SolarWinds NPM Reviews

This solution has many different roles in our company. There is the application support group who configure it for monitoring specific services within applications and our desktop or operations group which monitors toner in laser printers. My group, which is primarily networking and servers, use it for bandwidth monitoring, server processor utilization monitoring, and for disk space monitoring. So we use it for a lot of different things. There are probably 200 services that are being monitored within our financial system to make sure that it is running optimally. I'm an infrastructure supervisor and we're customers of SolarWinds.

The outcome of using this solution is that we've been able to become more proactive on really resolving issues before users know that there's a problem. Outages have reduced by probably around 90% because we're able to take and proactively add space to a disk or add processors to a server before users know there's a problem. It means we can take something down at night and fix it, rather than disrupting work in the middle of the day. 

The alerting and usage tracking is a valuable feature because it alerts us when we're getting near capacity on disk space, network utilization or processor utilization. It helps us manage our capacity and enables us to be proactive.

This is a complex product to set up and I think it's really too detailed and could be simplified. It's a change from their older product which was very easy to set up and manage. The new one is more difficult because it's far more detailed. The solution does everything we ask of it, but it takes a long time to deploy.

Additional features and improvements would be to simplify initial data gathering so that we can deploy easily and then refine it over time. Ideally, we'd like to be able to get something up and running in a week and then go through and decide, for example, to monitor things on one particular server and not necessarily on others. They could possibly create a generic installation and then let us go back and refine it. We spend a lot of time without having all of our equipment monitored because it takes so long to initially set up each server. 

I've been using this solution for three years. 

I think this is a very stable solution.

I think the solution is easy to scale although it does require a lot of resources. When we initially set it up, we had about a quarter of the resources that we currently have and we set it up too conservatively which caused a lot issues. When the consultant reset it, we quadrupled the amount of resources that the system has. We have about 10 people that get alerts and are actively involved with the system. The system requires about 10 staff hours for maintenance, updates and verification that everything is working.

As we refine it to monitor services, we are going to increase the usage. So right now we have it monitoring a database server, but we're not monitoring all of the services within that server. So we might have 30 databases in there. We're not yet monitoring each of the individual databases.

We have very few issues that require technical support, we only contact them a few times a year. They generally resolve things pretty quickly and our issues are generally related to improving deployment. 

We used to use a product called ipMonitor, which is a much simpler solution. It's one-tenth of the cost and we used it strictly for alerting. It would tell us when a server was down, but not that the server was running at 70% utilization for the previous week. ipMonitor was strictly a something is working or a something is not working solution.

The server configuration for installation took about a week. And then another two to three weeks to get it installed across all of our servers. We're making modifications every day. We initially set it up ourselves and then about two years after the initial installation, we hired a consultant to redo the installation and make it more efficient because it wasn't initially configured optimally. It's the amount of detail you need that will determine how much time you spend setting something up.

Our ROI has been in the savings in downtime during business hours.

Our annual maintenance fee is USD $15,000. 

HP had a similar product that we looked at but it wasn't nearly as universal as SolarWinds products. HP has a product to monitor servers and a product to monitor networks, but they don't have one product that does both well, SolarWinds monitors everything very well.

I would recommend taking into consideration that you will need more server resources than you think. Knowing that means you can save on having to rebuild the whole environment later on. We ended up going from one server to four servers and it's running much better now. Don't skimp on the server resources you get with the application.

I would rate this solution a 10 out of 10. 

We primarily use the solution to try to monitor all of our AWS services, including the servers and the cloud. We use both, and this actually helps us with monitoring and certain applications.

The best part of the solution is the sharing display. It gives a general public ID wherein everyone can link to a public display. That's a good feature.

I expected more from the solution. I thought it would be just like the Orion Platform. On Orion, for example, you can spot all the different widgets and everything from the dashboard. This solution is less simple. There are charts and lines and numbers. It might be helpful if the solution offered some more extensions, like a log that could add up your display on the dashboard.

I have mixed feelings about the solution. I started off thinking that this would be a replacement to all of our other dashboards, like Cloudworx. However, it didn't show me that promise. I wouldn't want to replace the other dashboards that we started with because it wouldn't generate reporting. It would be helpful if it would help visualize information better.

