What I like best about SolarWinds Observability is its unified visibility across infrastructure, applications, databases, and network performance through a single platform. The real-time monitoring, intelligent alerting, intuitive dashboards, and root cause analysis capabilities help reduce troubleshooting time and improve operational efficiency. I also value its scalability, ease of deployment, and the ability to proactively identify performance issues before they impact business operations. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

While the platform is powerful, initial configuration and fine-tuning can take time, especially for complex environments. Some advanced features have a learning curve, and dashboard customization could be more flexible in certain use cases. Pricing may also be a consideration for smaller teams, and deeper integrations with some third-party tools could be improved. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Unified observability platform for metrics, logs, traces, and alerts

Strong hybrid cloud and multi-cloud monitoring capabilities

Powerful APM and distributed tracing features

Intuitive user interface and visualization tools

Scalable SaaS architecture Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Costs can increase significantly in large-scale deployments

Some advanced features require additional tuning and expertise

Initial setup of custom monitoring scenarios may take time Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The ability to bring together telemetry from different parts of a complex environment into a single view, making it easier to detect issues early, troubleshoot faster, and improve operational reliability. This aligns closely with CBA's broader observability strategy of standardisation, improved data quality, and faster insight into system health. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

My main concern is that the volume of telemetry and alerting can become overwhelming without strong standards and governance. The platform is most effective when data is consistently instrumented and managed across teams. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It is very adaptable to complex network and application designs. I have found it easy to use, but you still need an understanding of monitoring, using solarwinds, and general knowledge of networking, applications, ITSM, and what is important to the business, not just the techies. SolarWinds provides integrations via API allowing you to link to other software, not just for data collection, but data sharing. This is powerful as you can put data in into PowerBI for example. Combining multiple data sources while still relying on SolarWinds to perform its main job of monitoring. The performance of Solarwinds has improved dramatically over the past ten years. Upgrades in a multimodule environment with additional polling engines used to take days as often as not. Now, I can scale a much larger environment, and the integrated installer upgrades them everything in about two hours. The ability to run more efficiently on the same server hardware specifications has improved too. The scale of element counts per server has increased a lot. This not only reduces cost of ownership as fewer servers are required, but makes maintenance and upgrades simpler too. The pricing has changed and it is hard to compare pure node count per module to the newer method of overall node counts. The combination of modules into a single product does make licensing simpler though, and the ability to split your licensing into multiple instances of SolarWinds is quite a benefit from years ago. For new users, the support and onboarding experience has changed for the better. There are learning pathways for new users and the onboarding experience gets organizations up and running quickly now. The SolarWinds Academy and the instructors do not get the love, respect and notice that they deserve. They are very knowledgeable and willing to get you answers even after a session. Finally we are seeing AI and improved anomaly detection. While anomaly detection is standard in the industry, SolarWinds has had a version for years, and it has only improved. The AI that is available now and coming is truly amazing and shows that they are not just keeping the lights on, but actively trying to integrate new technology in a way that is useful and not just for marketing. The AI can help with tasks, and create useful intelligent reports on the fly. This is a time saver. Knowing what to do with the data is one thing, but having the time and skill to curate and present that data for engineers to act on? This is a timesaver, especially when critical production is down and you want to find early indicators or correlate event timelines. The ability for users to self serve with the AI does not remove the skilled SolarWinds analyst, but frees them up to work on more urgent tasks. My only wish - I had this feature ten years ago.... Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

This is a hard question to answer as I generally like the product. Licensing is probably one of the bigger headaches for any vendor. This is no different. The on premise version has legacy use cases that do not translate easily into the new model. I have heard about difficulties with this, but the subscription model will keep you current and provide updates, support, and new features. One feature that I want to see more of... DARK Theme. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

SolarWinds Observability is extremely easy to use and gives our users quick access to performance information. I’ve had many customers praise how simple it is to find what they need and to see the status of devices in SolarWinds. They often compare it to other applications used within the company and point out how difficult it can be to locate information in other monitoring tools.

With SolarWinds, they can identify issues in the environment just by looking at the dashboards. It also helps them narrow down potential solutions and quickly confirm whether an issue is resolved after applying a “fix.” We don’t use all the modules in SolarWinds Observability due to corporate directives, but I believe it would be even easier if we did.

