SolarWinds Network Device Monitor Reviews

I have experience regarding the AD part, but my focus for the last 15 years has been oriented to the network side. My experience with identity tools comes more from a network perspective.

We used NetScout at least seven years ago. Currently, we are testing and playing with Splunk, and I am about to start working with it in a week or so. Other colleagues of mine have been working with Splunk.

We are using SolarWinds Network Device Monitor for bits and pieces on the monitoring side.

There are many areas of interest. For my area specifically, we were interested in a NetFlow analyzer. There is no comparison between the previous NetFlow analyzer and what SolarWinds Network Device Monitor can do with NetFlow. Previously we were using NetScout, and there is no comparison between those two.

For the network part, we were using NetScout. For servers, which SolarWinds Network Device Monitor handles as part of its combined functionality, we were using WhatsApp Gold.

We are doing more with SolarWinds Network Device Monitor than we were doing in the past with WhatsApp Gold. When we moved to SolarWinds Network Device Monitor, the whole observability part started to grow.

It improved various aspects of our operations. It brought improvements and benefits to other areas, such as the server side and applications, rather than just the network side that I work with.

The equivalent functionality of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor to WhatsApp Gold is adequate.

There are solutions that can perform better, but due to pricing for our corporate implementation, we had to stay with this solution. It accomplishes the necessary tasks, but there is room for improvement.

The features are not as customizable as we would prefer, but they are workable.

If configured properly, you can perform a drill-down analysis. However, I have not used this feature much for our infrastructure on the network side.

Everything is on-premises. We have two or three clusters in our environment. We are not a small operation. From the network side, I manage approximately 500 switch objects. On the server side, that number can be multiplied by 10 times.

I am not involved with the SolarWinds Network Device Monitor side. I am a consumer of the service. In our company, another team manages the SolarWinds Network Device Monitor infrastructure and everything else.

I need to examine the details, but I am 50/50 with this answer.

Regarding effectiveness, I would say 75%. The head of our observability team indicates they can do better, but it is the best we can implement at present. I would rate it a five.

Compared with other solutions in the market, they can perform better. I would rate it a six out of ten.

Overall product rating: 6/10

I use SolarWinds Network Device Monitor for monitoring network utilization, bandwidth utilization, uptime, and downtime. It also assists in incident management.

SolarWinds Network Device Monitor provides live monitoring capabilities, which are very useful. Its fault management capabilities are reliable for bandwidth management and other activities. NCM works well too, making it an excellent tool overall.

SolarWinds Network Device Monitor should include automatic diagrams in its network solutions. Additionally, there is a challenge with having to add an additional polling engine after 10,000 elements, which impacts performance. One server should manage unlimited resources without requiring additional commercial polling engines.

I have been using SolarWinds Network Device Monitor for approximately nine years.

I rate the stability of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor as ten out of ten.

There is a challenge with scalability related to the additional polling engines required after exceeding 10,000 elements, which affects performance. However, I still rate scalability ten out of ten.

I rate the technical support from SolarWinds as ten out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup for SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is simple.

SolarWinds pricing is on the higher side, and in India, every customer is cautious about commercial aspects.

ManageEngine is a competitor. ManageEngine has patch management, which SolarWinds lacks. This can be a deciding factor for customers comparing solutions.

I recommend SolarWinds Network Device Monitor for enterprise-level companies. It is effective for large numbers of devices, but there is an issue with the polling engine requirement. Overall, I rate SolarWinds Network Device Monitor ten out of ten.

We use SolarWinds Network Device Monitor for monitoring our internal network. We have a very large network that spans the entire country. I use SolarWinds Network Device Monitor to monitor the status of network devices and also to monitor the system, specifically VMware. In my current company, I use SolarWinds Network Device Monitor to monitor everything from the database to the network and applications.

SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is a straightforward product with valuable functionality. It serves as a comprehensive monitoring platform, offering real-time monitoring capability and integrations that provide a single point of view for the entire system. It enables linking from the system to the network and endpoint, which is a strong point compared to other products where functionality is independent.

