

SolarWinds NPM and Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller compete in the network management category. SolarWinds NPM seems to have the upper hand due to its ease of deployment and customizable reporting.
Features: SolarWinds NPM offers diverse functionalities, ease of deployment, and integration with Microsoft Active Directory. It supports multiple devices and provides an alerting system with customizable reporting. Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller delivers robust network management, valued for automation capabilities, and integration with Cisco's network infrastructure, enhancing its effectiveness in enterprise environments.
Room for Improvement: SolarWinds NPM needs improvement in network discovery, resource utilization, and manageability of alerts. Some features require separate purchases, limiting its all-in-one appeal. Cisco Nexus Dashboard could improve performance reliability, simplify reporting, and expand integration with various network vendors to meet user demands.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds NPM provides flexible deployment options, covering on-premises and hybrid cloud environments. While its customer service faces some criticism for response times, it is supported by a strong community. Cisco Nexus Dashboard is generally deployed on-premises or in private clouds, recognized for its technical expertise, though occasionally hampered by response delays.
Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds NPM's pricing is competitive for its robust features, though costs can rise with additional modules. It offers quick ROI due to effective network management. Cisco Nexus Dashboard, considered expensive, provides value with tailored network automation features and strong integration with Cisco hardware, leading to substantial ROI for Cisco ecosystem users.
The return on investment is significant as the solution effectively reduces costs while being worth its expense.
Cisco's support I would rate as a 10 compared to all other vendors.
If there is no timely response, getting a resolution is more difficult.
We had contact with SolarWinds regarding the implementation, and they were helpful.
They have good technical support.
SolarWinds NPM is scalable and effective in handling large network infrastructures.
The NPM product is stable, particularly when used for simple network monitoring.
I do not believe it integrated well with different infrastructures for hybrid environments.
Customers have given feedback about the delayed response times from the technical team.
SolarWinds needs to upscale on observability and add full-fledged observability features, including security features.
I would need a feature in SolarWinds in the future for some kind of malfunctioning detection, such as malware attacks or that type of environment.
It is not too pricey and is adequate.
PRTG's package offers all features in one bundle, which is cost-effective.
The solution is considered expensive.
People typically understand north-south traffic flows but usually miss the east-west traffic flows in data centers.
Whenever any node is down in our network, whether it is a server or any network device, we receive information through email that the device is down.
It provides a detailed overview of the network, which is valuable.
SolarWinds NPM has specific modules for monitoring different network capabilities, which provides rich features for carrying out specific tasks.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| SolarWinds NPM | 3.4% |
| Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (Formerly DCNM) | 0.7% |
| Other | 95.9% |


| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 10 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 6 |
| Large Enterprise | 16 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 59 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 33 |
| Large Enterprise | 85 |
The Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (NDFC) offers a comprehensive solution for managing Cisco NX-OS switches in hybrid-cloud environments, providing automation, visibility, and consistent operations. Designed to simplify and enhance data center management, NDFC integrates with Cisco Nexus Dashboard to streamline network connectivity, reduce deployment times, and ensure seamless transitions with minimal disruptions. Its modular architecture, new user interface, and support for non-Nexus OS platforms make it a robust tool for LAN, SAN, and IP Fabric for Media management. Additionally, NDFC enhances fabric reliability, automates workflows, and supports cloud connectivity with AWS and Microsoft Azure, making it ideal for businesses adapting to increasingly complex digital environments.
SolarWinds NPM is a network monitoring solution that enables you to detect, diagnose, and resolve network performance issues and outages quickly and efficiently. The solution is a powerful tool that can help you increase service levels, reduce downtime with multi vendor network monitoring, simplify the management of complex network devices, improve operational efficiency, and much more.
SolarWinds NPM Features
SolarWinds NPM has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:
SolarWinds NPM Benefits
There are several benefits to implementing SolarWinds NPM. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:
Reviews from Real Users
Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the SolarWinds NPM solution.
PeerSpot user Andrew N., Senior Network Engineer at Element Critical, says, “The "Performance Analyzer" feature is the solution's most valuable aspect. It's able to do the bounded graphs of all the interface stats, from errors to broadcasts and to current traffic. With a click of a button you're able to, in one interface, look at historical data for those items.” He also adds, “From the troubleshooting point of view, just having that peace of mind is great. And, The solution is extremely stable. We haven't had any issues in that regard. We haven't had issues with bugs, glitches, or crashes."
Daniel S., Systems and Data Warehouse Supervisor at MMSD, mentions, “The alerting and usage tracking is a valuable feature because it alerts us when we're getting near capacity on disk space, network utilization or processor utilization. It helps us manage our capacity and enables us to be proactive.”
A Senior Vice President and CIO at a financial services firm explains, “As we look to add more servers to our virtual environment and to understand the impact, the solution allows us to dig into the historical charts related to capacity planning. It also gives us visibility of spikes and allows us to track down the reasons for their occurrences. So too, it makes room for potential processes that have gotten hung or runaway and to know when it's time to reboot a server or service.”
Dinesh N., Digital Innovation at Bobcat Company, states, “The best part of the solution is the sharing display. It gives a general public ID wherein everyone can link to a public display. That's a good feature.”
Fazal A., Implementation & Support Specialist at 360Factors, comments, “We have configured multiple alerts for our network devices, including routers and switches, so that we are notified if any interface goes down. In the event an interface goes down, we have multiple reports that include availability monitoring, network uptime monitoring, and network downtime monitoring. These reports are on multiple schedules such as the end of the day, end of the last business day of the week, monthly, and quarterly. This gives us the ability to provide reports to our management and let them know the performance of our network.”
We monitor all Network Monitoring Software reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.