Hi everyone,
We are in the process of reviewing tools to assist with management of oour SharePoint environments.We are looking at a tool that can assist with the day-to-day management of the farm, sites, and content. What we also need is reporting on user access, implement setting accross sites/libraries (e.g. versioning etc.).
We have a relatively small farm, and let’s assume finances is not an issue. We also need good support, since we do not have the appetite or the resources to struggle with a 3rd party app when things goes pear-shaped.
We’ve had demo’s by both these parties, but I’d like to hear from “the people on the ground” 🙂
Sales people tell you all the nice tales, which is right, but I need an objective (well, as far as possible) view from the community. Your assistance and comments would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
Hi Francois,
We have been using Axceler ControlPoint for over a year now on 2 SP Farms and have been extremely happy with both the functionality and support they provide. It was easy to install, intuitive to use, and has provided a level of visibility into the system and ease of system level administration that we did not have before. The reporting is extensive and easy to use. We also just purchased Change Manager, which is an added feature to move sites from environment to environment and while I can’t give it an official review, looks good so far. Good Luck!
Sharon
Thanks Krisropher for clearing all this up. So to me it seems like the difference between the 2 is not that much. It really boils down to what you need and what caters for your needs best.
I’ll go with AvePoint, I do agree it takes time to learn the product but once you have its awesome, make life super easy, but ControlPoint is catching up.
The fist thing is AvePoint expensive and they do offer modules so buy what you need, backup/restore, reporting and Admin the usual suspects I recommend, and if you dive in deep you will find many useful features for admin and makes like easy copy/clone permissions – ofcourse now its in controlpoint but how about metadata? and can you migrate user from different domain ? (its possible with Avepoint with just few clicks).
Health monitoring is awesome in AvePoint, but you need to know how to configure.
I do agree with some comments regarding the training , yes that is where Avepoint should improve, they used to good till V5 but from V6 they screwed. I can just go on, but my recommendation is AvePoint.
You do not have to take the farm down if having too update ControlPoint. Not sure where that is coming from? It is a separate install, separate  web app, separate DB….
This is a good question and comparison, I will preface by saying I have not used AvePoint’s admin module. Â Only their platform and granular backup modules with limited success compared with other products. Â I also for one think the modular model can be a bit confusing because if you don’t own all the modules you can still see them all so you dont know which ones you own! Â I have been using ControlPoint for quite some time with good success on multiple clients in multiple farm configurations. Â Seems like your farm is smaller and may be a single farm installation.
I will just address some of these points from skimming over the comments, the initial discovery of ControlPoint was minimal if not non-existent in any environment I have used the tool in. Â In fact, I would argue that while no one ‘likes’ a third party tool to be intrusive on your farm….this is the exact reason this discovery needs to take place so this information can be pulled into the controlpoint database and segregated off from the farm itself rather than conflict with requests to your content DB. Â
From a reporting perspective, all those reports you are referencing such as site collection statistics, security reports, storage usage, Â etc..these are all out of the box. I typically run them to excel if going to utilize the data or to PDF if needed to look better for the business side. The cross-site collection views and settings provides advantages as well.
Agreed that sales people typically give you the nice tales, ultimately the product has to be put to the test and I have seen enough out that tool to have confidence in its stated functionality, especially for what you outlined above.Â
