SolarWinds NPM Reviews

Alerts, reports, overview of network, graphical picture of WAN for support team, port level visibility, and ease of use.

By finding out about problems or potential problems quickly and having a great view of my entire network.

The admin web site could be a lot faster.

8 years

No issues encountered.

Yes, but that was due to using just a recommend server size. Moved to a better server and all was well.

Yes, the more items I added the slower it became. But this was corrected once I split the servers apart. I had NPM and NCM on the same server.

10 out of 10

Any time I contacted support they were knowledgeable and fast.

No other solution used before, but looked at many.

Pretty straight forward if you know your environment.

In-house implementation.

I never put a dollar amount on it, but it sure saved me some big heartaches!

Setup cost and ongoing was just my time.

Yes, HP, Nagios, Cisco, Spiceworks, GFI, and Manage Engine.

SolarWinds makes a great product and their support is second to none! They continue to acquire/develop new software that rolls in nicely with their entire solution.

The most valuable features are language support and technical support.

An area for improvement would be the use of modular licenses, which are not practical for big clients.

I have been using this solution for seven years.

The initial setup varies but can be quite complex.

This product is priced quite highly. Its licenses are available yearly, and the calculation of costs is quite complex.

I would rate this solution as nine out of ten.

SolarWinds NPM is used to monitor network components and solutions.

We used it to monitor downtime and latency between applications, as well as the latency between services.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the monitoring capabilities.

If they did some type of synthetic monitoring, it would have been better.

I have been working with SolarWinds NPM for 10 years.

We are working on the most up-to-date version.

SolarWinds NPM is a stable product.

You could question the scalability. It could be improved.

The technicals support is fair. I would rate them a three out of five.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward.

I believe that we pay approximately $80,000 per year.

There can be fees in addition to the licensing fees if you add on.

I would suggest putting in a larger VM infrastructure than they ask for because, if you don't, it'll probably be a little slow.

I would rate SolarWinds NPM an eight out of ten.

We have been using this tool to monitor our multiple network devices, interfaces, physical and virtual memory, application servers, databases, and applications to keep a track of what is causing an issue that we are having.

Either it is the network, or it is the application, or it is the database queries that are causing our users to experience slowdowns. Due to alerting mechanism, we get notified if anything is responding slowly or if anything goes down so that we can resolve the issue as quickly as possible and keep providing best services to our customers.

We had been having some issues recently with network choking at a specific time, and we had been working on multiple things to identify the root cause. Using those methods, we were unable to trace it.

We decided to install a tool that would show us where the issue is being produced, and we can monitor our internal and external network traffic. We are able to determine whether the issue is being caused at the ISP end or our internal network, and with the help of SolarWinds NPM, we were able to track down the root cause of the issue.

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.

Even though SolarWinds NPM provides monitoring for a vast number of vendors and products, they do not support all of them. They should keep in mind that due to ongoing threats and daily malware attacks, companies have deployed network security and hired security professionals who are doing penetration testing. Certain devices provide ongoing security features, which can keep our network secure.

Fortigate firewalls are one example of a product that we are unable to monitor properly via SolarWinds NPM.

We have been using SolarWinds NPM for more than two years.

The stability of SolarWinds NPM is very good.

Scalability-wise, it is very good.

Technical support from SolarWinds is the best.

We previously used ManageEngineOpManager, but we switched because it did not have enough features.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward. We had to do some customizations, which was great to provide better visibility of our entire network.

We implemented it through a vendor and their level of expertise made us choose this tool. They gave such a great demo that we didn't even have to consider other options.

We achieved ROI within six months.

The licensing is based on the number of nodes, interfaces, and volumes.

We were recommended SolarWinds by a friend so we tried it and purchased it. We did not evaluate other options.

Our primary use case for this solution is for default of the stability of the network track.

If we need to plan the network, or measure our network utilization, SolarWinds enables us to do so. 

One of the best features is the reports feature. We can get an editor's report for the last five minutes, fifteen minutes, hour, month, or more. And, the correlation data that we can get from the different resources of data from routing, routers, swtitches and samples is really a benefit.

It would be nice to manage all network devces from just one single platform, instead of going to different platforms.

The solution is very stable. 

