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SolarWinds NPM vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
4th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
157
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (4th)
VMware Aria Operations for ...
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
46th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
31st
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (48th), Container Monitoring (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Cloud Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 4.2%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 1.4%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

MohitKumar - PeerSpot reviewer
High-level, comprehensive, and proactive monitoring in a user-friendly interface
The solution needs to integrate with additional SDN technologies that are part of the hyper market. The solution supports many vendors by default and just included Meraki SDN with the new release, but continued expansion is important. We created a custom method to pair with unsupported vendors but that can produce a lag in performance so future releases should expand SDN support. The solution does a good job of automating features but could expand that even more.
Yves Sandfort - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to deploy, worth the money, and helpful for uptime monitoring and performance insights
Its billing model is consumption-based. I understand the consumption-based model, but it is not necessarily easy to estimate and guess how many points or how much we are going to consume on a specific application up until we get to that point. So, for us, it would be helpful to have more insights or predictability into what we can expect from a cost perspective if we are starting to use specific features. This can potentially also drive our consumption a bit more. The other thing for us is that while it is great that we have all these standard metrics, it would be good if we can also more easily define standard metrics to be consumed for our own application. At the moment, for a lot of applications, we have to reinvent the wheel every time. If there was something so that we can build our own packaging of metrics, it would be helpful. In the future, we might be deploying our software to other customers as well. So, they should make it easier to redeploy that. There should be more customizable dashboards. The Wavefront dashboards are very technical and a more business-oriented dashboard design would definitely help.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"I found a lot of valuable features in SolarWinds NPM, such as the customized application monitoring that allows you to customize any monitoring and script customization, and you also have the option to deploy and upgrade SolarWinds NPM online, which is very useful for my organization."
"A product that is well-tested and trusted in demanding situations."
"I like that SolarWinds NPM is a strong tool for monitoring network devices, switches, and routers. It's also a user-friendly tool. My team also likes how scalable it is."
"The most important feature is reporting. The reports that are generated are useful and they save a lot of time with respect to monitoring."
"Technical support is very helpful with our upgrades."
"It is considerably cheaper compared to other tools."
"What I've found most valuable about the solution is that it's scalable."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The most valuable aspects of the solution are its ease of use and its ease of implementation."
"People are very pleased with the implementation."
"The stability of Aria Operations for Applications has improved significantly over the years."
"For us, the ease of deployment in combination with TMZ was the most important part because we don't have to manually deploy a complex monitoring solution. We can more or less do that with the click of a button, and we are not dependent on the developers to provide us with all the necessary features and functions to make that work. We can just deploy it on a workload cluster and monitor at least a good part of the workload. If we want to go into detail, we clearly need to make changes, but for a good part of application monitoring, it gives us good insights."
"VMware comes with a support team, and if you have trouble, you can easily create a ticket, and VMware will help you. Therefore, the best aspect is the support."
"Tanzu itself, integrated with multiple solutions, bestows support and security upon a container platform, especially when it comes to managing open-source container platforms such as Kubernetes."
"This solution allows me to have true visibility for any metrics when it comes to my cloud, and private."
"The features I find most valuable is the querying and alerting capabilities."
 

Cons

"The solution could be more secure."
"I would like to have a Syslog server module for this product. That would make the solution better."
"Fortigate firewalls are one example of a product that we are unable to monitor properly via SolarWinds NPM."
"Consolidation of platforms would provide a smoother experience."
"Technical support and releases are not particularly reliable."
"Having more technical and support resources available in Saudi Arabia would be helpful."
"The solution is not always good with new features, so it's take a long time."
"The root cause analysis and installation faults are not clear."
"The implementation is a long process that should be improved."
"Its billing model is consumption-based. I understand the consumption-based model, but it is not necessarily easy to estimate and guess how many points or how much we are going to consume on a specific application up until we get to that point. So, for us, it would be helpful to have more insights or predictability into what we can expect from a cost perspective if we are starting to use specific features. This can potentially also drive our consumption a bit more."
"It could use a URL document server. Everything in the market is moving towards automation and everybody's looking for the single click operations as well relational data locality."
"I would like to see integration with Kubernetes cluster and APIs so that you can manage the entire stack."
"They could make it more easy to plug-in data so that a nontechnical person will be able to use it, like accountants or finance people. That way they don't have to ask us."
"The main problem I have is that the license cost is very high."
"The solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor."
"In the new version, I would love to see more prediction capabilities. It would be great if one could see the alerts get a little more enriched with information and become more human-friendly instead of the technical stuff that they put in there. I think those would be really awesome outcomes to get."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think that the cost has risen, but the functionality and versatility is way above other products."
"I believe the original setup cost was around $3500 with an annual cost of around $1200-$1500 to renew the support license. This would bring the average day-to-day cost of around $5-$6 over three years."
"Excluding the costs of running VMs and physical blade servers, our licensing costs run around US$200,000/year for over 60 polling engines."
"When I compare the cost of CA Spectrum to that of SolarWinds NPM, the cost of CA Spectrum is way too high, and the cost of SolarWinds NPM is pretty low."
"We pay approximately $700 per year for renewal of the license."
"It is not an expensive product."
"SolarWinds is expensive. That's why it's primarily banks using the solution. Small businesses can't afford it. Due to its pricing, most smaller enterprises like manufacturing companies are not interested. For example, we have a client who is also interested in traffic monitoring, but they are not purchasing SolarWinds because of the cost."
"The cost of the personal perpetual license for SolarWinds NPM is approximately $2,000."
"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."
"The licensing costs are very high, particularly when you consider that we have to purchase a level 1 license for every integration, such as the load balancer, HAProxy, and the MSSP. And if you want to use vSAN, that's another license. Then, of course, Tanzu Observability has its own separate license."
"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."
"I don't have the details. In our case, there is a mixture in place. We have production usage, and we are also doing training for VMware. So, we also have a training instance. It is worth the money you would spend on it. That's because if you were to build all of this yourself by using some of the open source tools, then you would need a lot of time."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
57%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
It actually depends on the exact purpose or kind of devices (network devices, servers, something else). Some tools are better for only network devices while others are better for a cloud monitoring...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We are partners with SolarWinds and we sell a lot of Network management to large enterprises also because of scalability, products like Network Performance Monitor & Netflow Traffic Analyzer ar...
What do you like most about VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
VMware comes with a support team, and if you have trouble, you can easily create a ticket, and VMware will help you. Therefore, the best aspect is the support.
What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
It's hard to set up Tanzu clusters. It's hard to do a POC. Once you set up a customer's environment, you easily see the problems. The initial setup should be easier and more seamless.
What is your primary use case for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
I primarily use the solution for consulting. I help company DevOps teams.
 

Also Known As

Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
1. Atlassian 2. Cisco 3. Databricks 4. DigitalOcean 5. Equinix 6. Fidelity Investments 7. Google 8. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 9. Honeywell 10. IBM 11. Intel 12. JetBlue Airways 13. LinkedIn 14. Lyft 15. Mastercard 16. Microsoft 17. MongoDB 18. Netflix 19. Nvidia 20. Oracle 21. PayPal 22. Pinterest 23. Qualcomm 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. SAP 27. Spotify 28. Square 29. TMobile 30. Twitter 31. Uber 32. VMware
Find out what your peers are saying about SolarWinds NPM vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
832,138 professionals have used our research since 2012.