SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer Reviews

We are a distributor for SolarWinds Network Traffic Analyzer (NTA) and the majority of our customers are in the banking sector. For security reasons, we deploy the solution for our customers on-premises (it's not allowed to be cloud-based).

Our customers' standard use case for SolarWinds NTA is the monitoring of bandwidth and all the traffic flowing through their networks.

The bandwidth monitoring functionality is one of the most important features for our customers. When the customer notices that their bandwidth usage is too high for some reason, they will use the traffic analysis within SolarWinds NTA to identify which protocols (e.g. HTTPS) or applications are using up the bandwidth.

Another solid feature of SolarWinds NTA is their reports. They offer real-time traffic reports that show updates every five to 10 seconds.

For the most part, our customers are satisfied with the features already present within NTA, as they mainly use it for checking to see if their bandwidth usage is okay and within reason.

One area that we struggle with is the price. Because the price of this solution is so high, we are largely unable to introduce it into the local market, and only the banking sector has the means to afford it.

The biggest reason for this is because SolarWinds charges their users per ports, such that if you have a 24-port switch, they will charge you for 24 nodes, rather than count it as one single switch. In contrast, solutions such as ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer charge users per switch, which they count as a single node. 

Besides the pricing, I also think that the technical support could be better. When we call SolarWinds' tech support, it usually takes at least 10 to 15 minutes for a response. And when you send an email, you will again have to wait some time for a response, and sometimes this can be upwards of four to five hours.

I have been working with SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer for two years.

I would rate SolarWinds NTA a seven out of ten in terms of stability. In my experience, it is more stable than solutions such as ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer, which occasionally has issues with server hangs when viewing real-time reports.

As an enterprise-level product, SolarWinds NTA is certainly scalable. Our customers in the banking sector are able to purchase more than 1,400 nodes at a time, and some customers have purchased up to 15,000 nodes.

The technical support from SolarWinds for this solution is average, in my opinion, and the response times could certainly be improved. We have to wait 10 to 15 minutes for a response when calling them, but when emailing them they sometimes only get back to you four or five hours later.

As a result, we have found that it's much more sensible to call them directly to get a ticket number and start the support process from there.

The setup is not very complicated. The first time I saw it, it looked difficult, but now it's easy to configure.

The price is high, and typically only suitable for our customers in the banking sector. In the local market outside of banking, customers are not interested in SolarWinds NTA because it is so expensive.

SolarWinds' pricing structure is the primary reason why some customers opt for another solution such as ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer. In NTA, you are charged per port, meaning that if you have a 24-port switch you will be charged for 24 individual nodes. ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer, on the other hand, charges per switch, such that if you add a switch, the entire switch will count as one single node.

Two others solutions that we can compare with SolarWinds NTA are SolarWinds NPM (Network Performance Monitor) and ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer.

We have found that our banking customers prefer SolarWinds NPM compared to NTA because in NPM you can also view factors such as CPU and switch utilization, and check which ports are up or down. On the whole, they can monitor much more with NPM, and this is especially important for the banking sector. When it comes to networked devices such as ATMs, NPM provides good notification features where customers can be notified via email or SMS whenever an ATM link goes down.

ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer is another similar solution to SolarWinds NTA, but it's not nearly as good compared to SolarWinds NTA and NPM in terms of real-time reporting. ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer's reporting seems to suffer from server hanging issues and it sometimes takes a minute or more to update the reports.

Overlooking the pricing and the response times from their technical support, SolarWinds NTA is a good solution and our existing customers are satisfied with the product.

I would rate SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer a six out of ten.

I use SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer to get insight into the traffic from different locations, even if there are no interfaces or routers. The solution helps me to clearly understand if there is an issue, for example, if traffic is being blocked, what exactly the issue is, and anything else that the network team needs to look into.

What the network team found most valuable in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is that it helps them to troubleshoot or analyze the issue. For example, traffic that comes from our location: India, goes to the US, so for the network team to analyze where the traffic comes from and where it is directed, and whether the packets are being dropped, they use SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer.

The network team also likes that through the solution, they can analyze the complete traffic utilization and how they're going to use it.

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is user-friendly. The team finds it comfortable to use.

