What is most valuable?
IPAM’s search feature is deceptively powerful. I’m able to quickly look up, not only IP addresses, but VLAN IDs and hostnames, which makes tracking down networked devices quick and easy.
How has it helped my organization?
Our previous IPAM solution required users to install and configure a client, which had to be pointed at the IPAM server’s database. And managing user access was not intuitive. The SolarWinds IPAM solution presents users with a clean and modern user experience delivered to you via a web browser, and managing users and permissions is very simple. We spend less time managing IPAM, and more time managing our infrastructure.
What needs improvement?
While the product has several great dashboards, I think the most useful is the “Manage Subnets & IP Addresses” dashboard, which isn’t the default view. And even though changing your default dashboard is simple, I’d like to see SolarWinds put their best view into IPAM front and center. Functionally, I’d like to see IPAM offer an API that allows IP addresses to be marked as “in use.” Currently, IPAM is only capable of providing the next free address in a given subnet. If you’re using an automation solution for provisioning virtual machines, for example, you would want to grab an IP from IPAM and mark it as “in use” so subsequent VM don’t grab the same IP before the next scheduled scan.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have used SolarWinds for one year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We haven’t seen any issues with stability of the application.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We migrated the local SQL database from the IPAM server to a dedicated cluster, to comply with our database management standards. The migration was simple, and reconfiguring the application to point to the new database host was also straightforward. However, disabling the local SQL instance proved to be much more difficult than we anticipated. It’d be great to have a built-in method in IPAM to disable the local database components without impacting the application.
How are customer service and technical support?
I rate technical support 5/5. We haven’t had to reach out to tech support often, to be honest. But when we did, we got quick responses and resolutions to our questions.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We had a very old client-server solution for IPAM that was difficult to manage. It was effective at storing IP information, but the overhead associated with it was too great for a small team to accommodate.
How was the initial setup?
Initial setup was straightforward. We had the product up and running in under an hour. It took longer to get our firewall rules updated to allow scanning from the new IPAM!
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
SolarWinds products are always priced lower than you’d expect for great software. I’d encourage anyone who has priced other IP address management solutions to look at IPAM, and do a simple cost comparison. You’ll be surprised at what SolarWinds can offer.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We looked at InfoBlox, but we don’t need all of the features that are intrinsic to that solution. DHCP and DNS are managed by other teams, and we simply needed a replacement for our IPAM solution.
What other advice do I have?
Get in touch with someone from SolarWinds to arrange a demo and a trial license. There’s no better way to evaluate a product than to test it out in your own environment. The account team we worked with was quick to answer our questions during the trial, and when we elected to purchase the product, we were able to apply a license key to our trial version, which meant we didn’t have to re-deploy. An easy process by all accounts.
Disclosure: PeerSpot contacted the reviewer to collect the review and to validate authenticity. The reviewer was referred by the vendor, but the review is not subject to editing or approval by the vendor.
