SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager Reviews

SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager can be used for backing up network device configuration. It helps you be more secure when you have a system failure, you can get the information back.

The solution could improve by being more secure.

I have been using SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager for approximately nine years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable.

We have more than 100 customers using this solution.

Technical support could be faster when responding to an issue.

The installation is straightforward.

We have one engineer that does the implementation and maintenance of the solution.

There is a license for the use of this solution and it is priced well, there is a lot of value for the money.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager a nine out of ten.

They are four areas that we use the Network Configuration Manager for

1. Automate configuration backup. 

2. Configuration compliance. We have created checklists for different types of devices and check for configuration compliance as per our config guidelines.

3. Security vulnerability detection for Cisco devices. Identify open CVE's with devices.

4. Firmware upgrades / IOS upgrades of Cisco devices. This feature has seen one major improvement in the ability to perform parallel upgrades.

NCM has provided for the following benefits - Mainly to to with audit readiness on 3 fronts - regular configuration backups, configuration hardening and Vulnerability management.

The features we find most valuable are the configuration backup automation, configuration compliance, security vulnerability detection, and upgrading devices.

The Network Configuration Manager needs to improve the access control list compliance.

We have used SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager for more than six years now. We are on the near latest release 2020.2.5 HF1 as of June 2021. We have adopted an N-1 version deployment policy.

Platform stability is extremely good. A few areas of improvements required - better handling of NCM jobs failing - for example if an NCM job has multiple devices to be backed up, a detailed report/log of the success or failed status is required.

SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is very scalable. We have a deployment that covers over 12,000 network devices.

We have used technical support many times. They're good if you escalate properly. It is an area that needs a bit of improvement in terms of helping prioritize the ticket. Whenever we open a ticket with them, I think by default it lands up in an open bucket. So I don't have the option of saying that there is an absolutely critical requirement and I need some urgent help. I can't classify that when opening up a ticket for the first time.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. The initial setup did not take very long. I think the base platform was set up in a day's time. But I think configuration compliance policies, which is actually more of writing the policies rather than anything to do with SolarWinds, are slightly more time-consuming. The creation of policy is time-consuming. That has more to do with the organization policy, i.e., do I need Telnet enabled, do I need Telnet disabled, etc.

I would highly recommend SolarWinds Network Configuration Management to other customers. I rate this product at a nine out of ten.

We really did not evaluate many other options. We were actually using the Kiwi CatTools version which is also a part of SolarWinds. But I think SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager is a big brother of Kiwi CatTools and I think since we were already familiar with Kiwi CatTools the migration to NCM was pretty easy.

We use this solution to store and manage the configuration of Cisco switches and routers.

It significantly reduces the time required to make changes to routers and switches. A single script can be run on all the devices on the network at the push of a button. It also helps to enforce change management as change is implemented via the NCM interface and managers do not have the exec password but rather request for change via NCM which can be approved by those designated to.

The feature that I really enjoy is the ability to script changes across all of your devices.

For example, if you wanted to change the administrator password for all of your Cisco devices, you would simply put that config change in one window on the NCM, and with a push of a button, it sends it across to all the devices on your network.

The integration with the network performance monitor wasn't complete as at the last time I used it. 

It has a separate interface page within the web interface. I would prefer to have the NCM features on the same interface as the natural performance monitor device page.

For each device, when you open the network performance monitor, it will give you all of the information about the device, but many of the natural configuration management features are not on that page. You have to go to a separate page. It would be nice to have tighter integration with the NPM (Network Performance Monitor).

I would like to see NCM be more aggressive in adding new device support to the product.

I have been using this solution for seven years.

This solution is very stable. I have never had any real issues with stability.

When you deploy it with an external SQL server database that is properly managed and properly tuned, you won't experience any issues.

We know that the SQL Server is scalable, and you can take it to large sizes.

