Runecast

Avantages

The thing I like most about this software is its ease of use. I simply pull up the dashboard and I can visually see based on colors how severe a vulnerability is. I can then very easily drill into any of the vulnerabilities Runecast detected and get valuable information on how to mitigate the vulnerability in question.

Inconvénients

The only thing I would improve about this software is creating more "push button" compliance assessments (NIST, CMMC, etc.).

Avantages

An easy to use solution, very useful to prevent potential issues on your virtual infrastructure. The well designed Dashboard allows you to have the overall status of your infrastructure from a single pane of glass. Being constantly under development, Runecast releases updates as soon as new issues or new KB are released by VMware saving the administrators from potential services disruption.

Despite daily checks of the virtual infrastructure, not all issues can be detected on time. If the system has a problem, the users will have a problem. Runecast gives you the information you need to prevent potential and dangerous issues saving lot of time and keeping the environment healthy. Just think about Meltdown and Spectre issue... in large environments to identify hosts affected by this problem takes ages. With Runecast you can have the exact overview of hosts that need to be patched in a matter of seconds.

Inconvénients

No much to say about cons... for SMBs the application price perhaps can influence the purchase decision but the provided benefits are valuable. Anyway preventing issues surely cost less than fixing.

Avantages

Easy integration and installation, everything OK.

Inconvénients

Well hard to say, its almost 2 years, but maybe price?

Avantages

It takes the pain away from VMware Administration.... it does what it says on the tin, plug and play, sit back, and then spend some time Security Hardening your VMware vSphere estate, and not forgetting following Best Practice!

The real time log analysis against VMware KBs is amazing...!!!

Inconvénients

What is there not to like about Runecast Analyzer! Be prepared for a long list of todos, after it's analysed your VMware vSphere estate! It's not a software issues, because you should have been following Best Practice and Security Advice...anyway.

Avantages

The most important thing is ease of use and configuration. Recent release of vCenter plug-in made the life more easier. Routine updates and offline repository usage is one of the other important thing and it helps to maintain a more secure environment without exposing the internal network to the internet and while analyzing the security risks and best practices.

Inconvénients

To be honest, I have nothing in mind to say bad about this and overall experience was really nice so far.

Avantages

Its like have a Vmware Technician 24/7 auditing you Vmware Environment, its absolutely great !!!!

Inconvénients

No Alerting, if wanted alerts from logs. Hope they add these feature to a future release

Avantages

I'm impressed by the easy installation in my environment with dozens of remote clusters. It runs very smooth and the first results come in before I can even finish my coffee. It finds all kind configuration issues and gives advise how to fix or improve. Currently testing with the trail version, but hope to switch to the full version soon.

Inconvénients

The version I use is not creating a trend line for the security score or index and that is useful for my reports. I got from support that it is on the roadmap for a future release.

Avantages

- The ease of installation and upgrade. Deployed in 30 minutes and upgraded in 10
- The easy to use interface and to see how many hosts are affected by a particular bug/issue
- The ability to group issues into categories

Inconvénients

- Reporting could be improved. It would be nice to be able to produce a graphical report that illustrates all the issues diecovered and how many hosts are affected.

Avantages

It does what it supposes to do : single interface to discover by referencing VMware KB articles and best practices and then help you to correct issues in your virtual infrastructures : vSphere and now NSX !!!

Inconvénients

No much to say about cons. I'd like to have a trend of historical report.

Avantages

It does something unique by cross-referencing KB articles with your VMware estate, bringing a lot of hidden unknowns to the surface so they can be sorted before you have an issue.

Inconvénients

Just waiting on the PCI checks feature, but I understand this needs a lot of interaction with VMware themselves before they can release.

Avantages

It is easy to implement and use by all IT teams. what is impressive is how deep and detailed the information RuneCast provides. It helps us to quckly identify and mitigate issues.

Inconvénients

As we're working in a heavily regulated industry, compliance is critical to us Keeping our systems compliant with the regulatory standards is crucial for our IT department. It also helps us to quickly identify and fix any configuration or security parameters of our virtual infrastructures before they become a major problem. Integration of the product into our business was very easy.

