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13. What IT Pros say about SolarWinds SAM
» SAM named Best of TechEd in the Systems Management and
Operations category at Microsoft TechEd North America 2012.
 Awards produced by Windows IT Pro, SQL Server Pro, SharePoint Pro and
Dev Pro
» “With SolarWinds SAM I can keep track of everything in one
place.”
 Steve Borba, Network Security Engineer, Citizens Business Bank
» “Unlike many of the enterprise offerings we had worked with
previously, SAM was not bloated with information and had a
clean, easy-to-use interface. Within a week-and-a-half of playing
with the free trial, we were able to accomplish things with SAM
that we had been trying to do with our previous system for
three years.”
 Jason Krisch - Manager, Technical Services - Carilion Clinic
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14. Helpful Resources
We invite you to learn more about
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM)
Watch Video Test Drive Live Demo
Ask Our Community Download 30-day Free Trial
Client Testimonial Client Testimonial
(SAM) Allows Carilion to be Proactive (N)Ode to SAM
Whitepaper
Selecting the Right Server & Application Monitoring Tool
Click any of the links above
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15. Thank You!
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