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NetApp Cloud Insights vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

NetApp Cloud Insights
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
19th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
17th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Migration (9th)
SolarWinds NPM
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
5th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
158
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of NetApp Cloud Insights is 0.2%, down from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.9%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Scott Lauters - PeerSpot reviewer
It provides a single pane of glass, giving us visibility into the environment
All our production clusters are in Cloud Insight. It provides a single pane of glass, giving us visibility into the environment, which allows us to understand if any issues are going on across any of our clusters. The main issue we were looking to address was the lack of visibility across all the clusters in one single view. We're using Cloud Insight's Unified Manager. It has improved our ability to support and see the immediate status of the entire environment. If we have a critical incident, we can quickly see these issues and loop in monitoring teams and other teams. For example, if our app team thinks there are issues in the environment, we can quickly see if anything related to storage is part of the problem. It improved our organization by unifying all the various support teams. We all have the same view of what's happening in the environment. The dev team knows what storage is used or not, and we can quickly move on to other activities. Cloud Insights provides a single tool for containers and other cloud-based architectures, but we're not using some of those things, such as Kubernetes. We're primarily leveraging the monitoring and reporting. The solution does a great job of inventorying our resources. It allows us to put the tags on the devices. The process is fast. It also gives you the dependencies. I can dig down into all the related components. Cloud Insight's advanced analytics feature does a good job of highlighting the areas where there might be issues in the future.
MohitKumar - PeerSpot reviewer
High-level, comprehensive, and proactive monitoring in a user-friendly interface
The solution needs to integrate with additional SDN technologies that are part of the hyper market. The solution supports many vendors by default and just included Meraki SDN with the new release, but continued expansion is important. We created a custom method to pair with unsupported vendors but that can produce a lag in performance so future releases should expand SDN support. The solution does a good job of automating features but could expand that even more.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Among the most valuable features are the queries and reporting that allow us to look at the utilization of resources, at how well the storage is performing, and to report on which resources are being used by which business units. We can track usage across the entire environment, across applications, business units, cost centers, etc."
"Cloud Insights' best features are visibility and the connector to move the workloads."
"NetApp Cloud Insights helps with login monitoring and troubleshooting. Previously, if we had performance concerns or needed to interface with other groups and their products, a task that should require only one or two people turned into a six-person job."
"One feature we appreciate the most is its ability to take snapshots, which adds an extra layer of security and allows us to protect our data effectively."
"The solution is 98 percent stable."
"Its ability to quickly inventory our resources, figure out interdependencies across them, and assemble a topology of your environment is brilliant. There is a price associated with it. Whenever you target a NetApp environment, it is included in the price but whenever you want to add different vendors, like VMware and Cisco, the price greatly spikes. Inventorization helps us a lot to visualize the environment."
"The solution is easy to deploy."
"It is good for giving an overview of the systems and for tracking long-term trends. It is handy for root cause analysis, e.g. it can eliminate whether storage is the cause of an issue."
"SolarWinds is user-friendly with a manageable console."
"The most valuable feature of SolarWinds NPM is the performance monitoring to see the memory, and CPU utilization."
"There are a lot of options for customization of the dashboard, alerts, and reports."
"A product that is well-tested and trusted in demanding situations."
"The benefit of this solution is the reporting. We're able to report on and see our network in a graphical form. We are able to detect when a device is added to a network."
"The set up was very easy. We didn't have any problems with the setup. The deployment took less than an hour."
"The product is lightweight in terms of memory use, requiring only 10 megabytes or less."
"SolarWinds NPM is a scalable solution since it can handle a huge number of users."
 

