SolarWinds NPM Reviews and Pricing

Systems Admin Team Lead at a government with 501-1,000 employees

Sep 23, 2014

The Quality of Experience dashboard enables us to analyze application response compared to network response

What is most valuable?

When it comes to the new features in NPM 11, the most valuable addition for us is the deep packet analysis Quality of Experience dashboard (QoE).

How has it helped my organization?

There's so many times where we get a question such as – “Is the network running slow?” It's really helpful being able to configure the deep packet analysis to say we want to look at these servers and just these particular applications - and get rid of the other noise. Before we started using NPM, we could get this info with Wireshark but it was incredibly painful getting it.

What needs improvement?

From a QoE point of view - I'm really grateful it was released so that we could get started taking advantage of the features. The one thing that would make it even more helpful would be to allow us to define our own applications. But having said that, I posted a feature request on the thwack community and got a response from SolarWinds within a half hour, asking for more details about my feature request.

For how long have I used the solution?

We started using NPM about a year ago and we’ve been using NPM v11 for about 3 months.

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Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used WhatsUpGold, which has a fraction of the features for a tenth of the price. Moving to SolarWinds was a huge jump for our management since they were moving from a $3,000 - $4,000 solution to something which costs us $30,000 - 40,000 (5 SolarWinds products). I showed management the feature request page for NPM. What they noticed right away was that 50% of the feature requests had a "what we're working on" tag. With SolarWinds, management gets visibility into our infrastructure without them having to ask us questions. They can look themselves, it's all there. The fact that SolarWinds listens to customer feedback and requests makes all the difference.

What was our ROI?

For NPM 11, it enables management to see all of our infrastructure and gives them a heads up without doing a lot of work of how our systems are doing. To quantify it, I’ll explain it like this: we were looking to upgrade portions of our networks and our CIO suggested spending money to increasing bandwidth in our datacenter. We used NPM 11 and found that our network bandwidth within the datacenter was incredibly underutilized, we could use more bandwidth by our workstations. NPM helped us focus where to spend money on our infrastructure because we can tell where we need to spend, rather than just a gut feeling. We didn't have that visibility with WhatsUpGold. WhatsUpGold is good as an alerting tool but it’s useless for historical reporting. Graphs and easy correlation in SolarWinds are light-years ahead of what we were doing previously. Historical data is also more useful, we can go back 6-months and say ask ourselves what our pain points are and where we should invest more money. NPM paid for itself by allowing us to spend money where it needs to be spent.

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.

Ravi SuvvariPerformance and Fault-tolerance Architect with 1,001-5,000 employees

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Apr 7, 2015

Very valuable inputs regarding NP monitor ; Thank you for sharing Ravi Suvvari

it_user3195

Field Systems Engineer Level 2 at a tech consulting company

May 1, 2014

Review of Network Performance Monitor

Disclaimer: I work for a company that has a partnership with Solarwinds and provides services for Solarwinds products.

I have had nothing but good things to say about the Solar winds products. I have the pleasure to use NPM, IPSLA, NTA, and Engineers Tool Kit. We have a large network that without NPM would be hard to monitor and find problems. NTA allows us to keep good tabs on what people and systems are doing on our networks. It is nice to know who is playing World of War craft as an example or which server is pegging an interface. IPSLA has giving us the global view of how our network can handle real-time data. We have been able to vastly improve how implement routing and QOS in order to provide better throughput that result in a higher SLA compliance.

Network Performance Monitor
• Good for Quick Dashboard view
• Customizable for network needs if bandwidth is an issue for monitoring traffic
• Offers good Reporting and Graphics for those who want a bird’s eye view

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user3195Field Systems Engineer Level 2 at a tech consulting company

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Feb 12, 2013

Yes SolarWinds Orion does provide support for Wireless controllers both remote autonomous , centralized controller based monitoring. With VoIP it has very tight intergration that allows you to view your current call quality and CDR records.

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it_user69183

Systems Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Feb 5, 2014

Strengths include steady development and strong focus on Windows but don't install it on a multi purpose server

Solar Winds Orion is a strong contender in network monitoring up to (at least) mid size enterprises. It’s particular strengths are steady development and a strong focus on Windows. This focus gives it the ability to drill deeper into application monitoring with less effort than most of it’s competitors through WMI. SNMP is also supported for non windows devices to round out the mix. The interface is primarily the web console, which is highly configurable and can display completely different options for different users/groups. However, building maps and setting most alerts require a separate installed application for the former and console access to the Orion server for the latter. Orion uses MS SQL on the back end, and with more than a small network requires a separate DB server from the web server and agent server(s). Yes, you can use multiple monitoring servers for large networks. Pricing is tiered, both for the type of monitoring (straight network, application, and specialty items like VMWare are separate SKUs) and # of monitored objects.

