SolarWinds NPM Reviews

We are using the SolarWinds NPM solutions for monitoring our network devices. We are monitoring switches, firewall, and routers. We are monitoring the interface utilizations and the CPU, RAM utilization of the devices. Through SolarWinds NPM, we discovered some interfaces were having issues, which we subsequently corrected. This has been very helpful for our operations.

All the features in SolarWinds NPM are good, without any specific standout feature. We are working with the advanced alerting system in SolarWinds NPM.

The SolarWinds NPM provides insights into unhealthy connectivities such as interfaces and cables, which can help improve performance degradation. We are able to identify these issues early.

The dashboards in SolarWinds NPM are helping us in categorizing issues related to different devices and different categories of devices. It has been quite helpful.

Features such as taking backup of the devices or configurations of the devices can be included in further versions of SolarWinds NPM.

I was not involved in the initial setup or deployment part of SolarWinds NPM. My teammate was involved in that process.

We don't have any issues with the stability and scalability aspects of SolarWinds NPM.

We don't have any issues with the stability and scalability aspects of SolarWinds NPM.

We have worked with the tech support of SolarWinds NPM, and it is good.

Positive

Regarding return on investment with SolarWinds NPM, it saves time in identifying issues. This is the primary benefit we are getting from an ROI perspective.

The pricing of SolarWinds NPM is comfortable from our perspective.

There is no specific advice that I would share with users who would to start working with it. I rate SolarWinds NPM 8 out of 10.

Our company uses the solution to monitor NPM for 100 large accounts that typically have 40,000 interfaces. 

Basic monitoring includes CPU memory, errors, and interfaces. Advanced monitoring includes F5 load balancers, in-depth tunnels, and AP alarms. 

We also monitor CM for backup parts and integrate monitoring with Azure. 

The solution's interface is very user friendly and easy to navigate. We provide customers with access and they have no issues learning and exploring the solution. 

Monitoring capabilities are at a high level and it is easy to see utilization, access ports, and CPU memory in real time or through a lens for long-term visualization. 

The solution always includes new features in their releases. 

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. 

I have been using the solution for five years.

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable but dependent on appropriate licenses. 

We reach out to technical support when we need assistance with issues. 

I rate support a seven out of ten. 

Neutral

The initial setup has been made very easy over the last few years because all functions of the server become available on the solution's console upon installation. There is no longer a need to log in on the server side when performing routine tasks.

Deployment takes less than 30 minutes to run on a single machine if pre-requests, servers, databases, and ports are readied in advance. Errors or troubleshooting might add a bit of time to deployment. 

We implement the solution for our customers. Each of our technicians manages a group of 20 accounts for NPM and other services such as SAM, PM, NPA, and NTM for backup.

The pricing is based on a licensing model with bulk discounts offered annually. 

Licenses start with a low-cost option for 100 devices that runs between $2,000-$3,000. With 400 devices the cost is $4,000. With thousands of devices the cost can reach $50,000. 

All license levels come with technical support. Engineers are available to assist with challenges and there are no extra fees for that support. 

The solution provides comprehensive monitoring that includes proactive items such as advance notifications and engineer tickets for code breaks. This allows engineers to quickly resolve issues before major outages occur.  

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

I use SolarWinds NPM because no other tool has the capabilities that it does. The solution is user-friendly and has many options for customized monitoring that other tools don't have. SolarWinds NPM is an easy tool because it supports both servers and the network at the same time.

The solution's database performance could be improved. The data performance is a little slow and scattered for clients who use the solution for a bigger infrastructure. You can't keep a hold of one-year data if you want to because it doesn't give you the capacity to hold that much information at your end. You have to keep the retention period very minimal.

I have been using SolarWinds NPM for seven years.

SolarWinds NPM is a stable solution.

I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.

We currently use SolarWinds NPM for bigger clients, and I didn't see any problems with that. It totally depends on how many licenses you can purchase or afford. The solution has options for people with a small budget and enterprise businesses. It completely depends on the client's needs and budget.

Anyone can use the solution to monitor hundreds or thousands of servers in the network, as well as 10,000 to 30,000 servers. The number of servers it can monitor isn't limited.

I rate the solution’s scalability a seven out of ten.

The solution's technical support doesn't support any customization. If you want a customized script or a customized solution, they don't support that. Otherwise, the technical support team has really good and knowledgeable people.

Positive

The solution's initial setup is straightforward. You just need to know what you need and, accordingly, use the guide to set up proper hardware for your servers. It's a pretty straight installation, and it is not very complicated.

