SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer Reviews

We are a distributor for SolarWinds Network Traffic Analyzer (NTA) and the majority of our customers are in the banking sector. For security reasons, we deploy the solution for our customers on-premises (it's not allowed to be cloud-based).

Our customers' standard use case for SolarWinds NTA is the monitoring of bandwidth and all the traffic flowing through their networks.

The bandwidth monitoring functionality is one of the most important features for our customers. When the customer notices that their bandwidth usage is too high for some reason, they will use the traffic analysis within SolarWinds NTA to identify which protocols (e.g. HTTPS) or applications are using up the bandwidth.

Another solid feature of SolarWinds NTA is their reports. They offer real-time traffic reports that show updates every five to 10 seconds.

For the most part, our customers are satisfied with the features already present within NTA, as they mainly use it for checking to see if their bandwidth usage is okay and within reason.

One area that we struggle with is the price. Because the price of this solution is so high, we are largely unable to introduce it into the local market, and only the banking sector has the means to afford it.

The biggest reason for this is because SolarWinds charges their users per ports, such that if you have a 24-port switch, they will charge you for 24 nodes, rather than count it as one single switch. In contrast, solutions such as ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer charge users per switch, which they count as a single node. 

Besides the pricing, I also think that the technical support could be better. When we call SolarWinds' tech support, it usually takes at least 10 to 15 minutes for a response. And when you send an email, you will again have to wait some time for a response, and sometimes this can be upwards of four to five hours.

I have been working with SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer for two years.

I would rate SolarWinds NTA a seven out of ten in terms of stability. In my experience, it is more stable than solutions such as ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer, which occasionally has issues with server hangs when viewing real-time reports.

As an enterprise-level product, SolarWinds NTA is certainly scalable. Our customers in the banking sector are able to purchase more than 1,400 nodes at a time, and some customers have purchased up to 15,000 nodes.

The technical support from SolarWinds for this solution is average, in my opinion, and the response times could certainly be improved. We have to wait 10 to 15 minutes for a response when calling them, but when emailing them they sometimes only get back to you four or five hours later.

As a result, we have found that it's much more sensible to call them directly to get a ticket number and start the support process from there.

The setup is not very complicated. The first time I saw it, it looked difficult, but now it's easy to configure.

The price is high, and typically only suitable for our customers in the banking sector. In the local market outside of banking, customers are not interested in SolarWinds NTA because it is so expensive.

SolarWinds' pricing structure is the primary reason why some customers opt for another solution such as ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer. In NTA, you are charged per port, meaning that if you have a 24-port switch you will be charged for 24 individual nodes. ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer, on the other hand, charges per switch, such that if you add a switch, the entire switch will count as one single node.

Two others solutions that we can compare with SolarWinds NTA are SolarWinds NPM (Network Performance Monitor) and ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer.

We have found that our banking customers prefer SolarWinds NPM compared to NTA because in NPM you can also view factors such as CPU and switch utilization, and check which ports are up or down. On the whole, they can monitor much more with NPM, and this is especially important for the banking sector. When it comes to networked devices such as ATMs, NPM provides good notification features where customers can be notified via email or SMS whenever an ATM link goes down.

ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer is another similar solution to SolarWinds NTA, but it's not nearly as good compared to SolarWinds NTA and NPM in terms of real-time reporting. ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer's reporting seems to suffer from server hanging issues and it sometimes takes a minute or more to update the reports.

Overlooking the pricing and the response times from their technical support, SolarWinds NTA is a good solution and our existing customers are satisfied with the product.

I would rate SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer a six out of ten.

We're mainly using SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer to analyze high usage in one of our interfaces in our MPLS data providers. When we have high usage, we check the reports on SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer to find out what devices are being used more. We also use the solution to analyze specific connections to ensure access.

What my organization likes best about SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is its easy deployment. It's also well-integrated in terms of monitoring because my organization also uses a SolarWinds solution for monitoring. You can connect SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer directly to that monitoring tool to get information.

My organization also finds the default graphs that appear before the configuration in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer very useful.

What needs improvement in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is performance because sometimes, my team struggles too much for the solution to perform correctly for a specific deployment in my organization.

Having a more detailed view in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is another area for improvement, but that's more part of the protocol than the actual solution.