Competitors - quite a few. Whatsup Gold was purchased by Solar Winds a couple years ago but is still a separate product. Others include Nagios, MRTG, Cacti, on the open source side, and a host of ‘monitoring’ systems on the paid product side. Keep in mind that some of these are less monitoring than ‘is it up’ ICMP pings, but there is a good range of monitoring. I’ll let you inspect the field - this review is pretty good: http://www. . Orion was selected as winner by the site, but keep in mind your needs and resources may vary.

Resist the urge to install monitoring on a multi purpose server, and think very hard before using a ‘spare workstation’ or old server. It benefits from lots of memory, and the DB needs adequate disk performance. Database activity is greater than you’d think from the size (especially when opening a graph or running a report). Also keep in mind the aphorism that when problems occur it’s impossible to always self-monitor; the very tool used may be the problem.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user69183Systems Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

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Feb 12, 2014

First, I hope you've updated - the current release (10.6) of NPM has some really neat features, like instant access to server error logs and process monitors. Second, if you're just using the Network Performance Module (NPM) you're missing a lot. Application monitoring gives a much better picture of what's going on with your servers; the two together are pretty impressive.
As for sizing, we found that the newer capabilities a couple years ago added so much load we had to move the database to a separate server. Even then we were dropping data (empty space on the graphs) and replaced the monitor server last fall with a virtual system. We were on an older 32 bit server with 4 GB of RAM, moving to a 64 bit system gave us plenty of power and we no longer drop data. However our database server should be replaced; some reports and screens run slow when a lot of data is requested. It's a user experience issue, not a failure, so your milage may vary. Again, older hardware and 32 bit processors. Approach this in a stepwise fashion (separate the database first, etc) and you'll be fine.
Last point - be careful when adding monitors. It's easy to monitor too much; separate what is 'must have' from 'nice to have', add the 'must have' first and check system performance. That includes slow or saturated WAN links; it is possible to overload these with the extra traffic.
Let us know how the project goes!

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it_user83385

Network Engineer at a media company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jan 29, 2014

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Email & GUI alert system are valuable for me but response to support tickets that are not network down impacting is slow

What is most valuable?

The email and GUI alert system that it has is the most valuable for me. It also features the IP address management with manages your IP subnets internally and externally all in one place. Also the customizable alert feature is really helpful if you want a specific monitoring and alerting to configure.

How has it helped my organization?

Before we were using the Microsoft DHCP server to manage our IP addresses. However, it was not configured to replicate all throughout the domain so the IP address database and allocation is outdated and we are not sure if this is still active or not. Upon using the IPAM feature of Solarwinds we manage all IP addresses centrally in one location and it is cloud based so we can access it wherever we are in our intranet. I also liked the customizable alert feature because i was appointed to configure and monitor alerts for all the power supply on Cisco devices only. I made series of testing and research and I was successfully able to configure and implement an alert specifying the monitoring of power supplies of Cisco devices only, ie, excluding any other devices.

What needs improvement?

Perhaps they could hire more tech support for this awesome product. I had a difficult experience in their support, not technically but the availability of the engineers. Since they are so little and the bulk of demands for their support is huge, I would have to wait in line to get a response because my ticket is not network down impacting. It took me about 3 months to finish this customization.

For how long have I used the solution?

5 years now.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

Yes. During the test, I encountered troubles because the specific MIBs could not focus on certain power supplies only. I needed to find help from their product tech support.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There are minimal issues of stability for the NPM of Solarwinds. This is the reason you need to update the version as often as they release to address the minute bugs of this product

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No issues with scalability. It can accommodate as much nodes so long as you update your hardware all together.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service: I would say 7 out of 10 stars. They really know their product technically. However, the response time for non impacting tickets is very slow.Technical Support: 4 out 5 stars. They know their product so well that you could count on a bug fix update yearly.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I used Concord before and it is limited to monitoring network devices. Well, I think that's the only license that my previous company had with it. I did not switch because I liked the product, I simply switched companies that already is using the product.

How was the initial setup?

I wasn't the one who set this product up. it was already there when I transferred.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It will cost you to buy additional license for additional features. However, there is not day-to-day cost in using this.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

No. Like I said, I just moved to a different companies that were already using the product.

What other advice do I have?