Avantages

RuneCast made our life so easy. It look a job of days and turned it into minutes. Not only that, we had to ready each and every best practice document for each release and product (vSphere, vCenter, Horizon), RuneCase made it all in one. It also helped us to verify the compliance of our drivers with the release we use of ESXi as this use to be a manual process too.
so easy to deploy... its OVF, assign IP and you are ready to go... so so so simple
What I also love about it is that they keep on adding features without asking the customers to pay more or bring up a new license... The best value for money you will ever see in todays products.

Inconvénients

What I would like to see in RuneCast is that... Customers should be able to define their own baselines and it should compare your installation against it... currently it has built-in (vmware best practices, CIS, etc...), where what I see it should allow us to customize and run the analysis against our settings and then print it in a report format ... this will help us to showcase our compliance to audit team

Avantages

Runecast Analyzer saves De Volksbank’s IT team 75% of time previously spent on troubleshooting and identifying root causes of issues. The tedious manual approach of crawling through VMware Knowledge Base articles has been replaced with proactive automated problem prevention.

Inconvénients

The upgrade process in the past between major versions. The move from one appliance to another keeping all settings and data.

Avantages

While patching or upgrade to new version you can easily see the compatibility of firmware /drivers both hardware and software.
Helps to prevent PSOD by giving the prior suggestions.

Inconvénients

A complete upgrade matrix for vSphere . by checking all the product company is using.

Avantages

Its easy to use, handy to solve issues..

Inconvénients

Product keeps either losing creds or some other issue, as it periodically loses connection to various vcenters..Sometimes the interface can be overwhelming..

Avantages

Ease of use and frequent updates. And very aeasy to set up, too.

Inconvénients

Not so easy to override an alert. Nothing else.

Avantages

Nice software which allows to monitor vulnerabilities and bugs and fix them. It also has features of monitoring and analyzing logs which shows only information you need to know(errors, fails) and groups them.

Inconvénients

I would like to see more information about logs and their relation and impact on system together with KA and BP and maybe history of fixing bugs graph would looks good

Avantages

The fact that I can see all the issues and potential issues that exist is fantastic, but to be given a direct path for remediation has same me hours of time.

Inconvénients

To be honest, I haven't found anything that I didn't like about it. It has don't everything I needed.

Avantages

Easy to install and configure, I have fast result with it. Whatever your environment size, admin will save hours or maybe days with this tool rather than looking for a needle in the VMware KB.

Inconvénients

Unfortunately it's only for a VMware environment, nothing for Hyper-V or Xen.
When implementations allow it, it would be interesting to have a way to apply the correction easily instead of follow the VMware KB

Avantages

It is very easy to see where you are lacking and need to be patched. As well as categorize the different issues into their importance.

Inconvénients

It would be nice to allow automated patching of systems based on your preferences. This would make this product

Avantages

simple deployment
simple configuration
simple update process
offline update possible
good visualization of issues

Inconvénients

no defined way to contact support. I did it via Twitter and then I got excellent support. They're should be a contact form on the website or within Runecast to open a ticket.

Avantages

It is everything the VMware Health Analyzer tried to be and much more.
The comprehensive coverage of applicable KB articles, DISA STIG and best practises summarised across infrastructure qualities makes reporting current states effortless.

Also, from a security perspective, the offline capability is priceless.

Inconvénients

I wish the product had been around years ago.
Not much else I can really say about what I don't like about it.

Avantages

The software reduces the time needed to follow KBs to minimum filtering out irrelevant KBs to your VMware cloud....

Inconvénients

It would be nice if it would monitor driver / firmware changes, KBs, matrix of compatibility for hardware.

Avantages

Great KB DB and ease of use. I like integration in monitoring tab in vCenter WebGUI.

Inconvénients

More templates for home dashboard. Option to acknowledge some known issues on global level (Datcenter) vCenter level.

Avantages

Easy to set up, it's just a single vm deployed in 15min, after a short scan : able to pinpoint what's not correct or missing.. Simple criss-cross between config & best practices & kb's

Inconvénients

Nothing so far. Don't really see any cons yet. Or maybe : its not free but it's normal... You don't really get use full tools for free....