The solution's pricing is low compared to a lot of other tools in the market.

I rate the solution's pricing a nine out of ten.

The solution's alerting system is fine. However, we face a few challenges that we can see in the alerting system that we cannot modify as per our needs. There are some restrictions, but SolarWinds is working on clarifying those challenges. Apart from that, it seems fine to me.

We are currently using the solution on-premises. However, you can also use it on the cloud as it has both options.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

SolarWinds NPM was used for everything. For interface monitoring, load balancing checking interface uptime and device status. 

We had the full suite of products, not just NPM.

It is simple to use.

It can be agentless.

The nice thing about SolarWinds is that it's kind of all-in-one. I can manage the status of my networking devices, whether they are up or down, I can see how much traffic is going across an interface, and I can run a report that tells me exactly what that traffic is.

Their IPAM component is severely lacking. The process is extremely manual. It just doesn't get in there if you don't manually enter it. 

It is not particularly DNS-aware. When it comes to DNS names, you pretty much have to configure everything manually. It will not grab anything on its own. 

They need to work on their automation and automatically discover devices. They are not very good at automatically discovering devices.

I am been using SolarWinds NPM for 15 years.

I believe that we are working with version nine.

SolarWinds NPM is a stable solution, aside from the fact that they had a major hack a couple of years ago and effectively allowed the Russian government to completely hack their code, making everyone vulnerable.

SolarWinds NPM is not very scalable.

We had 10 users.

There was only an IT engineer that was responsible for upgrading.

There was only one administrator. The rest were read-only.

Technical support is very good. You always got a live person.

The initial setup is straightforward. It is easy to set up.

The initial configuration is simple. Because, they did not use a backend SQL database, their initial setup was extremely simple. 

As they grew, they began to use SQL, which made things a little more complicated. 

It was extremely simple at first.

It probably took me a week to get it all set up and running, and another month to get everything in it. 

The initial configuration to the point where it was up and running took me about a week.

We installed it in a central data center and then began implementing it. We had to manually discover devices, pull them in, and manually add them one at a time.

It was implemented in-house.

We have seen a return on investment.

It was inexpensive when we installed it and gradually became more expensive, but it was a very inexpensive product at first.

It is significantly less expensive than Infoblox.

I don't recall the exact amount, It was approximately 20 years ago, but I recall it being relatively inexpensive to install. The initial part was really cheap, but the licensing cost became really expensive over time.

I would advise people to only use it for monitoring or viewing traffic flows. Don't use the IPAM section, the DHCP section, or the DNS section.

I would rate SolarWinds NPM a seven out of ten.

We're using SolarWinds NPM for server monitoring, report monitoring, and application monitoring.

I found a lot of valuable features in SolarWinds NPM, such as the customized application monitoring that allows you to customize any monitoring and script customization, and you also have the option to deploy and upgrade SolarWinds NPM online, which is very useful for my organization.

An area for improvement in SolarWinds NPM is the short retention period. Currently, it's just for seven days of data, which is very low, making it hard for my organization to keep that data.

SolarWinds recommended a seven-day retention period, but my organization needs a fourteen-day data retention period. Hence, I'd like an increase in the retention period or the database limit in SolarWinds NPM because you can't go back to the data for any investigation if seven days have passed.

Another area for improvement in SolarWinds NPM is the database, which needs to be a bit more mature.

I want a modified database in the next release of SolarWinds NPM. I'd also like more options added to groups because, currently, it's very limited.

I've been working with SolarWinds NPM for almost two years now.

SolarWinds NPM is a stable solution.

SolarWinds NPM is a scalable solution.

My team contacted technical support for SolarWinds NPM a lot of times. On a scale of one to ten, I'd rate support as seven because one of my cases remained open for a year without the perfect answer or resolution, though the SolarWinds development team has been working on it.

Neutral

I've previously worked with HPE and IBM, but that was for another organization. My current organization uses SolarWinds NPM.

The initial setup for SolarWinds NPM is relatively easy, and anyone can do it.

As I deployed SolarWinds NPM in a huge environment, the deployment took almost six to eight hours for fifteen servers.

We deployed SolarWinds NPM in-house.

Though I don't remember the price for SolarWinds NPM, its price is somewhat okay when you compare it with other tools in the market. The price isn't too high and isn't too low, so it's okay.

I'm an end-user of SolarWinds NPM.

In the organization, over a hundred people use SolarWinds NPM, with five to six administrators. The solution requires specific maintenance, mainly because it has a lot of DW issues.