I also love how customizable everything is for reports, dashboards, and alerts through custom properties. Overall, I would highly recommend SolarWinds Observability because I’ve seen how much it has simplified our customers’ jobs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The main issues I have with SolarWinds in our environment are around consistency and support. Many users have the ability to add devices, set up alerts, create reports, and modify dashboards, and everyone tends to do it differently. Because of that, I’ve had to build a lot of reports and widgets just to monitor what users are doing and to educate them on how they should be entering and maintaining information in our environment.

When we run into issues with SolarWinds itself, the response we get from SolarWinds often takes a long time before there’s a fix. In the meantime, I end up digging around to find a solution on my own, which pulls time away from my normal work assignments. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The most helpful aspect of SolarWinds Observability is its ability to reduce mean-time-to-detection (MTTD) and mean-time-to-resolution (MTTR) through comprehensive, full-stack visibility across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. It provides proactive insights, AI-powered anomaly detection to reduce alert fatigue, and unified monitoring for infrastructure, networks, and applications.

SolarWinds Observability offers full-stack visibility, combining on-premises and multi-cloud monitoring into a single pane of glass to reduce tool sprawl and cut costs. Key benefits include faster root-cause analysis (lower MTTR), reduced alert fatigue via AIOps/machine learning, and improved user experience through proactive issue detection Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The least helpful aspects of SolarWinds Observability often revolve around its high cost, steep learning curve, and the complexity of its implementation.

High costs for small teams, a steep learning curve, and complex, time-consuming setup. Users often face challenges with third-party integrations, slow dashboard loading, and potentially excessive, noisy alerting if not properly configured. Additionally, self-hosted options require significant maintenance, and the brand has historical security concerns. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What stands out most about SolarWinds Observability is its unified visibility across infrastructure, applications, and network layers, all within a single platform. It allows teams to correlate metrics from servers, applications, networks, and synthetic transactions, which significantly reduces mean time to detect and resolve issues. The platform builds on our existing SolarWinds ecosystem—such as SAM, NPM, WPM, NTA, and IPAM—making it easier to extend monitoring capabilities without introducing a completely new toolset or steep learning curve. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

One of the main challenges with SolarWinds Observability is that key capabilities are still delivered as add‑on modules, which increases both cost and complexity as monitoring needs expand. For example, storage monitoring is not included by default and requires separate licensing, with costs scaling based on the number of disks monitored. This makes the overall value proposition less predictable at enterprise scale, as highlighted during internal evaluations and discussions Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Full-stack visibility in one platform

The biggest strength is how it brings everything together—infrastructure, network, applications, logs, and databases—into a single unified view.

You don’t have to jump between multiple tools

You can see how different components interact in real time

➡️ This “single pane of glass” approach helps eliminate blind spots and makes troubleshooting much easier. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Immature AI / AIOps capabilities

While SolarWinds promotes intelligent insights, in practice:

AI-based anomaly detection and root cause analysis aren’t fully mature

Limited predictive capabilities (e.g., forecasting, ML-based alert correlation)

➡️ Users report that these features don’t always give accurate or actionable results yet Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

What I like most about the SolarWinds database is how clearly it shows what is happening inside the database without making things confusing. Even if you are not a database expert, you can still understand where the problem is coming from. The dashboard feels clean and practical, not overloaded with unnecessary information. It saves a lot of time because you don't have to dig through logs or run multiple queries just to understand performance issues. Slow queries, high CPU usage, or memory problems are highlighted in a very straightforward way. This makes daily monitoring less stressful. Another good thing is how it works well with different databases. Whether it is SQL Server, MySQL, or another database, everything can be monitored from one place. This is very helpful when you manage multiple systems. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

One thing I don't like much is that the setup can feel heavy at the beginning. It takes some time to configure everything properly, especially if the environment is large. For new users the first few days can feel overwhelming. The pricing can also be a concern. For small teams or companies, it may feel expensive compared to simpler tools. Not everyone needs all the advanced features, but they still come as part of the package. Sometimes the alerts can feel too frequent if they are not tuned well. Without proper configuration, you might review notifications that are always urgent, which can become distracting. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Data Control and auditing is a must when we are working in verticals (like ours financial, banking, etc.) which are heavily regulated and global. Solarwinds does a good job in supporting this model where there is enough controls in place to protect our customers data across the regions. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Complexity of integration and the learning curve is currently high as things are moving so fast with AI. I think there needs to be a common lingo among the providers to make it easy for the users to adapt. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.