SolarWinds NPM Reviews

We use SolarWinds NPM for monitoring. We don't change anything, and we just look at it.

I like the tracking feature to track devices and see where they are connected. This is very practical.

The console could be more user-friendly. It would be better if SolarWinds updated the user interface.

I have worked with SolarWinds NPM for two or three years. 

SolarWinds NPM is a stable solution.

SolarWinds NPM is a scalable solution, but it costs a lot. As long as you pay, you can scale it as much as you like.

Technical support is quite efficient, but they have to be a little more responsive.

On a scale from one to five, I'll give them at least four.

Positive

The initial setup was quite complex and took a while. You need an engineer to install the solution and the database and configure everything. We have only two people accessing and maintaining SolarWinds.

We had a contractor implement this solution.

I did a proof of concept with ManageEngine. The functionalities are similar, but the ManageEngine interface is way more user-friendly.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give SolarWinds NPM a seven.

We are a mining company, and we use this solution to monitor our system operations. We monitor the truck service, and we have the network devices installed onto the equipment.

Their support team is efficient, and it is easy to set up.

The root cause analysis and installation faults are not clear.

I have been using this solution for two years.

It is stable.

Their support is good.

It was easy to set up. It took less than a month.

I would recommend this solution. I would rate it an eight out of 10.

We primarily use the solution for network health.

The ease of deployment is great. I also would say that it gave us good capabilities to tune alarms. 

I'm overall a huge fan of Solarwinds. To me, it's a top quadrant for a solution and I would be pushing for it internally were it not cost-prohibitive for startups.

The solution is stable.

The scalability is good.

The initial setup is easy.

The downside was the expense. At large, large companies, that's okay. However, at companies like mine where we're building a tech startup, it can be cost-prohibitive.

They've had some issues with security, and confidence in their product is probably down.

Technical support can be slow to respond.

I would like to see more of a focus on edge computing and edge device monitoring.

I've used the solution for several years.

The stability is good. Aside from the very public hack, from a user's standpoint, it's good.

It's easy to scale. I'm probably an avid fan and I'd say it's easy to scale. 

We have around 100 to 150 people using it at our company.

We didn't always get the responsiveness that we needed in terms of the level of urgency. If it was something where it was potentially project-related and very time-sensitive, they didn't match our level of urgency which could be frustrating. 

That said, overall, when it came to deployment or wanting upgrades or improvements or changes, that we would get good support. 

Still, for incidents where you are in a mission-critical and you have an incident that you need assistance with, they weren't always as quick to respond.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward and simple. A company wouldn't have any issues with it. It's somewhat easy to deploy, however, I'm not the engineer. I was the business leader. I just know that I never received any complaints.

The solution is expensive and may not be very affordable for startups or smaller companies.

We're just customers and end-users.

We are likely using the latest version of the solution. I cannot speak to the exact version number.

We use both the public and private cloud deployment models. 

I led a team of several hundred engineers who used SolarWinds every day. I would be involved in making the decision of a product to go through. Once they came in and recommended me their top three, I would choose it.

I would advise potential users to first take a look at some of the newer vendors on the market who may be a little bit more nimble and are coming out of the box with a focus on edge and edge devices. SolarWinds has a heavy, heavy background. There are lighter options. 

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten.

We have a data center that is used by multiple clients and we need to see how applications are performing when clients are on our network. The NPM tool is used to analyze what different applications are consuming, in terms of bandwidth.

The most valuable feature is the graphical user interface.

SolarWinds needs to be improved such that it is on par with the leading products in the market. There are better products available, albeit more expensive.

We have been using SolarWinds NPM for three months.

This is a mature product and the stability is quite good.

We have eight users including an operations analyst, system analyst, and support engineers.

We have been in contact with technical support and they are good.

SolarWinds was the first product of this type that we used.

The initial setup is straightforward. The implementation took about two weeks in a controlled environment. We had no problems with the installation and connecting to our devices.

We did not require assistance for the deployment.

One person is suitable for deployment and maintenance.

It is not an expensive product.

We will probably continue looking for a better product.

This is a product that I recommend, although it requires technical skills in order to use it.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

The valuable features are SNMP monitoring of servers, CPU utilization, as well as memory and disk-space utilization.

Without NPM monitoring, we would be in a world of hurt and constantly responding to outages and unexpected downtime. NPM allows us to be proactive and fix things before they cause downtime.

On a fairly regular basis, we have servers whose disk drives begin to run low on available space. NPM alerts us when disk space is getting low. We are then able to free up space or add additional storage to avoid a problem that would be caused by running out of available space on the disk.

I would like to see NPM become better able to create dependencies automatically so that we won’t receive alerts for all devices.