My advice to people looking to start working with SolarWinds NPM is that it's the best solution for a medium-scale environment. For a large-scale environment with many requirements, such as a vast number of nodes, for example, more than twenty-five thousand, SolarWinds NPM may not be as scalable, DW-wise. If you have below fifteen thousand to fifteen thousand nodes, then it's okay to use SolarWinds NPM.

My rating for SolarWinds NPM is eight out of ten.

SolarWinds NPM is used in our organization as a monitoring tool for network devices. As a network administrator, I use this solution to monitor devices like switches, routers, interfaces, and tunnels. 

The tool monitors tunnel utilization, interface status, UBS, data center humidity and temperature. 

It's a highly reliable product. SolarWinds NPM is one of our company's most valuable products. SolarWinds NPM immediately notifies via email in case of any downtime situations. 

The response time of the support team needs to improve. Sometimes, there is a wait time of three or four hours to obtain a response from SolarWinds NPM. The consistency of support also needs to improve, in some cases a quick response can be noticed from the support team of SolarWinds NPM. 

I have been using SolarWinds NPM for one and a half years. 

I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. The solution is highly stable. SolarWinds NPM has showcased the utmost stability for one and a half years of usage in our company. 

I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten. SolarWinds NPM adapts well enough to the workflows in our company. The solution is used in our organization to monitor more than 200 nodes. At our company, we are already using the maximum user license of SolarWinds NPM.  

The customer support is satisfying for SolarWinds NPM. I would rate tech support a six out of ten. Quicker responses are expected from the support team. 

Neutral

I would rate the initial setup a nine out of ten. Our company team effortlessly deployed the solution. Only a few free resources, like YouTube, were utilized by our organization's professionals to learn the product installation process.

The deployment of SolarWinds NPM took one or two hours in our organization. After the primary installation of SolarWinds NPM, every node needs to be restarted, it takes time to add the nodes at the monitoring end. Only one or two professionals from our company were needed to deploy SolarWinds NPM. In the post-deployment monitoring, only one professional is required.  

The product was implemented in-house. 

We have realized ROI in terms of saved time in our organization. The product has also contributed towards ROI through accurate and reliable downtime alerts. For instance, the exact number of down switches is notified by email. I would rate the solution's ROI a ten out of ten. 

The product price can be considered to be affordable in economically strong countries like the US but it appears as a bit expensive in Egypt. I would rate the pricing a five out of ten. Our company pays for the license on a yearly basis. The price of the solution is fixed and can be checked by anyone on the vendor's website. 

I would definitely recommend the solution to others. SolarWinds NPM has also helped improve our organization's network performance. The alerting and reporting capabilities of the tool are impressive and can be customized easily. The alerts or reports can always be obtained via email. I would overall rate the solution a ten out of ten. 

Our company specializes in the development of a SaaS site. Often times, we look for solutions to complement our existing tool based on customer's needs. 

We recommended the solution to a customer as an infrastructure configuration and monitoring tool that combines multiple domains in a single platform. The customer also wanted issue notifications to be provided in a real-time, viewable format. 

The solution ranks as one of the top five monitoring tools.

KPIs should correlate and combine in one simple report.

The solution does not offer much customization so is somewhat inflexible. 

I have been using the solution for one year. 

The solution is stable.

Our customer does not have broad scaling needs. They have fifteen users and the solution works fine with no issues in this small environment. 

The initial setup can take time because it requires proper security access from the customer side. Setup and implementation took our customer one week. 

Our customer utilized an internal team of four technicians to handle implementation themselves. 

Our customer reports that the solution is somewhat costly and licensing is a bit complicated. 

I recommend the solution if it is the best alternative for a customer's environment. It is one of five tools that I suggest for assessment of fit. 

I rate the solution a seven out of ten. 

The most valuable features of SolarWinds NPM are network performance monitoring and the overall benefit for servers.

SolarWinds NPM needs to increase its elements. One polling engine can only support 10,000 elements then it becomes slow. There are limitations even if you have the full SLX version license.

If we want to have more polling engines it will cost an additional 20 Indian rupees.

I have been using SolarWinds NPM for approximately nine years.

SolarWinds NPM is a stable solution.

The scalability of the solution is good. It is easy to do.

I would recommend this solution to enterprise-sized companies.

The support is good.

I rate the support from SolarWinds NPM a five out of five.

Positive

The solution can become very expensive and commercially not viable in countries, such as India.

I find this solution to be better than others because we are familiar with it.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate SolarWinds NPM a nine out of ten.