SolarWinds NPM Reviews

We are using Solar NPM to send alerts to the NOC and SOC teams. Some reports are used for our network to link to the router for internet utilization. We are also monitoring wireless access points using SolarWinds. Our network, security and system teams use this solution and its dashboards. 

This solution offers a very good view of our network and allows us to effectively monitor performance.

The dashboards for this solution could be improved. We would like to divide the dashboards to give a clear view to our management team to show what we have and what deficiencies exist in our network. We would also like to show the number of devices which we need to improve our service.

I have been using this solution for ten years. 

It is a stable solution. 

This is a scalable solution. A few months ago I had a problem with the number of nodes on the system itself. We have the SLX NPM license which is unlimited and I can add an unlimited number of nodes. It seems there was a limitation on the one server. When I contacted support, they told me that I either need to delete some nodes or add another server to scale.

Whenever I have a problem or I need to ask a question, I contact the SolarWinds support team. I would rate their support a four out of five. 

Our company decided to change to SolarWinds due to a security breach they experienced. Other solutions that were considered were more expensive than Solarwinds. 

The initial setup is straightforward. 

To install the SolarWinds for the first time, you need a virtual machine to install the demo or trial version of SolarWinds. You can then add some devices, monitor and try to use whatever dashboards or reports you think you will need. Installing NPM itself and adding the nodes took us three months.

We implemented this solution in house with the help of a third party who were Solarwinds experts. 

We have seen a return on our investment using this solution. We are now working on a re-innovation project for the whole organization's network because our network is very old. Some vendors offered us a management solution for network performance monitoring but their devices offer the same functionality as SolarWinds. Based on what other solutions charge, the $700 we pay for this solution is fair. 

We pay approximately $700 per year for renewal of the license.

I would advise others to test the environment before deploying the whole solution.

I would rate Solarwinds an eight out of ten. I would give a higher rating if I could use root cause analysis to point to one device in the stack to understand which device has a problem. In general, I think SolarWinds is one of the most stable solutions and it has a lot of useful features for network performance monitoring.

We use SolarWinds NPM for network monitoring.

The most valuable features of the solution are its graphical interface and reports.

The solution's customer service is not very good because the support takes too long. The solution needs to provide better training videos, especially on creating individual reports. It would be good if reporting were made easier with SolarWinds NPM.

I have been using SolarWinds NPM for five years.

SolarWinds NPM is a very stable solution.

I rate the solution ten out of ten for stability.

I am the main user of SolarWinds NPM in our organization.

I rate the solution a five out of ten for scalability.

The solution’s customer support is not very good.

Negative

The solution’s initial setup is easy.

SolarWinds NPM is very expensive, and we pay ten thousand yearly.

The solution’s maintenance is easy. The solution can be easily integrated with other services like Cisco. There are issues with the solution's updates, and our security team has not approved them. So, we are waiting for the new version to be approved.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

The SolarWinds product is easy to deploy and the product features are quite granular. We can dig deep into the infrastructure and at the data level, or we can aggregate and come higher up and look at all the trends and analysis of what it provides.

The integration with the APIs and the web servers deployed can definitely be improved.

I've been using the solution for three years. 

The solution is stable and reliable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

It is a highly scalable product. Users can use something like F5 or load balancing. That gives you failover and similar infrastructure for disaster recovery as well. It's very, very scalable and stable product.

Usually, NPM users will be fewer as they're all network engineers. The solution doesn't require hundreds of users. We have about eight to nine. However, we deploy SolarWinds with a lot of clients. If you look at our clientele and our own user base in NPM, we must have had more than 100 users on this product between clients.

Technical support is excellent. 

SolarWinds wants its partners and resellers to succeed. They give you all the support, all the training for free. It's really, really, really good.

One of the competing products for this solution is Cisco SecureX. We have used it in the past.

The setup and deployment are quite simple. 

It's straightforward, however, you need to have networking knowledge. If you have knowledge of the network, then it's straightforward. It's a great product.

On a medium-sized enterprise, for one of our clients, we deployed it in three hours.

We've got our own engineers to handle the setup. However, whether we set IP up or not all depends on the client. If they define everything properly, the delays are not with the product. The product actually answers a lot of the client's questions and helps the client determine what they should be doing.

You've got the annual license, and then you've got a perpetual license as well. The pricing is very affordable.

There is no extra cost beyond the licensing. 

It is the latest version. The latest version comes with observability as part of the package. It's SolarWinds attempt to bring all its products under one platform. We've kind of become quite an expert in the area.

We are a provider of SolarWinds. We are an MSSP and also a reseller. It depends on what the client wants. 

We want to launch it as an MSSP for SMEs, and small companies who can't really afford a full install. We just doing a SaaS model so they can deploy it at cost to SMEs.