There are some areas for improvement in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer. There are some challenges with the solution when compared to other monitoring tools such as difficulty in operations and difficulty with backup installation. My team is currently trying out different solutions but would need to see how it goes.

What I'd like to see in the next release of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is a change in the way data is being collected and displayed on the graph. Currently, data is being measured every fifteen seconds, but it would be better if it's measured in minutes, in particular, five, ten, or fifteen minutes. As an administrator, I feel it would be easier and more helpful if SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer collects data every five, ten, or fifteen minutes, rather than in seconds. Doing this would also give more accurate data.

I've been using SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer for the past eight years.

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is a stable solution. It works perfectly. Sometimes, there may be services that hang because we're doing something in the backend, so we'll just restart the service and that'll be taken care of. Stability is not a problem with the solution.

I haven't used the technical support for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer.

I utilize multiple tools and I can say the same for my company and the clients. The reason for choosing SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer over other monitoring tools is that it's very comfortable to use. It's a user-friendly tool.

The initial setup for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer was easy. There was no problem with setting it up. From start to finish, deploying the solution took two hours, but if you'll do some configurations, it could take more time.

We have licenses for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer. In terms of pricing, its license is not that expensive versus other tools such as HP.

Currently, I'm using version 4.6 of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer.

I'm a tech lead and I'm in different teams, and my company supports different clients. Clients have consultations with my team of fifty members.

I would recommend SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer to others because it's very easy to use. Once the solution's installed, you can immediately use it to find issues and gain insight into the traffic that comes from different locations. It can also analyze whether packets are being dropped and at what time and on which day. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is also a lot better in terms of cost when compared to other tools, so I'm recommending it to others.

I'm rating SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer eight out of ten. What would make my rating a ten is if the display of data or the reporting is improved. For example, rather than me selecting different graphs to see the data I need, if I could see everything such as the minimum, maximum, and averages in terms of data in one shot or in one timeline, that would raise my rating from an eight to a ten.

SolarWinds is a traditional enterprise network monitoring platform. It provides an event-triggered alarm. 

This is as opposed to ThousandEyes which is an application for delivery and performance metric monitoring. ThusandEyes is a service delivery tool for SaaS-based applications, with service delivery monitoring and circuit performance metric monitoring. Also, whereas SolarWinds is on-premises, this solution is cloud-based. Their analytic tools are on a cloud-based portal, but we have a physical, agent-based performance monitoring tool installed across the site.

SolarWinds has improved our organization because whenever a device is down, we get an alert. Or when a major interface is down, we get an alert. This is important since we need to know when a device or major link is down.

In the case of ThousandEyes, the feature I've found most valuable is that it is an active synthetic monitoring tool. It provides per-hub packet loss latency information across the private and public internet. This provides us with capability outside our network.

SolarWinds is traditional. It's old school and SNMP-based. It provides event-triggered alarms. We rely on the features to monitor our network device to see if it is online or not. It tells us if the interface is down or up or if the device is down or up.

Regarding SolarWinds, no major comment or improvement. We just use it. Because it's an old-school technique, we only rely on it for alerts, events, system logs, etc. That's why I said we don't put any effort into it.

Since we've only just begun using ThousandEyes, we're not sure yet. But there probably will be issues.

We have been using SolarWinds for a long time.

In terms of ThousandEyes, we just deployed it. We finished the Proof of Concept and deployed before the New Year.

The stability of Thousand Eyes is good. It meets our use case requirements.

As for SolarWinds, it is a traditional platform used everywhere. It has been on the market for 15 to 20 years. And within our organization, it is stable, too.

ThousandEyes will definitely be scalable because it's a cloud-native solution and they use a leveraging agent to collect. Cloud is more scalable compared to an on-premise deployment.

It is only our network team of 15 networking admins working on these two applications. And it requires around one or two people for deployment and maintenance of these solutions.

We are using SolarWinds every day as our monitoring platform and we don't have any plans to increase usage.

Before using ThousandEyes we only used SolarWinds.

The initial setup of ThousandEyes is very straightforward. It's not complex. It is really simple from a deployment and configuration perspective. Because we have multiple sites, the majority of the deployment time is for logistics and not for configuration or setup. It's very straightforward and simple to set it up. We are a global enterprise, so it did take a while. We used a vendor as a professional consultant service to help us deploy. It was a good experience working with them.