I'd like to see better performance in the next release of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer. I'd like it to be faster to drill down and move into different views. My organization typically works with the interface view. It would be good for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer to have additional widgets that would allow you to drill up or down from the widget.

We've been using SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer for more than six years.

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is a stable solution.

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is a scalable solution. You just need a license based on the number of your interfaces.

It's been a long time since I've contacted the technical support team for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, but my experience is that the team was very responsive. You get information from support really fast, but I've been managing and getting into the daily operation of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer as it's up and running, and there's now a local service providing enough support for my organization, so I don't have a very recent experience with SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer technical support.

Based on my experience, I'd rate support a five out of five.

The initial setup for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer was straightforward, but it was a long time ago. My organization has just been updating the solution.

Deploying SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer only took two or more hours, particularly installing, enabling, and updating the interfaces.

A third party implemented SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer for my organization.

I don't have information on the licensing cost for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer because it's bundled with another SolarWinds solution. My organization has seven different models and pays for the license yearly. My organization also had to deploy additional pollers, but the cost wasn't very expensive, though I can't give the exact numbers.

We tested some free applications from Netflow ten years ago but quickly moved into SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer.

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is used by the NAC and Communication teams almost daily. Three to seven people use the solution heavily. Still, it's also available for use by local IT teams within the organization, so the total number of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer users could be between one hundred to one hundred and fifty people.

For the maintenance of the solution, one person is enough.

I'd recommend SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer to others.

My rating for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is nine out of ten.

My organization is a customer of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer.

The most valuable feature of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is that it watches how your network is doing, checks the traffic, and warns you if there might be problems. It is great at telling you if your devices are working and it keeps an eye on your network's overall performance.

In terms of improvement, it can be complex to set up and configure, and the user guides provided can also be complex, especially when dealing with certain configuration aspects. Improved SQL capabilities would be useful in the future.

I have been using SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer for four years. 

It is a stable product.

It is a fairly scalable product. There are one thousand users at our company. I would not recommend it for smaller businesses.

The technical support is good. They are very responsive. I would rate it an eight out of ten.

Positive

It is very complex to set up and SolarWinds has to send someone from their team to assist with that.

We have definitely seen a return on investment with NetFlow Traffic Analyzer.

The product is not too expensive. The license is renewed yearly. When it comes to support for NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, it might cost extra. Usually, we pay for support each year, and it lasts for one year. After that, it needs to be renewed separately.

It is a valuable tool, particularly for modeling and optimizing network systems. Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten.

We use SolarWinds to get traffic visibility, job visibility, and traffic flows from all our outsources. We generate the traffic that we select within our network to show you.

We use it to generate the traffic that each location produces. We configure the flow on all the outputs in the branches and remote locations. The NetFlow will transport the traffic and send it to the SolarWinds server. This provides us with visibility into network activity, including the traffic generated, ports used, and communication partners, as well as whether we are exceeding our subscribed bandwidth. If we need more bandwidth, we allocate it accordingly.

The SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer will show us the traffic and let us know if we are maxed out. It helps us know when a branch is down because it has a graphic presentation of all the locations a node represents. The node shows different colors, and the branch is up and running when the echo is green. If it is amber, it means that the network is not perfect. When it is red, the network is down, and we need to investigate and troubleshoot to know what the issue is. It also sends us emails when a branch is down, which we can configure to send us alerts. If there are JitsaaS, it will notify us. If one of the links is down, it will also notify us so we can fix the issue. It's very good.

There is room for improvement when it comes to the traffic generated by the analyzer and the analysis of that traffic. They need to work on it more because when it generates traffic, SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer doesn't show the source and destination IPs, which is essential to understand. It only shows the ports being used and what they are communicating with. SolarWinds does not have a monitoring solution for this, so they need to include a feature that can show where the IPs and systems are communicating, as third-party solutions can do.

There is a definition system that defines bad websites to your standards, and when your system communicates with that system, it flags it. However, SolarWinds cannot do that. It only shows you the telemetry, and there's no more visibility into what is happening outside the network. If you are connected to an IP outside your network, you won't know what it is.

It doesn't have any intelligence to add to the flow. It's just slow. It needs to be more of a robust tool that adds intelligence to the flow. When it shows you the flow, it should be able to tell you if the traffic is harmful to other sites.

