SolarWinds NPM Reviews

In my opinion, one of the most valuable features of this product is the level of customization. From web interfaces to custom monitors and alarms, this product has a high level of flexibility that can be molded to suit your business needs, regardless of the size of your organization.

It has helped to provide a user friendly interface for support to drill down and see where the issue lies and remediate issues quickly. We have other solutions that might have features NPM does not but the front end could look confusing to an inexperienced user. With NPM, we are able to fine-tune what the support accounts look like so users only see the things they need to do their jobs effectively.

Better offline license management. I’ve had to get in touch with customer support several times simply to remove an expired license from our NPM servers (which have no connection to the public internet). Also, if you add a new license and don’t remove the old one first, NPM will recognize only the expired one and ignore the new one, which prompts an additional call to support.

Personally I have been actively using this product for a little over a year but our organization has been using NPM for many years.

We had some issues with getting failover polling engines working properly and were forced to abandon the effort. So we’re currently backing up data to a warehouse database but we currently don’t have any redundancy with our polling engines.

On the whole, NPM is a very stable product. Occasionally, we might have a poller that stops communicating with the mother ship but usually a little bit of basic troubleshooting is able to resolve the issue with minimal downtime.

This is one of the strengths of NPM. As our infrastructure grows, NPM is able to grow organically to accommodate it. Scalability is as simple as spinning up another VM, installing the product, and ensuring connectivity to the primary instance of NPM.

Customer service at SolarWinds is great. I have had several issues in the past and they were prompt, helpful, and were able to resolve these issues quickly. SolarWinds also cares about what their customers want from a network monitoring standpoint. Rather than release a new version and hope that this is what customers want, they hold regular sessions to show customers what they’re currently working on and can fine tune future releases of NPM based on the feedback.

As a company, SolarWinds goes out of its way to put a human face to their technical support staff. The main way they’ve accomplished this is by creating a community out of their customer base. Using their forum, Thwack, customers are able to interact with SolarWinds staff from numerous departments, including from support, development and marketing. I’ve been a member a short while and I’ve already been blown away with how tight knit this forum can be.

The initial setup is very straightforward. It’s installed via a wizard and walks you through the steps, installing the extras it needs to function along the way. Then, it’s just a matter of activating your license and configuring the front end web page to look the way you want it. Most of the complexity of the initial setup and configuration is from custom modifications done by us on the back end. We had to modify the database to get NPM to hook into our in-house alert management system. But, for other companies' environments where this level of customization is not needed, NPM has an excellent amount of alerting methods that work right out of the box.

We do all of our NPM implementations using an in-house team. I am one of the engineers responsible for setting up new environments when new data centers come online. I’m not sure if SolarWinds has vendor teams available that can do this function but as I’ve stated, NPM is designed to be unboxed and up and running in an hour or less depending on how much customization is needed.

Due to the large size and scope of our organization, our cost of using this product is comparatively high. Excluding the costs of running VMs and physical blade servers, our licensing costs run around US$200,000/year for over 60 polling engines. Pricing differs if the NPM server is a primary or secondary polling engine and how many elements (nodes and interfaces) will need to be monitored by it (e.g. 250, 2000, or unlimited).

My advice to others before implementing this, is to attend one of their webcasts to get a feel for what NPM can do for you. The presenters are technical people who understand the product well and can answer a wide range of questions. Secondly, I’d make an account on their forum, Thwack, so if you’re ever stumped on an issue, you can pose a question to the community and glean information from other NPM users or from one of SolarWinds’ resident “Head Geeks.” Lastly, from personal experience, I would make sure you’re on good working terms with your network engineers before considering implementation. Like any other network management tool, you will likely run into firewall or connectivity related issues when adding nodes and having a good network engineer on your side can really make a big difference .

• Real-time netflow data
• Highly customizable alerting & reporting
• Very large base of information, further customized by high compatibility with MIBs from many, many vendors, resulting in very customizable UnDPs

Being a global company with many highly-sensitive manufacturing lines and process control environments, SolarWinds consistently delivers real-time and accurate views into the deepest parts of our environment. Though my role is 100% network-side, SolarWinds has greatly benefited our team of systems-side admins as well.

Because SolarWinds is built upon a SQL database, some level of SQL query knowledge is necessary if one really wants to take customization of alerting/reporting to a deeper level. This is really difficult for someone who

1. Doesn't have the time to devote to this
2. Doesn't have a strong background in any sort of software development/coding

I've used it for three and a half years.

I was not around for the initial deployment, but I've been responsible for maintaining the environment over the last three and a half years, including product upgrades and migration(s) to new VMs.

At times, we've had trouble with lost data within the database. These were largely resolved by moving to a more stable database server. I don't recall any recent issues now that we're on 11.x.

Yes, but only due to our own willingness (or unwillingness) to deploy additional polling engines. We're actually researching this feasibility right now, so that we can support a greater number of devices globally while maintaining a centralized "pane of glass" for administration.

This is one area where SolarWinds can do better. Customer service, in terms of account renewals, and licensing, and so on, is very quota-based. They need to make their sales/transaction quotas, and that's about all that matters. They can be very pushy when it comes to the purchasing process. I think this is probably due to SolarWinds being THE solution for network/systems monitoring, and they know they have some level of a monopoly on the industry. SolarWinds is also not a cheap product -- it's very expensive under a CapEx consideration, and annual renewals are about 10-20% of the initial CapEx. So, it's not inexpensive.

This is also an area where SolarWinds could do a lot better. Every time I've opened a case, they agree to a screen-sharing session (GoToMeeting/WebEx, etc) as an absolute last-resort. Sending me KB articles and other suggestions is always the first three to four emails, until I can formally get them to agree to take a look "in-person". I greatly enjoy working with Cisco TAC mainly because of their complete willingness to dive head-first into the issue by STARTING with a screen-sharing session. It gives me, as a customer and end-user, a much greater appreciation for Cisco's interest in resolving the issues, and making sure our production-affecting problems are no longer present.

In-house implementation.

As far as I know, SolarWinds was really the only option at the time.

It was an in-house implementation.

As far as I know, SolarWinds was really the only option at the time.

Don't assume SolarWinds is the right choice. Evaluate LOTS of other alternatives. These days, SevOne is a very promising competitor. But if you choose SolarWinds, dive into it as deeply as you can. Take advantage of their free online classroom training sessions (it's thousands of dollars for you to pay for from a third-party training vendor).

We used SolarWinds for network switches, routers, firewalls, and servers, and to collect performance data for items on a global scale. We have 1,000 to 1,500 users.

The ability to customize the views and dashboards is nice. SolarWinds also allows us to access the data via the API. That's probably the feature I liked the most.

It would be nice to have a test to check if you can access a particular device via API without installing it and waiting for a poll cycle. You should have the capacity to initiate a test to see if it was reachable and get the results almost immediately.

I have been using SolarWinds NPM for four or five years.

SolarWinds was pretty stable.

SolarWinds NPM is scalable.

SolarWinds provides good support.

Setting up SolarWinds NPM was relatively straightforward. There is always some complexity, but it's usually pretty straightforward. Two technicians were able to set it up.

We set up SolarWinds NPM in-house. 

I rate SolarWinds NPM eight out of 10. I recommend taking advantage of the online training that's available. Get an account on THWACK, the online user group. It's good for getting help.

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 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