The main disadvantage of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is the licensing cost, which is expensive. Another issue is their transition from on-premises licenses to a cloud-based model. This transition seems unsuitable for a government company because purchasing a cloud license is not feasible.

I have been using SolarWinds Network Device Monitor for more than seven years.

I think SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is quite stable.

I think the scalability of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is good. They offer different options for different sizes of companies and various requirements.

The technical support from SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is good. They respond very quickly and the solutions they provide are straightforward.

Neutral

The installation of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is easy, both for installation and configuration.

For deployment, one person is enough, but for system configuration, you need individuals from different teams, such as the database team, to assist with integration information.

The licensing of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is costly.

When comparing to other products like ManageEngine, SolarWinds Network Device Monitor offers linked functionalities, unlike others which are independent.

I would give SolarWinds Network Device Monitor a rating of seven out of ten points for its overall performance.

In my current company, I am using SolarWinds primarily for device management. We need to monitor our network features, including routers and servers, to check the CPU, memory, and bandwidth utilization. Additionally, SolarWinds Network Device Monitor collects NetFlow logs and allows us to identify the top ten network talkers regarding bandwidth usage.

Since our devices are spread out across the world, we can see the status of these devices without having to send someone physically to a remote location, which saves money.

SolarWinds is flexible and works with multiple vendor devices. It is also beneficial for near real-time monitoring, letting us know if something is not right. 

Furthermore, it excels by categorizing information across multiple silo domains such as device monitoring and NetFlow. The network discovery capability is helpful, even if it sometimes requires manual adjustments.

The solution lacks in performance monitoring. Although it identifies that everything is operating correctly across silos, it fails to demonstrate where a problem might be occurring within the service path. 

There is no AI integration, which would be beneficial for baseline monitoring and alerting on behavioral deviations.

I have probably been in my new job for about a year.

Stability has not been an issue because the number of devices is not that many. For larger environments, ensuring the system is correctly sized at the start is essential to avoid stability problems.

For large scalability, considering a SaaS offering in a cloud would be more scalable compared to on-premises deployment.

Most of the time, we ask questions and open a case online to which they respond.

Positive

I have used Check Point in the past. I switched when I changed jobs and am no longer at my previous company.

The setup is not difficult and just requires someone with IT skills to start the installation.

The more devices you add, the more expensive the licenses become. SolarWinds has a premium cost associated with it.

I have been looking at other options since SolarWinds lacks performance monitoring.

It would be beneficial if SolarWinds incorporated AI to monitor device behavior, create baselines, and alert on deviations.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We use SolarWinds Network Device Monitor to keep track of all network devices and manage their configurations. It helps us monitor critical links, showing us real-time utilization graphs. We organize devices by location names, enabling us to receive alerts specific to each location on our summary screen. Additionally, we use SolarWinds Configuration Manager to back up configurations and ensure compliance. This includes using reporting tools to check for any missing compliance elements in our devices.

I find SolarWinds Network Device Monitor to be both simple and complex, offering a wealth of data that meets our requirements effectively. It has definitely saved us time when troubleshooting specific device issues and provided valuable information. As for cost, that decision is managed by higher-ups, so I can't speak to that aspect.

The alerting functionality in SolarWinds Network Device Monitor helps us stay informed during off-hours by sending alerts if our main links or devices are impacted, allowing us to quickly address any issues. As for features, the tool offers a comprehensive summary view where we can check end-to-end network performance (NPM), create customized flows for issue resolution, utilize configuration management tools, and access maps of network locations for easy troubleshooting. Integration with other platforms also provides a seamless experience with a single dashboard view.

It would be beneficial if SolarWinds Network Device Monitor could provide a feature to monitor CRC errors specifically on individual interfaces rather than the entire device. This would help in detecting intermittent issues and packet drops on main links more accurately, especially when there are CRC errors. It's important for us to be aware of these issues to avoid any voice quality problems or interruptions on our MTS links.