There needs to be more integration of widgets, especially for reporting purposes.

The solution would benefit enormously from more automation, especially around reporting.

SolarWinds NPM has been in our company for two years now, but we have just recently started to utilize the solution effectively. We've begun to get the full effect of the product, I would estimate, only in the past few months.

The stability is weak in comparison to other solutions. CloudWatch is far better in the stability aspect. The solution is a bit slow.

The solution has the potential to scale. I'm not sure if my company has tried to do so or if they plan on doing so, so I can't speak from any personal experience.

We are actually in the process of replacing a lot of items. This solution didn't do the things we expected, so don't know the likelihood of scaling it in the future, or continuing to use it.

For the most part, our IT teams are the ones that are on the solution. Not everyone in the company is on it.

Technical support has always been great. They are very responsive. We've been satisfied with their level of support.

We didn't previously have any other hybrid platform to monitor. We were just using CloudWatch for our AWS services. With SolarWinds, we have the potential to take a look at everything across the board. 

The initial setup was straightforward. It was really smooth.

I personally did not handle the deployment part, however, the rest of the team who supported me had handled the process and it was my understanding that they didn't have any issues.

I don't deal with licensing or pricing, so I wouldn't be able to guess how much we pay for the services or if they are monthly or yearly. I'm not sure what our license agreement looks like.

We just use the product. We're not consultants or resellers.

I'm not sure of which version of the solution we are currently using. It may be the most recent.

I do believe that in the future, users will gravitate towards using one solution for monitoring all the servers and applications. However, right now this product needs a lot of plugins. Currently, a lot of improvements are needed before the solution gets to a good place in terms of usability.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We primarily used the solution for routers and switches.

The "Performance Analyzer" feature is the solution's most valuable aspect. It's able to do the bounded graphs of all the interface stats, from errors to broadcasts and to current traffic. With a click of a button you're able to, in one interface, look at historical data for those items.

From the troubleshooting point of view, just having that peace of mind is great. I think it was kind of a neat feature they added. However, it obviously depends on who's using the platform. I use it as a troubleshooting tool mostly for historical data. That's kind of why I have a monitoring system. We rely heavily on that. We are supposed to be on 24/7 so if some resource is knocked out we can just do troubleshooting using historical data. Performance Analyzer was one of the core features I thought was pretty cool.

The idea that you can automatically trigger alerts from the TRAPS received is still something that still hasn't really taken off or worked properly. We have to manually go into the database and create SQL queries or SQL queries, to be able to match those and trigger those as alerts. On the engine itself, the Orion platform, just being able to receive the TRAP and generate the alert or something like an alert is a manual process.

We have all of these other networks that rely heavily on their own vendor protocol for monitoring, and then what the vendor has in place is just a place to be able to northbound, whatever it received to another server. 

It becomes tricky when you're trying to, for example, dry contact monitoring for power, etc. Those are not necessarily your network, they're using dry contacts. Just analog. The vendor needs to get all the information, and then put it into a format that actually works to be able to be received by other networks.

Basically, it's just important to have some sort of TRAP alert generation. There's no point of us trying to do queries into the database.

Before I joined my current company, I had been using SolarWinds for about six years.

The solution is extremely stable. We haven't had any issues in that regard. We haven't had issues with bugs, glitches, or crashes.

In terms of scalability, there is room for improvement. When you start monitoring, if you have so many interfaces and you're trying to monitor them at a faster interval, or a shorter interval, you get to a point where you need to request another node.

If you have a router that has over 400 interfaces, you need a very robust server. If you don't you'll end up running into issues.

I've never really reached out to technical support. I understand that it's alright. The very few times I've needed assistance, I was able to get some things from the SolarWinds page and their knowledge base. That's where almost everything you would need is found. 

For the most part, I've not had issues that required me to go past their knowledge base. The other thing is, when people do try to reach out past the knowledge base, the support staff always bounce back with a question like "Hey, did you check the log?" It can be frustrating because obviously you've looked and that's why you're calling. Because the answer isn't there.  

For the most part, they do a great job of having people share stuff on their knowledge base. Once you get access to that, most of what a general user would need is on there, if they running into something. The few times I've actually worked with support, it was in relation to something that was related to an enhanced feature. The experience, overall, I'd say has been okay.

