Sunbird DCIM reviews

Why I chose Sunbird DCIM

Pluspunten:

I like it because of its ease of use, good features, great support and help if needed. Easy to update and are frequently updated.

Minpunten:

Most of the problems I had is mostly on my side, i.e I am not familiar with terms, technical lingo and mindset. So when for instance filling in information is a bit tedious but it is getting easier.

SunBird - The best feature rich DCIM product in the Market Place

Opmerkingen: The overall experience has been a bit overwhelming to start, with all the feature rich software has to offer, but with a good professional services engagement from Sunbird they were quickly able to break it all down into bit size chunks to understand and on free online training was extremely helpful when we got stuck with a curtain function.

Pluspunten:

The software provides a rich end to end functional journey of creating a DC room, adding the power train, then the racks and finally the devices into those racks. In the process of doing this you get a visualization view and an asset list plus how it all logically & physically connects together. Plus great out of the box dashboards.

Minpunten:

None from a product perspective, but it does require you to understand all the layers within your data Centre and the equipment makes and models plus specifications.

Sunbird DCIM DCTRACK is a great tool for Data Center Managements

Pluspunten:

In Verizon, we started using dcTrack, a Sunbird tool from 2020 and seeing it really helpful in our migration from the old legacy applications to this new dctrack tool. It has a lot more easy to use functionalities to migrate/ add data & realtime dashboards to view graphs/data. Also they provide new release versions every 4-6 months to add new features and fix bugs reported in the existing version.

Minpunten:

As its a third party tool, we wont have direct access to their code base and DB, to fix any bug found during our implementation, rather have to create a ticket and they'll take a look at it and will release a hotfix for the existing version/ fix it in the next release version.

PowerIQ is admin's best friend, dcTrack is best to comfort revisors and auditors

Opmerkingen: (x) Support is over-average
(x) new releases have a high quality, we always wait a few month until implementing a new release and in the last two years we never had an issue after a release upgrade

Pluspunten:

New hardware devices are ready be monitored in seconds. Management of hundreds of hardware devices such PDUs and sensors lost it's complexity. PowerIQ superseded our Nagios Installation for all hardware-related devices. It becomes more and more our primary trap host.

Minpunten:

Compared to PowerIQ setup of dcTrack is complex. Integration of PowerIQ an dcTrack could be easier to use. (License) Price for integration of USVs into PowerIQ is definitely to high, as a result we do not monitore our several USVs via PowerIQ

Great Product for Visibility/Control of your Data Center

Opmerkingen: Great product with great training program and support!

Pluspunten:

The ability to see all power usage at a facility and compare to the cooling capacity is an amazing feature.

Minpunten:

Some features require multiple clicks to access/use.

Cleveland Clinic Data Center Tech evaluation of Sunbird DCIM products

Opmerkingen: I am able to better manage and produce reports to my management with this product.

Pluspunten:

The product is very easy to use, and also train new employees how to use it.

Minpunten:

I can't think of any Cons for this product.

Bingus

Opmerkingen: Good works great for my job

Pluspunten:

The ability to have a 3D rendering of the data centre as well as a good database

Minpunten:

A few bugs when swapping over and updating on a few devices making us having to re enter them

PowerIQ Evaluation

Opmerkingen: I had a very positive experience with powerIQ. Easy to setup and use yet has the ability to drill down into more complex capabilities if needed.

Pluspunten:

I only used PowerIQ. I liked the ease of setup and dashboard creation. I liked the sales team availability and help provided. The ease of which other team members were able to work with the product with no training and no documentation provided.

Minpunten:

Sometimes extra work was needed to find special filters to apply. I had to create an IT device to filter plugs since that was not include in the associated PDU.

SUNBIRD 2023 LF Rev

Opmerkingen: Featureful and still user friendly with Sunbird support

Pluspunten:

Seamless integration with Sunbird support

Minpunten:

Not sure yet. I still need to evaluate the suitability of client reports and access to a client portal.

