SolarWinds NPM Reviews

• Overall simplicity
• Solarwinds development of the product line

• It's provided us with a quicker turn around time for diagnosing and remedying a failure or issue
• The pre-built templates for Windows are outstanding
• If you're new, they tell you what the metrics mean and the possible solutions
• You can also modify baselines it to your environment.

It needs group views with performance metrics. They do certain ones well, but not filters to a custom group view.

I've used NPM and SAM for five years.

No issues encountered.

Data collection can be an issue so you have to maintain that accordingly.

None yet.

Customer service is pretty good.

Tier 3 is excellent they know how to repair a problem.

We had Openview for the network side but the cost forced us to switch and it has actually ended up better for us in the long term.

It's very straightforward and super easy to deploy, 15 minutes tops. It's documented well what you need, or there's an option you can do if you're on a limited budget. Also, the support engineers are always there to help with specific questions.

We implemented it in-house.

It paid for itself within six months, when compared to our previous solution.

We did not track it but it was less than four hours worth of total effort. Day to day cost of using the product US$273 given our current licensing model.

No other options evaluated.

Get the trial download to use its all the features for 30 days. Its automation/DevOps is outstanding for its software development kit.

• Polling
• Automatic ticket creation of server resources (CPU, Memory, Reboots etc.)

We can sometimes fix a problem before it is even recognized by our user community based on the thresholds we set up for various resources on a production server.

They could make the process of adding various devices easier and more intuitive.

I've used it for nine months.

No issues encountered.

It's very scalable and customizable.

They have good customer service.

They have good technical support.

I haven't used another solution like NPM before.

It's significant in my opinion.

You can and should put the not so obvious devices onto SolarWinds. An example would be a server's back-up power supply. Otherwise you won't realize when the back-up is not functioning until the main power supply goes down and it's too late at that point.

• Polling engines
• Alerts
• Backup configuration

Basically, it helps in monitoring the device status. It helps locate in which region the network is down so that we take immediate action to restore it.

All the software has room for improvement, nothing is perfect.

I've used it for about five to six years alongside NCM v7.0.2.

We do see issues, but not so many major ones.

No issues encountered yet.

At least an 8/10.

At least a 7/10.

We implemented with a mix of an in-house team and a vendor one.

If your infrastructure is big, and requires a good kind of reporting tool, then SolarWinds fulfills all these requirements.

• Real-time netflow data
• Highly customizable alerting & reporting
• Very large base of information, further customized by high compatibility with MIBs from many, many vendors, resulting in very customizable UnDPs

Being a global company with many highly-sensitive manufacturing lines and process control environments, SolarWinds consistently delivers real-time and accurate views into the deepest parts of our environment. Though my role is 100% network-side, SolarWinds has greatly benefited our team of systems-side admins as well.

Because SolarWinds is built upon a SQL database, some level of SQL query knowledge is necessary if one really wants to take customization of alerting/reporting to a deeper level. This is really difficult for someone who

1. Doesn't have the time to devote to this
2. Doesn't have a strong background in any sort of software development/coding

I've used it for three and a half years.

I was not around for the initial deployment, but I've been responsible for maintaining the environment over the last three and a half years, including product upgrades and migration(s) to new VMs.

At times, we've had trouble with lost data within the database. These were largely resolved by moving to a more stable database server. I don't recall any recent issues now that we're on 11.x.

Yes, but only due to our own willingness (or unwillingness) to deploy additional polling engines. We're actually researching this feasibility right now, so that we can support a greater number of devices globally while maintaining a centralized "pane of glass" for administration.

This is one area where SolarWinds can do better. Customer service, in terms of account renewals, and licensing, and so on, is very quota-based. They need to make their sales/transaction quotas, and that's about all that matters. They can be very pushy when it comes to the purchasing process. I think this is probably due to SolarWinds being THE solution for network/systems monitoring, and they know they have some level of a monopoly on the industry. SolarWinds is also not a cheap product -- it's very expensive under a CapEx consideration, and annual renewals are about 10-20% of the initial CapEx. So, it's not inexpensive.

This is also an area where SolarWinds could do a lot better. Every time I've opened a case, they agree to a screen-sharing session (GoToMeeting/WebEx, etc) as an absolute last-resort. Sending me KB articles and other suggestions is always the first three to four emails, until I can formally get them to agree to take a look "in-person". I greatly enjoy working with Cisco TAC mainly because of their complete willingness to dive head-first into the issue by STARTING with a screen-sharing session. It gives me, as a customer and end-user, a much greater appreciation for Cisco's interest in resolving the issues, and making sure our production-affecting problems are no longer present.

In-house implementation.