I have been using SolarWinds Network Device Monitor for the last eight years.

I would rate the stability of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor at eight out of ten. It has been quite stable since we upgraded to the newer version, and we haven't faced any major issues recently.

I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten.

We are satisfied with the technical support provided by SolarWinds through their third-party partner.

As for the setup experience, I find it straightforward. With basic knowledge and following the documentation, setting up SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is easy. The deployment of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor typically
takes around three hours for configuration. I would rate it a nine out of ten in terms of ease of setup.

I find the cost of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor reasonable for our company. Though, I'm not aware of the exact licensing cost.

Currently, we have only evaluated SolarWinds Network Device Monitor and have not considered other monitoring options.

I believe integrating AI features would benefit SolarWinds Network Device Monitor in the future. My advice to those considering this software is positive - it's user-friendly, customizable, and provides valuable data tools. Overall, I would rate SolarWinds Network Device Monitor a nine out of ten.

I use the tool for network performance monitoring or NPM of WAN connectivity. In the past year and a half, I have started to use my enterprise LAN with the tool. The product is basically used for link and node monitoring as well as for utilization purposes.

The most valuable feature of the tool for network management tasks is the historical utilization as well as the alerts that I get during jitters or any latency-related issues.

When an organization's network grows, the complexity of the dashboard becomes an area of concern where improvements are required.

A missing feature in the product that I really want in the tool is known as discovery. The automatic discovery feature provided by the product is not up to the mark.

I have been using the solution for ten years. I am a customer of the product.

It is a stable solution. Occasionally, there are some bug-related issues in the product. Stability-wise, I rate the solution an eight and a half out of ten.

It is a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

I have deployed the tool for around 4,500 nodes in my company. There are also around 36 tech users of the product.

Support is always available when I raise an issue. My company also gets India-based support from SolarWinds Network, which helps us get quick solutions. I rate the technical support an eight out of ten.

Positive

I rate the product's initial setup process a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one means it is a difficult phase and ten is an easy process.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

Recently, it took me around two days to be ready with the whole solution after the additional deployments of the tool were done in my company.

My company has been able to save time and resources by using the product. My company has saved a lot of time in terms of resolution as well as fact-finding. I don't have to deploy too many resources, considering that the alerts and dashboards were quite good in the past. The product has saved around 15 to 20 percent of the time for my company.

I rate the product's price as three to three and a half or on a scale of one to ten, where one means low price, and ten means high price.

I had gone through a PoC phase with ThousandEyes. ThousandEyes and SolarWinds Network Device Monitors are not comparable products. ThousandEyes can be described as a customer reachability management solution.

Setting up device monitoring for specific device tracking is an easy process. Adding new devices and new nodes to the system is quite easy.

Users experience lag when they grow their networks because the dashboarding part becomes complex. After a certain point, the dashboard loses value when the network grows. My company has used the product for the past ten years, and we feel that we are capable of using it to get results. If you know how to navigate, the product is good. Once your network grows in size, it becomes cumbersome to have a proper dashboard.

The alerting system helped mitigate network issues, and the product can resolve issues and vulnerabilities. If my company raises a query with the product's support team, they quickly resolve such problems. The tool's technical team is capable and ready to jump on a call and resolve any issues related to the product.

I faced no challenges when integrating SolarWinds Network Device Monitor into our company's IT infrastructure. It is easy to use the integration capabilities of the product.

I recommend the product for plain network monitoring purposes.

I rate the tool a seven to seven and a half out of ten.

Our company uses the solution to monitor all network connectivity throughout the country and provides results to our client's stakeholders. 

We have a network topology that establishes a certain set of macros and frameworks throughout our entire organization. 

There are 6,000 interfaces that are monitored 24/7/365. The nodes are very sensitive and each has its own service. If a node goes down, we recover it immediately. 