I've been using it for about ten years now. We receive the latest updates when the product looks outdated since we have a subscription with them. When the software looks outdated, they send us a patch that we use to update it. So we are using the latest version.

It is a stable solution. Before we invoice, we use a code, PRTG. This helps us understand and assess the market and its requirements. It's multidisciplinary and is used in defense as well.

The customer service and support team is good. 

The setup is easy. You just need to install it on the server.

The price is sufficient based on everything it offers. I would rate the pricing model a five out of ten, with one being cheap and ten being expensive.

I would recommend using the solution. It's easy for you to get started since it's already running on the network.

Overall, I would rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

The most helpful feature of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is bandwidth analysis, which lets you see who's hogging your network.

An area for improvement in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is the dashboarding.

The user interface also has room for improvement because it's currently clunky.

I've been using SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer for seven years.

The stability of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer needs improvement, so it's a seven out of ten based on stability.

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is very scalable, so it's an eight for me in terms of scalability.

The technical support for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer isn't as good as it was a few years ago. The level 1 engineers don't have much experience in the product, but when you get past the level 1 engineers, you will get experienced, knowledgeable, and helpful engineers. However, it takes a bit too long to engage with the experienced ones.

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer technical support right now is a bit of a joke because I'm the one telling level 1 engineers what to do until I get the senior, more technical people. I found the senior, more experienced engineers good.

The initial setup for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer was straightforward, as with most SolarWinds products. It's easy to get the solution going very quickly.

Setup-wise, I'd rate it as nine.

I implemented SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer.

I've worked with SolarWinds modules, mainly SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor and SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer.

I'm using the latest version of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer.

I work in a university, and about ten or eleven people use SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, me included, plus five or six network guys and the service desk team.

I'd tell someone looking into implementing the solution that it has a straightforward out-of-the-box implementation. However, what you have to be most aware of when deploying SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is that you don't need to use it on everything. It's a question of being sensible about how you set up your devices to provide NetFlow information, mainly because the solution is slightly unusual with the configuration of what devices supply the traffic. It's not done within SolarWinds. Instead, it's done on network devices, so I advise making intelligent selections in that area.

I'd give SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer an eight because no product is perfect. I also noticed that its UI has become a bit old-fashioned and needs to be more modern. SolarWinds is moving in that direction, but it's still lagging behind others. A few years ago, there was a security breach, and SolarWinds has been spending a lot of time improving the security of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, which could be why some features haven't come up as quickly as I would have liked.

My organization has no partnership with SolarWinds. It's a customer.

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is used for traffic analysis for networks and companies.

What I like about SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is that it's useful for analyzing traffic. It also has an application visibility feature that lets you control applications.

An area for improvement in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is application visibility because some applications aren't being recognized correctly. You can see applications such as Facebook and YouTube, but SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer needs to have more visibility into more applications.

Currently, SolarWinds fails to detect more powerful applications, such as Zoom and Teams. If SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer can recognize every application and be able to report on each in terms of bandwidth, then that would be good. This is what I'd like to see in the next release of the solution.

I've been dealing with SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer for ten years now.

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is a very stable product. I don't have any problems with it in terms of stability. I implemented it for a customer in Cameroon and it's very stable, and it's good to deploy.

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is very scalable. You just need additional architecture to scale it, but there's no problem with scaling it.

The technical support for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is good. Support is responsive.

Pricing for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is very high. I have a customer that needs the solution but doesn't have the budget for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer because the problem is that you can't use the solution only. You have to buy requirements such as the SolarWinds NPM first, and some companies don't have the budget for all the required components and modules. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer can cost up to $10,000, and some customers don't have that budget.

Another product has all the modules that SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer has, with a very low price, that can be a replacement, which is ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer.

PRTG is another solution that can replace SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer.

I'm still working with SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer. I sell it to enterprise customers, such as telecommunications companies, logistics companies, etc.

My advice to anyone who wants to implement SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is to have training on it first. I like the solution because it has good documentation and training online. It has a supportive community. You should have basic training before implementing SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer to avoid problems in the architecture, project, target, etc.

I would rate SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer as nine out of ten.