As far as I know, SolarWinds was really the only option at the time.

It was an in-house implementation.

As far as I know, SolarWinds was really the only option at the time.

Don't assume SolarWinds is the right choice. Evaluate LOTS of other alternatives. These days, SevOne is a very promising competitor. But if you choose SolarWinds, dive into it as deeply as you can. Take advantage of their free online classroom training sessions (it's thousands of dollars for you to pay for from a third-party training vendor).

Network performance monitoring was invaluable.

We had issues pinpointing the exact location of a problem due to configuration of a particular bandwidth. This was due to the Cisco firewall configuration.

I used it for four years.

No, it's also fairly easy to administrate.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

Good.

Technical Support has plenty of room for improvement, knowledge of their product was not very strong.

No previous solution was used.

It was fairly easy, but you just need to make sure that you have a SQL server on a different box or otherwise you would run into problems later on after your database grows.

We implemented it in-house.

We used it 24/7 and it had a great ROI.

I don't remember exactly, but it was a few thousand dollars for NPM with both NTA and SAM Administrator.

We didn't evaluate anything else.

Make sure you have a strong database server separate from the NPM server.

• Easy monitoring of applications
• Networking
• Power
• Server infrastructure components

We are frequently able to attend to issues before our user community and customers are aware that a problem exists. We are also able to provide interfaces to our service desk and other users customized for their needs.

The stability when multiple modules are added could be addressed. We have the need to restart the monitoring solution on a weekly basis as we've combined NPM with a variety of other SolarWinds utilities.

I've used it for nine years.

No issues with deployment.

Yes, as noted above, the solution is not always stable and generally requires a weekly reboot. We do own a wide variety of SolarWinds products that are integrated with NPM.

No, additional polling engines can be purchased at any given time.

They have an excellent sales team however, they do not negotiate maintenance. So while you may get the product for 75% off list price, you'll pay 20% of list for maintenance every year. Once they have you on the product, they get their money back on the 20% maintenance on list every year.

First level usually doesn't get any further than running through the installation wizard, next, next, next. I've run into some scenarios where we've been requested to "start fresh" with data which is not a good resolution. We generally push for escalation and work with second and third level support/developers.

We used What's Up Gold at one company, which wasn't as feature rich, and Nagios at my present company which was quite expensive in terms of custom programming to get what we want out of the solution.

Quite easy, the "next, next, next" GUI installation with the addition of a standard SQL database usage made installation quite seamless and easy.

All in house.

I couldn't tack a dollar figure on this without analyzing all incidents/service requests entered based upon information obtained from SolarWinds. We do have recognition that profitability is affected at a rate of approximately. $58 x 700 = $40,600 per hour for each hour that either warehousing or manufacturing systems are unavailable.

We did an evaluation of continued Nagios utilization costs vs. purchasing of the complete SolarWinds package.

Examine all the products on the market and choose the solution that requires the least amount of interaction with the most amount of usable data. I haven't looked recently so I cant comment if this is that package or not.

Multicast

We are a small ISP in FL. Having this tool has been helping us a lot with time responds critical outages and troubleshooting.

Map section and Bandwidth.

Been using Solarwinds now for 4 years and happy with the system.

No issues.

No issues.

Yes

9 out of 10

10 out of 10

Netcool was just an outdated system.

Straightforward.

Vendor team - I'd rate them a 10 out of 10

Awesome product with a lot of info available and great support team.

Historical interface statistics & historical storage utilization.

I have been able to catch network/server issues before they became critical. It also enables me to free up disk space on a critical drive before it completely runs out of space. Tickets can be pro-actively opened with carriers when we see CRC's and errors on interfaces. Lastly, I can quickly identify spanning tree and/or routing issues by watching syslog & trap messages.

Reporting functions are limited & difficult to modify.

Over 7 years

No issues encountered.

Not anymore. Years ago I would frequently have issues after performing software upgrades, but over the last 3 years that has improved significantly.

Not much, but I have had issues with our SQL database becoming fragmented over time & having to engage a SQL expert to address it.

Over all customer service has always been timely, helpful & friendly.

Overall tech support has been timely & helpful whenever I've needed assistance. I've opened literally dozens upon dozens of tickets over the years and most of the time I get the answers I need on the first call.

Previously WhatsUp Gold.

Setup has always been very intuitive & simple.

In-house implementation.

Not sure how to quantify that, but it has been well worth the cost in my opinion. The problem is getting my co-workers to actually use it.

Depending on the number of nodes to be monitored, take careful steps to size the polling server & SQL server appropriately. If at all possible, use a dedicated SQL box. Also, take the time to configure all of your network devices to send syslog & traps to the NPM server.