SolarWinds NPM Reviews

We use the product for network monitoring. 

SolarWinds NPM provides an overview of network monitoring, extending its capabilities to cover other aspects, such as virtual machines and servers. The platform has features like NetPath, which is particularly beneficial for end-users, offering insights into issues like latency, packet loss, and connectivity problems with routers, switches, or servers. NetPath helps identify where the network path is disrupted or experiencing problems. For instance, if accessing Google services encounters issues, NetPath can pinpoint where the problem lies.  Another valuable feature is that it provides real-time data on device performance, including resource utilization, RAM status, and responsiveness.

The tool can only monitor up to 1000 instances in a single SolarWinds console. Customers may have over 1000 instances. Hence, it needs to support a minimum of 1500 instances. It should also improve support. 

I worked with HPE for about six to seven months in 2016. It had similar features to SolarWinds NPM. However, the deployment process was complex.

Deploying SolarWinds NPM is a straightforward process. The deployment steps include extracting the files, mounting them on the server, and deploying them. The documentation provided by SolarWinds is clear. 

While I haven't extensively worked with ManageEngine, I've observed some of its features, and customization stands out as a strong aspect. ManageEngine can be a good option for those with budget constraints, as it offers similar features to SolarWinds NPM at a more affordable price. I rate the solution an eight out of ten. 

My company uses SolarWinds NPM for interface monitoring because we are not required to put in any keywords and do the manual thing, making it easy to onboard. In our company, we just export the device and download the configuration, while the NCM part can be enabled by going to the settings and changing the configuration. The solution becomes easy if you use everything on a single dashboard.

My customers have experienced benefits from SolarWinds NPM since it supports Akamai Guardicore, Akamai Synthetic Monitoring, and VMware-based device monitoring. In general, SolarWinds NPM integrates smoothly with every solution. The integration part of the solution might not be as easy as it seems since one may have to enter some commands in JSON format in the integer part. The templates are already set in the solution, but there is a need to change the parameters, values, and IPs. After the aforementioned steps are followed, integrating the solution with tools like Tableau, Power BI, ServiceNow, and Microsoft Teams for notifications and alerting an incident becomes easy.

Though in SolarWinds NPM, there is no need to go into other interfaces and set up some settings with other parameters, SolarWinds NCM allows you to do so more easily. We just put the configuration and execute the particular IP, or you can just put the Excel sheet, where once the import is done, it shows all the IPs there, and so you just need to do the configuration and execute the IPs. The solution provides you with real-time data, including details like how many devices are completed, how many are left, and how many are getting errors.

The dashboard of the solution is an area with certain shortcomings that need improvement. Having all the features and parameters under a single tab in the solution would be good. For knowledge-related purposes, SolarWinds needs to consider adding documentation to its portal to provide users with the upgrade command if they want to upgrade the solution and how to carry out the onboarding procedure.

I would like to see real-time visualization and monitoring, especially when attempting to connect globally where one router is in the USA and the other is in the UK. With real-time visualization, all the interfaces can be made visible properly, while the users also get more visibility and their network. If an interface goes down, then one can monitor the interface directly with the help of the dashboard provided in the solution.

I have been using SolarWinds NPM for nine to ten months. I operate as a system integrator for SolarWinds. I use the open-source version of the tool.

It is a stable and good solution.

SolarWinds NPM is a scalable solution since it can handle a huge number of users. When I joined my current organization, I saw SolarWinds NPM handling 10,000 devices, including the backup, storage, and everything else. SolarWinds NPM never had any performance problems, like hanging or lagging issues, and this may be because the solution only has a few features in it.

For SolarWinds, my company needs to send an email to the customer support of SolarWinds, after which they will reply back to us with their incident number, and then work on it. If required, the customer support of SolarWinds will set up a call with our company to understand the real-time situation at our end.

I rate the support team an eight out of ten.

Positive

Though I wasn't involved in the deployment process of SolarWinds NPM, I was involved in Fortinet FortiCloud's deployment. With the deployment part, my customers have deployed SolarWinds NPM and Fortinet FortiCloud on the same server.

My company's current customers plan to replace SolarWinds NPM with Fortinet FortiCloud.

In comparison to other tools in the market, SolarWinds NPM hasn't been upgraded yet. I believe SolarWinds NPM plans to upgrade itself in the future and have more features, like the ability to support other devices or vendors, like Arista, Juniper, Guardicore, or Akamai. In terms of the advantages provided by SolarWinds NPM, I would say that the solution is easy to use, easy to onboard, easy to set up, easy to delete, easy to configure, easy to get the report on a single interface, and one can also apply a filter to get what is required.

In the last four years, I have deployed three tools in Avaya and another four in my current organization.

The maintenance of SolarWinds NPM is not difficult.

SolarWinds NPM is one of the easiest and most flexible tools, but I would say that SolarWinds NCM is a better tool. I rate SolarWinds NCM a nine out of ten.

I don't know if there have been any upgrades in SolarWinds NPM. Considering the performance graph, one will see a clear visualization in SolarWinds and not in Fortinet FortiCloud.