For instance, if the power goes out at one of our locations, it would be nice if we could receive a summary alert. The alert could describe the possible causes of a power outage because NPM ‘saw’ our UPS at the site go into battery mode and then eventually it ran out of power. Intelligence like this would be a HUGE addition to an already great product.

I can’t really think of any else. SolarWinds is constantly improving and updating the product and we LOVE every aspect of it.

We have never experienced any stability issues with NPM.

We did hit the maximum number of resources for a single poller. However, all we had to do was purchase an additional poller to scale out NPM to support our growing environment.

I would rate technical support as top notch.

The setup is simple and straightforward. It walks you through everything that needs to happen and is very clear and easy.

SolarWinds is a bargain for the price. You can spend a LOT more on “more sophisticated” monitoring systems, but all you really get is added complexity and an inferior product.

Before this solution, we evaluated IBM Tivoli and WhatsUp Gold.

Go online, download a free trial, and give it a spin for yourself before buying.

It is hard to identify a single feature for each product as the three products function as a chorus to help me manage our IT throughout the enterprise. Nonetheless, here are the valuable features of each product.

NPM 12.0

The most helpful feature with in NPM is the NetPath Services. Having the ability to view the end-to-end view of the path for accuracy and availability provides me with the data to visualize an issue in the network.

NCM 7.5

With NCM, I am able to track the accuracy and changes to my networking devices to make sure configuration integrity is adhered to.

SAM 6.3

With the SAM application, the Application Health Overview feature lets me know that my production traffic is running as expected.

Having all 3 products tied together gives me the data I need to accurately pinpoint a problem within moments, instead of collating data from various applications and servers. The difference is five minutes with SolarWinds, compared to two hours without SolarWinds.

These three products have provided us with the information we need through a single interface to identify issues from server to network to remote site. They provide us with the intel we need to make better decisions on improving our network while reducing costs through under-utilized paths.

I would like to see more information on design, customization from the community, and a better certification department.

I have been using SolarWinds products since 2000.

Once I installed it as a high performance server, there were no stability issues.

Once I got my pollers deployed to different areas of the globe, the system functioned better.

Technical support is good, but I got faster answers from the community pages.

The SolarWinds setup is wizard based and walks you through each step. It will identify shortcomings with your system resources, but it could use a little more work. It would be helpful if the system would identify and configure based on a solution type, such as large (with pollers), medium (different buildings), or small campus.

Start with the three products and your licensing needs, and then increase capacity as you grow.

I would suggest the following:

1. Install the product with default settings
2. Build the database
3. Reinstall based on the needs and requirements of your deployment

Our company specializes in the development of a SaaS site. Often times, we look for solutions to complement our existing tool based on customer's needs. 

We recommended the solution to a customer as an infrastructure configuration and monitoring tool that combines multiple domains in a single platform. The customer also wanted issue notifications to be provided in a real-time, viewable format. 

The solution ranks as one of the top five monitoring tools.

KPIs should correlate and combine in one simple report.

The solution does not offer much customization so is somewhat inflexible. 

I have been using the solution for one year. 

The solution is stable.

Our customer does not have broad scaling needs. They have fifteen users and the solution works fine with no issues in this small environment. 

The initial setup can take time because it requires proper security access from the customer side. Setup and implementation took our customer one week. 

Our customer utilized an internal team of four technicians to handle implementation themselves. 

Our customer reports that the solution is somewhat costly and licensing is a bit complicated. 

I recommend the solution if it is the best alternative for a customer's environment. It is one of five tools that I suggest for assessment of fit. 

I rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

We use SolarWinds for network monitoring. It's suitable for mid-sized or enterprise-scale companies. It can work for a small business, too, because it's not too expensive. 

SolarWinds' network and server application monitoring features are strong.

SolarWinds could offer more support and insights for a broader range of devices. Currently, it focuses on routers, switches, and some load balancers. However, it lacks an out-of-the-box dashboard for monitoring firewalls and some other modern network security devices. We have to customize it a lot.

At the same time, some tools don't have the ability to customize, so SolarWinds is ahead of the competition, in that regard. I would also like to see more support for software-defined network platforms and enhanced API monitoring capacity.

I have been using SolarWinds NPM for more than five years.

SolarWinds offers some options for scalability, but there is a bottleneck on some features. I hope the scale of NetFlow can be increased. Also, SolarWinds uses the Microsoft SQL database, which doesn't allow distributed architecture or scaling options.

I rate SolarWinds support seven out of 10. The quality varies depending on who picks up the phone.

In most cases, setting up SolarWinds is simple. However, when customers have some special requirements, the deployment can become highly complex.

I rate SolarWinds NPM six out of 10 for pricing. It isn't the cheapest solution, but it's still affordable.

I rate SolarWinds NPM eight out of 10. I would recommend this product for medium-sized and enterprise-scale companies.