The solution and its interface are elaborate and fully integrate all monitored items for easy analysis and troubleshooting. We have added all nodes to the system and look at events or problematic alerts to troubleshoot. 

The solution is configurable and has many features. 

The reporting feature needs improvement because we are unable to configure reports that were included during initial implementation. We are aware of features that allow report customization a monthly basis or other duration, but don't often have access to these options. 

For example, a filter of interfaces or ATM nodes that have been down for a month does not include all events in the report. We would like to change the report's filters to a very segregated level but cannot because we lack access to the original report. 

The data is in the system but we are unable to pull it because reporting is not integrated and versatile. It seems only the engineer who filtered the original report had configuration options. 

I have been using the solution for two years. 

The solution is stable.

We experience lags because our vendor did not install or configure all of the solution's features. 

The solution is scalable. 

We plan to scale in the future because customer demand is already large and is growing. By 2025 or 2030, we will need to scale up. 

Our company already had the solution in place when I joined the team. 

Our VM and other files are open source but we could not install using an open source product due to security issues and checks. We do not take risks, so we chose the solution because it provides protections through its license and connection to a known provider.

The initial setup to monitor 6,000 interfaces was completed before I joined the team. 

Current complexities are because the installation vendor did not install all of the solution's features. 

Our monitoring department worked with an external team to implement the solution on a server in our data center. 

We are planning for future growth so are looking at all options including the solution.

Zabbix and Nagios are open source so are not options for us because we require an authentic and reliable source for services and licenses. Our client's stakeholders feel this is important to ensure the quality and security of the software. For our own employees, the open source solutions are fine.

We are looking at Datadog as an option. 

Other products might have the same features but they would have to be comparable in usability and the level of professional service that is provided with the solution.

There is a low probability that we will renew our license for the solution. 

Overall, the solution is pretty good. 

The user interface is elaborate but a bit complex. 

I rate the solution an eight out of ten. I would provide a higher rating but the original configuration did not include all features so that has caused a lag in workflow.

We use SolarWinds for network monitoring and make some dashboards to provide information to other members about which device is working or not. 

You can create an attractive dashboard and create a hierarchy.

It should provide user-friendly pages and device environment. When adding devices, you can view devices easily in a list view, filter them, and create PDF or Excel reports.

I have been using SolarWinds Network Device Monitor for 

The solution is stable.

Five administrators and 15 users are using this solution.

SolarWinds provides excellent technical support. You can easily identify which devices are operational and which are not. Based on the status provided by SolarWinds, you receive detailed information about each device, including its operational status and performance metrics. This information helps you make informed decisions and address network issues effectively.

SolarWinds is better than PRTG and Zabbix because it offers lower ping delay times. While SolarWinds, PRTG, and Zabbix all respond within a certain timeframe, SolarWinds provides faster response times.

It is complex software with a sophisticated user interface. Installation requires a high-performance machine. In contrast, PRTG offers a more user-friendly environment and is easier to install on devices.

It has a yearly license. 

I have some suggestions for improving the SolarWinds Network Device Monitor. First, consider enhancing the visual appeal of the graphs. You could include options for different types of graphs, such as network bandwidth, and add a scanning feature. By entering an IP address, SolarWinds could retrieve comprehensive information about the device, including the MAC address, device name, and image.

Additionally, expanding the range of graphs available in SolarWinds would be beneficial, particularly for bandwidth monitoring. Implementing a notification system that sends alerts via email when a device goes down would also be valuable. Lastly, ensuring that SolarWinds remains lightweight could help organizations with less powerful machines, making the software more accessible.

Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.

Before cementing it into the production environment, we used to test it in a UAC environment - part of which we are using like the NPM. We're using it when we want to monitor certain things. The NPM display perfectly shows the information we need, especially in the threshold configuration. We have a threshold window as well. For example, if memory goes from 50% to 70%, we can set a threshold to get notified.

The Network Device Monitor itself is very useful. It's also easy to use. 