We pay for yearly licensing on both solutions. 

We have already seen a return on our investment by going with ThousandEyes. We already see the benefit, which is that we get visibility. That's the only thing we wanted. We can pre-benchmark service delivery and monitor across different sites on the cloud.

Before choosing ThousandEyes, we evaluated Riverbed. We select a solution based on our use case. Our main purpose here is to monitor service delivery on the cloud and Riverbed cannot do that. Riverbed could replace SolarWinds but does not have that capability, which ThousandEyes does. So that's the main difference.

As for advice for people looking to implement either solution, it's on a case-by-case basis as each person has different requirements. In our case, one can do somethings and can't do others. It's not the silver bullet that can fix everything, but we selected them based on our requirements.

On a scale of one to ten, I'd rate SolarWinds a 5. It does not flow. It cannot do our metric performance monitoring. So it is very limited. They can do it but in a very limited fashion. It is only good for SNMP-based alerts.

Regarding ThousandEyes, I would give it a seven, because you can set a threshold but they are not really alert-based. They can generate an alert but they can't say if a device is up or down, they cannot monitor.

So you basically have to supplement with each other, that's why we still have both.

The most valuable feature of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is that it watches how your network is doing, checks the traffic, and warns you if there might be problems. It is great at telling you if your devices are working and it keeps an eye on your network's overall performance.

In terms of improvement, it can be complex to set up and configure, and the user guides provided can also be complex, especially when dealing with certain configuration aspects. Improved SQL capabilities would be useful in the future.

I have been using SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer for four years. 

It is a stable product.

It is a fairly scalable product. There are one thousand users at our company. I would not recommend it for smaller businesses.

The technical support is good. They are very responsive. I would rate it an eight out of ten.

Positive

It is very complex to set up and SolarWinds has to send someone from their team to assist with that.

We have definitely seen a return on investment with NetFlow Traffic Analyzer.

The product is not too expensive. The license is renewed yearly. When it comes to support for NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, it might cost extra. Usually, we pay for support each year, and it lasts for one year. After that, it needs to be renewed separately.

It is a valuable tool, particularly for modeling and optimizing network systems. Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten.

We use this product for monitoring our bandwidth. We run daily reports, send the data to Tableau, put that in a map of Texas, and look at all of our sites. It tells us if we're nearing 80% and when we need to increase bandwidth.

Using this solution helps us to better manage our bandwidth. We have it handled with no problem. We export information every morning so that when everybody gets to work, we can look at it and tell exactly what is going on in terms of bandwidth.

The most valuable feature is the ability to look for any increases in bandwidth over time so that we can plan before it becomes critical. We have our threshold set at 80%, which means that when we hit that capacity, it's time to start looking at things like whether there is a problem in the network or whether an increase in bandwidth needs to take place. Essentially, it gives us a tool where we can manage our business proactively instead of reactively.

I have 19 direct reports that use this product.

It's not a cheap product, so the pricing could be improved.

We have been using the SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer for about eight years.

This product appears to be very stable.

This product seems to scale just fine. We've got 862 satellite sits we're looking at and we receive data from more than 340 land sites. I'd say that it has scaled very well for us.

We have had really good support. If we have issues then my technical person makes one call and gets help.

Prior to SolarWinds, we were using WhatsUp Gold. We weren't getting out of it what we needed, so we did a trial of SolarWinds and really liked what they saw. That is why we changed.

I was not managing the team when the setup took place, but I didn't hear of any major issues so I would say that the initial setup was pretty straightforward.

We purchased it outright but there are ongoing maintenance fees. From what I have seen, price-wise, it is close to the competitors.

When selecting new products, we always put out an RFI to see who has what out and available. Afterward, we evaluate those and make a selection. The NOC was responsible for choosing the product and then it came over to my team, the network service group. Since the NOC was responsible for the comparison, I don't have information on the other solutions that were evaluated.

As this solution is implemented now, we're running fine and it is difficult to see things that can improve. It's giving us all of the information we need. For example, we have SNMP traps set up and we are able to look at offices across the entire state of Texas. It's a pretty big job. We are very much sold on this solution and plan to continue using it.

My advice for anybody who is considering SolarWinds to get the free 30-day trial, install it, test it, and see if it meets their needs. They have a lot of different modules available, so you buy the ones that you need and implement them.

