Discovery - Should you run Solarwind along with Discovery (and ServiceWatch)?

[paw2]

Should you run Solarwinds along with Discovery (and ServiceWatch)?   Would be interested in knowing issues or got ya to watch out for.

[Stijn Verhulst3]

Hi Patricia,

I'm not familiar with Solarwinds to be honest. I do know it's used for monitoring & diagnostics, correct?

With this knowledge in the back of my mind, I'd say you should see Discovery & Service Mapping (new version of ServiceWatch) as a different set of tools; focusing on the actual collection of your core / key CIs (or maybe even more) within your CMDB while building out a reliable Business Service Mapping; in order to leverage a clear, transparent & understanding view regarding analysis & possible impacts on your IT infrastructure from a IT Service Management perspective.

I'd say (unless someone here counters me) in a very simplistic way:

- Solarwinds: permanent evaluation of how well particular CIs within the infrastructure are running & actually executing their core tasks

- Discovery & Service Mapping: creating a top-to-bottom view of your infrastructure to get an accurate visibility on your actual Business Services whin run upon them

So, if possible, I'd run both of them.

Kind regards,

Stijn

[Scheuerman1]

Good morning,

We run both Discovery and Solar Winds. The Discovery tool is not a real-time manager of devices, or anything like that. You'll run Discovery maybe a few times a week to keep your CMDB updated. Solar winds integrated into your CMDB allows you to have real-time alerting / awareness of your network equipment.

So if you plan on using your CMDB for event management, you will want to be using both. They do different things with a very, very minor crossover.

ServiceMapping is more of a real-time awareness, but it is very vertical. It only tells you what is happening with specific devices that are required for something to run. A good example is a website. It will tell you everything that is required for that website to run, and alert if something happens.

It has a little more crossover with Solar Winds, but not very much. I would still use both tools to make sure you had a complete view of your entire environment and your CMDB is properly kept up to date.