I'd advise potential users to use the one-month free trial and get a company like us to do a proof of concept and then do the NPM, application monitoring, log monitoring, et cetera. One by one, pick up all the products and integrate them.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

Our primary use case for the solution is to monitor whether certain devices are up or down, monitor bandwidth utilization and have a network performance monitor.

The ability to quickly identify downtime is the most valuable because we use the solution for monitoring. For example, a map that shows all of our switches, which make up our core infrastructure, and then the small firewalls that connect to the other locations so that we can see how our devices are running. Hence, the monitoring ability to create those maps and monitor everything on warmup is a very valuable feature for us.

The solution works very well for our current use case, but the price of the solution can be improved.

We have been using the solution for a while and are currently using version 12.4, but we are considering upgrading it.

We have not had issues with stability. I rate the stability a nine out of ten.

The solution is scalable, and there is currently only two staff utilizing the solution in our organization, but we have plans to increase usage further.

We have a fairly small environment, but this is because we only have about 15 switches, some servers, and our remote locations, so we're using a couple of hundred nodes altogether, but we can scale up to probably thousands or even tens of thousands because there is room to add additional servers. I rate the scalability a nine out of ten.

We dealt with customer service and support once for a license issue, and they resolved our concerns swiftly.

Positive

SolarWinds NPM was the first network monitoring solution we used

The initial setup was complex as there was quite a bit of work that had to be done in terms of setting up databases and making sure the database was linked to the application.

We implemented the solution through a vendor team the first time, but further installations were done in-house.

The licensing costs are fairly high. I rate it a five out of ten.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten based on our current version. The solution is a robust and stable product but can be improved by reducing its licensing costs. Therefore, I recommend the solution to users considering implementing it.

We use the solution for our network. It's for P2P networks or our servers to our network.

It can be a monitoring tool that just monitors for us at the moment, checking what the issue is or where the issue is. It is managed by a third party. Basically, it just gives us a view of what the site is. We can see our server connection and whether it's up or not. It's just checking if the servers are up or not and if the network is up or not. It's not doing too much else.

The solution is very user-friendly. 

When it pinpoints something, I will get an email alert. I'll immediately know what the problem is and be able to do something. 

The pricing is great. 

We were looking for some sort of endpoint monitoring as well. it would be nice if that was covered. We'd like to have more security when it comes to ADR. 

We'd like to see a bit more automation in the future. 

Sometimes, if the problem isn't on our side, it doesn't provide a very clear problem in terms of what the issue is. 

I've been using the solution for about two years. 

It's been very stable and reliable. I'd rate the stability ten out of ten. It doesn't crash or freeze. There aren't bugs. 

We just have one user on the solution who monitors it. Three of us can cover it at any given time. It's web-based. 

A third party helped with the initial setup, and they handled everything. I'm not sure how the deployment worked. 

The initial setup was done by a third party. 

The pricing is decent. We chose to use it based on the price. I can't speak to the exact cost, however, I can say it is very reasonable. 

I'm a customer and end-user.

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're using. 

As a user, I would recommend the solution as it is user-friendly and easily understandable. It will tell you exactly what the issue is and where. It's quite useful. 

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. 

The most valuable features of SolarWinds NPM are network performance monitoring and the overall benefit for servers.

SolarWinds NPM needs to increase its elements. One polling engine can only support 10,000 elements then it becomes slow. There are limitations even if you have the full SLX version license.

If we want to have more polling engines it will cost an additional 20 Indian rupees.

I have been using SolarWinds NPM for approximately nine years.

SolarWinds NPM is a stable solution.

The scalability of the solution is good. It is easy to do.

I would recommend this solution to enterprise-sized companies.

The support is good.

I rate the support from SolarWinds NPM a five out of five.

Positive

The solution can become very expensive and commercially not viable in countries, such as India.

I find this solution to be better than others because we are familiar with it.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate SolarWinds NPM a nine out of ten.

What I like about SolarWinds is the application health monitoring system. It's a very good system, and I recommend it to big companies in the pharmaceutical or the banking industries, for example, with large networks and very critical servers. 

The other valuable system is the DSS (decision support system). If there's a fault in the network, SolarWinds is basically capable of rectifying and resolving that problem on its own without any intervention from an IP assistant or administrator.

The evaluation time for the product is too short especially for large corporations.

I have approximately seven years of experience.

We have a hybrid cloud type of deployment.

SolarWinds is a stable product.

It's a very scalable solution because you can install different pollers.

I have not had a good experience with technical support because most of the time when I contact them, they first want to know whether you have a license. If you do, then they support you. However, if you are working on the evaluation version they do not take your queries very seriously. There is some level of support, but it's not at a high level. So, I'd rate them at six on a scale from one to ten.