Overall, we are happy with this product. That said, nothing is perfect and there's always something better.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We deployed it with one of the hospitals for network infrastructure. Then we deployed into a hotel system in the Middle East for the FIFA World Cup. In the data center, it's just magic.

The configuration and ease of deployment are great. Within half a day, you can start seeing the traffic data coming in. Over a period of time, you can gradually improve the quality of the data and the sampling rate. For example, let's say you have got a new network or a new extension to a network, and you want to see its behavior. You cannot wait two or three days as you'll get hacked. With this, within a few hours, you can just bring the MPM or APM, any other SolarWinds product, and immediately you can start seeing the traffic coming in.

The deployment is fast and easy.

It doesn't cost too much. 

I'm expecting to see a little bit more artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms. They need a bit more sophistication in that. 

We'd like more user input into the analysis, not just what they provide. It'll be good to put some user inputs like business timing, high volume of traffic, et cetera. With that, we could be more responsive.

All analytics could basically be more in-depth.

I've been using the solution since 2015, about seven years. 

We have six large clients using the solution right now. 

Support is very good. You raise a ticket, you get a response, and they're technically good. That's what the main thing is. We get the help we need.

To actually install and deploy, you need about two hours. You need half a day to ensure the client data is coming in and that NetFlow is turned on so we can start seeing the traffic, SNMP traps, and all of those things. Turning on the things to the client devices takes time. However, for SolarWinds itself, it's two hours to get going.

You only need one and a half people to handle deployment and maintenance. They could be anyone from an engineer to a senior engineer, a CCMA, or CCMP.

All SolarWinds products are very affordable.

It's gone through an evolution. I have used about four or five versions of the product and the whole family of products. It's been great overall. 

You can use a cloud or on-premises deployment model.

I'd advise potential new users to get the trial license and get a company to help and do a proof of concept. A POC would only take about two weeks - not more than that.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

We use SolarWinds as a core tool to monitor our internal infrastructure.

In terms of the implementation, we've actually used SAM, the server and application monitoring tools. The network configuration tools are very useful in terms of bulk upgrading switches and infrastructure. Also, the Network Traffic Analyzer was extremely useful to track down errant users soaking up bandwidth.

Quite a lot of our internal investigations are actually using the Network Traffic Analyzer to find out which computers are soaking up the network bandwidth.

The biggest problem with SolarWinds is that they've tried to integrate a lot into the core modules. I think it would actually really benefit if they are more focused. It's packing a lot of technology in now, it's very confusing areas in respect to what the product can potentially do. Even though it's split into very specific core modules, there's quite a lot of overlap. I think anybody being dropped in front of SolarWinds for the first time could initially be overwhelmed.

I think it's a very comprehensive product. It could do to even be toned down a bit. It is very powerful. They keep on pushing more and more features and I don't think it's a good thing, because we've noted quite a few stability issues with the product. I'm not saying 100% of it is all SolarWinds really related, but it's doing a lot. It's a very complex product and it's difficult to troubleshoot it when it goes wrong.

The problem is that SolarWinds is trying to bolt in too much and that can leave bugs, which you have to then sort out, leaving the product unstable. SolarWinds needs to try and slow down and improve the stability of the product, as opposed to bringing out more and more features.

In terms of our environment, it's reasonably stable but not perfect. The stability can be improved. 

I think that it's really difficult to tell just whether the issues are environmental problems or whether it's SolarWinds itself. Certainly, core modules in SolarWinds would crash. Specifically, SolarWinds information services would crash quite a bit. I was constantly talking to SolarWinds about optimizing the product in order to try it to get it to working better. It's got quite heavy demands in respect to the SQL environments as well. It has got some stability issues, but it may not solely be down to SolarWinds.

We have, in terms of total numbers of nodes, including switches and nodes, perhaps six or 700 switches and nodes.

I think the product is very scalable but it's also very expensive to scale it. You have to pay for multiple steps of the initial implementation cost in order to scale the product. For example, if you spent 50,000 pounds putting in SolarWinds, you can pretty much say that you're going to pay the same in order to put another poller in because it's literally duplicating the environment across multiple pollers. It's quite expensive in order to scale the product.

