SolarWinds NPM Reviews

It combines and presents information from many different sources, giving a corporate-wide vision on a single pane of glass. The user interface is logical and standardised; if you know one module, you know the others. Everything is customisable. Support techs are great.

It can be selectively focused. At one stage, it simply highlighted full boot volumes, and steadily increased to now analysing poorly performing web pages & SQL queries. It’s what you need it to be & when you need it to be that.

Server stability dramatically improved, additional bandwidth was purchased where needed, and ESX resource was clawed back to be re-assigned, so system performance was improved and new hardware purchases were postponed.

Time: A worldwide deployment can be confusing for dispersed users with non-local times. Each node should have a local time (with summer offset if appropriate) & each user should view & report in their local time. This means that the database must record metrics in Universal Time and that each node must be assigned an offset with user viewing based on their local time. It’s a significant re-write, but is essential to attract global customers.

We have been using various modules since 2003. Right now, most modules are at the latest version including IP Address Manager 4.3, Network Traffic Analyser 4.1.1, Network Performance Monitor 11.5.2, Server and Application Manager 6.2.2, Network Configuration Manager 7.4, Web Performance Monitor 2.2.0, Voice and Network Quality Manager 4.2.2, User and Device Tracker 3.2.3 plus Virtualisation Manager v7, Additional Polling Engines, Additional Web Servers and the Engineers Toolset.

I have only rarely encountered stability issues.

I have only rarely encountered scalability issues.

The quality of the support staff is exceptional and their dedication to improve the client’s installation is outstanding. The community site must be unique in the way that customers, SolarWinds engineers and SolarWinds managers interact.

I have been forced to use a variety of other products with other clients, but most have migrated to NPM after an evaluation. Simplicity in use, in administration & the ability to present anything that management or the business wants is a killer to other products.

Initial setup was simple. Run an evaluation & win the team over, then procure the hardware/VMs/licences & follow the books.

SolarWinds used to make a big thing about “20% of the cost for 80% of the functionality”. I think that the cost has risen, but the functionality and versatility is way above other products.

I regularly have to run gap analysis on other products, such as CA Spectrum, Nagios, Check_MK, OneSight, PRTG, and Munin, but NPM always wins. J

Download and run the evaluation bundles on a spare server; it‘ll offer SQL Express.

1.NPM can help keep a watch on the network and devices like switches, routers, access point. It can monitor any SNMP enabled devices in real time. 2.NPM can easily scale up when your network grows beyond the usual limits and it can monitor the network and connected devices with same efficiency and speed. Scale up is primarily handled by Orion Hot Standby Engine which keeps a watch on the health and functioning of the primary NPM system. 3.The Orion website has the ability to run from machines other than the Orion server and allows additional web server to be added. This allows more users to access the Orion web portal without impacting the overall performance. 4. It supports multiple vendors and thus can monitor majority of the network devices 5. Microsoft Active Directory support

1.The user interface is not intuitive enough and needs improvements in certain parts. 2.The web interface does not have a good support for some browsers like Google Chrome. It officially supports IE and Firefox. 3. Windows Vista systems are not officially supported from SolarWinds.

Solarwinds NPM has lots of features not found in some other network performance monitoring tools e.g. seamless integration with Microsoft Active Directory. It can easily scale up when there is a need to support and monitor higher number of devices without impacting the overall performance. There are certain pain points that need to be addressed like improving the overall user interface and support for more number of web browsers.

Server and network monitoring.

• Single pane for monitoring
• Scalable
• Creates new business opportunities.
  

Monitoring.

More MIBs.

One to three years.

We use SolarWinds NPM to monitor and manage network devices and infrastructure in our environment.

SolarWinds NPM has helped our organization by providing a proactive approach to understanding the current trends in the environment, utilization of the resources, and providing inventory reports of the environment. This has helped us stay ahead of the cost for new infrastructure requirements as well as licenses.

The solution could improve in many areas, such as the marketing and description of the products, providing areas of improvement, cloud capabilities, and being able to be more streamlined with the current integration points with other applications.

I have been using SolarWinds NPM for approximately two years.

I have found the stability of SolarWinds NPM to be good.

The scalability has been adequate.

We have multiple users using the solution with various roles, such as network administration, server administration, and reporting users.

We have plans to increase usage. We are currently leveraging the internal infrastructure aspects of the environment. We're going to expand it and we purchased additional infrastructure to expand the visibility across multiple areas.