It is very scalable. For years we have not had a problem with scalability.

I am looking at other solutions, to compare. For example, I am currently looking at ManageEngine OpManager. We also looked at Zabbix

I would like to see this product becoming more flexible in the future. In addition, integration with other solutions would be helpful.

The ability to monitor multiple devices using SNMP v3 and HP Procurve SFlow as well as multiple setups for different technicians.

We only use SNMP v3 and all of our devices are HP. Not every technician needs to see everything or have control of everything.

Technicians are aware of issues and 90% of the time exactly what caused the issue. Repairs can be scheduled ahead of time and RMA’s can be filed without the technician having to drive to the site only to find out it is a bad power supply or fan in a switch or server.

The speed needs improving. If you have a very large network and are monitoring a lot of devices the dashboard responds slower.

We have been using the solution for almost four years.

We had some stability issues.

We had some scalability issues. The cost for monitoring interfaces is ridiculous.

Technical support is not exactly the fastest. You create a ticket in the morning and probably get a response by e-mail from the actual technician the following day.

We were using Intermapper previously.

The setup was straightforward.

The pricing for monitoring large amounts of equipment is not bad but when you want to monitor the actual interfaces of those devices the cost goes up.

We did not look at any alternatives. This was a government project and only one company responded to their request.

Make sure you have several servers. You must have the actual platform on a separate server from the database. You will need a separate database server for each module you activate such as flows. There is a very big footprint.

• If you are almost in the dark, SolarWinds can give you a quick view of what you have and you can start basic monitoring.
• The user interface is good.
• You can build a live inventory of the equipment you manage.
• You can start structuring and digging deeper into Network Performance Management and Diagnostics.

• It helped to bring a basic monitoring in place that could be a platform for additional information you need to manage a large IT infrastructure.
• IT network visibility can help the organization a lot.
• It provides a buy-in from other IT groups (database, Windows, applications)

Scalability: In general, the scalability for most organizations is OK.

The product is also used by larger companies and TELCOs. They encounter scalability and stability issues. You need a dedicated person or team to keep everything under control.

We have used the base product for more than 12 years.

You certainly can have stability issues. The system runs on Windows Server and a dedicated MS SQL Server.

You need a lot of polling engines for larger networks (50K+ interfaces). This will consume additional resources, such as licenses, support, and patching.

SolarWinds does not provide professional services. You have to rely on partners that provide this service.

If there is an issue, you will have a pretty slow response. You need access to the SolarWinds portal to register a ticket.

In general, the response time of SolarWinds should be improved.

In general, it is mainly switching from open-source systems to a supported system.

The initial setup worked fine. This depends on the system and scale you are trying to implement.

General advice is to build the monitoring as a layered approach.

Add devices/systems by categories, starting with basic monitoring ICMP and SNMP, and then add specific metrics to the system.

The pricing depends on what company you are. If you are you an enterprise or TELCO, the pricing is really great.

If you are a smaller company, it can become expensive and also complex to get it running.

For SMBs, you have to sit down and think what you are going to do. Some companies outsource a lot to get rid of the IT pain.

• Create a very simple requirements list.
• In general, do not start a paper comparison.
• Install the product or let someone help you with the install and configuration so you will get a quick start.
• Do not try to find out everything yourself.
• Based on what you have seen, you can build the so-called "gap analysis".
• If you go for SolarWinds, it will not solve all your IT problems. You will also need complementary tools.

Our primary use case for SolarWinds NPM is for network monitoring and SNMP traps.

SolarWinds NPM features that I have found most valuable are the reporting tools and the ability to create customized reports.

With regards to suggested areas of improvement for the product, I would like to see the price come down, and in addition I think the network element mapping tool is not as robust as it should be. 

I have been using SolarWinds NPM for 5-6 years.

SolarWinds NPM to date has been stable for me. 

The SolarWinds NPM product is easy to scale.

I have utilized SolarWinds technical support to help with issues, the experience is adequate for the the level of support we pay for. 

The initial setup of SolarWinds NPM is complex in my view. There are many knobs, dials and buttons to push, and it can take several days to get familiar with the product and it's functionality. 

Approximately 50 users utilize SolarWinds NPM within my company.