We've utilized SolarWinds to its maximum for the environment that I've been testing it in. Certainly we've invested in six of the SolarWind's modules, and I don't think that there's anything further which we want to buy at this stage.

If one starts to notice performance issues, then it's worth considering putting in other pollers. And if you put in other pollers, that's really expensive because you effectively duplicate the license costs. It's fairly scalable in terms of up to the limits, the licenses you've purchased but if then you want to go really beyond the limitations of a license and put additional polling stations in, and then it gets expensive.

I think their technical support is excellent. It really is very good technical support. I can't fault SolarWinds technical support. It's very, very good.

We were previously using Zabbix. We also looked at alternative products such as Nagios, but SolarWinds was actually decided on only because it's got a lovely graphical interface, it's easy to use, has powerful reporting features, and excellent support.

The initial setup is fairly straightforward. Once you actually get familiar with what it's doing, it's fairly easy to implement and use. There's not a problem installing it and actually using it, but it's just a complex product.

In terms of actually installing core modules, it took a couple of hours.

To fine tune it, you're probably looking at really a month of operational stats. Because obviously it goes off and it builds baselines, based on the current infrastructure. Then those need looking at and optimizing for the environment it's working in.

We did the implementation ourselves but we took advantage of the Smart Start programs, which are opportunities given by SolarWinds in order to train.

Time to actually fully deploy is quite straightforward. To install all six SolarWinds modules, you could easily do it in one day. Then it's about 30 days to actually build baseline stats and optimize, and then you're going to probably spend really the next six months optimizing the alerts and dashboards.

We could say that everybody, in terms of the team that I was working with, was involved in SolarWinds in some shape or form. In terms of core people looking after the product, perhaps three or four staff members are needed. 

There are additional costs if one wishes to purchase other modules or increase the available functionality then you can pay for additional licensing options. It gets very expensive once you actually decide to scale the infrastructure but if you stick actually within the current license limits, which you may be licensed for, then that would be reasonably cost-effective.

My advice to someone considering this solution would be to look on the THWACK forums, which is the SolarWinds community support. It's a user support forum. I'd pose lots of questions on THWACK and I'd take advantage of the 30-day trial as well, which is available for all corporates initially when you want to use a product. You get 30 days free of charge to try out a product without obligations.

SolarWinds is fairly competitive. There are lots of tools and products out there so you really do need to look at what options are actually available before jumping in and going down the SolarWinds route. I think if anybody purchases the SolarWinds route, then they are buying into a solution as opposed to just purchasing a package. Once you put SolarWinds in, you're then tempted to go out and explore other SolarWinds modules and then very, very quickly you become absorbed into the SolarWinds community.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

This solution allows me to see what we are using in terms of bandwidth on the WAN. I can use that in conjunction with Observium to figure out what endpoint on the network is pulling a lot of data, and what type of data it is.

One of the problems is that I am using two different products with two different dashboards to chase down the same problem. The bandwidth analyzer alerts me to the issue of excessive bandwidth usage, but then I have to look at the second product to figure out where. I have to find out what switch, what port, and potentially what host, so it takes a little bit of investigating to really narrow down what's going on.

This solution gives us a simple way to monitor traffic that is coming in and out. It shows me how much bandwidth is both inbound and outbound, and it is shown clearly on the dashboard.

The most valuable feature is the alarm that is set up to trigger based on bandwidth utilization. When we are alerted then we know that we have to look further into the issue.

This solution does not do a very good job when I am trying to look deeper into my internal network, in particular with respect to individual ports.

I have been using the SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer for between two and three years.

This is a stable solution. It works and I really don't have any issue with it.

There are three of us who use this solution from an administrative point of view. I am the manager of the department, there is a senior engineer, and there is a junior network engineer who uses it as well.

We did not have anything in place before implementing this solution.

The initial setup was straightforward.

One of my internal engineers deployed this solution within the company.

This was a good solution when we began using it a few years ago. However, now as the company is growing, I have more data lines coming in and I have more endpoints, I want to combine products. I'm looking for a single pane of glass dashboard to keep an eye on the entire infrastructure. As it is now, I have three dashboards that I have to keep track of.

Right now, this solution is doing what I need it to do. There is probably more room for improvement but I use the product in a simplistic way so there are things that I have not learned about it. Ideally, I would like a single product that does everything we need.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.