NPM allows you to add pollers to scale it, but I am not sure that NCM has the ability to utilize the additional pollers in a NPM. I have never tried to scale it to thousands of devices. I have only scaled to a few hundred, and I know that it handles a few hundred devices with no issues in one box.

Technical support is good. I have no complaints.

I have used other products and switched to SolarWinds NCM because of the ease of use. The design system is better with fewer bugs.

The initial setup was very easy. There were no issues at all.

I was an integrator and would help to deploy the solution for some of the companies.

We have a team of three to manage and maintain the solution.

Most of the companies would require an integrator to help them deploy the solution.

NCM pays for itself within the first 3 years of use as you do need less dedicated Cisco certified engineers fully on site once it is implemented

The NCM is licensed per device. 

You have a base license for 50 devices, and then you can add more licenses as you go. 

It scales from 50 to a hundred and so on.

Also, they have an annual fee that covers upgrades. You have a 12-month license to download new updates.

Larger organizations would be able to have people invest the time to learn how to use the system and deploy on their own. 

Smaller organizations would need an integrator to help them through the deployment process.

We definitely plan to continue working with this solution. 

There are less popular devices that are not directly supported by NCM. You have open-source Linux devices that you really can't support with NCM. They have their own tool that you have to use. We have a couple of those, but generally, NCM is a tool we use for the majority of the well-known brand network purposes.

My advice to others who want to use this solution would be to get it if you have a network with several departmental devices to take care of. 

Do an early set up of your approval process to make sure that change management is built-in. If you have several people with the admin password who are able to go in and make changes to all your devices at one time, it makes the entire system much less stable. You need to ensure that you put in all of the controls very early on, and have levels of authorization for change.

This should be done very early when you deploy the system.

I recommend using SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

I use it for monitoring the entire network for the company. We oversee nodes, we oversee devices heading up to crossing the threshold for CPU usage. We oversee power, we oversee if they're down or if they're failing. We oversee any node down or any router from any vendor. We have MPLS, so we have a lot of those MPLS routers on the node. We can see when those routers are down. 

SolarWinds can give us not only that, but we can also create running tasks. It can schedule backup for the devices. We can do active jobs, we generate reports and oversee and look for any peaks of ranges or network slowness or network interruptions. These events trigger immediate alerts and the alert brings up the attention to the NOC that brings up the troubleshooting with whoever is local, depending upon who manages the network in that place. It's a helpful tool and I really like it.

The network logs could be improved. When the error logs come across with those false positive alarms in the error logs. We see days or weeks on those error messages. I think this needs to be addressed or they need to mitigate the house cleaning or the housekeeping of those errors or those logs. I mean that's one of the things that I will say that can be a little challenging sometimes. I'd like to see when you look for the node, via IP or via the name of the product, a quicker response in the search for the node. Sometimes when I search it, I have to look three times for the node in a different way. The search for that particular device or search for that particular product, I have to sometimes dig in on my own DNS and find the IP. Then I go to SolarWinds copy and paste it the IP. It's a pain. Let's say the search or the browse for any particular note needs to be improved for the GUI.

I have worked with SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager for about a year.

I think so far stability is going great.

They need to improve their response time. Sometimes they take longer than expected. They need to respond quickly after a ticket is opened. I will email them and I won't see the response for another two or three hours. I have to give them a call and it's a pain. It's a nightmare. I keep bringing that up to them all the time. I would improve that.

Just make sure you only put the nodes that you need to monitor and make sure whoever needs to have nodes in SolarWinds, keep the people besides your team or your group, who want their own nodes there. Make sure you set up the right rules and the standards and the thresholds where you need to get communication for error messages or CPU alerts or power heat or any type of alerts. The alerts, they need to be very clearly addressed in order for you to monitor your devices. We have faced some problems in the past that the alerts are not really set up properly. We have to randomly change the thresholds and the numbers and the ranges. I would recommend that you make sure you monitor only what you need to monitor. Make sure if you need to trigger those alerts, make sure that you have somebody or a team to respond. And, they can have a group responsible for whatever they need to troubleshoot. 