We like how you can select an individual device and basically, in NPM Network Performance, there are two types of settings. You can discover the devices on auto network discovery. On top of that, you can individually add a device, and if the device is not recognized in the auto-discovery procedure, you can add it manually. You can add MIBs in the Network Device Monitor if the MIBs are not supported. 

We are just monitoring a UPS, and the UPS is not supported in SolarWinds NPM, so what we need to do is individually add that device to the Network Device Monitor. We can individually import the MIBs from the vendor and install them into the NDM Network Device Monitor, and that's the beauty of it.

The initial setup is straightforward. It doesn't take long to install everything.

The product is stable. 

We can scale the solution if we need to.

There were certain aspects that weren't supported exactly. I was just able to monitor some basic things. I also couldn't get the thresholds and the rest of the details. All MIBs and drivers should be in the package when you install it. It would make everything easier. If everything were in the package so that everything was ready to go out of the box, that would be ideal. 

It's a pretty heavy product.

I've been using the solution for three to four years. 

We've never had an issue with stability. It doesn't crash. It's reliable. 

We can scale the solution. It has the option of adding to it. You can, for example, add another server. The capacity management is right there. they make it easy.

They do offer good support. We are mostly happy with the level of service. They always give great feedback, which helps in real-world scenarios. 

Neutral

It's easy to set up. Implementing the solution is not a problem.

How long it takes to install is totally dependent on the person which is installing the solution. Regarding my experience, I have had a pretty good experience in network devices, so it will hardly take me two to three hours at a maximum to set the Network Device Manager. Obviously, there's a fine-tuning which will take a couple of weeks. You must fine-tune the thresholds, the battery level, and the network device threshold. Fine-tuning will take a couple of weeks. However, adding the network devices will take hardly two to three hours.

It's not difficult to maintain the solution. It's easily accessed from the database. Anyone with a bit of experience with databases can easily handle and maintain this product.

As an implementor, I have implemented the solution for clients many times. 

I'm an implementor. 

I'd recommend the solution to others. It's a good product.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

The solution is used in our organization for process monitoring and prolonged device monitoring. SolarWinds Network Device Monitor helps in identifying and correcting issues without turning certain metrics offline in an enterprise. 

There are vital features of auto-plugin core ports, bandwidth optimization and aggregation in SolarWinds Network Device Monitor. 

The solution should have AI-powered issue-resolving capabilities. If trend-based issues arise, the solution should be able to self-explain the need to be fixed. 

I have been using SolarWinds Network Device Monitor for a year. 

I would rate the stability an eight out of ten. 

It's a scalable product. A huge number of enterprises in the Asia-Pacific region are using SolarWinds Network Device Monitor and especially the NOC team, to get monitoring insights. I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. 

I would rate the customer support of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor as seven out of ten. But the support can be further improved. 

Neutral

In my career, I have worked with various vendors and solutions, including database solutions, Oracle Engineered Systems, and Microsoft Stack. 

Our organization's customers have a deployment team of more than 100 professionals, divided among the network, storage, database, product, development, and P&O teams. I maintain SolarWinds Network Device Monitor for our organization's customers, along with the help of a database team comprising four to five engineers. 

Whenever any critical ports or switches are down, SolarWinds Network Device Monitor alerts all the stakeholder network system teams and which needs to be attended to at the earliest. A dual port is usually present for fault tolerance purposes, but the other port needs to be fixed as soon as possible until it reaches a single point of failure. 

The real-time performance insights provided by the tool help in improving network reliability. Real-time management is implemented with the solution using color-coded graphs, critical landmarks, and failure spikes, which can be easily viewed on the interface.

The IT NOC team is dedicated to checking statistics on the monitor screen to identify malfunctions or uncertainty in the graph. The majority of our organization's customers are using the on-prem version of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor as they are already using some native cloud tools such as Oracle Cloud. I would definitely recommend SolarWinds Network Device Monitor to others. I would rate the solution a nine out of ten overall.