Great Customer Service

Pluspunten:

Great support both during our POC and from the support team now we are fully onboarded

Minpunten:

Further work that could be completed on the network physical layer

Great 1st Echelon Support

Pluspunten:

dcTrack, along with powerIQ provides in-depth health-concern data for your data centers, at a glance. I dont' have enough characters here to list everything I like about this software. I'll sum it up like this, all of the questions/requirements you may have for your system, that start with, "can I do ______ with this system?", the answer is yes. Some features are harder than others to get setup. Power connectivity, for instance, takes into account your building's entire power chain. From the building UPS, up to your rack PDU's, utilizing any available management information those devices will offer up. Unless you know a lot about industrial power (I do not) then it could be a difficult feature to get working. That being said I was able to get things up and running with a Sunbird support staff who are not just extremely knowledgeable of their applications, but have expertise in every facet of every infrastructure area that the system supports. The applications are also visually stunning that they are easy sells to management and are "no-brianers" to justify for purchase.

Minpunten:

My biggest complaint about the software is a development paradigm of dictating what can be done or not in the system, even if you may feel like you should be able to proceed with an operation. An example of this is that the system, when implemented as deigned will not allow you to make a network connection between a SFP port of a switch and a copper NIC. This, even though these connections are possible using copper GBIC's. There is a workaround for this, of making all of your different port-types to "twisted-pair" which constitutes a minor inconvenience. The important thing is that the Sunbird Support staff have always come up with a work around for the particular incompatibilities in our environment, of which there have not been many.

The future might be blinding bright for Sunbird if they play their cards right.

Opmerkingen: We have not achieved production functionality yet but overall great!

Pluspunten:

Features, ease of deployment with some reservations to importing assets and setting up a db, overall look and feel, automation, precision and wide scope of functionality.

Minpunten:

The process of getting your existing assets in is quite gruelling if you are not using Service Now as your asset management system. Collating and matching data to dcTracks standards is very challenging for the project team. We are going to use your turn key service to ease the process.

Caretech Solutions Inc.

Opmerkingen: As a remote datacenter manager, it is invaluable to have a visual readout of our assets, and easily be able to determine and display capacity. As a Shared Services provider, we can easily demonstrate to existing customers where their racks are located, how populated they are, etc. This is also useful in sales initiatives; having a 3-D graph of racks with available capacity (one of the vendor-provided reports) makes the salesman's job easier.

Pluspunten:

I like the fact that it can be as high-level, or granulated as you like. I initially started with "where are my racks and what's in them" usage, easily generating 3-d visuals, and exporting .csv and .pdf reports. Using the built-in import and export tools, I've been able to add entries for power whips (and associate them with racks), and populate chassis with individual blades. Next steps will be to update network information for devices, again, with the easy import tools.

Minpunten:

The models library sometimes lacks the specific Make, Model, etc. of a device I'm adding, so I'll have to use a similar one, or define a generic one. Sunbird has a mechanism to submit model addition requests.

Fantastic DCIM Application

Opmerkingen: From the purchase to implementation to use, the entire ride has been easy and fun to learn.

Pluspunten:

Ease of deployment and use; visuals are very useful

Minpunten:

Limited customizable reporting, although the support team will help create additional reports if needed.

3D View/Bulk Uploads/Odbc DB Connection/Easy to use

Opmerkingen: If you haven't used a DCIM previously and want to quickly install and use a DCIM and learn how to use it quickly, I recommend this product.

Pluspunten:

First of all it has an impressive easy-to-use 3D user interface. If your knowledge of Datacenter components and operations is good, you can learn its usage in a very short time and define the new hardware models in 15 minutes without waiting for support. With the CSV upload feature, you can save a serious time by organizing updates in Excel that will last longer. End-to-end cable tracking is really successful. With access to the database via ODBC, you can prepare advanced reports and integrate with other applications. Payment is more flexible than other companies. Monthly usage is also possible. Unit prices are public on the web-site.

Minpunten:

Each circuit has to be terminated with an endpoint. This is necessary for you to do the job right, sometimes short-term temporary operations can annoy you.

A true partner in Sunbird

Opmerkingen: We have found a true partner with the team at Sunbird. They are there to listen, investigate, and offer advice and solutions to any questions we have. The product is flexible enough to adapt to what you need it to do while offering a solid structure to build on.

Pluspunten:

Sunbird listens to all of there customers and then plans and implements the feature requests that provide the most improvement in a timely manner. The support team is attentive and works to both understand the underlining issue and providing work around and long term solution.