I rate SolarWinds NPM an eight out of ten.

I use SolarWinds for monitoring. We have around 300 people at my company. 

I like the NPM and SAM features. 

The integration with video apps could be better.

I have used SolarWinds NPM for one year. 

SolarWinds NPM is stable.

SolarWinds NPM is scalable.

I rate SolarWinds support nine out of 10. SolarWinds support is excellent. 

Positive

The SolarWinds deployment was straightforward and took about two weeks. One support engineer can handle it. 

SolarWinds is reasonably priced. 

We considered Dotcom-Monitor, but we went with SolarWinds for financial reasons. 

I rate SolarWinds NPM eight out of 10. Before implementing SolarWinds, do your homework and compare it with other products. Contact the technical accounts manager and find out the latest features so you can see the pros and cons. 

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're using SolarWinds NPM for server monitoring, report monitoring, and application monitoring.

I found a lot of valuable features in SolarWinds NPM, such as the customized application monitoring that allows you to customize any monitoring and script customization, and you also have the option to deploy and upgrade SolarWinds NPM online, which is very useful for my organization.

An area for improvement in SolarWinds NPM is the short retention period. Currently, it's just for seven days of data, which is very low, making it hard for my organization to keep that data.

SolarWinds recommended a seven-day retention period, but my organization needs a fourteen-day data retention period. Hence, I'd like an increase in the retention period or the database limit in SolarWinds NPM because you can't go back to the data for any investigation if seven days have passed.

Another area for improvement in SolarWinds NPM is the database, which needs to be a bit more mature.

I want a modified database in the next release of SolarWinds NPM. I'd also like more options added to groups because, currently, it's very limited.

I've been working with SolarWinds NPM for almost two years now.

SolarWinds NPM is a stable solution.

SolarWinds NPM is a scalable solution.

My team contacted technical support for SolarWinds NPM a lot of times. On a scale of one to ten, I'd rate support as seven because one of my cases remained open for a year without the perfect answer or resolution, though the SolarWinds development team has been working on it.

Neutral

I've previously worked with HPE and IBM, but that was for another organization. My current organization uses SolarWinds NPM.

The initial setup for SolarWinds NPM is relatively easy, and anyone can do it.

As I deployed SolarWinds NPM in a huge environment, the deployment took almost six to eight hours for fifteen servers.

We deployed SolarWinds NPM in-house.

Though I don't remember the price for SolarWinds NPM, its price is somewhat okay when you compare it with other tools in the market. The price isn't too high and isn't too low, so it's okay.

I'm an end-user of SolarWinds NPM.

In the organization, over a hundred people use SolarWinds NPM, with five to six administrators. The solution requires specific maintenance, mainly because it has a lot of DW issues.

My advice to people looking to start working with SolarWinds NPM is that it's the best solution for a medium-scale environment. For a large-scale environment with many requirements, such as a vast number of nodes, for example, more than twenty-five thousand, SolarWinds NPM may not be as scalable, DW-wise. If you have below fifteen thousand to fifteen thousand nodes, then it's okay to use SolarWinds NPM.

My rating for SolarWinds NPM is eight out of ten.

Our company specializes in the development of a SaaS site. Often times, we look for solutions to complement our existing tool based on customer's needs. 

We recommended the solution to a customer as an infrastructure configuration and monitoring tool that combines multiple domains in a single platform. The customer also wanted issue notifications to be provided in a real-time, viewable format. 

The solution ranks as one of the top five monitoring tools.

KPIs should correlate and combine in one simple report.

The solution does not offer much customization so is somewhat inflexible. 

I have been using the solution for one year. 

The solution is stable.

Our customer does not have broad scaling needs. They have fifteen users and the solution works fine with no issues in this small environment. 

The initial setup can take time because it requires proper security access from the customer side. Setup and implementation took our customer one week. 

Our customer utilized an internal team of four technicians to handle implementation themselves. 

Our customer reports that the solution is somewhat costly and licensing is a bit complicated. 

I recommend the solution if it is the best alternative for a customer's environment. It is one of five tools that I suggest for assessment of fit. 

I rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

The primary use case is for cybersecurity, as they did not want it on their own personal cloud. 

We found that it was easy to operate, and it was simple if anyone has entry-level working experience or even if someone is not experienced.

The improvement would be that SolarWinds NPM thoroughly checks its patches before releasing them to the market. Better testing, alpha testing, and then releasing it to the market.

I have been working with SolarWinds NPM for the past one to two years.

The stability is very good and informative.

We were able to quickly expand and include any other active equipment or any new buildings which became requirements. We were able to easily take into consideration everything and set it up.

Technical support is good, however somewhat delayed due to the time difference. We had some troubleshooting issues because new people were working on it, but SolarWinds NPM responded back and it was easy for everyone to go through it.

Positive

Deployment was straightforward and we had an expert of SolarWinds NPM who we employed. The process was completed within a couple of hours.

We had one person from a third party help us through the deployment process.

I would rate SolarWinds NPM a nine 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 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.