The technical support offered by SolarWinds NPM is pretty good.

The initial setup was straightforward. We deployed the solution from new and completed the upgrades. 

We coordinate with the vendor to help support the implementation. It can take many days depending on the modules that need to be installed. It took us approximately two days.

We need at least one staff member in each focus area for the implementation of the solution, totaling approximately six, depending on the modules you have.

We have a multi-year license for the use of this solution. There are additional costs for recourses in the environment.

Before choosing SolarWinds NPM we evaluated other solutions such as Splunk and ScienceLogic. The flexibility and the overall breadth of different modules that SolarWinds has to offer were superior to the other solutions evaluated.

I rate SolarWinds NPM an eight out of ten.

It is a good solution, it provides multiple module options, easy to use, and predominantly easy to find people to support it in the industry.

On-premises

We use this solution for infrastructure monitoring, including servers and network devices.

This has helped us to monitor the availability of our routers, switches, servers, and virtual environments. We also use it to monitor our services. When a critical service goes down, SolarWinds will send us an email alert. It also supplies us with information that makes it easier for us to find the root cause.

The most valuable feature is the notification that we get, via email, when a device in our network goes down.

The user should be able to customize the dashboard to their own requirements. Right now, we have to design separate dashboards for visualization. For example, there is one for the environment and another for the infrastructure. I would like to design a single dashboard that contains my visualized environment, my physical environment, my services, and my processes. This would make the job of monitoring easier.

Application Performance Monitoring should be included in this solution.

The reporting is in need of improvement.

Three years.

The stability is very nice. This is a good solution, compared to other monitoring solutions.

We have had no issues with respect to scalability. As we get more devices, routers, and servers, we simply add them to SolarWinds for monitoring.

There are nine people that manage this solution and receive email alerts. We have six people with read-only access in our NOC department, and there is also an admin console that the remaining three people are managing.

There are a lot of guides online, and whenever we have issues we consult them. Most of the guides are "do it yourself", and we have not encountered any problem that has necessitated contacting technical support.

Prior to this solution, we were using HP NNM, the Network Node Manager. With HP the monitoring was in silos, whereas SolarWinds gives us a unified dashboard. This is the reason that we switched.

The initial setup for this solution is very straightforward.

The time required for deployment depends on the number of devices that you want to monitor. For example, if you want to monitor a hundred devices then I think that it will take three or four days.

In our environment, we are monitoring more than four hundred servers and approximately two hundred network devices. Our deployment took about three weeks to complete.

Two or three staff are suitable for deployment.

We handled the implementation in-house.

We have a perpetual license for this solution, and my impression is that this solution is cheap.

In addition to this solution, we evaluated SCOM. We found that SolarWinds is better.

SolarWinds is a great solution, and I think that for anybody looking for a nice infrastructure monitoring tool, this solution will do the job.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

CRC monitoring for each port is a valuable feature for us.

Today, the webapps are getting worse for showing all items. Sometimes your browser will not respond.

My recommendation is to create separate console-based applications, especially for network operation centers.

The security information and event management could be improved.

I used it for five months, then removed it from my system.

I had issues with the SQL database, and I would suggest they add MySQL.

There was slow performance after adding 100 devices with 400-500 elements with 10 second interval pooling.

There were issues with scaling it.

Customer Service:

0/10 as there were no knowledge base articles when I used it, and every new patch required customer login to apply.

Technical Support:

The product I am still using, PRTG, was very simple, so I never had experience with technical support.

I am still using PRTG.

Initial setup was a simple process.

I worked with the partner, and honestly, we did not require any support after the initial installation.

For small customers, it's good.

• PRTG
• Nagios

They should change the database and OS.

Network performance monitoring was invaluable.

We had issues pinpointing the exact location of a problem due to configuration of a particular bandwidth. This was due to the Cisco firewall configuration.

I used it for four years.

No, it's also fairly easy to administrate.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

Customer Service:

Good.

Technical Support:

Technical Support has plenty of room for improvement, knowledge of their product was not very strong.

No previous solution was used.

It was fairly easy, but you just need to make sure that you have a SQL server on a different box or otherwise you would run into problems later on after your database grows.

We implemented it in-house.

We used it 24/7 and it had a great ROI.

I don't remember exactly, but it was a few thousand dollars for NPM with both NTA and SAM Administrator.

We didn't evaluate anything else.

Make sure you have a strong database server separate from the NPM server.