Minpunten:

The team is still working to eliminate the thick client. It isn't hard to use the thick client, but a little inconvenient to have to switch between thin and think. However you don't have to use it too often.

Sunbird PowerIQ - DCIM I couldn't work with out.

Pluspunten:

Everything in PIQ is just so easy to use. From adding new racks, to adding new devices for monitoring purposes. Currently monitoring over 1k devices/sensors across the United Kingdom with ease. If you ever need support, Sunbird has your back with quick, easy to understand answers. They know their product inside out!

Minpunten:

We had a few teething issues when we first started with PowerIQ and the compatibility with some specific devices we were trying to add. Sunbird provided plenty of support and got to the bottom of the problem quickly. Fast forward a number of years and I don't have any cons with this DCIM solution, it just works as intended.

Reasons to use DCIM

Opmerkingen: Existing data center structure was modeled exactly the same. In this way, planning can be done on a cabinet basis. Since cabling can be done, we can see which switch or router any device is connected to from any port. Apart from these, you can manage your inventory from here, thanks to the new warehouse system.

Pluspunten:

The application interface is very simple to use. Thanks to the constantly updated device list, all devices can be added and placed in their places in the cabinet. Apart from these, the datacenter structure can be displayed in 3d. In this way, capacity planning can be done on cabinet basis.

Minpunten:

Sometimes problems can occur when removing cable connections.

Easy to get reports and see overall health of the data center in one page.

Opmerkingen: Get the ease of knowing how our data center is running at a glance. Can keep track of assets through out the organization without having to physically going to each asset.

Pluspunten:

Can set up and change settings easily without a lot of going back and forth through screens, which I had to do with other DCIM tools. Easy to navigate for the end user without needing a lot of training.

Minpunten:

Depending on the manufacturer of an add on device I needed to purchase another interface to allow this to read the power.

Sunbird DCIM and PowerIQ

Opmerkingen: Easy straight forward integration. Great technical support. Lots and lots of features

Pluspunten:

Before Sunbird, we were managing our data center inventory with a simple spreadsheet, but now with Sunbird DCIM, we're still able to simply manage a spreadsheet, but along with it we're able to extract much more concise and informative data, graphs, and dashboards for all our planning and expanding needs.

Minpunten:

It's great having an entire models library (40,000+ unique models) at our disposal, however since some systems can have different options(ports, PS, etc) there can be some tweaking of the models required, but that's entirely personal preference and optional.

Solid product with great feedback and response team.

Opmerkingen: Having deployed the Sunbird product line for nearly 4 years, there were several inflection points that forced us to make the decision: move forward with Sunbird or find another product. Each time that decision came up, Sunbird was able to act fast and provide immediate solutions to our problems. We are very happy with the customer support and responsiveness.

Pluspunten:

Simple UI doesn't overwhelm the new user yet still provides a full experience for the expert user.

Minpunten:

Our rapid growth caused scaling issues, overloading the software.

Great DCIM tool with perfect customer support

Opmerkingen: We are very satisfied and happy that we choose Sunbird Software.

Pluspunten:

- Easy to use - Integration is available with other System - API Integration - Audit Feature - and many more...

Minpunten:

Sunbird software is improving day by day and they made some extra ordinary changes and modification too meet the customer expectation. The only new feature I would like is the High Availability for Power IQ.

DCIM Review

Pluspunten:

Assets are very helpful with the detail you can add. PowerIQ helps with power management to a granular level. The connectivity is also a plus when working in the rack with cabling. Also the "Company Standard" for adding new servers and such is useful.

Minpunten:

Moving from 7.X to 8.X was about it. That was on my end not the software.

6 years of work with dcTrack & PowerIQ

Pluspunten:

24x7 managing both our Data Centers. Received on time a power, connectivity, humidity and water alarms. Produced a great reports.

Minpunten:

dcTrack Classic View can't open a full screen view. It could be a great to have a full vision of the dcTrack configuration

Moderate user of Sunbird's PowerIQ module

Opmerkingen: Been a moderate user for 7+ years. Creating Reports, Analytics and Dashboards

Pluspunten:

Ease of integration with Raritan (Legrand) PDUs a,d ability to monitor/alert down to outlets.

Minpunten:

search function limitations, lack of custom fields