The initial setup is very straightforward.

It's easy. A user can download the file, then they simply click the installer and it provides simple step-by-step click-through style instructions. It's been very intuitive for the most part. Before installation, it's important to consider space requirements, resources for the server, etc. before jumping in. Users will also need to consider (if they're running netflow) whether to save the data on the email server or not. It's possible to run out of space that way, however. There are various guidelines, however, at the end of the day, the installation process isn't complex in and of itself. 

I no longer work at the company that uses Solar Winds, so I don't have information about what they were paying or what they pay now. The current package I'm using myself is a free package as I do a comparison between PRTG and SolarWinds.

We're in the process of doing a comparison between SolarWinds and PRTG. 

At my old company, we were always using the current version of the solution. We'd like to keep up to date with the latest releases. The company even changed over when there was a move from a 2012 Windows server to an updated version of Windows (16).

We had a single server located in one location and all the other devices were networked. Sometimes SolarWinds was used as a slot receiver and trap receiver for some of those devices that have their own "NMS" (network managed system). It's not really proprietary, but we had a northbound interface to be able to send syslogs or TRAPS. SolarWinds was used as the one central location to be able to receive and process alarms and alerts for any trigger actions.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. The solution is kind-of expensive, but at the end of the day, it's quite robust. It has several great functionalities. It has groups, maps, almost everything. It's just a matter of the price point that makes it somewhat prohibitive.

There are modules in SolarWinds NPM which are better than other competitive tools. However, some areas require new releases or updates. For example, there have not been many updates to cloud monitoring, containerization or serverless environments. In that regard, SolarWinds NPM is not as good as other solutions in the market.

It is a stable solution, and rate the stability a nine out of ten.

The scalability can be better.

The technical support has been a good experience.

The ROI has been good.

It is considerably cheaper compared to other tools and available technologies in terms of LMS or EMS.

I rate this solution a seven out of ten. Regarding advice, I would recommend concentrating on gaining some expertise. A foundational or intermediate understanding of different network protocols and technologies would be helpful when using SolarWinds. In addition, understanding the underlying technology that will eventually be monitored or managed will be good.

Our clients are using Solar Winds NPM to monitor their network product. Solar Winds NPM is straightforward and you can monitor it very easily.

I think Solar Winds NPM needs to create a profile with documentation responsibility.

I have been using Solar Winds NPM for about three years.

The product is very stable and we have been using the product for around ten years.

Technical support is very helpful with our upgrades. I would rate them about an eight or a nine.

Positive

The setup is straightforward and takes about a week.

I would rate this Solar Winds NPM an eight out of ten.

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. 

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.

We use SolarWinds NPM to monitor and manage network devices and infrastructure in our environment.

SolarWinds NPM has helped our organization by providing a proactive approach to understanding the current trends in the environment, utilization of the resources, and providing inventory reports of the environment. This has helped us stay ahead of the cost for new infrastructure requirements as well as licenses.

The solution could improve in many areas, such as the marketing and description of the products, providing areas of improvement, cloud capabilities, and being able to be more streamlined with the current integration points with other applications.

I have been using SolarWinds NPM for approximately two years.

I have found the stability of SolarWinds NPM to be good.

The scalability has been adequate.

We have multiple users using the solution with various roles, such as network administration, server administration, and reporting users.

We have plans to increase usage. We are currently leveraging the internal infrastructure aspects of the environment. We're going to expand it and we purchased additional infrastructure to expand the visibility across multiple areas.

The technical support offered by SolarWinds NPM is pretty good.

The initial setup was straightforward. We deployed the solution from new and completed the upgrades. 

We coordinate with the vendor to help support the implementation. It can take many days depending on the modules that need to be installed. It took us approximately two days.

We need at least one staff member in each focus area for the implementation of the solution, totaling approximately six, depending on the modules you have.

We have a multi-year license for the use of this solution. There are additional costs for recourses in the environment.

Before choosing SolarWinds NPM we evaluated other solutions such as Splunk and ScienceLogic. The flexibility and the overall breadth of different modules that SolarWinds has to offer were superior to the other solutions evaluated.

I rate SolarWinds NPM an eight out of ten.

It is a good solution, it provides multiple module options, easy to use, and predominantly easy to find people to support it in the industry.