I use SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer to get insight into the traffic from different locations, even if there are no interfaces or routers. The solution helps me to clearly understand if there is an issue, for example, if traffic is being blocked, what exactly the issue is, and anything else that the network team needs to look into.

What the network team found most valuable in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is that it helps them to troubleshoot or analyze the issue. For example, traffic that comes from our location: India, goes to the US, so for the network team to analyze where the traffic comes from and where it is directed, and whether the packets are being dropped, they use SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer.

The network team also likes that through the solution, they can analyze the complete traffic utilization and how they're going to use it.

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is user-friendly. The team finds it comfortable to use.

There are some areas for improvement in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer. There are some challenges with the solution when compared to other monitoring tools such as difficulty in operations and difficulty with backup installation. My team is currently trying out different solutions but would need to see how it goes.

What I'd like to see in the next release of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is a change in the way data is being collected and displayed on the graph. Currently, data is being measured every fifteen seconds, but it would be better if it's measured in minutes, in particular, five, ten, or fifteen minutes. As an administrator, I feel it would be easier and more helpful if SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer collects data every five, ten, or fifteen minutes, rather than in seconds. Doing this would also give more accurate data.

I've been using SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer for the past eight years.

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is a stable solution. It works perfectly. Sometimes, there may be services that hang because we're doing something in the backend, so we'll just restart the service and that'll be taken care of. Stability is not a problem with the solution.

I haven't used the technical support for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer.

I utilize multiple tools and I can say the same for my company and the clients. The reason for choosing SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer over other monitoring tools is that it's very comfortable to use. It's a user-friendly tool.

The initial setup for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer was easy. There was no problem with setting it up. From start to finish, deploying the solution took two hours, but if you'll do some configurations, it could take more time.

We have licenses for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer. In terms of pricing, its license is not that expensive versus other tools such as HP.

Currently, I'm using version 4.6 of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer.

I'm a tech lead and I'm in different teams, and my company supports different clients. Clients have consultations with my team of fifty members.

I would recommend SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer to others because it's very easy to use. Once the solution's installed, you can immediately use it to find issues and gain insight into the traffic that comes from different locations. It can also analyze whether packets are being dropped and at what time and on which day. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is also a lot better in terms of cost when compared to other tools, so I'm recommending it to others.

I'm rating SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer eight out of ten. What would make my rating a ten is if the display of data or the reporting is improved. For example, rather than me selecting different graphs to see the data I need, if I could see everything such as the minimum, maximum, and averages in terms of data in one shot or in one timeline, that would raise my rating from an eight to a ten.

We deployed it with one of the hospitals for network infrastructure. Then we deployed into a hotel system in the Middle East for the FIFA World Cup. In the data center, it's just magic.

The configuration and ease of deployment are great. Within half a day, you can start seeing the traffic data coming in. Over a period of time, you can gradually improve the quality of the data and the sampling rate. For example, let's say you have got a new network or a new extension to a network, and you want to see its behavior. You cannot wait two or three days as you'll get hacked. With this, within a few hours, you can just bring the MPM or APM, any other SolarWinds product, and immediately you can start seeing the traffic coming in.

The deployment is fast and easy.

It doesn't cost too much. 

I'm expecting to see a little bit more artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms. They need a bit more sophistication in that. 

We'd like more user input into the analysis, not just what they provide. It'll be good to put some user inputs like business timing, high volume of traffic, et cetera. With that, we could be more responsive.

All analytics could basically be more in-depth.

I've been using the solution since 2015, about seven years. 

We have six large clients using the solution right now. 

Support is very good. You raise a ticket, you get a response, and they're technically good. That's what the main thing is. We get the help we need.

To actually install and deploy, you need about two hours. You need half a day to ensure the client data is coming in and that NetFlow is turned on so we can start seeing the traffic, SNMP traps, and all of those things. Turning on the things to the client devices takes time. However, for SolarWinds itself, it's two hours to get going.

You only need one and a half people to handle deployment and maintenance. They could be anyone from an engineer to a senior engineer, a CCMA, or CCMP.

All SolarWinds products are very affordable.

It's gone through an evolution. I have used about four or five versions of the product and the whole family of products. It's been great overall. 

You can use a cloud or on-premises deployment model.

I'd advise potential new users to get the trial license and get a company to help and do a proof of concept. A POC would only take about two weeks - not more than that.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.