I would rate it at a seven out of ten.

We primarily deploy it for our customers. We don't use the solution ourselves. Customers schedule it with us and we troubleshoot for the customer as well. We have files and templates from NCM as well as confirmation templates. We sometimes schedule the backups too.

Since the customer is the primary user, they'd have a better idea of the best features.

Compared to other vendors, like NetBrain, managing the solution is easy. They made it very user-friendly.

On NCM, reporting could be a bit better. It's completely become just one report. When I try to create a custom report, the solution just commits old server data.

They need to make a health checkup report in a new release.

We've been using the solution for one year, but this year we are switching to NPM NCM. It's a request from our engineers. We are not monitoring the servers with either and we want to monitor the servers with something going forward.

We do health checkups for the network devices. However, compared to NetBrain, the NCM health checkup is getting very bad.

The technical support for the solution is very good.

We also use NPM and NetBrain as well.

The implementation process is very user-friendly. Deployment takes about three hours with customization. You only need a few people to handle the deployment; it doesn't take too many. You might need one on the server-side and one for the application.

We are using version 7.9 of the solution. We migrated from 7.7 to 7.9 about three years ago.

We use both the cloud and on-premises deployment models. We had production on the on-premises model in 2016.

I'm an implementation engineer for SolarWinds so I'm not using the NCM devices any longer.

I'd advise others who may be installing the solution for the first time to just use the 7.9 version of the solution. It's the latest version. If you are using FortiGate you'll be able to configure everything and have a backup and be able to use the data.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution to check the configuration for Cisco, Juniper or L3 devices in our network.

The most valuable features the solution offers are compliance, reliability, and information about reliability.

The solution could offer a better compliance report. GDPR has many security standards. If a company is working with an international client, it must be compliant with any standards. We work with a bank, financial companies, and an insurance company. They need to be compliant and the core customer compliance is our main challenge.

The interface of solar winds could be improved.

I've been using the solution for one year.

The stability of the solution is good. We haven't faced any issues.

The scalability of the solution is good. We haven't had any problems with scaling.

Technical support is okay. We've contacted them many times and they've been fine.

The initial setup is easy. If it is already done with existing network infrastructure, deployment takes only two to three hours.

With a minimal bundle, we pay about $3000 a year in licensing costs. If you have multiple devices in your network, you must buy the bundle, which is 100% identical for your infrastructure. If you have 15 devices, you need 15 licenses, for example. That's one bundle. You don't pay for anything over and above that.

We use the on-premises deployment model. We're a SolarWinds distributor.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

I use this to monitor our system. I also use it as a configuration manager where all changes of a configuration are stalled.

We are using this product for efficient automation and a short learning gap. It is part of our tool set.

• The features include an easy alert setup. 
• We push all our configurations to the servers with ease and the logs capture almost all the transactions needed for an internal audit.

We want to be able to store it in a data warehouse format and integrate it with Google single sign-on.

• Additional polling engines
• Virtual manager

We can proactively monitor our infrastructure in a single pane of glass, unlike before when there were a lot of network management tools that would need to be looked at.

• Report generation
• We need to be able to monitor the NetScaler VIPs

We've used it for over seven years.

We had issues with the FailOver Engine module installation, due to the resources of each SolarWinds server.

8/10 - there's no SLA on a ticket created, albeit they have a level of severity upon the creation of a ticket. So far, I like on how they handle my tickets, especially their tier three. Also, they have 24x7x365 assistance.

One of my clients used Cisco Prime but this solution is only for Cisco, and we have different vendors so we needed a network monitoring system to monitor all of our devices with different vendors.

It was straightforward for monitoring a small environment.

One of my clients is a global company and our pre-sales engineer proposed a bunch of modules that would benefit their events team, tier two, and tier three. We also used a disaster recovery solution in order to accommodate all of their devices in different regions.

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