Micro Focus Network Node Manager Reviews

We are able to have all network devices in a single place in order to send the alerts to an umbrella tool (Service Now). 

The stability is quite good.

It's quite a mature solution.

Technically speaking, I'm facing some issues when monitoring Barracuda firewalls. There is some room for improvement in this area.

The documentation for the initial/upgrade setup present errors sometimes.

This product has been used in our company for ten years, I suppose, however, I have been personally using it only for two or three years.

Regarding stability, we don't face any issues. It's reliable. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

From the very beginning until now, we deployed to two servers in a fail over environment. Therefore, I can't really speak to the scalability of the product.

Technical support could be much better and work much faster.

Typically, is taking some time so solve tickets. If involving a higher level expert is needed, you should wait.

The initial setup is somewhere in between. It's both not so easy, and also not so complex. We have the Linux version. Some years ago we had physical servers and we migrated to virtual ones. 

There were some issues and we opened some tickets, however, in the end, they were solved. It's just that there are a few key steps that need to be handled carefully during installation. You need documentation to guide you. However, some of the articles meant to assist were not very accurate. If you're following exact instructions line by line, and you are not getting what is expected, you have to do a bit of problem-solving by yourself.

I don't handle the pricing, however, it's my understanding that the product is quite expensive.

I would recommend the solution to others due to the fact that it's quite stable and mature. That said, there are a few improvements that can be made.

Overall, I would rate it eight out of ten.

We install, integrate, customize and configure this solution for our clients. We are system integrators who resell tools to our customers and we are partners with Micro Focus. 

The great thing about this solution is its compatibility for enterprise level organizations. If you need to install 10,000 or even 20,000 devices, it's easy to monitor. The product's fault management is awesome. 

I haven't had a great experience with this solution because the dashboards are not customizable and it's not user-friendly. The market has changed and people are now focused on mobile solutions, tablet solutions, or dashboards, which I prefer to use. I'd like to see dashboard customization and customized reports.

I've been using this solution for three years. 

The stability is good. 

The scalability is great. 

The customer service has improved drastically over the past couple of years and I think they're very good now. 

Positive

Deployment generally takes around two to three hours. It's a matter of integrating with the databases, and then connecting devices. It's not easy getting the connectivity right and that can be time-consuming because there are lots of configurations required on every device when connecting to the NNM. We use our own technical team for deployment, usually three or four people; two for delivery and two for follow-up support.

I think getting an ROI takes about three years but it depends on the customer and the scenario. For some companies, for example, if one site goes down and nobody is aware of it, the cost can be in the millions. In other scenarios, the loss wouldn't be so great.  

The license is a perpetual lifetime license and the subscription is on a yearly basis. It's an expensive product because it's an enterprise-level product with a big team working behind it for batch releases, maintenance releases, version upgrades, maintenance support, and professional services. 

I rate this solution seven out of 10. 

We are using virtual servers. We have two servers, they are set in fail-over environments. One is active, one is waiting.

I work for a very big enterprise. Any employee could technically access this tool, but only a few of them are interested. Roughly 50 people working in specific departments access this tool — mostly the network operations team.

Currently, we are not using all of the features they provide; just the main tool for monitoring the alerts. The lists are sent to a third-party tool — ServiceNow. It's an umbrella that collects alerts from different tools.

I'm pretty satisfied with this tool. We have some specific devices that are not integrated very well, for example, Barracuda Firewalls. They have to improve this, but this is a specific situation. 

It's a good one. It's a stable tool. We do not have any issues stability-wise.

I would say that they definitely need to improve their support features — this is a problem. When I open a ticket, usually they respond very late. Some of the people I negotiate with seem undertrained. They don't know much about the tool; they have to ask their high-level colleagues. This takes a lot of time and it's pretty frustrating to wait so long to form a ticket. They need to be quicker and more knowledgeable.

When we paid for a consultant, it was a very different situation. All of our problems were solved in a very short period of time.

Micro Focus Network Node Manager was already installed when I came to this company. In the future, we may switch to SolarWinds.

I wasn't involved in the pricing, but I think it's quite expensive. For example, we wanted to buy a separate module — a performance and reporting tool; however, our colleagues from the payment section said that it costs too much.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight.

We are using the solution for network monitoring.

We had some issues with some of the features, some modules are not meeting expectations. Additionally, they need to start following some of the latest trends.

I have been using the solution for approximately 7 years.

It is a stable solution.

It is a scalable product. 

When we speak to the customer service about issues that we have been experiencing, they tell us that is how the solution operates, unfortunately, and we have to live with it. 

We have approximately 3 technicians doing all the installs and maintenance.

The solution is priced mid-range compared to the competition.

We are thinking about migrating to SolarWinds because of some of the issues we have been experiencing.

I rate Micro Focus Network Node Manager a six out of ten.