SolarWinds NPM and Cisco Intersight compete in the network and cloud management sector. SolarWinds appears to have the upper hand in community support and network management capabilities, while Cisco Intersight is stronger in cloud integration and manageability.
Features: SolarWinds NPM is noted for robust network management capabilities with extensive SNMP monitoring, easy configuration, and modular pricing. It supports multiple vendors and provides proactive alerting. Cisco Intersight stands out in cloud integration, accommodating both on-premise and hybrid environments, with orchestration across multi-cloud setups. Its manageability and integration with Cisco data center solutions are key strengths.
Room for Improvement: SolarWinds NPM users highlight issues with complex alert configurations, server resource utilization, and a need for more automation and scalability. Integration of multiple modules can be cumbersome, with a desire for a more intuitive setup for beginners. Cisco Intersight users see room for enhancements in hybrid cloud management, automation capabilities, and easier integration with external tools. The need for a simpler user experience suggests improvements in usability and configuration.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds NPM primarily supports on-premises deployments but also extends to hybrid cloud environments. Users report a stable setup process, although technical proficiency is often required for larger installations. Customer service receives mixed reviews; technical support is regarded as knowledgeable, but response times need improvement. Cisco Intersight offers versatility in deployment across public, hybrid, and on-premises scenarios, praised for straightforward cloud integrations. Customer service is generally rated high with solid technical support, though response time for non-critical issues could be better.
Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds NPM offers competitive initial pricing with modular licensing, though costs can escalate with additional features. Users find it provides good value, particularly in complex environments where comprehensive monitoring reduces downtime and troubleshooting costs. Cisco Intersight presents a cost-effective solution with competitive pricing, especially beneficial for large organizations needing cloud integration. Although not the cheapest, it delivers value in line with its feature set and integration capabilities, making it suitable for environments using Cisco technologies.
The return on investment is significant as the solution effectively reduces costs while being worth its expense.
For complex issues, it's challenging to get the right engineer quickly unless you have a specific contract like CX.
Cisco provides better support than anyone else.
We had contact with SolarWinds regarding the implementation, and they were helpful.
They have good technical support.
SolarWinds NPM is scalable and effective in handling large network infrastructures.
Some steps are not included in the official documentation, which can create challenges.
There is a significant issue regarding migration from UCS Manager into Intersight without formatting the Fabric Interconnects (FI), which is problematic in a production environment.
More products should be made compatible with iWORK, including more software and hardware.
SolarWinds needs to upscale on observability and add full-fledged observability features, including security features.
The pricing mechanism sounds fair.
The solution is considered expensive.
Pricing-wise, SolarWinds NPM is more expensive than PRTG.
This solution has provided time savings and required fewer people to operate this tool, rather than direct cost savings.
It provides visibility into other products and storage, and is beneficial for environments where Cisco and other vendors coexist, allowing full visibility of the entire infrastructure.
It offers visibility and optimization of workloads, which are very important features for a company.
The most valuable feature for us is the database performance analyzer, which we use a lot.
SolarWinds NPM has specific modules for monitoring different network capabilities, which provides rich features for carrying out specific tasks.
Cisco Intersight is Cisco’s systems management platform that delivers intuitive computing through cloud-powered intelligence. This platform offers a more intelligent level of management that enables IT organizations to analyze, simplify, and automate their environments in ways that were not possible with prior generations of tools. This capability empowers organizations to achieve significant savings in Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and to deliver applications faster, so they can support new business initiates. The advantages of the model-based management of the Cisco UCS platform plus Cisco Intersight are extended to Cisco UCS servers and Cisco HyperFlex and Cisco HyperFlex Edge systems. Cisco HyperFlex Edge is optimized for remote sites, branch offices, and edge environments.
SolarWinds NPM is a network monitoring solution that enables you to detect, diagnose, and resolve network performance issues and outages quickly and efficiently. The solution is a powerful tool that can help you increase service levels, reduce downtime with multi vendor network monitoring, simplify the management of complex network devices, improve operational efficiency, and much more.
SolarWinds NPM Features
SolarWinds NPM has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:
SolarWinds NPM Benefits
There are several benefits to implementing SolarWinds NPM. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:
Reviews from Real Users
Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the SolarWinds NPM solution.
PeerSpot user Andrew N., Senior Network Engineer at Element Critical, says, “The "Performance Analyzer" feature is the solution's most valuable aspect. It's able to do the bounded graphs of all the interface stats, from errors to broadcasts and to current traffic. With a click of a button you're able to, in one interface, look at historical data for those items.” He also adds, “From the troubleshooting point of view, just having that peace of mind is great. And, The solution is extremely stable. We haven't had any issues in that regard. We haven't had issues with bugs, glitches, or crashes."
Daniel S., Systems and Data Warehouse Supervisor at MMSD, mentions, “The alerting and usage tracking is a valuable feature because it alerts us when we're getting near capacity on disk space, network utilization or processor utilization. It helps us manage our capacity and enables us to be proactive.”
A Senior Vice President and CIO at a financial services firm explains, “As we look to add more servers to our virtual environment and to understand the impact, the solution allows us to dig into the historical charts related to capacity planning. It also gives us visibility of spikes and allows us to track down the reasons for their occurrences. So too, it makes room for potential processes that have gotten hung or runaway and to know when it's time to reboot a server or service.”
Dinesh N., Digital Innovation at Bobcat Company, states, “The best part of the solution is the sharing display. It gives a general public ID wherein everyone can link to a public display. That's a good feature.”
Fazal A., Implementation & Support Specialist at 360Factors, comments, “We have configured multiple alerts for our network devices, including routers and switches, so that we are notified if any interface goes down. In the event an interface goes down, we have multiple reports that include availability monitoring, network uptime monitoring, and network downtime monitoring. These reports are on multiple schedules such as the end of the day, end of the last business day of the week, monthly, and quarterly. This gives us the ability to provide reports to our management and let them know the performance of our network.”
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