Neutral

The initial setup process requires specific knowledge of the product, and if the implementation manager has the appropriate knowledge, it will not be that difficult to set it up.

The deployment can take up to two weeks depending on the size and complexity of the network.

When I compare the cost of CA Spectrum to that of SolarWinds NPM, the cost of CA Spectrum is way too high, and the cost of SolarWinds NPM is pretty low.

I mostly recommend SolarWinds, especially to companies with a low budget or to those that are not ready to spend a good amount on network management and network tools.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate SolarWinds at eight.

We've been using SolarWinds for our network monitoring. It's basic advanced network monitoring, up-down of Rogers switches, as well as metrics, latency, wireless metrics, where users are, errors on interfaces, route cables, and things of that nature. We're just pulling as much data from our network devices as possible to present that in an easy pane of glass.

I find the NetPath to be very valuable. It visualizes that traceroute that you can share with anyone in the business. For example, when they say, "Hey, what's going on? The network's slow because my application or my server's having issues" you can show them this nice graph that visualizes where there may be congestion or if there isn't any congestion at all.

Its initial setup is simple. 

So far, it's been pretty good, however, due to the whole solar flare thing that happened two years ago, a lot of cybersecurity and leadership's kind of looking to replace it with something else. We're currently just trying to find other info or anybody else who's comparable in terms of other network monitoring solutions.

Wireless monitoring needs improvement. We need to get a little bit more information from the thin clients or wireless LAN controllers than we already do. It's very minimal at this point and getting more information would be pretty vital.

There should be a little bit more integration in some of the other tooling and utilizing the APIs of devices or tools could be a little bit better. It would help to present information - rather than trying to get the highest level of administrative access to present minimal information. There are a lot of aspects where they give you base information, however, for other necessary gleams of information, you may need to have high-low. For instance, for Linux servers, you need to have pseudo access to get the necessary information to monitor and that's kind of a hassle.

We've been using the solution for about three years. 

The stability is fantastic. We haven't personally had any issues other than a few gripes about the lack of information. However, as far as it being stable, for me, it's been pretty solid.

It's possible to scale, however, it comes at a cost. You have to go through them and there's a whole nother license piece that costs a large lump sum to grow your polers to start importing more if your initial server is getting towards a limit. It's scalable, with the caveat of it's going to cost you.

We have about ten to 20 users. It's a mix of network analysts, CIS admins, storage administrators, and application administrators.

We do not plan to increase usage at the moment, mainly as we're pretty much utilizing it as much as we need to, however, it is pretty much monitoring our entire environment or maybe couple hundred switches, some routers, couple hundred servers, and applications and things like that. We pretty much monitor our whole environment and our environment's not really growing anymore. We're pretty good right now.

Technical support is pretty good. In the few cases we have reached out for any support, they've been pretty responsive. Also, their online resources and knowledge bases are very extensive as well.

Positive

We actually didn't use anything before this product.

The implementation process is pretty straightforward. They give you an MSI and once you have your servers and databases set up, it's just a couple of clicks and it's set up.

For overall importing of everything may have taken a couple of weeks to have things up and running due to how our organization is structured and how we can gather information to pull into SolarWinds and our implementation strategy. For example,  who set up servers and applications. We start getting with the appropriate aims to get whatever monitor or whatever polling method we need, whether it was S and NP strings or accounts for any server monitoring with administrative access or whatnot. Then we look at the network and do those automatic scans from there. Once we start pulling in that information, we start actually organizing all the nodes in there to properly alert and monitor. It takes maybe a month or so to get it to a baseline.

For deployment and maintenance, honestly, it's just me by myself doing it. It would be easier with a few more people.

The setup was done in-house. We did not use any third party, like an integrator, reseller, or consultant.

As far as assisting in being proactive in our network, it's been a great help in helping us maintain a healthy environment and being proactive and making sure things are up to date and upgraded.

The standard licensing fees are what we're paying. It's about $20,000 a year for all our licensing.

There weren't any other options were evaluated. We saw SolarWinds and noted our other sister companies use that. We just went with it to be standardized within our entire conglomerate.

We are a customer and end-user.

I would definitely advise others to do their homework. There are a lot of different modules you can buy with different licensing. You need to understand what you're looking to monitor, and what you're trying to present to your business, and then do the homework on the solution itself and see how that fits your needs before just going and buying it or even talking to a sales representative.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. It's pretty good at its job. I haven't really delved into too many other things. I've tried to look at other tools recently and in my opinion, solutions like Nagios or Zabbix aren't the best. I haven't really looked into other things like Datadog or LogicMonitor yet, however, I'd say this solution is kind of a leader in the pack for what it's doing. Still, there's definitely room for improvement.