Utilize this product to its full potential, NOC will find it very useful and easy to manage.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user69183

Systems Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Nov 21, 2013

SolarWinds has a library of applications that add additional functionality for a great price

I have used Orion for quite a long time - almost 10 years, and while the work that requires remote access to the server is annoying, more is gradually moved to the web interface with almost every upgrade. Of course, SolarWinds has a library of applications that add additional functionality and, as such things go the cost is not great, and you can pick and choose what you need.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user3372

Senior Manager of IT at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

Nov 7, 2013

Solarwinds takes traditional log-centric EM, re-conceives it & brings it forward to address the realities of today

Discovery – Event Management

In the early days of networking, when computing resources were primarily used for research, “network management”, was unheard of.

Today high-speed computer networks have become not only a necessity of doing business but a way of life. In the future dense servers will be expected to do more than just undertake menial data center workloads such as serving up web page front-ends. Network virtualization and tiered storage are set to be the next big consolidation in the data center.

Network connections are seemingly ubiquitous whether it involves our smart phone, laptop, or opportunities offered by big data/analytics. Almost every aspect of our society relies in some way on computer data networks. When there is a breakdown in these networks disruption is caused throughout many areas of our society, often affecting millions of people simultaneously.

Network management software is designed to enhance the operation, administration, and provisioning of networks and related assets within the network.These powerful, comprehensive applications allow businesses to better control and maintain their IT networks by centralizing and automating all activities related to tracking, monitoring, servicing, and fine-tuning its components. Its role is crucial in network and cyber defense.

Once known as a solution for smaller businesses and remote offices, Solarwinds’ has expanded its portfolio into the enterprise. Visibility drives detection - SolarWinds’ adoptions in mid-tier businesses, and large enterprises and service providers in context with overall business and operational objectives, provides one single platform for capturing and analyzing large amount network, log and other data.

In short Solarwinds takes traditional log-centric "Event Management" (EM) and re-conceives it and brings it forward to address the realities of today’s “time-to-decision” landscape.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user68013

Network Engineer at a healthcare company with 501-1,000 employees

Oct 31, 2013

If you REALLY want to get the information we crave, you need to buy some of the plug-ins.

Out of the box, Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor does an adequate job of monitoring the basics of your network. Things like Bandwidth Utilization, syslog capture and reporting, circuit outages, etc. However, If you REALLY want to get the information we crave, you need to buy some of the plug-ins.

You start out with NTA, Netflow Traffic Analyzer. Now you don't just know that your bandwidth is being consumed. You know WHAT is taking a big bite out of that ALWAYS important bandwidth. Is it legitimate traffic and you need to add bandwidth or is it frivolous and you need to block it?

Next, if you operate call centers you might want to add on the VoiP and Network Quality Manager. I'm unfamiliar with this but it must have evolved from IP SLA Manager, a product I loved for it's ability to tell me how well my voice traffic was moving across the network. It looks like they've added integration with Call Manager so now you can really dig down into those voice related issues.

There's another piece you may consider indispensable if you have a lot of apps running across your network; Server and Application Monitor. Now we're cooking with gas!

Nowadays, it's just not enough to know that you still have bandwidth available. What you REALLY need to know is, do you have bandwidth available to ALL your key applications? QOS might be dropping packets while you are blithely examining your bandwidth utilization, thinking everything is running smoothly.

While Voice and one or 2 other apps may be blissfully travelling down the carpool lane of your network, what about the rest of your traffic? Is it stuck in a traffic jam, staring hungrily at those empty lanes? You NEED to know these things. And that's where the plugins will make your monitoring get up and DANCE! And once you KNOW what's going on on your network, YOU'LL be dancing too!

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user8427

Network Manager at a consultancy with 501-1,000 employees

Aug 6, 2013

The latest iteration is an extremely powerful tool

I have used Solarwinds NPM since it was Orion. I have found that with a little effort, the latest iteration is an extremely powerful tool. I leaves Openview in the dust. The reports can be customized with either a simple interface with a complex SQL query. Alerting is superb. You can even set the alerts so that you will not get flooded when key components fail (as in WAN links) The licencing is not actually per node, but three levels of maximun and an unlimited. Either way, the pricing is extremely reasonable and the anual is for supporty and upgrades. The people at Solarwinds have always been very responsive.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user4401Developer at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees

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Nov 26, 2013

You are right and I would like to add other features that Network Performance Monitor has: first is ConnectNow Topology Mapping. It allows the environment to be mapped in real time automatically, which provides graphical visibility into the network. Second is Integrated Wireless Poller, which monitors wireless devices for security and other issues to allow more widespread use of wireless technologies by reducing the pain to manage these items. The third one is Report Writer, which gives the administrator the ability to create his own custom reports detailing things within his environment.