Cons

"Most of the time, I initially connect with entry-level support, and then I need to request a higher-tier support level, which can result in delays."
"In a perfect world we would have something built, right out-of-the-box, that can identify what we call "noise," and reduce the amount of data. You're presented with so much data when you first start the data collectors. For example, it brings back a lot of change rates that happen just because of standard computing, like profile changes and that sort of thing. Being able to identify things like that and categorize them and strip it down—and it probably can do that, I just haven't gotten there yet—would be very beneficial."
"The visualization needs some improvement because there are occasional delays while the system queries information."
"The IP-based monitoring could be added in a future release."
"The support is not very quick."
"When I did need support because I was having problems with the solution, the first or the second line just didn't understand it. They were providing this only on a software as a service basis. So, they were asking all the wrong questions."
"Their pricing model needs improvement."
"Cloud Insights could offer more detail when we drill down into the Azure environment."
"It would be good to have high security."
"If they did some type of synthetic monitoring, it would have been better."
"Time: A worldwide deployment can be confusing for dispersed users with non-local times. Each node should have a local time (with summer offset if appropriate) & each user should view & report in their local time."
"The price could be better."
"It has covered everything, so no improvement is required at their end. The only thing is the price."
"I would like to see some enhancement on the reporting side, such as making it a little bit easier to create reports or having a larger assortment of canned reports."
"Each model has different features, so clients need to purchase a separate model for SQL monitoring, database monitoring, network traffic analyzer, HTTP traffic, etc. So each feature they need is in a different model, but customers would prefer an all-in-one solution."
"SolarWinds NPM offers limited customization options. Users and developers may find restrictions in modifying or customizing the dashboard and adjusting monitoring features such as polling intervals or SLAs for different nodes."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing model could be improved. We love that you can use it for free for looking at NetApp products. You only need licenses to look at non-NetApp products, but as soon as you do that, you start utilizing licenses that actually would have been free in the public. So, there is a bit of an anomaly in the licensing model."
"The licensing is complex. The calculation depends on what you're ingesting. A terabyte of one product is not a terabyte of another product. Virtual machines don't equate so easily. It's all about the end-use managed units and having an easy place to reference how far those units go."
"The solution is expensive."
"Be aware of the capacity licensing and understand how that works, because it is based on capacity. Getting an understanding of that is the biggest thing."
"We are billed based on management units, so we can purchase units based on six months, twelve months, twenty-four months, or thirty-six months upfront or pay as you go depending on our requirements."
"The solution's pricing is based on the device you purchase and includes support services."
"It is not an expensive product."
"The pricing is in the middle. It's not particularly cost-effective, but it's not overly expensive either."
"The pricing needs to be improved. It is too high. One full engine costs around $10 000, which is why we don't have high availability right now."
"It is too expensive."
"SolarWinds is expensive. That's why it's primarily banks using the solution. Small businesses can't afford it. Due to its pricing, most smaller enterprises like manufacturing companies are not interested. For example, we have a client who is also interested in traffic monitoring, but they are not purchasing SolarWinds because of the cost."
"It was inexpensive when we installed it and gradually became more expensive, but it was a very inexpensive product at first."
"We pay for SolarWinds NPM yearly. We buy it and then we renew it, but it's not subscription-based. I don't remember the value exactly, because it's my manager who manages pricing, but we pay $60,000 per year for all the solutions. Pricing will also depend on the number of devices. We have a lot of devices."
"I’d suggest that people be aware that licensing has tiers."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
34%
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Educational Organization
5%
Educational Organization
54%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about NetApp Cloud Insights?
NetApp Cloud Insights helps with login monitoring and troubleshooting. Previously, if we had performance concerns or needed to interface with other groups and their products, a task that should req...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp Cloud Insights?
The licensing is complex. The calculation depends on what you're ingesting. A terabyte of one product is not a terabyte of another product. Virtual machines don't equate so easily. It's all about t...
What needs improvement with NetApp Cloud Insights?
Ease of reporting is one thing that they're trying to tackle. If you have a specific set of data you want from Cloud Insights, you can ask NetApp to help you build the reports from the ground up. T...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
It actually depends on the exact purpose or kind of devices (network devices, servers, something else). Some tools are better for only network devices while others are better for a cloud monitoring...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We are partners with SolarWinds and we sell a lot of Network management to large enterprises also because of scalability, products like Network Performance Monitor & Netflow Traffic Analyzer ar...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp Cloud Insights vs. SolarWinds NPM and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.